Ara: History Untold

[Sherlock]

I think a major difference is the ARA team listened to their testers, and made big changes between Alpha 1 and 2 based on feedback. This gives me confidence they are acting on feedback. The Humankind team refused to listen to any feedback during their testing period.

After Endless Legend I was a big fan of Amplitude. Not any more.

 

[The_J]

The whole soundtrack is now available on spotify, see

 

[The_J]

In their next dev diary, the developers of Ara are talking first about women in game development, and later about simultaneous turns, which will be a part of the standard Ara game, even in single player.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

Interesting how she points out the problem with the Civ franchise. Basically how the designers have to follow strict criteria that limits their creativity. And because Ara is new that they can now think out-of-the-box and create something different.

 

[Ita Bear]

I'm worried they are taking the Paradox approach to 'winning' the game, in that there is no way to win the game at all. Is this just another glorified sandbox game? The game boasts 'no pre-set paths to victory'. Are we not conquering our enemies? Or diplomatically bending them to our will? Or launching humans into space? What's the purpose of this game?

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I'm excited they are taking the Paradox approach to 'winning' the game. Ara is about creating a story; it's not the screen at the end of the game that matters, but the journey that you took to get there. The game boasts no preset paths to victory, so you make one yourself. (This is how I play Civ and most other strategy games, by the way. I don't tend to have a grand endgame, I just make up little goals and aims along the way.)

Kind regards,
Bonyduck Campersang

 

[Civinator]

Here is a short gaming report made at the gamescom by the German Gaming magazine Gamestar. The report is in German language and there is an advertisment in the report from 1:48 - 2:43. After the advertisement the report is becoming interesting (especially from 5:00 on) and there are some comparisons in it to Civ 6 and Humankind.


Link to video.

 

[AntSou]

@Dale I thought listening to feedback was their thing. They certainly made a point of repeatedly communicating that they listen to feedback. So I'm surprised to hear that's just talk.

 

[pokiehl]

@Dale I thought listening to feedback was their thing. They certainly made a point of repeatedly communicating that they listen to feedback. So I'm surprised to hear that's just talk.

I don’t think it was just talk at all. Their forums show that Amplitude DID listen to feedback during the OpenDevs, and that became a real problem throughout development IMO. Developers can end up chasing their tails.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think unfocused group testing from regular players is a great way to design a videogame (which is why I don’t have particularly high hopes for Ara). Play testing is a professional skill. Regular player feedback is often better suited for hammering out balance issues once the core systems are already in place. Otherwise it’s like building a bridge as you cross it.

I think the feedback Amplitude got during the OpenDevs hurt a lot of the core gameplay, especially revolving around the Influence yield for instance.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don’t think it was just talk at all. Amplitude DID listen to feedback, and that became a real problem throughout development IMO. Developers can end up chasing their tails.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think unfocused group testing from regular players is a great way to design a videogame (which is why I don’t have particularly high hopes for Ara). Play testing is a professional skill. Regular player feedback is often better suited for hammering out balance issues once the core systems are already in place. Otherwise it’s like building a bridge as you cross it.

I think the feedback Amplitude got during the pre-release phases hurt a lot of the core gameplay, especially revolving around the Influence yield for instance.

The 'Blind Playtest' system of game design predates computer gaming, having been developed for board games and then used to develop miniatures rules as far back as the 1960s. Having taken part in Simulations Publications board game playtest (Friday night) sessions back in the late 1960s, I can add a bit to this.

It is not unfocused or blind playtesting that is bad, it is Unguided playtesting. SPI's playtest sessions were directly supervised by professionals, who extracted immediate feedback from the ('off the street') playtesters on every aspect of the game, and especially any aspect that produced problems. On occasion the game was modified on the spot and before the end of the same night the new version was played and examined.

The burden then, is not on the playtesters, but on the game designers to extract 'lessons' and find and define problems in the game design. Expecting definition and isolation of problems from unguided amateur (even if experienced) playtesters is a recipe for a game design in any medium that has undiscovered problems - and in computer/electronic games, to throw away large sums of money on a flawed design.

 

[Dale]

@Dale I thought listening to feedback was their thing. They certainly made a point of repeatedly communicating that they listen to feedback. So I'm surprised to hear that's just talk.

I was involved in every single Humankind test before release, and I can tell you hand on heart, they made the pretence of listening to feedback, and even kept saying "thanks for the feedback", but in the end didn't change the game per the feedback. There were a couple of pieces of feedback which almost everyone was in agreement with that Amplitude didn't act on, and in the end I think it's fair to say that the final release is a direct result of not changing the design per the feedback.

I don’t think it was just talk at all. Amplitude DID listen to feedback, and that became a real problem throughout development IMO. Developers can end up chasing their tails.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think unfocused group testing from regular players is a great way to design a videogame (which is why I don’t have particularly high hopes for Ara). Play testing is a professional skill. Regular player feedback is often better suited for hammering out balance issues once the core systems are already in place. Otherwise it’s like building a bridge as you cross it.

I think the feedback Amplitude got during the pre-release phases hurt a lot of the core gameplay, especially revolving around the Influence yield for instance.

Amplitude did NOT respond to the common feedback. Every pre-release test the same 3-4 points would be mentioned by most people. The game released still contained those 3-4 flaws. I think it's fair to say that the continued lack of success of Humankind is a result.

And yes, professional testing is a skill. I've been in that job. But professional testing focuses on finding bugs, rooting out design flaws, negative testing. Play testing by market focus groups is also a big thing. That's what the pre release tests were, the market focus groups. You MUST listen to your audience. If your target audience says your game has these problems, and you don't listen to them and release with those problems, then you cannot stand around and go, "Why wasn't our game a success?" And that's all I've seen them and the fanbois do.

 

[AntSou]

Amplitude did NOT respond to the common feedback. Every pre-release test the same 3-4 points would be mentioned by most people. The game released still contained those 3-4 flaws. I think it's fair to say that the continued lack of success of Humankind is a result.

Could you share the more commonly repeated concerns that were not addressed by Amplitude?

 

[Dale]

Could you share the more commonly repeated concerns that were not addressed by Amplitude?

There are NDA's involved of course, so I don't really want to run afowl of that. But I'm pretty sure you can sort of work out the areas they were involved. They were pretty much the common complaints after release.

 

[pokiehl]

Could you share the more commonly repeated concerns that were not addressed by Amplitude?

Amplitude was pretty open about the feedback they were receiving. This update in the opendev phase is a good summary of early concerns, including what I was talking about with Influence:

HUMANKIND™ - Steam News Hub

Updates, events, and news from the developers of HUMANKIND™.

store.steampowered.com

Additionally, player feedback is public. You can check out the Opendev subforum archives on their own forum Games2Gether. We even have opendev discussion threads here on CFC

Going through the feedback on Games2Gether in particular in retrospect is kind of frustrating because you feel like players were just focusing on the wrong things. I don’t blame players because the opendevs were mostly singular slices of the game; that made it hard for fans to contextualize their feedback and give it consideration from all angles. But still, in retrospect I think a lot of player desires were misguided.

I thought the opendev process was really open, and Amplitude seemed earnest to me in trying to address what fans said, which you can see in the forums. To directly answer your question, I don’t know what specifically Dale is referring to. Maybe there was another testing group he was part of that was not public, and the feedback shared there was different?

 

[Civinator]

Here are some excerpts from the Gamestar video:

The recruitement of military units is "item-based". Per example, If you want to produce a unit of archers you need the bows to equipe them. These bows can be gained by production or as a prey:

Squad-based battles:

Only one victory condition: Prestige points (those can be gained for nearly everything):

Civ Stats and some buildings:

Civ Traits (here India/Ahoka):

No tiles, but regions (nothing new, but a nice image):

Research is different from the Civ series. Here cards are drawn from a card deck. Only one of three suggested techs can be drawn. Per era there are only nine different cards. I have the feeling, that here the last word is not spoken yet:

Quests:

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Ashoka's screen seems to show only his Leader abilities and not any Civilization abilities: Conquest by Dharma could easily be an ability of either Ashoka or India. Also, disappointed to see no sign of unique units and infrastructure, haven't watched the video yet so I may be wrong.

 

[Civinator]

Ashoka's screen seems to show only his Leader abilities and not any Civilization abilities: Conquest by Dharma could easily be an ability of either Ashoka or India. Also, disappointed to see no sign of unique units and infrastructure, haven't watched the video yet so I may be wrong.

The video was done with only about one hour of game play and additionally the game is still in development. You should watch the video. So it is in German language, the images and the texts in them are in English language.

 

[Dale]

Amplitude was pretty open about the feedback they were receiving. This update in the opendev phase is a good summary of early concerns, including what I was talking about with Influence:

HUMANKIND™ - Steam News Hub

Updates, events, and news from the developers of HUMANKIND™.

store.steampowered.com

Additionally, player feedback is public. You can check out the Opendev subforum archives on their own forum Games2Gether. We even have opendev discussion threads here on CFC

Going through the feedback on Games2Gether in particular in retrospect is kind of frustrating because you feel like players were just focusing on the wrong things. I don’t blame players because the opendevs were mostly singular slices of the game; that made it hard for fans to contextualize their feedback and give it consideration from all angles. But still, in retrospect I think a lot of player desires were misguided.

I thought the opendev process was really open, and Amplitude seemed earnest to me in trying to address what fans said, which you can see in the forums. To directly answer your question, I don’t know what specifically Dale is referring to. Maybe there was another testing group he was part of that was not public, and the feedback shared there was different?

I was in the opendevs too. It's literally been 2 years since I've even looked at Humankind but if my memory serves me, the biggest issues brought up in opendev ignored by Amplitude included:
- culture progression is completely dis-jointed and results in lack of any empathy or identity with your Civ. To the point you would identify as colours not cultures.
- the prestige system was good intentions but didn't work well.
- the game was literally BBW (biggest blob wins). FIMS was implemented poorly.
- surrender mechanic and war resolution.
- the game felt like good ideas working in isolation to the each other. The game lacked that cohesive feel of other 4xs such as Civ

That's about all I remember.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I was in the opendevs too. It's literally been 2 years since I've even looked at Humankind but if my memory serves me, the biggest issues brought up in opendev ignored by Amplitude included:
- culture progression is completely dis-jointed and results in lack of any empathy or identity with your Civ. To the point you would identify as colours not cultures.
- the prestige system was good intentions but didn't work well.
- the game was literally BBW (biggest blob wins). FIMS was implemented poorly.
- surrender mechanic and war resolution.
- the game felt like good ideas working in isolation to the each other. The game lacked that cohesive feel of other 4xs such as Civ

That's about all I remember.

The culture progression and resulting utter lack of identification with the Civ has been the bane of Humankind since Day One. It was an interesting idea, but it simply does not work as a basic game system. I really wish it did, because the idea of having a faction/Civ whose special elements actually were relevant to the particular in-game situation as it changes is so attractive.

"The game lacked the cohesive feel of . . . Civ". Given how disconnected so many of the Civ VI mechanics are and how little consequence there is from disjointed decisions, I can't say that Humankind is any worse overall, but this is not a game design feature that should be emulated. I've tried to start a game of Civ VI several times in the past month, and have given up after about 50 turns at most because the game systems are so poorly integrated. On the other hand, given the basic and fundamental problems with the Humankind culture progressions, game map and other 'features', I haven't even opened that game in over a year and I don't think I've tried playing it since early 2021.

 

[Civinator]

Back to ARA. May be some of you have not noticed the video created by the magazine gamestar during a one-hour- play of ARA at the gamescom, containing some new informations about ARA. So the video is in German language, the images with their texts are in English language.

You can find it here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ara-history-untold.677325/page-6#post-16504683