AOM wrote:
are you suggesting that turn pending bugs are a common feature of AAA games?

DING-DING-DING!

(1) (2) (3)

Not common, but not rare either.

Well, I haven't made a survey of all games, so I won't dispute that. All I can say is that Googling "turn pending bug" is, well, it's instructive. Even if you Google "Civ turn pending bug" the articles that show up discuss HK's turn pending bug (e.g., a review article comparing the two games that mentions the turn pending bug in HK). The only other game I've seen discussed in regards to a turn pending bug that was of consequence to players was one of the Endless games...

But all of this could be construed as off-topic, so I leave the last word on it to you if you want it.

Slashman wrote:

aeonova wrote:

Humankind launched with 55,284 users playing it 3 months ago. It's steeply dropped to 2,176. 50,000 people have not come back. Embrace those numbers however you'd like to.

Looks it's fine. You enjoy this game and it works for you. This game hates the way I play and I get no enjoyment from it. Literally nothing but frustration. I wouldn't care but I'm already in the for the $60 and damn I love the tactical minigame part and it's gorgeous. I'm just saying if they add "Refuse" to surrender terms I'll play it again and maybe more people will too.

Weird. The first 10 reviews I read never mentioned needing a "refuse surrender". So how do you figure its the most glaring issue that will bring back players that it lost?

This board has had a number of people saying they don't like the surrender mechanic. And I think it's fair to say that for every person who says they don't like the surrender mechanic on this board, there are factors more not saying anything and just uninstalling the game.

I am one of those who refuse to play the game with the surrender mechanic. It is the number 1 frustrating element of the game for me. I don't care about the bugs, or the lack of balance, or the massive skew towards production. Those can be fixed over time. But as long as the surrender mechanic is in, I will not play the game.

The second most frustrating element of the game for me, is the era culture mechanic. Am I A? No wait, I'm now B! And what was C is who now? Let's just call them brown, those guys yellow. The culture swapping mechanic (aside from the complete change from what was proposed years ago to us) de-identifies all the players on the map to colours. IMO, it is a horrible implementation and I can think of numerous ways to change it that I would find enjoyable.

But again, take all I'm saying with a grain of salt. I'm just one person stating on the forum what I don't like. I'm sure the silent factors of people who agree with me are wrong too. :)

This thread is so entertaining to read

Dale_K wrote:
Am I A? No wait, I'm now B! And what was C is who now? Let's just call them brown, those guys yellow. The culture swapping mechanic (aside from the complete change from what was proposed years ago to us) de-identifies all the players on the map to colours. IMO, it is a horrible implementation and I can think of numerous ways to change it that I would find enjoyable.

That is one thing that I really don't get. The avatars are lying right there, just pick it up and run with it. They did all the things to create memorable opponents you'll remember across playthroughs and then went through all the additional hoops to make sure player barely interacts with any of them. As you say, it's never "Ah, that dastardly Poe attacking me again", it's "Ugh... blue dudes". The cultures were supposed to be building blocks of our empires, why insist so much on presenting them as identifying factor of it, if they change almost every era?

I do like Amplitude's take on diplomacy, tho, too many 4Xs focus on bigger fish eating smaller ones whole, petty conflicts over (relatively) minuscule land gains feel more interesting and create grudges against enemies that can last whole game, rather than choosing new target for annihilation every fifty or so turns. The Force Surrender mechanic isn't implemented in the most gracious way, but rather than removing it, I think it needs to be expanded upon, you should be able to ignore it at ticking war support penalty going forward, risking that you'll have even less war score if you miscalculated.

Molay wrote:

Shouldn't this thread encourage people to mention why they personally are not enjoying the game and leading to those rough reviews? Sure some people don't pick their words perfectly, but the amount of shit they get for giving their feedback is phenomenal.i don't remember this community being so combative. Don't we just want to hear what people have to say, instead of shouting at them that they're wrong for not loving the game? :/

The Amplitude forums were never this combative before, because the previous games in the series were never designed in a way guaranteed to divide and polarize the community. 

I'm just re-stating what I said earlier in the thread, but Amplitude made two design decisions that are causing most of the problems. They abandoned the former asymmetric and creatively designed factions we could play, in favor of a system that scrambles faction identities as you move through the game. Who am I fighting against exactly? There is no personality in the factions. Fans of 4X games are used to having stronger identities both for the faction they've chosen to play, and the ones they're contesting against for a victory condition.

The other major problem is the war mechanic, the way the game designer reaches his magic hand into your winning war campaign and says "no, you can't do that." It's essentially the same system Paradox games use, but done in a clumsy way that's frustrating people. At least in a game like Stellaris you can choose a faction able to ignore war score/exhaustion and simply go on a rampage, but with a compensating factor that makes it more difficult (i.e. everyone hates you on sight and there is no diplomacy in that mode). 

I think Amplitude misread the 4X market, and didn't realize how many people this warfare system would turn off. It's guaranteed to alienate Civ fans, and it's not fun for many of us fans of former Amplitude games either. I'm probably not coming back to HK unless they do something about this. There are better ways to stop the player from steamrolling the game.

People here who are enjoying the current warfare system and the "blended" factions of course will strongly disagree. I think the current Steam rating and low player numbers speak for themselves though. The game is beautiful to look at, and the tactical combat alone should have sold the game. So what's holding down the numbers if not the faction design and warfare system? The Amplitude devs might be able to turn this around, but they seem wedded to these two design choices, and I don't know if there's enough flexibility in the design to improve it.

I think that score seems about fair. I’d call it sort of a high average/bordering on good game. But I also expected just that going in so I don’t really feel let down or anything. Fact is that it was always going to be a very uphill battle to take on Civ directly. People complain endlessly about this or that in Civ VI but it’s still the entrenched standard of the genre and it’s going to be hard to launch a game against a Civ game with lots of expansions and mods and have it feel worth the money. It’s just going to take time and listening to the community, which is why I think this really should’ve been launched in Early Access. It’s not like Amplitude didn’t have experience doing that before. 

Corgiwealth wrote:

Where are the heroic people? People able to tell unique grounded stories of what's happening in our empire through quests, which also weren't carried over to Humankind. Something to make your empire feel a little more personal rather than what it is currently: a collection of numbers and modifiers.

I don't see how they could have done a quest system like previous games, because they were tied into the faction identity which never changed from start to finish in a game. You could take the quests at your own pace. If HK had faction quests, then what happens if you start a quest written for the flavor and history of one culture, and you don't finish it by the time you need to change culture?  It's why we can only have brief events now.

There is a theoretical advantage in not having storyline quests for each faction because it limits replay value. Once you've seen the quest chain for one hard-coded faction, you may not want to play through it again. I'm not sure this "throw all the cultures into a blender" approach is better though. 

Hmm I think ‘theoretical’ is the key word there- I personally played Endless Legend for hundreds and hundreds of hours and it had so much more replay value compared to HK

There is a theoretical advantage in not having storyline quests for each faction because it limits replay value. Once you've seen the quest chain for one hard-coded faction, you may not want to play through it again. I'm not sure this "throw all the cultures into a blender" approach is better though. 

Old World has over 3000 events, nearly all of which are written such that they can occur for any nation, at any point in the game. There is massive replayability too since with that many events there is literally billions of event chain combos possible. And the event system manages the ambition system (what you are calling quest system) very well.

Sorry, but your point isn't really valid IMO.

aeonova wrote:

I'll just leave this here. The data below shows that a lot of people (55,284) jumped right in and wanted to love this game. They all played it a few times and ~50,000 haven't returned. Devs and fanboys can listen to feedback and fix why those people left or they can keep the "vision" pure. Looking at the Civ6 and Endless Legend data you don't see similar drop offs. 100% the drop-off is because it was marketed at the Civ6 demo who took the bait, tried it out, made their reviews, and then bounced. I was one of those people. I'd love to see this number go up but this game needs to adapt to what the ~50,000 people who left want.. or be happy with the current numbers and reviews.

I am one of these people who wanted to love the game and haven't played since and it is definitely not because I want it to become more like Civ. I think you might have forgotten to take other variables into account, such as the academic year starting or the general lack of replay value all 4Xs have (including Civ, which is in a much worse state than HK in that regard). I don't see how adopting the systems in the Civ franchise is going to help any of these problems. Also let's not ignore the amount of bugs the game still has. These bugs have much moire impact in the gaming experience than Humankind's mechanics that don't resemble Civ's as much as you'd like.

Dale_K wrote:

There is a theoretical advantage in not having storyline quests for each faction because it limits replay value. Once you've seen the quest chain for one hard-coded faction, you may not want to play through it again. I'm not sure this "throw all the cultures into a blender" approach is better though. 

Old World has over 3000 events, nearly all of which are written such that they can occur for any nation, at any point in the game. There is massive replayability too since with that many events there is literally billions of event chain combos possible. And the event system manages the ambition system (what you are calling quest system) very well.

Sorry, but your point isn't really valid IMO.

Agree, I love the event system in Old World, and I also believe Humankind would benefit from having as much events. I assume it would be more difficult because events in Humankind are era-specific for the most part, but I think many would enjoy the variety and more narrative-driven playthrough.

DragonGaming wrote:

well good things are happening as the recent reviews section has risen from 55% to 67% and overalls reviews is on the fine line between 68 and 69%, the store page says 68% but my wishlist says 69%. But approval is getting better now.

EDIT: ok maybe not, it says 67% but when i go to the community hub then straight back it then says 57%, i think the review systems bugged.

It says 68% when I log into Steam and the number of users that gave reviews has risen to 1000+ so it has seen some improvements there. I think it will gradually get better and better...but what do I know?

Yes, I'm happy to see it in the blue again. I guess the demo is well received.

I also voted for outstanding visual style - I think Humankind totally deserves that (more than music imo).  

Obvious review stacking.