About the multiplayer community,

I frequent the French discord and the CPL discord in English, to play multiplayer.

The number of players iis abnormally low. It's always the 10-15 players who play. We all know each other. For a new game, this is really low.

Playing without discord is currently impossible, because there are frequent disconnections. You have to be able to invite other players into the new game. And this is not possible because on Steam with Humankind, does not give the ID of the players with whom you just played in a game.

Moreover, the exploits bugs and the very imbalanced features are so numerous, that we can't afford to play without a dozen rules.

The different problems and bugs pointed out on the forum by the multiplayers should be solved, and then maybe we will have a more active community.

Kamino72 wrote:

The game need 1 more year of debug, polish and balance.

It actually needs only 3 months with a dedicated quality assurance team. Unfortunately most publishers have done away with that and go with customer pays to be a  beta tester. Biggest and most destructive scam in the gaming industry..

kryton24 wrote:

Single player works largely fine in my experience outside of some bugs that require the game to reload like combat being stuck. Either way I think this is funny enough about on par to how civ 6 launched for multiplayer but people might be forgetting the desync issues it had. 

Civ 6 had multiplayer literally tacked on as an afterthought. Every DLC/patch from launch until Gathering Storm(2nd expansion) broke multiplayer until we, Civ Players League, sent them enough game logs for them to begin to find where the bugs were. BTW, the game still has desync issues.

Mausklickmoerder wrote:

I fear the truth of the matter is that Humankind is.. not a very good game. Not only because of the obvious issues (balance, broken mp), but because it built on a foundation of sand. There isn't really much variance in gameplay. You'd think that with 60 different cultures and 6(?) culture types, you'd think that wouldn't be an issue, but on the contrary, every playthrough feels more or less the same. In the end, it all boils down to small changes in the numbers and maybe one or two buttons with powers that essentially just further tweak those numbers a bit. Its like Amplitude actively went out of their way to unlearn all the great things they did with the Endless series. Those games actively pushed the genre forward with asymmetric balance, while Humankind seems to try and reinvent all the parts on the Civilization cart while moving back on the achievements of its predecessors.

I don't agree that the foundation is bad or that there isn't much variance in gameplay with cultures but I'm someone who does like the changing culture every era aspect. The game has a rocky launch for MP but single player works decently. I still think Humankind is a good game and a creative one at that, some may not like the playstyle of it but surely anyone who has played 4x knows this isn't copy pasta or "a civilization clone". I look forward to seeing what they have in mind for expansions that will help refine and enhance what we got, I'm just a bit bummed this game like many others for years now just isn't solid at launch.

Expectation management is a real thing, and that's where HK fell down a bit. You have people who didn't get to pick the Greeks coming around to complain that the game is broken. The game is not broken, if you really want to be the Greeks you can play on baby mode or you can learn how to manage your path to make sure you get first pick to the Classical era.

Of course, if you really wanted to be the Ancient Egyptians then the game is just broken on anything but baby mode but I digress...

The game looks like it's one thing, but then it's another. It's actually for people like me, who thought Civ 6 was too simplistic and not very fun. People who thought Civ 5 was better than Civ 6 because in Civ 5 you're expected to lose. And lose. And lose. And then you win.

Humankind isn't as hard as Civ 5. But it's WAAAAAAAY harder than Civ 6. And the game tried to appeal to a very broad base of players without telling them "hey guys, this is like an X-Com game. Unless you're a god-tier strategist, pick the low difficulty setting." No one wants to pick the difficulty that says "as complex as running a donut shop." They want to pick the one that says "like managing an Empire." And they're thinking they need to be Donald Trump smart when they actually need to be more like FDR smart.

teatimeG wrote:

Expectation management is a real thing, and that's where HK fell down a bit. You have people who didn't get to pick the Greeks coming around to complain that the game is broken. The game is not broken, if you really want to be the Greeks you can play on baby mode or you can learn how to manage your path to make sure you get first pick to the Classical era.

Of course, if you really wanted to be the Ancient Egyptians then the game is just broken on anything but baby mode but I digress...

The game looks like it's one thing, but then it's another. It's actually for people like me, who thought Civ 6 was too simplistic and not very fun. People who thought Civ 5 was better than Civ 6 because in Civ 5 you're expected to lose. And lose. And lose. And then you win.

Humankind isn't as hard as Civ 5. But it's WAAAAAAAY harder than Civ 6. And the game tried to appeal to a very broad base of players without telling them "hey guys, this is like an X-Com game. Unless you're a god-tier strategist, pick the low difficulty setting." No one wants to pick the difficulty that says "as complex as running a donut shop." They want to pick the one that says "like managing an Empire." And they're thinking they need to be Donald Trump smart when they actually need to be more like FDR smart.

Attitudes like this are not selling the game. Saying that people who want something from a game that is different than what you want are "complaining" and should play on "baby" mode is a serious disservice to the dev and the community. What is your problem? Who cares how someone else plays their game? Hmm...let me think. People who have nothing else going on in their lives but being miserable to others on the internet. FFS, get a life.

AOM wrote:

teatimeG wrote:

Expectation management is a real thing, and that's where HK fell down a bit. You have people who didn't get to pick the Greeks coming around to complain that the game is broken. The game is not broken, if you really want to be the Greeks you can play on baby mode or you can learn how to manage your path to make sure you get first pick to the Classical era.

Of course, if you really wanted to be the Ancient Egyptians then the game is just broken on anything but baby mode but I digress...

The game looks like it's one thing, but then it's another. It's actually for people like me, who thought Civ 6 was too simplistic and not very fun. People who thought Civ 5 was better than Civ 6 because in Civ 5 you're expected to lose. And lose. And lose. And then you win.

Humankind isn't as hard as Civ 5. But it's WAAAAAAAY harder than Civ 6. And the game tried to appeal to a very broad base of players without telling them "hey guys, this is like an X-Com game. Unless you're a god-tier strategist, pick the low difficulty setting." No one wants to pick the difficulty that says "as complex as running a donut shop." They want to pick the one that says "like managing an Empire." And they're thinking they need to be Donald Trump smart when they actually need to be more like FDR smart.

Attitudes like this are not selling the game. Saying that people who want something from a game that is different than what you want are "complaining" and should play on "baby" mode is a serious disservice to the dev and the community. What is your problem? Who cares how someone else plays their game? Hmm...let me think. People who have nothing else going on in their lives but being miserable to others on the internet. FFS, get a life.

He's not trying to sell the game though. He's stating his opinion, whether you think it is valid or not.

Selling the game is the task of the developer and the publisher. And perhaps his opinion is not stated in the nicest way possible but there may be some merit to it that people are expecting everything to be handed to them and to be catered to specifically in a game even when it goes against the very design of the game and the developers vision for it. Maybe instead they should appreciate the game for what it is and not what they want it to be.

I guess that might go against every gamer's natural instinct though and what do I know. Except that when I changed my attitude of "this game has to be made specifically for me" to "I will try to appreciate the developers vision for the game and see if I can have fun with it"...I was a lot less frustrated in general.

Slashman wrote:

AOM wrote:

teatimeG wrote:

Expectation management is a real thing, and that's where HK fell down a bit. You have people who didn't get to pick the Greeks coming around to complain that the game is broken. The game is not broken, if you really want to be the Greeks you can play on baby mode or you can learn how to manage your path to make sure you get first pick to the Classical era.

Of course, if you really wanted to be the Ancient Egyptians then the game is just broken on anything but baby mode but I digress...

The game looks like it's one thing, but then it's another. It's actually for people like me, who thought Civ 6 was too simplistic and not very fun. People who thought Civ 5 was better than Civ 6 because in Civ 5 you're expected to lose. And lose. And lose. And then you win.

Humankind isn't as hard as Civ 5. But it's WAAAAAAAY harder than Civ 6. And the game tried to appeal to a very broad base of players without telling them "hey guys, this is like an X-Com game. Unless you're a god-tier strategist, pick the low difficulty setting." No one wants to pick the difficulty that says "as complex as running a donut shop." They want to pick the one that says "like managing an Empire." And they're thinking they need to be Donald Trump smart when they actually need to be more like FDR smart.

Attitudes like this are not selling the game. Saying that people who want something from a game that is different than what you want are "complaining" and should play on "baby" mode is a serious disservice to the dev and the community. What is your problem? Who cares how someone else plays their game? Hmm...let me think. People who have nothing else going on in their lives but being miserable to others on the internet. FFS, get a life.

He's not trying to sell the game though. He's stating his opinion, whether you think it is valid or not.

Selling the game is the task of the developer and the publisher. And perhaps his opinion is not stated in the nicest way possible but there may be some merit to it that people are expecting everything to be handed to them and to be catered to specifically in a game even when it goes against the very design of the game and the developers vision for it. Maybe instead they should appreciate the game for what it is and not what they want it to be.

I guess that might go against every gamer's natural instinct though and what do I know. Except that when I changed my attitude of "this game has to be made specifically for me" to "I will try to appreciate the developers vision for the game and see if I can have fun with it"...I was a lot less frustrated in general.

People don't buy games to enjoy someone else's vision of what fun is. People buy games to have fun. No one is gonna pay money for a game their friends told them is awful. If you didn't notice, the topic of this thread is "HUMANKIND NOW SITS ON 69% POSITIVE REVIEW RATING " The question was "what went wrong." Hence, my post. If you are that sheep that buys something and then tries to appreciate it if you don't like it, lol, well, you are "special." That really isn't how life works.

Probably a big part of what went wrong is all the bugs. But, I wouldn't discount this weird ass community where so many people are like  zombies saying "just appreciate the game" at the same time they're saying "I don't care if the dev can sell their game." It is really one of the most bizarre game communities I personally have ever seen. All I can do after reading your post is roll my eyes and think how strangely sycophantic you are for someone who doesn't seem to care if the dev can sell their game. Reading posts like yours in this forum is like watching the Revenge of the Stepford Wives. Strangely passive aggressive.

A drop to 69% of positive reactions certainly, but it is above all a loss of 90% of players on STEAM.

If each player who left would have left their opinion, the score would not have been 69.

SpikedWallMan wrote:
The biggest mistake was for Amplitude to pitch Humankind as a "Civ killer" right from the start.

They never really did that, though, they purposefully avoided civ comparisons, even. It was the community that took the 'civ-killer' tag and ran with it.