Disregarding extensive feedback and foregoing immediate, significant improvements – only to avoid the virtual technicality of releasing a minor update during an event – were irresponsible. EP8.2 in actuality consists overwhelmingly of tweaks, directly resulting from player feedback. Had I not made the exception of releasing the update at the time, surely player concerns were both greater and more justified. I’m not able to perfectly take every opinion into account, but I spend a ton of time trying to acquire and consider as many as possible, and EP8.2 is no different, in this regard. Let’s not overreact—with one exception (Consulate bug), player feedback is the very reason for the update’s release!
Every substantial and tangible piece of information available (activity, civilization diversity and extensive feedback & polling) indicates that the patch has grown more balanced and more popular, with every release for which I'm responsible—each one firmly rooted in feedback. For a comprehensive example, I encourage everyone to study the results of the most recent balance poll, as well as the correlation between those results and subsequent updates (EP8 through EP8.2), in addition to subsequent feedback. I am confident that you will find the correlation very strong indeed!
Please know that I have scores of developing (and differing) opinions to consider, and that I work hard to collect and consider them, through chats, ESOC forums and polling. The patch is necessarily a compromise, and those players incapable of accepting or understanding that fact are doing no one – least of all themselves – any good. Unfortunately, when someone insists on reacting negatively to practically everything (regardless of its merit) it becomes harder to take them seriously, their criticism becoming less reliable and less useful.
With regards to the direction of the patch, it is simply unheard of for any respectable RTS to effectively – let alone willfully – keep a huge part of its essential and original content out of the game. Some AoE3 players don't seem to understand just how extreme that position is (it is literally the one absolute extreme of a total of two). This perspective has normalized itself, warping EP balancing discourse. While there are more changes than there were in the past, they remain quite limited indeed when you consider a full and objective perspective, instead of pretending that changing nothing while the game remains in ruins is the moderate position. Please note that none of this is to say that it's an invalid opinion; just an extreme and unrealistic one. It will inevitably have to tolerate some degree of compromise.
With that said, I can easily count such players that I know of on my two hands, and any player under the impression that feedback is not being sufficiently taken into account troubles me. These are valid concerns that I take seriously, and will keep working to address, through communication and the continued expansion of influence of as many players as possible (building on the efforts of balance polling), via coming initiatives, ahead of EP9 – which will focus on balance and the viability of remaining key areas (age-ups, mercenaries, minor native tribes and the Consulate – preliminarily).
Thank you all!
P.S. Although I've barely spent any time at my PC recently, I have been watching some streams. Is it just me, or does civilization diversity – despite the map pool – seem especially good right now, to anyone else?
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