Where is “Communication”?
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Don’t feed the troll.
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Forum-goers are a minority in every single topic that exists, that doesn’t mean their opinion is worthless, instead these type of people might know better about what’s best for their hobbies. They are more passionate about a certain topic and that’s why they dedicate time to discuss it. Not to mention that forums are the only way to easily gage public perception outside of reviews and surveys. If you want to know what fans of X topic want, you go to the forum about X topic. Aiming to give your fans what they want is most often better than doing whatever you want or trying to chase bigger audiences.
True!!! They should cater to the people that were already buying their products and making sure that Age of Empires stayed as one of the biggest RTS in the world for 20+ years.
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No. They should cater to the Marvel fans. That’s 100x larger than this small minority and infinite $$$. WE aims for greatness.
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They should also adapt the game for modern audiences because that always works
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We the loud minority, the “history people”, are the main hindrance of WE becoming the biggest gaming company in human history. If WE got rid of us, they’d be making the biggest esports-RTS-FPS-MOBA-gacha game of all time which every modern teenager and every person in China plays 12 hours a day
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I don’t think it’ll get to that. At that point WE had to pay for people to engage, so I don’t see it happening..
When gaming dev and companies say “we hear you”, or “we’re listening”, or “given community feedback”, who are they referring to then?
Silent players? Vocal fans? Did they put out a survey so it’s not just people on the forum and reddit? Did they send out private messages asking for opinion? Or is it just or performative BS?
And by the way 3K would have been fine as its own mode. I respect them trying to tap into Taiwanese market even if it’s short-term. It’s the higher-ups’ job to manage and harmonize the different player bases and they screwed up.
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usually in the industry they just look at engagement numbers - times a civ is picked, average duration of playing a civ, total player numbers.
This way they have statistics of the whole playerbase and can judge from there.
Big data and such
These are post hoc statistics (aka post-DLC release).
Deciding on 3K being a base game DLC has to be done before any of these numbers exist.
Many people here did anticipate some kind of 3K chronicles DLC after seeing Greece’s success. Based on what info did they see 3K should go in the the base game is a mystery, and I don’t see what metric can tell that.
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Did you even read my reply? See:
Turns out the most popular campaign mod was a campaign about… drums 3K.
Then why are you and your employer also forcing those CAMPAIGN civs into RANKED (something you don’t care at all)?
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Yes I read that. I said base game. Myself included anticipate a 3K chronicles DLC but not in the base game. Where’s the info that 3K fits the base game?
Like someone else said, this should be an easy win for everyone, with 3K chronicles + civs surrounding China.
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It’s been a scenario mod way before the game was fragmented into different modes.
What communication? There is no communication at all zzz
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I myself find the communication style has been outdated for such innovative approach they are going for.
Pre-ROR works because it’s consistent, and has less to no risk of announcing & teasing. It works because it messaged that “hey, we know what you want” and correlated with little information that they shown.
Post-ROR is meh, or worst like 3K. You just a get snip of a pie and suddenly it’s like “don’t skip the cutscenes”. The post-teasing products are so out of touch what most people expected.
They NEED TO CHANGE THEIR COMMUNICATION!
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DLC communication used to be good. For example, for Lords of the West, the original announcement was a bit heavy on the exclamation marks, but generally very clear and descriptive:
Lords of the West—the first official expansion to Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition—is now available to pre-order or add to your wishlist for the holiday season. Here’s what it brings to Age II: DE:
- Challenge your friends with two all-new civilizations, each of which include unique units and technologies for you to explore!
- Battle across Western Europe and the Mediterranean in three new campaigns—including the British king, Edward Longshanks!
- Claim victory by means of sheer military might, diplomatic prowess, or through overwhelming economic power!
- New achievements to earn on your Xbox or Steam account! Check out the full list, below.
Lords of the West will be released on the Microsoft Store and Steam this January 26th, 2021!
This was accompanied by information about the new civs and campaigns, and screenshots that accurately depict the units and buildings available to the new civs:
Things started to go south with Dynasties of India. I’m not opposed to releasing teaser images before any factual announcement, but the images were misleading since they showed players with combinations of units from different civs, e.g. here we have Bengalis with chakram throwers, shrivamsha riders, and bombard cannons, fighting a player who has chakram throwers and ghulams:
The official announcement was similar to Lords of the West though – still factual and descriptive, although it featured some of these misleading screenshots.
I think the communication became actively bad with the “road map”, which was vague and nonsensical, and obviously designed to incite speculation without being at all informative. This seems to have been the approach to communication ever since. At this point, the communication also started to read as if it was written for children by adults who don’t understand children – the tone is just completely off, especially for a game whose audience is predominantly adults, many of whom have been playing it for 25 years.
A good example of this comes from the patch notes from December 2023:
2024 is going to be a great year for Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, with some surprises we’re pretty sure you’ll simply never guess. Try. Give it your best. We’re hyped and can’t wait to see the reaction as some of these things get announced!
It just feels like adults talking down to children.
Now vague communication could actually be fine if the DLCs themselves were in the traditional format – if the audience knows roughly what to expect, then releasing a couple of (accurate) teaser images before the full announcement could actually work well to generate a bit of hype without misleading anyone. But four of the last five DLCs have been unpredictable experiments that, by and large, have added little of value to the game as a whole. If the DLCs are going to be non-standard in this way, then to avoid creating discontent among the playerbase, the communication needs to be explicit up front – no vague previews, no patronising nonsense about “surprises you’ll simply never guess”, and certainly nothing misleading or false.
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Your comment and the onebefore represent by 100% what i feel. Change needs to happen, and i wish the devs (not even sure if it is under their control or someone above) need to act. I believe they read these forums, atleast somewhat, but the least we can do is keep being vocal about it.
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Tin foil hat: this is all intentional expectation management
At some point they decided to abandon the “traditional” DLCs but they still wanted to make the players hooked on potential future additions. So they had to be vague and just enough misleading (leave enough room for themselves and their apologists to blame the players for expecting “something else”)
In the meantime they keep telling they didn’t forget about the “traditional” DLCs. But they are not telling when they’ll come, and the definition of “traditional” is open to interpretation, like putting civs on ranked is also “traditional” (but don’t ask what civs)
Before: the pattern is clear (regular civs+campaigns) so no need to emphasize it. They just need to provide details before release.
Now: they need to blur and disrupt the pattern that had been deeply embedded in and naturally expected by the players
Yes. They want to first create hype and ride it, then blame the playerbase for the “wrong” hype later.
How dare you forget this:
Summary
That announcement and the speculations that followed now feel so funny to read btw
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Yeah, we didn’t get sweaters from grandma. We got socks.
Socks that suck.
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Oh whoops, that is probably the best example of what I was talking about.