One Year of Humankind and the Future

Most of this is fairly generic, but I am happy to see Maritime Gameplay on the list! As it is listed under Improvements I won't expect too much, but I do hope it adds to exploring the oceans, introduces independent fleets (pirates), and that the common frustration of naval battles will be addressed, where an enemy can wipe out most of your fleet with outdated ships because of the fire first and no retaliation mechanic (and vice versa btw, destroying enemy fleets can be extremely easy because of this).

As for stealth overhaul, I assume this was meant to be a more fleshed out feature to begin with, but personally I never understood stealth units and stealth aerial strikes. I hope I will be able to scout enemy lands and gain vision when this is improved.

Independent Peoples: curious what you will improve, but anything that adds to more nuanced and varied gameplay yes.

Third party reinforcements: I can help my ally in battles? My ally can help me? 

Yea Denuvo, great stuff. Remember when Amplitude said, "we promise we won’t change" when they willingly sold themselves to Sega? Well, Denuvo is part of that promise :))) LOL 

Guess who uses Denuvo in their products? Ubisoft, the company they left to make Amplitude, an indie company that was closer to the customers and fans without all the corpo trash integrated in their games. Guess who did not use Denuvo? Amplitude before selling themselves to Sega

From what I can see now, they are going mainstream, they have a steady support from Sega, so they could care less about their fan base and depend even less on their money. They only say now they care in words, but the implementations they come with confirm they don't care anymore that much

I remember not long ago when any new Amplitude game was a source of joy and an insta buy. Now I have to take a very long stick, as long as a spear and poke the new game from afar and see if it drops any Denuvo, DRMs, gambling, skins, mobile game mechanics, child addicting methods, loot boxes and all that other mainstream garbo or as Amplitude would say items from the "we promise we won't change" package :))). Very sad, sad times and I never thought I could say this about Amplitude

I will just put my faith in them that they will come back as they sure can and make a great Endless Legend 2 and turn from mainstream to the great products they used to make and were appreciated on Steam with very positive ratings

But never worry. If they won't make Endless Legend 2 or turn to who they were, in the future other indie companies will emerge to make great 4x games as they once did or maybe other talented people will leave Ubisoft and make a splendid company as they once did or why not maybe if they grow in this mainstream corpo direction and far away from who they were originally, even the talented people from Amplitude who feel what I and others are saying here will leave Amplitude and make their own company as once Amplitude left Ubisoft and we will get the cool Endless Legend 2, Endless Space 3, Humankind 2 and so on, spiritual successor games that we will all love. 

Time will tell what will happen, but for now there is still hope, as from what I have seen over the years from forums and streams both the management and the projects teams have nice talented people. Still, as we know from history, sometimes money and power can corrupt with ease. I hope for the best and much love to everyone

The publisher has no fault in this. Amplitude was an amazing independent studio that cared for the fans and the games they made for them. One day they willingly decided to be acquired by Sega using their own will. Other companies like them preferred to stay independent and still do, making great games and doing well. Look at the statement Amplitude made when they willingly joined Sega and said they identify with them and their practices:

https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/endless-space-2/blogs/452-amplitude-joins-the-sega-family

„we have decided to join forces with SEGA”

„The opportunity to join them is incredible for us, a real dream come true”

„Because it was SEGA, and we all have a good reason to love them.”

„Often, studios are controlled by a central department that dictates what games they should do, and how and when. But SEGA is a company that offers its support to the creators, positioning itself as a service provider, helping studios to reach their goals with only one objective in mind: Quality!”

And yeah, Sega is all about quality as they said, „67%, mixed, approval quality on Steam”, a first for Amplitude :facepalm:

Basically for them it was a dream came true to be part of Sega, to be forced to release games early (if it was the case as you said, the above statement said Sega does not do that, maybe it was Amplitude’s will), and when fans said in OpenDev the game has a great foundation it just needs 1-2 more years to be release ready they just said, ohh, they like the game, let’s drop the OpenDev title and sell it to them as it is, screw them, we now rely mostly on money from Sega we don’t care that much about fans :facepalm:

So yeah, pumping free updates/DLC to make the game 1.0 worthy and get very positive approval like their other games do would be a nice repair, even though the unfinished game release but with full complete and refined game price that they asked still is a bad practice towards their buyers/fans. But from what I see they are pumping paid DLC, not free ones, and after 1 year of updates and paid DLC the approval is still bad and buyers still screwed, and I believe more paid DLC and not free ones will follow until the game becomes good if ever as you also said. Sad times

True, Amplitude has some passionate devs and made amazing games in the past, that is why I still write over here in my own spare time instead of doing good things for me, that is why I spent hours and hours of writing feedback, helping out and also bought all their games and DLCs until Humankind where I have only the preordered expensive option, as Amplitude brought a lot of joy in my life with their other good games that they did before and in the hope that they will learn from this and get back to who they were, with Endless Legend 2, as they already know that formula. I also hope they will only release finished polished games in the future especially when they ask for a AAA polished game price for them

Could be so @sapsling

But what do you say to people who participated in the OpenDevs (their Alpha/Beta) in their spare time and used their resources to help Amplitude, a company they love to succeed with feedback and know how and than preordered the game, hoping for an amazing 4x, just to discover it was almost the same OpenDev build that dropped the “OpenDev” title filled with bugs, bad AI, and a mess of a game

What do you say to those people? Thanks for participating in our cash grab and hope you will buy our 17 paid DLCs as you say to get a good 1.0 experience and pull a “No Man’s Sky”?

I truly believe Amplitude will learn from this and not do the same in Endless Legend 2. Otherwise it will be clear Amplitude that was loved by everyone is no more and the Amplitude that willingly sold themselves to Sega are just another company. It would be ironic to leave Ubisoft (as they did) and make this lovely Amplitude company just to become Ubisoft themselves

GlorySign wrote:

Next I hope is Endless Legend 2 a game that will bring back the glory of Amplitude with very positive ratings on Steam after being plummeted to mixed rating (67% approval rating) on Steam for more than a year, for the first time in Amplitude's history, by Humankind

Well there is a positive trend upwards, as recent reviews have been dipping in (and out) of Mostly Positive.

I am hoping they will pull a No Man's Sky, which took five years and "17 free game-changing updates" :P :D

https://www.pcgamer.com/five-years-later-no-mans-sky-finally-has-positive-steam-reviews/

Next I hope is Endless Legend 2 a game that will bring back the glory of Amplitude with very positive ratings on Steam after being plummeted to mixed rating (67% approval rating) on Steam for more than a year, for the first time in Amplitude's history, by Humankind

Thank you for this updated roadmap, looking forward to the changes and new contents.

I'm also very interested to hear about the other plans for improvements and additions to the game ! I'll stay stune for more infos.

docktorkain wrote:

hmm... that roadmap is for the next 8-9 months or so. Given amplitude's rate of work so far, I would bet on it being split on 3 or 4 different updates. So lets play a game: Which parts of the roadmap would you guess for each update? what'll come first and what'll come last?

i guess new "Game Systems" will come last. If they are changing the way you can enjoy and play the game, it takes a lot of work.

But it can play out a other way out too.

For example: religion needs a lot more game mechanics. This "Game Systems" could come together with new religious/spirit fame stars up to the early modern time. Together with a new class of religious cultures.

And from the industrial age on with new atheistic cultures able to counter balance the religious cultures witch had already gained a lot of religious fame stars.
A fundamentalist cultures against atheistic cultures endgame.

Or they can ad a future era. With future cultures. New techs. And a new win condition. I can smell the dust. Settling on a different star systems brings up so much fame, that you can win by tech and production even if you startet the future era third place in fame...

What i would love to see, is when they ad new "Game Systems" to also see cultures to make the best out of this. This will also need fine balancing for existing cultures.

Third party reinforcements is not a can of worms I expected you to tackle, very interesting.

For Maritime, I hope it becomes possible to reset the "lost at sea" status in somebody else's territory. That first push to the other continent is often a suicide mission because nobody's going to open their borders the turn you meet them, and it's a weird benefit to Expansionists in Classical.

For IPs, hopefully you can groom them to be vassals instead of being forced to assimilate. ES2 had the same issue, if things go well they all straight up vanish.

Probably a longshot, but a district planner as a UI improvement maybe??? 

Looks good, I'm still very much enjoying playing the game as is, the improvements list looks good and I'm very excited for what the future will bring in terms of new cultures, narrative events, and just about everything else. Absolutely loving the new loading screens, by the way, some fantastic art with the 'What If' series, I especially love St. Basil's in Edo!

I'm appreciative of our first persona customisation options that feature a variety of hats, too. I'm still eagerly awaiting glasses, but I'm happy to be patient given how much I'm enjoying the content that is getting added.

Would love to see Melayu or Majapahit inspired cultures, I've a friend in Malaysia that is getting really into the game and it'd be nice to see some other varieties of cultures centred around that area of the world make it into the game as DLC, or in an update. Would be happy to see some other Eurocentric options, too!

Edit: I just realised I read 'third-party reinforcements' and didn't really process what that means for the game. It was one of the focal points of my disappointments with the game lacking and I'm super happy to see it coming to the game now, should make multiplayer games more interesting too.