Time limited content is "supposedly" to drive engagement, boost numbers, keep players playing, etc. but it rarely, if ever, does that. A game has to stand on its' own and even game-as-a-service games are now experimenting with removing the "time limited" part of things like battle passes, etc. to where you can choose what event you are working on. In a game like Humankind, time restricted events make NO sense. They take dev resources for a game that in a genre that has always been about players playing the way they want to play, when they want. For people with compulsive issues, it had make the experience more detrimental. For people with busy lives, it can feel like they aren't getting the same experience as others. For people that buy the game a month later, it just feels bad in general - why is there content they'll never get, when they still have the same "full game" as everyone else?

It punishes players, and it wastes dev time. Contrast that with if this content was just optional free DLC or just inherently including in the game has, essentially, no downsides. Plenty of games from all genres have done this for years and years.

I certainly don't want to spend money to support a game that wastes resources and gatekeeps people from the full experience. I can enjoy a game with some poor design implementations, but I won't support a game that acts like this towards their customers, and I certainly will not buy any more Amplitude games in the future if this is the route you are taking. Humankind, as a game, thoroughly disappointed me after Endless Space 2 being my favorite 4X to play, but mods and patches can always improve it. The time limited gatekeeping of your customers, as well as the very slow updating of the game, is what's changed Amplitude from one of my favorite publishers to one I'll probably avoid for years.

We have some people asking for ways to delete personas, and we've go you complaining you can't get them all. 

Being a game developer must suck, lol.

+1, It's not even keeping players playing, the steam charts show that player count is getting so low that Endless Space 2, a now 5 years old game, is getting ready to overtake Humankind in player count, the closest the 2 have gotten was a mere 29 players apart earlier this day.

HorizonShadow wrote:

We have some people asking for ways to delete personas, and we've go you complaining you can't get them all. 

Being a game developer must suck, lol.

To be honest, now that a 'native' HK persona base grows, I would really love a way to drop all the streamers, who I wasn't thrilled to play against in the first place.

Agreed, I want to chill at my own time. The reason I do not touch NMS anymore is because of their timed events.

HorizonShadow wrote:

We have some people asking for ways to delete personas, and we've go you complaining you can't get them all.

Being a game developer must suck, lol.

Those aren't mutually exclusive ideas. It makes sense that people would, y'know, want some options as far as how to play. One of the big advantages games have over other media is being able to customize it to ones tastes (within the context of each game).

Personally, I'm fairly indifferent to having specifically DaVinci appear in my game or not. But I'm not everyone else. My whole point is nothing is achieved with this time-locked stuff besides alienating players, or at best mentally manipulating some. I would rather everyone have the chance to experience all the free stuff on their own time, in their own way. I'd be happy to have a ton of new personas unlocked but also disable ones that I don't care for (like non-historic ones).

HorizonShadow wrote:

We have some people asking for ways to delete personas, and we've go you complaining you can't get them all. 

Being a game developer must suck, lol.

Why not both? Delete what you don't want and be able to get something you do want. Some people will download avatars to try them out, them maybe dislike them later or find another avatar that best suits that role. Options are good.

Totally agreed. I didn't buy this game to do extra work to unlock personas. Just wanna play the game in the way I want, whenever I want.  I play HK about 10 hours a month and I don't have any minute to do this event thing. At first, this kind of event was fresh and enjoyable at some points but there were too many of them.

+1

+1, very well said!

I agree. As a Stadia player I'm comfortable with being an update or two behind the latest PC release, but I did pay the same pre-order price and it would be nice to be able to have access to the community event content eventually. Removing the time restrictions would allow me to tackle them down the line.

Yutterh wrote:

HorizonShadow wrote:

We have some people asking for ways to delete personas, and we've go you complaining you can't get them all. 

Being a game developer must suck, lol.

Why not both? Delete what you don't want and be able to get something you do want. Some people will download avatars to try them out, them maybe dislike them later or find another avatar that best suits that role. Options are good.

That's probably the ideal situation. 

I think the ideal situation would to keep the events after they're finished. Let the players choose to run them to unlock the personas.
On top of letting you remove ones you don't like, of course. 

This would also solve the fact that us Stadia players don't even have access to the events at all :|

I stopped to play humankind some time ago, but sometime watch on forum what is new in this game...

And i learned that... they really do that ?

In a 4X, where a game can be on an entierly week ?

Bad choice, bad time...

Totally agree with the poster.

JoaoGomes wrote:

+1
I couldn't agree more. In a game where you usually "create a world" to play for a long time, sometime weeks (due free time to play) the choice of launch an event with a very limited time seems unwise. Not only that, but to get all the missions done you have to play at least three games (or much more due the "destroy 10 fortification") which makes me feel more demotivated than the oposite.

While I don‘t like the time limitations on the events, it‘s not hard to get all 6 achievements in one game for this particular event. 

Siptah wrote:

JoaoGomes wrote:

+1
I couldn't agree more. In a game where you usually "create a world" to play for a long time, sometime weeks (due free time to play) the choice of launch an event with a very limited time seems unwise. Not only that, but to get all the missions done you have to play at least three games (or much more due the "destroy 10 fortification") which makes me feel more demotivated than the oposite.

While I don‘t like the time limitations on the events, it‘s not hard to get all 6 achievements in one game for this particular event. 

How hard/easy the events are irrelevent. 

This was not adertised as a GaaS game. Increasingly looking like it is.

+1
And with the all the other issues with the core functions of the game, seeing Amplitude spend resources on this is a mere provocation.

The events are what they are precisely because Amplitude doesn't want to spend unnecessary resources on it. Its form can be criticized and I'm not a fan of time-gating it either, but let's not pretend like they abandoned development and push the challenges out as a cop out.

I hope that they're thinking hard about how to implement the rewards as permanent thing and will soon inform us about their decision. I still think that challenges should have their own tab in the game settings and you should be able to opt-in any of the past or present challenges at your leisure, preferably with in-game counter being present for that save to check your progress at any time. But this would actually take the resources from development and I won't expect anything changing here sooner than after the Summer patch.

USSER wrote:

Siptah wrote:

JoaoGomes wrote:

+1
I couldn't agree more. In a game where you usually "create a world" to play for a long time, sometime weeks (due free time to play) the choice of launch an event with a very limited time seems unwise. Not only that, but to get all the missions done you have to play at least three games (or much more due the "destroy 10 fortification") which makes me feel more demotivated than the oposite.

While I don‘t like the time limitations on the events, it‘s not hard to get all 6 achievements in one game for this particular event. 

How hard/easy the events are irrelevent. 

If you would take the care to read what you are quoting, you would see that JoaoGomes complained that they would need to play at least three games within the limited time. I was just correcting him that this isn't true as they can all be done within one game without going too much out of your way. And of course, the difficulty is relevant here - compare it to the Holi event which actually required you to invest a lot of time because the goal were hard to reach/included a lot of random factors outside of the player's control. It may be irrelevant to you personally and the theoretical-level discussion you presumably want have, but it certainly isn't irrelevant to what was actually discussed at hands.

I think what game developers bosses don't get is their end market. They think they have good insights in who their use base is. But actaully they don't. It is the simple 80-20 formula. 20% of your user base make you near 100% of money. And who are these 20% of your user base - not some kids on a mobile devise. Especially for an 4X game. And then they come up with timed events? Like honesty? I never cared about these events - because you know that after some time all the conent will be free anyway. I think when game developers start doing their job - not commercial exercises  - we could actually see some good games. Like what HK was supposed to be. 

Reicha wrote:

I think what game developers bosses don't get is their end market. They think they have good insights in who their use base is. But actaully they don't. It is the simple 80-20 formula. 20% of your user base make you near 100% of money. And who are these 20% of your user base - not some kids on a mobile devise. Especially for an 4X game. And then they come up with timed events? Like honesty? I never cared about these events - because you know that after some time all the conent will be free anyway. I think when game developers start doing their job - not commercial exercises  - we could actually see some good games. Like what HK was supposed to be. 

For a full price game with no mictrotransactions, that statistic is not accurate. That's more in line with F2P / Gacha style games - the vast majority of players don't pay anything, some pay a small amount (comparable with an MMO subscription for example), then there are the "whales" that spend 5 digits on the game. For Humankind, you buy it or you don't. You buy the DLC or you don't. There is no whale to chase here.

That said, companies do need to make money to pay developers (and themselves) - that's the idea behind buying the game itself, and also the idea behind DLC. I don't begrudge companies making paid DLC, it's usually a good thing. I do begrudge companies spending that money to make "free" content that is unavailable to people that buy the game. It likely takes MORE (marginally) effort to make something time-restricted than to just add it, because otherwise the content is the same - but you have to add stuff for timing, removal, blocking off people from unlocking it later, etc. which takes some time to do.

These free events are the worst of both worlds - they make no money for the publisher, they take money from customers and use it for things that said customers may literally never have the option to see or engage with. As I said, even full-fledged F2P GAAS games are starting to experiment with making events playable for people that start playing afterwards. There is absolutely no excuse for making content blocked off here, regardless of how trivial the content itself is.

Siptah wrote:

JoaoGomes wrote:

+1
I couldn't agree more. In a game where you usually "create a world" to play for a long time, sometime weeks (due free time to play) the choice of launch an event with a very limited time seems unwise. Not only that, but to get all the missions done you have to play at least three games (or much more due the "destroy 10 fortification") which makes me feel more demotivated than the oposite.

While I don‘t like the time limitations on the events, it‘s not hard to get all 6 achievements in one game for this particular event. 

For my skills it wasn't that easy as you say. My comments are based on a person who, as I said, like to create a world while playing it and enjoy through the limited time I have for playing. I'm quite sure I wasn't the only one in this situation.

+1

I don't care about these events. I care about the game, but my faith has tanked considerably with how slow and minimal they update their potentially magnificent but heavily underbaked game. And these events only seem to provoke and reap hate. It's really beyond me why they continue this way with the gigantic amount of negative feedback. I don't get what they are trying to go for here. If you want people to play your game, or have faith again, this is not the way. They seem obstinate for no reason, and this dynamic with the community is getting so negative. 

Siptah wrote:

USSER wrote:

Siptah wrote:

JoaoGomes wrote:

+1
I couldn't agree more. In a game where you usually "create a world" to play for a long time, sometime weeks (due free time to play) the choice of launch an event with a very limited time seems unwise. Not only that, but to get all the missions done you have to play at least three games (or much more due the "destroy 10 fortification") which makes me feel more demotivated than the oposite.

While I don‘t like the time limitations on the events, it‘s not hard to get all 6 achievements in one game for this particular event. 

How hard/easy the events are irrelevent. 

If you would take the care to read what you are quoting, you would see that JoaoGomes complained that they would need to play at least three games within the limited time. I was just correcting him that this isn't true as they can all be done within one game without going too much out of your way. And of course, the difficulty is relevant here - compare it to the Holi event which actually required you to invest a lot of time because the goal were hard to reach/included a lot of random factors outside of the player's control. It may be irrelevant to you personally and the theoretical-level discussion you presumably want have, but it certainly isn't irrelevant to what was actually discussed at hands.

What is being "discussed at hand" is that time gated events are bad. Not whether they are easy/hard. Not to mention that easy/hard is up the player's playstyle and abilities-meaning there is little objective value here.

Just like you brought up that this event was 'easier', presumably after the trainwreck that was the previous event, I piped up and said events being easy/hard has 0 merit to the discussion. There will never be an event that suits the playstyles or abilities of every player-yet if they are time limited, easy or hard, the ride is gonna' eventually fall flat for everyone sometimes, especially in a 4X game. 

el-Fakir wrote:

sapsling wrote:
It's really beyond me why they continue this way with the gigantic amount of negative feedback.

People most often come to unwarranted assumptions on any topic based on how vocal and loud negative criticism about that topic is heard, which is always the case, i.e. negative feedback is always the majority of all criticism in every subject. I understand how frustrated you feel about these events but don't assume the majority of players feels the same and is represented here in this thread. For instance, you don't have data at your disposal to see what percent of active players finished event achievements. Of course, it'll better that events are not limited in time if it helps even one more player to play Humankind more.

I personally like these events very much and have nothing against their time-restricted nature. Achievement goals set in previous events forced me to try different mechanics of Humankind that I deemed non-optimal before. I still think they are not largely part of my preferred way to play the game but they offered a different kind of Humankind experience, nevertheless. Limited duration of events also forced me to try Blitz or Fast speeds that I never played at before. As I was trying to fufill achievements of events (some rather ambitious ones like those in Holi Event) in limited time I could see how fast pacing change the whole feel of the game compared to Slow/Endless speeds that I'm used to play. It turned Humankind into almost a different game which I also enjoyed playing.

When 80-90% of the comments on steam under the blog updates are negative to extremely negative, it is fair to assume a general trend. 

Besides, it is about the time-limit not the achievements themselves. And mostly it is because people seem frustrated with the very slow and minimal improvements, and every month they get this chance to spew their hate. 

generally speaking you are certainly right. When it comes to the point about "rather improve the game and dont waste time on timerestricted events" i only wanna point out that thats probably not that easy. I mean you got investors and managers running around in the back trying to make this game "succesfull" and apparently they are pulling the cataloge of (shady)businesspractices. Got no connections or anything. Just pure speculation. Also the devs making the events may not be the ones that fix bugs etc. etc. etc. There can be a number of reasons why they dont do that (even though they definitly should).

as for time-based Events in general. I must say that i am not totally against them. BUT they should be 1: a lot harder (i mean Da Vinci was easy-as piss; i got 4/6 just logging into my current game), they should be pretty much independent on what the AI does (Holi Event had 2 achievements that you had very little say in; you just had to set up a game that increased the odds that that would happen and then wait and hope, basically; DONT) and 3. they should be repeatable.

Now i hear yo say: "But if they are repeatable they are not timerestricted." - Here me out. What i am thinking is that you could make a trigger in the menu to start the event and once its triggered you got a limited time (i would say a week max) to do all the challenges. If you fail you should be able to restart it whenever you like. Sou shouldnt be able to interrupt it though. So you need to wait for it to run out.

Why events in the first place? - I see a certain potential here to get players to try and do things they probably wouldnt otherwise. Try a culture you usually dont pick. Go for an endcondition you usually dont pick. Stay a culture for several eras, what you wouldnt otherwise do. Its a solid way to disturb the daily grind and gets ppl to try out things they havent done. And if you dont want to do that. Simply dont. Me personally i absolutely do like a challenge from time to time. Even one that i didnt create myself for me.

As they are now they suck, though. I agree on that.

SpikedWallMan wrote:
we DO have player data from SteamDB which shows that the events aren't driving engagement the way that a dev would hope for a time-limited event.

el-Fakir wrote:
For instance, you don't have data at your disposal to see what percent of active players finished event achievements.

I was rather referring to active players data. We still don't know what percent of active players participated in these events. It would be an interesting metric to check before deciding whether these events are successful or not.

sapsling wrote:
When 80-90% of the comments on steam under the blog updates are negative to extremely negative, it is fair to assume a general trend. 

No, it is not. That was the whole point of my post: We, internet people and gamers, don't flock to forum pages to convey our praises and congratulatory feedback when we're content about something whereas others who are not so happy are always more vocal about their negative feedback. Ratio of negative to positive feedback is not indicative of general consensus on any subject.

el-Fakir wrote:

 

sapsling wrote:
When 80-90% of the comments on steam under the blog updates are negative to extremely negative, it is fair to assume a general trend. 

No, it is not. That was the whole point of my post: We, internet people and gamers, don't flock to forum pages to convey our praises and congratulatory feedback when we're content about something whereas others who are not so happy are always more vocal about their negative feedback. Ratio of negative to positive feedback is not indicative of general consensus on any subject.

That's definitely not true to the extent you are implying. Negative comments tend to be over represented, but NOT that much. If you looks at more neutral or even positive patch threads for other games, you can see it actually flips to negative comments being in the minority. Even if you assume there are 10 people that like the change for every positive post about it, the ratio still stays in the negative (and that's just statistically false, anyway).

Every data point so far points towards the time limiting having a negative perception. I don't have any issues with personas having unlock requirements, I think that's fine. The time restriction is all the negative comments I see (aside from non-event related ones, like the patch being underwhelming and much of the game still being fundamentally unbalanced).

sapsling wrote:

 

sapsling wrote:
When 80-90% of the comments on steam under the blog updates are negative to extremely negative, it is fair to assume a general trend. 

No, it is not. That was the whole point of my post: We, internet people and gamers, don't flock to forum pages to convey our praises and congratulatory feedback when we're content about something whereas others who are not so happy are always more vocal about their negative feedback. Ratio of negative to positive feedback is not indicative of general consensus on any subject.

I understood your point the first time. I replied because I think you are exaggerating. When something is positively received, it shows on the internet. When something is overwhelmingly negatively received it also shows on the internet. While I am very aware of negativity bias on forums, you make it sound like it represents nothing. I disagree strongly.

What's next, steam reviews mean nothing too? You think this game is actually well received? When a game is good it shows, when a game fumbles it shows. 

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that the game is reviewed negatively. Just that the negativity isn't from the events. 

Though I do agree that I don't like time restrictive events in any capacity. Hopefully we get another shot at the events again. Maybe like a end of the year think all the events for that year can go at once so people who missed it can try again. I really didn't care for the other two but I really want Da Vinci. But as a completionist I want the atheistic stuff. I just didn't realize at first they were timed. Figured I try for them later. I really think they should just be permanent. But I understand why they do it, gotta get people playing to keep up the active user count.

I disagree
I think these events are wonderful little windows that show the game's potential in different lights. I would never have thought about playing in different ways to accomplish some of these challenges. I've had more than one "you can do that?!" moments while trying to tackle the challenges.
I appreciate the effort and the thought behind each one, even the ones I can't quite seem to manage. Sad face is that I just don't have a lot of time to play, however, nothing I've seen that's been given away so far that would make the game easier. Meaning I don't have to stress about finishing it.

I'm not sure what is planned on re-releasing opportunities to play the challenges, only know that its been said it will happen. So for what its worth: How about re-releasing or, (-insert word meaning side-by-side here-) releasing the challenges as little free DLC packets?

In any case, Thank You Amplitude for making another game that is cutting into my Endless play time! xD

I dislike the events so much that I actively do NOT play the game when one is active.

That way I do not count as an active player when an event is live.

I at least try to actively show that I dislike the events by lowering the player count whenever an event is active (even when it is only -1).

If you like the events I'm totally OK with that. 

It just is not for me and it is something that I do not want to see in the games I play.

And to be clear: The tasks of the events are fine. I just don't like that they are time limited.

I'm not sad either. I just play something else in the meantime :)

SpikedWallMan wrote:
y the same token though, you are assuming that the the 22 users in this thread are somehow NOT representative of those 2K players either.

:)

[While banging my head on keyboard] No, I do not assume such a verdict; I'm only politely reminding you not to assume such a verdict.

Rest of the player base may very well feel exactly the same way as you do. We just don't know. This thread or any other thread you mentioned is not a good sampling data, because a) it's not big enough and b) it's not diverse enough due to natural tendency of forum posts populating such boards with negative feedback.

I'm not arguing to try to change your mind about these events. As a player you have every right to dislike something and express it openly.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Venetian Empire awaits me to rule the world with rich nerds, while also conquering the whole world as a side exercise.

Not trying to assume anything, or at least not too much, I'm just gonna reflect on my own feelings towards the events:

I really don't like them how they are right now. 

I like the game as it is and I enjoy playing my 4x games slowly. The general ideas of the events are cool enough, the thing that we can unlock more personas is great, but the timed aspects about them annoys me to no end, as I have expressed in these forums before. I saw the Holi event and its (for long games at least) unfortunate and overtuned tasks and stuck with something else (there was a fairly big game just out at the time about an old ring). Which all in all put me off from really trying to get the persona. Seing the next timed event now, albeit much easier, doesn't add to my drive to play the game, but rather pushes me away from it.

I'd really love to return to the game at my own pace, play at my own pace and unlock the personas through that. And, God forbid, in this micro-transaction heavy time with live in, I'd probably even pay a few bucks for a collection of personas as well, rather than have them like this, annoying and timed. 

I didn't realize that this could even be a point of contention until I came to the forums.

I just loaded the game, saw that an event was active, and played through the challenges. No big deal.

Sure, it'd be cool if they gave multiple opportunities to grab some of the content, opened it up again sometime down the road, maybe even permanently... but I'd also be content with no events at all. I know this because up until the most recent event started I didn't even realize there were events :'D

Amathul wrote:

Not trying to assume anything, or at least not too much, I'm just gonna reflect on my own feelings towards the events:

I really don't like them how they are right now. 

I like the game as it is and I enjoy playing my 4x games slowly. The general ideas of the events are cool enough, the thing that we can unlock more personas is great, but the timed aspects about them annoys me to no end, as I have expressed in these forums before. I saw the Holi event and its (for long games at least) unfortunate and overtuned tasks and stuck with something else (there was a fairly big game just out at the time about an old ring). Which all in all put me off from really trying to get the persona. Seing the next timed event now, albeit much easier, doesn't add to my drive to play the game, but rather pushes me away from it.

I'd really love to return to the game at my own pace, play at my own pace and unlock the personas through that. And, God forbid, in this micro-transaction heavy time with live in, I'd probably even pay a few bucks for a collection of personas as well, rather than have them like this, annoying and timed. 

Agreed, I like the events just hate it being timed for the exact same reason as you. Was also hooked on that game about a old ring lol

I don't get why these events are timed. This is not an MMO, it's a 4X game. You can introduce the event challenge and run with it. Make the player work for the reward whenever they want, there's no reason they should miss out on content due to high tempo work schedules or educational demands. It's a very simple concept. I purposely don't play the event because I think it is dumb to incentivize a pointless practice with my player count.