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3 years ago Mar 25,2021, 13:59:40 PM

Humankind Release Moved to August 2021

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When we announced Humankind, we often stressed that this was the dream game Amplitude was founded for. We were overjoyed by the positive reception our dream saw, many players expressing their excitement for a new entry into the historical 4X genre. Yet we knew Humankind was an ambitious dream, so we looked for help from our eager community. 


Through the OpenDev program, you have given us invaluable feedback on the game. While Humankind is already a great game, many of you think it could be even better, and after analyzing all your great feedback, we realized that we could make even further improvements to make Humankind the best game that it can be. These improvements take time, however, so we have decided to move the release date. 


Humankind will release on August 17th, 2021.


This will give us time to further polish the game for a great day one experience, address the feedback from the OpenDev scenarios, and keep working with our community to improve the game. We want to thank you all for your passion for our dream, the feedback you have given, and the support for this decision many of you have already expressed: 


Hello everyone! 


In the weeks since the Lucy OpenDev, we've been reading a lot of feedback. While many players told us they see great potential in Humankind, they also offered a lot of constructive criticism, and often expressed concern if the game could live up to this potential in the time until release. 

After taking stock of your feedback, of where we are with the game, and where we want it to be when we release, we have decided to postpone the release until August. We agree with you all, the game will be incredible with a little extra time, and we think we are lucky to have passionate fans like you who support us up in that decision. 

At times like these, I am also reminded that we made the right choice when joining SEGA, who has been incredibly supportive of this decision. They believe in Humankind as much as we do, and they have been a great partner in realizing our vision of the game. 

Thank you all for your support. 


Cheers, 

Spacetroll 



We are immensely grateful to all our passionate players who gave the game a try and let us know what they thought, what they liked, and what they didn’t like. Your feedback is crucial to improving the game, and to thank everybody who has shown us their trust by pre-ordering, we are adding two more Avatars to the preorder bonus: Lucy, and Edgar Allan Poe. 


Once upon a midnight dreary,/ As I pondered weak and weary,/ 

If I have more time to burn,/ Proclaimed Lucy: One more turn!


So, what is all the feedback we are talking about? What did our players tell us about their experience with the OpenDev, and what are we doing to address their concerns? We’ll be working to address pacing, balancing, diplomacy, accessibility, and AI (among others), but let’s take a closer look at some of the most common points of feedback and our plans for them: 


  • Pacing and Balancing:These were two of the most discussed topics in the OpenDev Feedback, and the general consensus was that the game progresses too quickly, and all basic resources are too abundant. Here are some examples of what we are working on to address these issues: 
    • The New Growth System: Since the growth model we tested in the Lucy OpenDev (based on current population and population capacity of the city) turned out to be difficult to understand and balance, and potentially frustrating with newly founded cities, we've swapped back to a growth rate based on surplus food. Of course, this still needs to be tested and balanced. 
    • Food and Influence in the Neolithic Era: Since many players performed quite a bit better than expected in the Neolithic era, we're rebalancing the food and influence gains and are keeping an eye on this with our internal tests. 
    • Neolithic Era Variety: Many players found that the Neolithic era lacked variety, so we want to implement additional narrative events. 
    • Research Costs: We will rework the research costs of technology to create a smoother progression that should roughly keep pace with the intended era progression. 
    • Stability: Stability should be a limiting factor on City and Empire growth that creates interesting situations for the player to tackle, but in Lucy OpenDev many players found it too easy to reach a point where they could ignore stability. We’re examining and rebalancing the various factors of stability to reach a point where it can create interesting challenges without being punishing or frustrating. 
    • Money and Influence: As many players found that as the game progressed they stockpiled an abundance of Money and Influence with little to spend it on, we are working to balance the income and spending of these resources.
    • Market and Research Quarters: Market and Research Quarters were often seen as not worthwhile compared to additional Farmers or Makers Quarters, so we want to improve their value compared to these.  
    • Cultures: As expected of such a test, some of the Cultures in the game emerged as particularly strong, some to the point of overshadowing other cultures. We’re working to address this by rebalancing their Legacy Traits, Emblematic Quarters, and Emblematic Units. Most Emblematic Quarters will now also be limited in number per territory to preserve their uniqueness and avoid direct competition with generic quarters. 
    • City and Army Cap: To strike a better balance between size and number of both cities and armies, we are working on imposing a limit on the number of both, after which players would incur penalties. 
    • Sieges: Many players found that it was too easy to conquer the cities of other players or Independent People, and we are looking into how to address this. 
    • Era Star Requirements: With all the other rebalancing, we are also keeping an eye on era star requirements to adjust them if necessary. 
  • Diplomacy:While a lot of OpenDev players liked the underlying system of Diplomacy in Humankind, many also found it confusing due to the interface and feedback. Here are a few points we are working on: 
    • Diplomacy notifications: We are rewriting many of the notifications, grievances, demands, and surrender terms to make it clearer who did what. 
    • Improved Dialogue Flow: We're improving the avatar dialog flow to reduce the number and duration of pauses, so it flows more naturally. 
    • AI Attitude Changes: We are also working to clarify the "mood messages" when AI change their attitude towards you with additional text. 
    • Trade View: We're still working to polish the trade view in the Diplomacy screen, so you get a better understanding of your trade network, including incoming and outgoing trade routes. 
    • User Experience Flow and Feedback: We're working to improve the clarity of the UX in the diplomacy menu, for example clearly highlighting when an AI has accepted or rejected a treaty. 
  • Onboarding:Some of Humankind’s systems were difficult to grasp for players, especially new players, so we are hard at work on the onboarding experience, including: 
    • In-game Tutorial Videos: A set of short videos explaining basic concepts, accessible through an in-game menu. 
    • Tooltip Polish: We're working to improve the readability and clarity of the tooltips. 
    • Hints: We'd like to have a better hint system to help players figure out good strategies, for example suggesting useful Infrastructures to build. 
  • User Interface/Experience:We're working to improve the interface and user experience in various areas: 
    • Territory names: To help players locate events and demands on the map, we are going to add names to territories. Trade routes passing through uncontrolled territory will also create a label showing the name and number of trade routes. 
    • Fame Objective Pop-ups: When you get close to achieving an Era star, your progress will be shown on the main screen so you can easily keep track of your objectives without checking a separate screen. 
    • Notifications: As many players found that the messages in the notification ribbon did not contain enough information, we are including more dynamic information in them, for example in which category a star has been earned. 
    • Management Screens: We're still polishing the city management and battle menus. 
    • Ideology Changes: We’re working on a clearer display of the ideology changes and its effects in the Civics menu and events. 
    • Splitting regions: We are working on an option to detach territories from a city. 
    • Battle Prediction: We'd like to improve the battle prediction to not rely solely on the relative unit strength. 



As you can see, we got a lot of feedback from the different OpenDev scenarios, in particular the Lucy OpenDev. Participation was great, so we received not only a lot of detailed, constructive feedback in our forum, but also valuable data from the survey. You certainly pushed Humankind as far as you could, as you can see from the stats below: 




Of course, as we continue to work on the game, we may want another round of feedback from our passionate players, so keep your eyes peeled for future opportunities to try the game! 


UPDATE: Our Studio Head Romain has confirmed that we are aiming to launch the next OpenDev around the original release date of April 22nd. We will release a blog with further details on when, where, and how to participate once the specifics have been settled.



The Amplitude Team 

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:05:14 PM

Glad to know why it's delayed not just; Bugfixing, But a proper list of what is happening behind the scenes.

Hope there is another OpenDev given the delay gives time for one.

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:11:03 PM

You're making the right choice here. While I'm sure many people are going to be upset with the delay cause it happen all the time when any game gets delayed, I think it much better you delay it if you feel you can do better and make it have the strongest release possible with another delay.

Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:11:17 PM

I think it's good to take the time and finish the game to a point where all is balanced. There will be no hard cap for cities and units, right? Because that would be something I hardly disagree with. 

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:19:28 PM

Well, not welcome news, but expected. Hope that means 'a couple more opendevs' mentioned on Humankind Day stream will become reality.

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:21:06 PM

While it's always a disappointing to hear people will have to wait few months longer - it's always better to take your time and release a better game than stick to some arbitrary date set many months before and release an unfinished game. 


Quality is the most important. And good quality takes time to accomplish. It's absolutely understandable.

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:23:38 PM

C'est parfait ! Vous avez raison de le repousser pour le peaufiner... On saura être patient :)

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:27:40 PM
PJR wrote:

I think it's good to take the time and finish the game to a point where all is balanced. There will be no hard cap for cities and units, right? Because that would be something I hardly disagree with. 

"we are working on imposing a limit on the number of both, after which players would incur penalties."


Good call, the game needs to be the best it can be on release. Keep up the good work!

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:29:36 PM

It is a good and important choice. 
The game needs a good and stable start :) and a lot of those changes are sorely needed.
Of course we all wish it would come out earlier than august, because we want to play it, but still it is understandable and we are looking forwards to see the end result :)
Hope tosee more open devs xD

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:29:51 PM

Ah the one time I break my rule to not pre-order games I'm punished for it. Bitterly disappointed, hiding this detail at the back of the Lucy Opendev thank you video was very bittersweet. The former date was just after my brother's birthday and we had planned a humankind extravaganza. 

At least we have enough time to change our plans.

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:45:16 PM

Better late than too soon. I was disappointed by some feature of Endless Space that got fixed with DLCs update so I am happy to seing you reporting the game. Take your time to make the game of your dreams!

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:45:56 PM

I know it's easy to say as VIP but it is indeed the right call. The game is shaping up quite well but the additional time will certainly help nail those points shared in the blog.

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:54:59 PM
I was looking forward to play the game in April but Im even more happy to hear that the game won't be rushed and the dev team is revising it based on player feedback. I personally was a bit dissapointed with the state of the game in the Lucy OpenDev but im very hyped to the potential that the game has. Can't wait! I only hope we get another OpevDev between now and August because I really want to play more Humankind!

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 2:56:00 PM

I think most people were expecting the delay. I really hope there will be another open dev in the meantime, the previous one in December was really fun!

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 3:02:24 PM

Right choice, right and wrong reason, wrong timing....and a needed carrot

Right choice- releasing a bugged, disappointing game with so much potential would have been the wrong choice, The devs rightly realised this

Right reasons- the list of things being worked on is pretty comprehensive (including the help for newbies... really needed for a game of this complexity. My one plea following my one game on Lucy, and it’s there. I was clicking at semi-random, making selections because I liked the name of it.... I know!!!). If some can be sorted by launch, I have confidence the dedication of the team will mean that with every update we’ll have an excellent game by Xmas (and a very good one in August)

Wrong reasons- devs have been very quiet for months. Was the announcement made today because of the speculation caused by the French video yesterday?

Wrong timing- I doubt whether today (or even the last month) was when it was realised it couldn’t be delivered by April 22nd. There’s been a lot of speculation of a delay. Expectations should have been managed way before now. A delay of 4 months less than a month before launch is poor. Not Crossrail poor, but poor.

The needed Carrot... they’ve been working on changes. They will work on changes. To find how balanced their changes are in practice (and to acknowledge/alleviate the disappointment caused by the delay) an early Opendev is needed. To put it another way... I wanna get my mitts on a version of it!


Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 3:14:34 PM

Meh. Still seems light on details given that so much of every conversation is "everything might change". It is nice to see the bullet list of targeted goals though. Not even a sample photo or even a diagram of any new UI stuff (which was admittedly, pretty cluttered). 

Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 3:22:54 PM

Certainly a lot still to look forward to in the coming months (contemporary reveals, opendev, etc.) to be excited for. I'm glad the development team is taking as much time as they need to make something truly special. 


Arkalis wrote:

I know it's easy to say as VIP but it is indeed the right call. The game is shaping up quite well but the additional time will certainly help nail those points shared in the blog.

Lucy already had a lot going for it, but that extra time will indeed help Humankind shine in the 4X genre. 

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3 years ago
Mar 25, 2021, 3:25:05 PM
Lonkah wrote:
Wrong timing- I doubt whether today (or even the last month) was when it was realised it couldn’t be delivered by April 22nd. There’s been a lot of speculation of a delay. Expectations should have been managed way before now. A delay of 4 months less than a month before launch is poor.

The stream yesterday still mentioning April 22nd was an unfortunate side effect of timing: When the segment was being prepared, we did not have a precise new date yet, so did not want to rush out the announcement, so the old date served as a fallback. We're sorry that with the timing of the stream and our announcement, this may come across as a bit of a bait and switch.


Lonkah wrote:
The needed Carrot... they’ve been working on changes. They will work on changes. To find how balanced their changes are in practice (and to acknowledge/alleviate the disappointment caused by the delay) an early Opendev is needed. To put it another way... I wanna get my mitts on a version of it!

As mentioned at the bottom of the post, the chances for another OpenDev are pretty good. That's all we can say for now, though.



PotatoesAreBland wrote:

Meh. Still seems light on details given that so much of every conversation is "everything might change". It is nice to see the bullet list of targeted goals though. Not even a sample photo or even a diagram of any new UI stuff (which was admittedly, pretty cluttered). 

You should tune in to the stream later today. We'll be talking about the feedback and have some footage to show.

Updated 3 years ago.
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