The Closed Beta of Humankind was listed separately from the full release of Humankind on Steam. As a result, it has an independent Review section, and many players have already put up reviews there. Since the Closed Beta had ended and its store page being removed, I was unable to check the overall statistic of the reviews; last time I checked, it has about 85% positive reviews IIRC (including reviews for Lucy and other early opendevs). And the focus of this post is about the negative reviews of the Closed Beta version of HMK.

As one can imagine about the Steam reviews, a large portion of these negative reviews are whining and ranting, and I will not cover these reviews in any case. However, a significant portion of the reviews is also decently written and offered constructive criticisms. Most importantly, many of these constructive reviews are written by players that are new players.

Unlike us on G2G, who had been with the game since Lucy or Stadia Opendev eras, and generally being very seasoned players of HMK, these players brought up frustrations and criticisms from the perspective of someone that is completely new to HMK or completely new to Amplitude games. More often than not, things that we the seasoned players are very familiar with or used to, are not clear enough for those who are new to the game to understand. For this post, I hope to bring these "frustrations felt by new players" under the streetlight, in case we are too familiar with HMK to notice them, or even overlook them. After all, every player was initially a new player who struggled to understand the game, and accessibility is crucial for allowing players to enjoy the game.

The post is divided into major points commonly brought up by the constructive Steam negative reviews, sometimes with quotations, with my commentaries following each point.

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1. Combat, especially with the Tactical Map, line of sight mechanic, reinforcement mechanic, etc.

"The AI somehow gets to see over mountains and up to three levels of terrain"

"There's a lack of clear directions when attacking (like what's impassible vs passable terrain) which means you end up meaning that you make some battling mistakes"

"Sometimes you are f**ed by game, because you can't command your units how and where to move or to be deployed before a battle"

"the AI is pulling units magically out of their backsides"

"when a siege happens all units inside the region are just kicked out because, well, seems like siege rules are being respected unconditionally"

Tactical Map is not a regular feature of 4x games, and many players of HMK didn't experience Endless Legend beforehand. Without proper tutorials or tooltips, many would struggle with how the combat works. The quotes above basically show that a lot of things in the combat - line of sight, terrain bonuses, etc. - are lacking explanations and trouble the new players (even I only figured out how trees can block line of sight and visibility in Victor despite playing the opendevs since Stadia). The most striking realization here might be how many reviewers don't know reinforcement is a thing or it is locked behind a tech - since the game doesn't tell it very well - therefore being beaten in the battle, and feel like AI is cheating.

In addition, Tactical Map can suddenly put you in unfavorable terrain - as how it unfolds is arbitrary and random, mostly outside the player's control - also bring frustrations to many reviewers. Judging from the reviews, it creates a sense of "uncontrollable-ness", something a player clearly doesn't want to experience when in a battle.

2. What is this "War Support"? 

"I was forced to surrender after an AI killed 2 scouts"
"Why is my desire to fight limited by this arbitrary WAR METER?"
"I just became a vassal after taking a city from the nation that warred me"

"Grievances just forced you into war - and without grievances expected to lose easily"

War Support on its own is a clever idea; I never saw any 4x game that has a Clausewitz-style understanding of war. However, War Support, as well as most of the War Support related mechanics, are not something well explained, similar to combat. Players simply don't know what it is, where it comes from, and forced to surrender or force surrendering others in ways they felt completely random and/or out of control. Some reviewers even claimed that Ideological Proximity is useless - which they are not, they can affect War Support - due to they don't know how it works, as the game doesn't tell much.

This is a case where a fascinating idea being bogged down by bad tooltipping. Speaking from a personal experience: I'm one of the primary contributors of the unofficial wiki of HMK, and writing the "War Support" wiki page trying to explain the mechanics to new players really gave me a headache. Many War Support modifiers are unexplained - In order to check how a War Support modifier affects your War Support, one needs to wait until it triggers, then hovers over the War Support meter to see its number, which doesn't really say how it was triggered in the first place (What is this "proximity state as attacker"?). Even "How many War Support does it require for a Formal War" was tested out via checking the meter every turn before the "Declare War" button being not greyed out anymore, instead of directly explained in the tooltip.

Basically, the whole mechanic requires to be explained properly in the tooltip, as the new players may not understand how it works at all - you can tell that from the frustrations reflected in the quotes.

3. Limited diplomatic options

"Why is my vassal constantly in rebellion/Why ways to interact with other empires are so limited?"

"A 3rd empire beaten my enemy and made it their vassal, so I can't annex lands from my enemy anymore"

It is generally observed that the current diplomacy system will have a hard time handling everything multilateral or involving a 3rd party. Vassals mostly just provide money and nothing else, alliance not offering too many benefits besides a perpetual peace, as well as not able to trade territories besides win/lost a war, are also among common complaints. Like the reviewers, I think this part of the game needs further work to be more meaningful and enjoyable.

4. Limited stability options

"For ideology, adopting -10 Global Stability for like 5% of 10 food per turn is not a worthwhile investment at all"

"The stability loss is crazy - anyone remembers squalor on Rome Total War? It seems like that."

"Stability takes hits from EVERYTHING"

The nerf of Commons Quarter is in a good direction. On the other hand, the ways to get stability are already very limited. I had made several comments on Discord and CivFan that what made players spamming Commons is because there are very few ways to gain stability in the first place, instead of Commons simply being too powerful - many Steam reviewers found themselves in the same "starving for stability" situation as well. They didn't get to the "Spamming Garrison" solution, of course, and as a result they are struggling with it, having a hard time building up their cities.

Judging from various comments about lacking viable sources of stabilities from G2G, Reddit, and now Steam reviews, the balance of Stability sources and Stability penalties would better be reexamined.

5. Unhelpful UI, tooltip, and notification

"after playing 3 hours of gameplay, getting nowhere and not knowing how to upgrade or really, just DO ANYTHING, very tiresome"

"The World Wonder menu is HIDING in your city pull-down menu for some reason"

"City production menu is so crammed together"

"During Forced Surrender, the options for outposts/cities are grayed out unless you find some hidden branching tree that I thought had to deal with maintaining a contiguous border"

Most of the constructive reviews complained about UI. UI and tooltip complaints were quite common back in Stadia Opendev - even I wrote feedback about the UI myself on CivFan - but gradually onwards, we are used to the UI after all these open and close devs, as one can tell from the feedback section of G2G. On the other hand, the same cannot be said for newcomers, who still need to learn from the very beginning. The first quote reflects this situation - new players feel at a loss and don't know what to do, due to UI and tooltips cannot properly guide them.

Other common newcomer complaints include: Crammed city production UI, too much info on such a small window; opening up the yield view all you see is huge -10 Stability on every District instead of more useful info; about 10 notifications pop up every turn while refused to say anything in detail; and diplomacy screen being a clickfest due to no "overview" for all the AI relationships. (Myself sometimes get confused due to all out of a sudden all the trade route break down and an AI empire suddenly hates me, and I cannot tell why.) These are all little things, but they can gradually add up to the learning curve and frustrations.

I have heard rumors that Amplitude had a hard time hiring good UI designers in France (due to all of them being grabbed away by Ubisoft or something), and I did see UI improvements since from Stadia Opendevs; hence I can tell the devs are trying their best to work for a better UI. In any case, better UI accessibility would be beneficial for new players.

6. Map readability

"Really cannot figure out which terrain type provide which unless open up yield view"

"Forests/Woodlands in certain biomes are hard to tell from a glance, unless zooming in or directly hovering my mouse over it"

I once asked around a bit about this in official Discord: Many seasoned players on Discord, me included, are used to open up the yield view and stay in the view, in order to figure out the terrain bonus. Sometimes I also feel that sometimes there will be "random" Science anomalies that would only show up when in yield view, since these anomalies don't have a clear distinction with surrounding tiles on the terrain. Again, for new players, it can become more confusing. In any case, "tell from a glance" is much more helpful than "hovering over it and wait a few seconds".

I assume more readable terrain features are not something that can be easily dealt with before release, though - maybe too much strain for the art team? - but for the future, it is something that shall be addressed for the sake of accessibility.

7. Naval play being pointless

"Nope! This [naval unit] can't siege! This [naval unit] doesn't carry anything! Don't even get this [transport ship] wet! And we're ALL slower than armies on land! Whee!"

A common complaint that is also covered by G2G and Reddit feedbacks, so I don't have a lot to say here. This part of the game needs further works to be more meaningful and enjoyable.

8. Pacing

"On easy difficulty enemies advance way too fast and are extremely aggressive"
"Unable to research Industrial Era techs within the 200 turn time frame in a game that was meant to test Industrial features"
"In my last playthrough my Era is already on the Industrial Era yet my technology hasn't caught up and still in the medieval era"

A common complaint that is also covered by G2G and Reddit feedbacks, so I don't have a lot to say here. This part of the game needs further works to be more meaningful and enjoyable.


9. Culture Combination
"The culture system while has a lot of potentials is not well explained and not very well fleshed out. There needs to be a clear way of showing how your culture (through your choices throughout the eras) changes through the eras"
"It makes it feel like my civilization is progressing but rather just being replaced every era."

"The other AIs felt interchangeable - one turn before you are fighting Babylonians, one turn later you are now fighting Persians."

This one is at the level of meta-criticizing, so I put it at last. "Building your own culture" is the selling point of HMK; however, I also see a couple of reviewers saying that the presentation of "building own culture" is not enough, so they cannot feel this selling point. One reviewer specifically said that changing buildings and unit visuals in every era feels like the culture was being replaced instead of merged. In addition, the issue of "AI Factions are not easy to identify or recognize" has also been brought up (along with criticism of streamer avatars).

This is not something that can be easily solved through number tweaking, of course; still it may be worthwhile to consider whether the "own culture" aspect had been stressed enough in both game mechanics and visual presentations.

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Besides a couple of feedbacks on game mechanics and the design philosophy - which echoes with many of the feedbacks on G2G and Reddit as well - it is obvious that most of the constructive criticisms can be boiled down to one thing - Could the game be more accessible to new players? One reviewer directly commented as "they should implement better tooltips if they want to keep new players to play this game especially since the 4X genre is notorious for having hard tutorials."

I remember devs had stated that a tutorial is planned for the full release, which is promising. On the other hand, the current tooltips don't really help, certain UIs being hard to navigate, and various mechanics such as War Support not being stressed or fully explained - these are not issues that can be easily dealt with via tutorial or an in-game encyclopedia, and accessibility support from tooltips and UIs would be required. HMK, or 4x genres in general, has a very deep learning curve, and without proper accessibility/readability helps, it can close the door on new players (sometimes even players with certain 4x experiences). Judging from these Steam reviews, more helpful, explanatory, and informative tooltips are definitely needed, even if seasoned players are relatively used to them. Moreover, mechanical issues such as pacing, naval play, and stability balancing are also among common feedbacks, and they would better receive some reexamination before the full release as well (if possible for the schedule).

Just wanted to drop by and say that I enjoyed your write-up. Good job!

Interesting.. +1. 

This is exactly what bugs me about splitting Games/Demos (Prologues)/Betas across multiple appIDs - the loss of praise, criticism, and discussion when these pages are closed in favor of full release.

The store page was archived on June 14th but unfortunately this did not extend to the 300+ reviews on the page. So thank you for recovering an aggregation of some of the lost information.

I'm not sure how many people have thought of this or how prevalent this thought is among the devs, but I've noticed that the Stability starvation is quite big as well, especially from someone who plays the game usually to avoid war and tries to maximize economy, unless you're really rushing science or if you're getting a science centered culture at the beginning (Babylon's) you're not going to get to commons quarters very quickly at all and if you're not prepared for that in advance by building monuments then you're going to run into trouble.

One way to alleviate this problem is to of course make stability more of an option in more places, or the other way around as a potential idea is to slow the growth of cities early in the game for building focused people like myself. Perhaps making each additional district cost more production, or perhaps just raising the base cost of districts, or making the cost of districts go down per era, with a higher starting point. The slower cities develop in the early game the less likely you'll run into the issue of so much negative stability before they're able to get to commons which is a fairly late introduced in terms of other districts, which I think is fine.

But those are just my two cents :)

ALSO I think it would benefit from clearly pointing out that the penalties of stability don't start until they hit 30%. The stability "box" that comes up when you hovered over cities is quite a paragraph and I'm sure people get turned off by that, so they may miss that there aren't really any penalties until they hit 30% or lower. Making that more clear may also assuage some of the issues since I'm guessing lots of newer users also didn't realize that, but they may have as well.

- a quick tangential note, I wanted to say that the buff to the Zhou's school building was really needed and appreciated :) as one of the few cultures who could combat stability, the building felt very much like you had to get a 4 or 5 mountain adjacent placement at the cost of your city placement in as many areas as you could before the end of your first era, so much appreciated :)

CAN'T WAIT for the game guys!