I find it funny how people take it so literally offensive that there is a civ in the game soon, that does not meet their interest but they demand that NO one is playing with that civ and if they get matched up with that civ they will quit the match.
That says a lot about you folks more than anything. YOU are the problem here, not the new civ direction. It’s really immature in so many ways. No one is forcing you to like it, just to accept that it’s okay to have a civ that different people of interest can enjoy. That should be the main priority.
If you remember at the start of the game we had mandatory water maps. You couldn’t give them up, you had to play them. Very often, after finding an opponent in the game and realizing that you got a water map, the opponent left the game. This is how players will feel on the Joan of Arc civilization.
You choose to compare an exploit used by players that forced the hand of the developers to address in a patch, to a new civilization that will come as a variant that provides with new game-play and strategies? How is this even remotely the same?
All I’m saying is that you are welcome to dislike this civilization in the game, you don’t need to play it because guess what? There are 15 more civilizations to choose from and that should be the priority here, to give players enough choices so that everyone has their civilizations they love to play.
How is this effecting you in any way? Unless this specific civilization becomes extremely OP I see no reason how this can effect your game-play, when you are playing other civilizations that you love and enjoy?
If this is how people feel about a new civilization before you even get the chance to play with, then it says a lot more about you and not the civilization.
How can you even compare it to anything when you haven’t even tried it yet? It’s one thing to read a short summary on the website, and another to actually try it for yourself.
Having named heroes causes conflicts when playing mirror matches.
This was an issue in LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth when you played a mirror match as Gondor for example: You had 2 Gandalfs, 2 Aragorns, etc.
Generic heroes are ok since it’s understandable that opposing factions have 2 kings or 2 khans. But you can’t have 2 Joanne D’Arcs unless you are completely forgoing any semblance of historical accuracy.
The mongol TC rush was no exploit but a bug that made the carriages way too fast. Instead of making the strategy unviable like other strategy games do, they lazily made it impossible. I wonder if they will add the same limitation to jeanne?
Why should players not play against a mongol player who spawns a TC in your face but against a jeanne player that spawns an army in your face? The units appear out of thin air! Very strategic.
It is the very concept of a unique unit being able to do such things that will push players to just quit. No scouting can tell what this hero unit will do to me once it reaches my base.
It is just like AoE3 enemy shipments, now in your base
You don’t understand the problem at all. It doesn’t matter to me what kind of gameplay Jeanne d’Arc has. Maybe he’s very good. I believe it can be fun. But the problem is that JEANNE D’ARC IS NOT A CIVILIZATION!!!
Its presence in the game is DISGUSTING!
But they haven’t even shown the gameplay of that variant civilization (only some information about Joan), and you’re already drawing conclusions without knowing.
The civilization of Joan of Arc (a disputable name for me regarding what a civilization should be called) is a civilization with this mechanic and it still focuses on other things.
AoE4 will continue to be an RTS, it will still be AoE4, and it will remain open-minded.
I played a metric ton of that game, but that really seems like a very specific complaint for specific players, that a ton of games will fall foul of. That’s the problem with immersion - it’s best catered to in PvE content. Multiplayer will always rub up against these kinds of design decisions.
(I’m glad we’re getting a campaign with this expansion, but the game could really do with more)
Neither is the Order of the Dragon.
We get the problem. What we don’t get is why it’s only Jeanne, when there are others that don’t fit either “empire” or “civilisation”. And this is before we get onto other games in the franchise.
If you have other issues and this is just the final straw, I get that.
The issue I’m having with your argument is that you base all of this on just your assumptions when in fact none of us know how this civilization is going to end up be once the expansion goes live.
What will be its strengths and weaknesses? Which civilizations will it do good against and bad against? On what maps will this civilization be good on and bad on? How difficult will this civilization be to play as? etc.
You cannot compare a civilization that is not out yet and that none of us know how it’s going to play, with other civilizations in the game that’s been there since launch. I’m not counting the website that has a short summary review of a civilization to be enough to know all of this before trying it a few times for yourself.
I’ve already provided with a possible solution earlier today on how to address the name issue that people have right now, by combining all the variant civilizations under their original civilizations so for example when you choose the French, you get to choose between the French or Jeanne D’arc (French) in a separate menu that appears only then. This way you will not see them as a “separate” civilization in the list and thus removing the name issue all together.
I doubt the player base is more than a 500 people at this point, so I went with “was”.
You are missing the point. At a gameplay level, it doesn’t affect anyone in any way, but it’s a big perception issue of what the game is supposed to be and its focus. Every game, book, movie, etc. has to adhere to certain rules so things make sense. They can be made up things like having magic or dragons, but their powers/limitations/accuracy must be respected through the game, book, movie, etc. otherwise you throw the audience into suspension of disbelief issues, disinterest and even outright anger at what little attention is put into those things.
Game of Thrones “fast travel” in S7 and S8 comes to mind as a good example. Writers were honoring the rules regarding how big the world was, until they couldn’t care anymore.
I hope at some point there was a meeting to discuss these new variants, their implications, names (maybe variant names weren’t in the agenda, lol) and that the topic of having 4 opposing players with 4 Jeanne D’Arcs was brought up. This is not Mortal Kombat where you have 2 Sub Zeros with different costumes, or at least it wasn’t, but sadly we’re slowly steering away from what little semblance of historical accuracy we still had in exchange for shiny names that sound cool (Order of the DRAGON!), map monsters and magical creatures. But we still can’t have real birds flying overhead.
Why not have AoE4 randomly generate hero names out of a realistic pool of historical characters? If we have Jeanne D’Arc carrying guns, I’d much rather have her fight a Napoleon than a clone.
Yes, the Order of the Dragon is also a problem. All variants of the civ are a big problem. But now only Jeanne was shown.
So it turns out that you still put an equal sign between nations and one woman. Who is she? Why should entire civilizations resist it? She’s not Jesus or Napoleon. Her name doesn’t mean anything, but she’s a civilization.
The only solution is to allocate all the variants of civs to a separate game mode. Then even with the names there will be no problems, call it what you want. But the list of civilization remains undefiled.
You clearly didn’t understand my solution as that solves the NAME ISSUE that you folks have, by not having the variant civilizations show up under the civilization tree in a lobby because the names aren’t following the traditional civilization name standard.
By doing what I suggested you only get to pick the variant civilization, via a separate menu that only appears when you choose a civilization that has a variant one as well.
Why is this not enough for you if they choose to go this way? I thought the issue was the names and that it doesn’t make sense compared to the other traditional civilizations but now you are saying you are having issue with the variant civilizations period.
The variant civilizations are still a part of their original civilizations, just that they provide with other strategies that isn’t available for the original civilizations. In other words the variant civilizations are like a sub-civilization that shares the same history from the original civilization but that gives new strategies to play around with, so how is this bad in your eyes?
Games MUST take certain liberties for a game to be functional and be interesting to play as time goes on, so again this is purely a YOU problem and nothing else. It’s a game at the end of the day and not a 100% historical accurate documentary game because with this logic you should also have issues with things like villagers being able to create new farms in a matter of seconds when in real life it takes many many months to do that, or how is it that you can create so many villagers and soldiers in a matter of seconds? Where does all of this people come from etc.
See the problem that appears if you view it the way you and others do? It’s one thing to be critical, and provide with constructive feedback but this what you guys are doing now is just insane and it just shows how you don’t understand how a game works in general.
And to answer your question about Jeanne d’Arc, who is she? Well she is a historical person who lived in France and played an important role for France. I’m sure you wanting history and authenticity can approve that she is now playable am I right? Doesn’t sound like it.
Something like the Khan with 2 or 3 active abilities is cool, as long as the impact is minor and that unit only “levels up” by aging up.
The idea of the Khan I personally really like and it fits the gameplay.
Something that gives a little bit of flavour to a civ but doesn’t give a huge advantage.
No experience mechanics please and PLEASE let this new hero be kinda weak like the Khan…
Quite honestly that hero is a big bull**** move then.
This is not league of legends, dota2 or warcraft3 or starcraft2, this is AGE OF EMPIRES.
I love all of the mentioned games (except of spamcraft2), but this is age of empires.
Why does it have to get destroyed?
This is so sad.
That your favorite game in the franchise is probably AoE3, being the most different from the historical games, and then saying this seems inconsistent to me.
Aoe3 is my favourite in the whole series by far, DE is not.
De did improve a lot of things in the technical department, improved graphics and QOL features, bugfixes, bringing the NEEDED wall (sight-range) nerfs and all.
But with the content inflation the game just got butchered more and more every patch for competitive (team-) play.
I’d choose DE any time over Vanilla if DE sticked to Nilla’s or TAD’s content and didn’t inflate the game with broken civs and mercenaries.
DE is basically just a short-term crash-grab and completely destroyed aoe3 eventually.
Thanks to DE, TAD and Vanilla are completely dead and now DE is dying too.
Last time I tried to play it, I had HUGE waiting times in ranked queue due (I used to play somewhere at 1700-1900 elo if I remember correctly, even though I didn’t even play too much in DE compared to aoe3).
Then I either got matched with some people which didn’t even challenge me (probably 1400 and less) or some top 20 players which kinda crushed my friend and me.
Almost never you find someone in your elo range if you are somewhere above average.
Also, there are so so so many new completely broken mercenaries and civs in the game, that it’s just super frustrating to play. My friend and me played a few matches, got mad, then laughed it off and said let’s leave this joke of a game, is this league of legends?
When USA got released I already lost my shit, though the new civs and mercenaries top the stupidity…
Aoe3 keeps a nice mix of historical aspects and parts which favour the pure gameplay, a healthy balance.
It wasn’t overly arcade but gameplay also didn’t suffer from choices like “only french had knights, so we’ll leave all the other civs with light cav only that gets sniped in 2 shots”.
Every civ in aoe3 had heavy cav age3, every civ had culverines.
It was DE which introduced a lot of bull****.
TAD was already pretty unbalanced (before ESOC patches and still afterwards for teamplay).
DE is a catastrophe now honestly, it’s completely pushed into casual/arcade.
Sorry for the long OT post.
TL;DR
Please no arcade heroes in aoe4, please don’t butcher the game like aoe3DE did ~1 year after launch in an increasing way.
