It goes on for a while already.
People get in this forum just to grudge and run stuff down.
It’s annoying and disrespectful to the community which is actually interested in healthy discussions about the game.
I often want to berate the people who do that nonsee, but it would only bring me a ban. They hide behind the moderation, but in reality they are toxic. At least I see that as toxic.
This nonsense has to stop. I see that the team wants to be seen as “open to critic” from the community. But most of that critic here has nothing to do with actual critic on the game. It’s trying to get influence and/or just because the people see they get away with it.
That’s how people work. If they are happy they are quiet, if they are angry they are loud.
Just because there is a wave of angry comments doesn’t mean the majority hates something. The developers do surveys and have metrics from game usage that help them figuring out how people actually see the game. But also being mad about a game ironically shows that you like it a lot. You wouldn’t be mad about something you don’t like at all, right. Because why brother wasting time on a piece of media you don’t enjoy?
OK I see where you going. And I also have my share of critics on the current path.
TLC was a massive step in the right direction though. The issues I see come less from devs doing stuff wrong, but the general question where we are going. There are already way too many civs for how ranked play is designed, just as an example.
But the issue is currently we don’t get there discussing these topics because of all these grudge threads.
PS: And whilst I think that the majority of people here still love the game, unfortunately a lot of these grudge posters don’t look like that to me. A lot of them only look as they try to get influence and/or away with toxicity. Knowing that you can’t really tell them to “f off” because then you would get banned. In my eyes they use a general dissapointment in the community to get away with toxic behaviour.
for a healthy discussion to be had, we would require two things:
a healthier game
a healthy relationship with the devs
how is any discussion here ever going to be productive, if the people who can actually change things aren’t participating? the current situation is as follows:
the devs lie in public interviews and break their promises
they then push some unwanted changes on everyone, without giving any options to the players
on this forum there are players talking to each other, without the devs even being present
Everybody has the right to post opinions.
Not demanding. Not unjustful hate.
And if you do, you should think about what you are writing. You won’t get away with any nonsense you write. Don’t post bs and then complain about others telling you it’s bs. Don’t attack others and then complain if they punch back. Don’t construct absurd narratives just to get your personal willing, then complain if someone doubts your honesty and calls you out.
The right of opinion implies that you have to take the responsibility for what you state.
In m any cases yes. Sometimes if someone is really just a menace and toxic af there is no way around it. I much rather prefer solving stuff directily. But if others don’t want stuff to get solved, but only to escalate there is literally no other way.
On the other hand I have experienced that the same people who escalated situations then flagged my or other peoples responses to theiir toxicity. And ofc that’s then the next step up the ladder of toxicity which I try to point out in this topic.
Also, just to clarify. This thread is not generally against grudge or criticism or whaterver. It’s the specific type of threads and posts that in my opinion are unjust and dishonest. Threads that try to use the disappointment in the community to get away with that kind of stuff.
I see and respect there is dissapointment and I too have points I don’t liked about the last expansions. Though in general liked most of it actually. My concerns are more in the direction “where is the game going? will it stay enjoyable if we continue this path?”.
And then ofc it’s important what @TheTowerDefender expressed in his post. There is the feeling of parts of the community getting “ignored”. And whilst I think a lot of this comes from an underlying crysis that major parts of the community don’t want to have the game changed too much. But if there comes nothing new with the DLCs they just won’t sell. And sticking just to what worked in the part then feels “worn out”. And ofc we need to find a soluition for this very, very complex problem.
to add to this, i think another issue is that there are several problems with the game that we would like to see addressed but have been completely ignored:
the starting experience in ranked
the (perceived?) smurfing issues
the completely broken lobby browser
there is no option to find fair games in a non-ranked setting (eg if you’d like to play BBC dodgeball, FFA, or even just 1v1 arabia, without other maps)
so it isn’t just that we as people feel ignored, but also that obvious issues with the game get ignored. Issues that had been solved in previous iterations of the game
TBH i don’t think they “ignore” it. They just probably cant fix it [without putting more res in than it would be appropriate].
Look at pathing. Though I have to admit it was in a way, way worse state than currently (at least it’s not unfair anymore). But it’s actually still broken.
But yes, ofc these points and others staying open for so long doesn’t ease the situation.
it’s still super shitty of them to have DE be a downgrade in all of these aspects compared to HD.
in HD you could start against weaker opponents when playing multiplayer
I’m not sure if smurfing was a big issue in HD, but we have seen multiple people run analysis for the game to identify smurf accoutns
the lobby browser was just better in HD. you could actually filter and find games, as opposed to DE where it’s (and this is an extremely technical term) super fucking spazzy
HD had elo in lobbies. Not 100% sure if that also worked for BBC dodgeball and FFA, but you could just play Arabia, or Nomad, or Arena and weren’t forced into other maps.
it’s a slap in the face that the “Definitive” edition is objectively a downgrade in these aspects.
Pathing is genuinely a difficult problem to solve. The issue I have with that is when patches made pathing worse, they didn’t roll back those changes, but stuck with them until the next patch. Some of these changes (like teleporting units, or units ignoring commands entirely) would have been rolled back or hotfixed within days in any other game.
Especially in a game without patch rollback (fuck knows why they force us to always play on the latest patch), this is unconscionable.
It’s funny because many of the CURRENT devs were once fans given an ascension meaning they should be communicating with us. I remember chatting with and Brainstorming with the FE team to try and help plan for the next fan expansion when it was 2013 even having decent rapport with Cysion… then they hit big and suddenly they don’t communicate any more.
so I agree they need to healthily chat with us again
Immediately doing whatever some snobby and hateful fans disrespectfully demand from them? Is this what “muh they are not communicating with us.” drama means?
I find a lot of the opinions on here rather annoying and while I’d prefer if we had a single thread for the complication of criticisms of say, a single patch or DLC.
People should be allowed to express their opinion even if it goes against the status quo or even if it makes someone personally uncomfortable. That’s what freedom of expression should be about.
the issue is more that the devs have directly lied to us and broken promises:
they said that they were done adding civs, then did a 180 without giving us options to opt out
they said V&V would be a campaign DLC - contained no campaigns
they said Chinese wouldn’t be split, we now have 4 chinese factions and a massive rework for chinese
many of these things would go over way better if they said why they were doing this and answered questions about it.
similarly there are many things that would objectively improve the game, that they seem to show no interest in doing: why doesn’t fixing the lobbies get priority? why are we still limiting how many bans we get in ranked? why can’t we have more ranked queues for stuff like FFA, etc?
just a single AMA on reddit where we would get some answers would do so much to garner good will.
I was trying to do this with the “last chieftains feedback thread”, but a big issue on this forum is that threads get off-topic really quickly.
Also lacking the reply system of something like reddit, it’s hard to discuss the different criticisms of the same topic in one thread. eg how do you have criticism (with responses) about Civ choices, civ design, unit design, campaign design, and balance in a single thread? But all of these were (valid) criticism voiced for TLC
Posting/sharing ideas about a fan mod and an official content is completely different things.You cant really expect the ideas you give will get ported over to a product people pay for when there are multipele stakeholders at play.
The lies aren’t even the biggest problem imo, it’s the fact the Devs seems adamant on dodging all accountability for what they said and did.
To the point all the criticism is moot, like 3K is ever gonna get fixed because the Devs won’t admit that they fucked up. The average player of this game don’t care cuz they aren’t that deep into it. So what are we even supposed to do but just abandon it?
Oh contraire, you seem to have forgotten the devs graciously invited us to tell them what we hate. Surely we’ll get fixes very soon.
Seriously though, for me it’s a distinction without a difference. The lies are indicative that there is no respect for a fanbase who’s supported the game for 25+ years. If lying or any other deceitful, manipulative, or otherwise generally anti-fan action benefits their aims they will do so.
To your point, those are the harmful actions though they are consequence of ethically deficient leadership.
They lie cause they’re ethically deficient, and because they’re ethically deficient they deny responsibility. It’s all chicken and the egg, one begets the next.
For example Cysion lies about not splitting China, needing 5 civs to tell the stories they want to tell, having no interest in adding insignificant polities.
When the lie becomes obvious he lies again. He says he simply didn’t have time to explain what he truly meant, even tho the deceptive portions were in each case the end of that remark. He also said that the format didn’t permit him the necessary time, but somehow someway Nili was on the same podcast a few months later to talk about upcoming work that he also did not have freedom to speak about freely at the time. Somehow Nili didn’t cause a great controversy. Seems the format, contrary to Cysions dis-statements, wasn’t the issue.
I also noticed in article for TLC’s announcement they repeated the language that the civs were a natural addition to the aoe2 roster, from the 3K announcement post. Seems the reasoning is if you repeat a lie in a more favorable context, you can retroactive make more truthful the original lie.
Respect is a two-way street, and the devs will get it when they show some the other way around.
Lying, manipulation and just simply not understanding what people have asked in plain words is not respectful.
I’m not looking for an apology, I want fixes to the messes they keep making.
RoR just being abandonware at this stage
Balance decisions that feel like random lurches: Khitans OP as hell for months, Champis dogpiled in less than a week
The 3K civs which literally nobody asked for
Not finishing Jurchens and Khitans
Khitangut abomination
Persian architecture (they knew what they were doing with the Mountain Royals promo images)
Changing the menus when nobody asked for it
Adding dumb yellow rings around objectives (If you’re going to do that, at least give us the option to turn it off(
I can see the promo images are less deceptive as of late, and more clear info shared beforehand. This is good, I’m not going to criticise improvement. Let’s just see it elsewhere as well.