Just a quick meme.
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This is a good joke, but I think it would be more accurate to say the community is divided into five distinct groups. Iām personally in a state of āIām pretending I donāt care but Iād be so happy for some new DLC.ā
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Seems like weāre slowly getting over it.
Only because we have to.
Not because they didnāt do the wrong thing.
Never forgive. Never forget.
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I donāt see this as a joke; in my opinion, this is an accurate observation of whatās happening.
Furthermore, the most dangerous thing about this is that during the stages of grief a person can get stuck in one stage and I fear that many people will get stuck in the negotiation or Anger stage, hopefully everyone can reach the acceptance stage.
I think the best thing the community can do is focus on helping/favoring the most talented modders to keep the game alive with content that, letās be honest, sometimes surpassed what the developers were producing.
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Itās exactly what they want, so no.
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Exactly. Iām not reaching acceptance.
ā¢ I do not accept the lousy way that Worldās Edge announced a DLC for AOE3 in the first place. Be transparent - a community is more forgiving if you just say you aināt go anything to announce for AOE3 at the moment, rather than leading us on. Iām not taking the excuse that we, the AOE3 community needed something to take away during the AOE content/DLC announcements, because we so desperate and need some solace.
ā¢ I do not accept the communication levels. We were even told that they would be improved, however that didnāt happen. Staff to fanbase communcation is important.
ā¢ I do not accept the excuse that the DLC was to be delayed. This is not a frothing-mad AOE3 fanboy comment - I just want them to be transparent. It was really not worked on and it was jostling for some position in a long queue. Why announce it in the first place until some work had been done - itās just bad planning.
ā¢ I do not accept the bridge-burning, rug-pulling, dumpster fire, AOE community-wide shock of an neat, compact announcement bundling of 1. ceasing the previously officially announced, previously delayed DLC that the whole community knew of in some form or another and 2. essentially the ceasing of any significant updates and patches. The AOE3 community were devasted and the shockwaves were felt in other AOE communities regardless of whether you were AOE3 fans/haters/indifferent folk - effectively shutting a gameās support echoes with the AOM:R community as it occupies a similar level of players (more niche than AOE2 + IV) and who knows what will happen after then 2nd DLC.
Personally I feel incredibly unmotivated to make future AOE purchases. I love AOE2 and am pleased with the latest Update but will not be purchasing the latest DLC (I mean thatās a whole different subject in itself!). Iām also not going to be pushed into IV - though thatās mainly at the complete indifference to it.
What would make a small, but significant step in moving forward, would be at the very least a āfinalā update to end support professionally and squash some silly bug issues.
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On the contrary, if we allow ourselves to be blinded by anger, they will use it against us, whereas if we accept the situation, we can take appropriate action with a cool head.
Accepting the situation is not accepting the mistreatment, it is accepting that you were mistreated and seeking justice, but thinking with a cool mind and not blinded by anger.
This seems perfect to me, you made a decision thinking with a cold mind and no one will be able to blame you for it.
They owe us a final patch, they had promised us one with quality of life improvements, which never really arrived and by ending support for the game we did not receive any final patch with fixes and improvements to facilitate modding, that is clearly not fair for the community and it is not fair for the consumer either.
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They are about to release a big patch in Aoe 2, after that it may be our turn
Absolutely not. Still in the āangerā stage. These developers did this all wrong. We gave them the benefit of the doubt for literally YEARS while they went radio silent, patched unreliably, introduced countless new bugs, failed to fix old ones, and broke the balance for multiplayer. They left this game in a sorry state and, no, itās not acceptable.
We can see clearly where their passion and talents are being applied with AoM. Itās clear that AoE3 could have benefited greatly from similar attention. They should have left a small group to manage ongoing balance issues. They should have left a team in place to back port new features added to AoM that ended up being popular to AoE3. They should have left Multiplayer in a better state with a better functioning matchmaking lobby and UI. And they darn well should have fixed their terrible AI and absolutely broken unit pathing issues.
The game wasnāt finished, but they parked it. Thatās a problem. They were radio silent about it for 2 years and still havenāt had the guts to formally admit theyāve thrown the game in the dumpster and moved on to a new toy. I gave them the benefit of the doubt for 2 years while they slowly ramped down. Iām not doing that anymore.
I donāt have to āacceptā the unacceptable.
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What worries me is blind anger and what I interpret from your message is deep and justified indignation at the actions taken during these years.
I think we all felt indignant to a greater or lesser extent, we gave them our patience and they responded with silence, we offered them our ideas and they gave us mediocrity, we forgave them for their mistakes and they treated us like trash.
I completely agree that the actions of these years are unjustifiable, but getting angry does not help us achieve anything, we must think coldly and make ourselves heard, we must demand what they owe us and force them to listen to us.
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Nothing about what I feel is āblind.ā Itās very clear eyed and specifically directed.
Iām no longer trying to achieve anything with this group. I have no expectation of them to deliver anything. I donāt trust them with anything. I expect nothing of them.
To accomplish what? They made a business decision. Theyāre done with AoE3. Thereās no ālistening to usā anymore. They havenāt listened to us for several years now. Why would expect that to change? Thereās no change in leadership or management. Theyāve signaled no change in their business plans. Theyāre aggressively rolling out new content for another game. Their whole dev team is on other projects. Iām not in the bargaining stage. I have no expectation theyāll change their position.
Afterthought: I can be a really cold son of a gun when I want to be. 
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You gave up, that doesnāt seem right to me either. 
Itās not about trust, itās about making us respect, the product was left in poor condition and if we allow them to get away with it then they will feel that they can go unpunished and will do it again.
Ask, if you hire someone to do something and they do it poorly, do you let them be or complain and demand that they do their job well. (for example, think about someone who has to fix your kitchen gas or someone who has to install a fence on their house)
I say so because the logic is similar.
Nope. They did. Thatās why Iām angry.
I think the only way to make them respect us is to vote with our wallets and not buy anything further from this team or publisher. The first is easier. The second is much harder because Microsoft owns so many IPs now. But as for AoM, I did buy the game, but post-AoE3 abandonment, Iām not buying any further DLC for it. Iām honestly spending more time away from the computer not playing video games at all right now. Spring and summer are great for encouraging that.
Sadly, punishing corporations is very challenging. How exactly do you punish a legal structure? Governments run into this all the time. You fine them and they just built that into their operating costs and charge their customers more and keep on going. The only way to stop a corporation is to hit their revenues. So, I donāt buy, and I encourage others not to buy if they agree with me.
As your analogy goes, if I hire work from a contractor and they donāt do a good job, I fire them, hire another contractor to finish the work and encourage others not to do business with them, as well.
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I respect that, it seems like a great way to counter attack, I just hope itās not a decision driven by anger, because eventually the anger runs out, I would prefer it to be a decision based on your principles as a person.
Iād much rather forgive. It takes a lot less energy to do. But that has to be asked and earned. They have to acknowledge the mistake and take corrective action to not repeat it. I do not expect this team is ever going to speak to the AoE3 community again, let alone would be willing to acknowledge what I think were the core problems:
- refusal to engage with the community
- making promises and failing to keep them
- refusal to offer explanations or insight into why decisions that affected customers were being made
I donāt care about the DLC. I never asked for it and argued against it. I care that they promised it as a last minute virtue signal with no effort at all to develop it, then spent over a year stringing along the community while they abandoned the game to work on AoM, then dumped it with a letter that effectively said nothing and admitted no fault, and have since said absolutely nothing about their intentions for the rest of the game. They abandoned it in a broken state and didnāt even bother to build in the tools and set the stage to hand over future management to the community so we could fix it. Thatās why Iām walking.
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