I love that some people are trying to be more positive than negative in reference to the patch changes, but they really shouldn’t. Being constructive is a good thing, but so is outrage. If everyone did a bad job, still got paid and a pat on the back for jobs done poorly, you are creating an atmosphere that has no incentive to get better. I didn’t pay 60 bucks now for a game that will be good 6 months from now (or possibly later at this rate). It is obvious from the twitch stream today, and previous streams, that the dev and balance teams are completely out of touch with the community and competitive play. Looks like they want to balance the game for AI matches, not for E-sports as some (myself included) thought. Plus they are a month or more behind the meta as far as nerfs and tweaks are concerned. Did any of them watch Genesis???
This patch did way more harm than good. Everyone already knows what’s wrong if you scroll down the forums, so I won’t go into detail; but for a quick rundown, they fixed Rus artifact bug, nerfed hulks, made Delhi unplayable, Abbasids can fight from leagues away, fixed (or did they) Chinese in the poorest way possible, nerfed HRE, and Mongols, French, and English are still running the show. No real changes to these civs!!!
The reason people are frustrated is because they want to love it, they are invested in it, they paid good money for it, and so deserve the right to say what they will. People that are pissed have played this series of games for 20 years and got excited for it, only to be let down. This whole, "Nice try, you’ll do better next time,’ approach doesn’t do anyone any good.
This patch should be rolled back until the AoE4 team has a grasp on what the heck they are doing and why.