Relax, he explicitly said it was just an assumption.
I don’t really buy into that assumption either, to be honest. But the thing is, he does actually check Tieba, so he has definitely seen the drama stirred up by some Chinese “players”, I’m not even sure if those “players” actually play the game, or if they just enjoy arguing on Tieba for fun.
And he has definitely seen those who don’t want Jin to be a variant, somehow he chose to ignore them.
I certainly don’t deny the existence of “nationalist” on Tieba. I was simply asking him by what logic or methodology he reached his conclusion or assumption. Otherwise, it’s just another one of many reductive, irresponsible interpretations of the heterogeneous needs of a large player population. I have seen enough of these comments across the franchise. We had one from a South Korean not long ago.
Now, I don’t want to derail this thread, so I’ll stop here.
Nah. Definitely not. That’s illogical.
Why would they specifically emphasize it has new music and masteries? Every base civs have those.
They never said it WASN’T a “variant”. They just didn’t use the word variant. Probably because of the visceral reaction a bunch of people have to it.
They also explicity said that there would be 2 new base civs this year, both in the 2nd expansion.
It seems to me that whether it’s a variant or not doesn’t really matter at this point. Whatever compromises the developers make on a full, brand-new civilisation, there will be a negative reaction to.
And I think the negative reaction is fine, but at the end of the day, compromising on new civs to give the players more options is also fine to me (which is why I was never that fussed about variants existing - being able to flavour full civs with a different design is a cool way of representing the ways cultures changed even during the timeline AoE IV is set in).
Well, yeah I do check Tieba constantly, and yes, it was just an assumption, based on some comments from that forum, like these:
And well, more when 28% of the players are from China, and the DLC is about China. So the devs should have been cautious in how they interpreted the Jin Dinasty, especially considering this audience, and I believe they have been.
But anyway, it was just an assumption, nothing to take seriously, a theory, but hey, people on the forum seem really sensitive lately.
Even within the same forum, there are threads where Chinese users state that the Jin Dynasty is part of Chinese history. The thread Concerns regarding the Jin Dynasty: Voiceline (And acts of historical distortion) specifically discusses this extensively.
Now, it’s also possible that these comments weren’t the reason, and Jin Dynasty was a variant all the time, but the devs simply didn’t announce it as a variant to generate hype and avoid the trauma caused by the term “variant civ” the recent years.
In any case, is a good variant*: with 99% new elements of gameplay, bonuses, unique units, unique techs and mechanics, very different from the Main China Unicom. Like is Knight templars from French.
I’ve always really appreciated your willingness to gather info from platforms in different languages. After all, it’s notoriously hard for feedback from the Chinese player base to get across effectively due to language and platform barriers. I really wish the Devs had the same habit. Of course, I also suggest on Tieba that Chinese players head over to the English forums more often. More communication is always beneficial overall.
As for the variant issue, I vaguely recall them claiming it was going to be a brand new civ, but I’m not sure if they ever actually changed it.
Either way, I’m genuinely glad that even as a variant, it got its own new music. I’d love to see more of this kind of effort.
