Closed Beta Feedback Thread

[Swissy]

I agree with many of the opinions here. After playing the Closed Beta every day for a week I feel I threw away my money. As it is now I won't be playing Humankind much on release. Main problem I have is the feeling that they put to much detail into the game as far as the various systems, then never took a hard look at how they worked together. It just isn't all that fun to play.

 

[Kwami]

You could always get a refund on your pre-order. I might very well do that myself.

 

[Atlas627]

Ok, time for more extensive feedback.

The game clearly has balance issues, and in a strategy game that can utterly kill all the fun. Obviously that needs to be worked on, but that can also be patched after release as more and more people play and reveal the balance issues. So all I will say to that for now is that Influence costs start out good, but the scaling needs to increase more quickly. Stability seemed frustratingly difficult to regain, but I didn't try splitting off Territories into their own Cities, which I think is a good solution I just didn't get around to trying.

Most of the Civic choices are not dramatic enough for me to care. Even the Ideology bonuses were not all that dramatic. I think each Civic should be about as interesting as any Culture's Emblematic Unit or Emblematic Quarter or Legacy trait. I think Ideology should be as impactful as 2 Cultures. After all, it is a grand strategic decision. It also means that the Civic choices become more interesting just by virtue of changing your Ideology, possibly in the direction you don't want.

Era stars come a little too quickly, and Science is a little too slow. Together, there is a horrible mismatch. I think it is good to have Era transitions come quicker than Science, so that investing SUPER heavily into Science can let you catch up or slightly outpace Eras, but normal investment lags a little behind Eras (which means you have to pick and choose which Techs you bother getting), and low investment can be a strategic decision that you take when you purposely want to hang around in an Era or 2 to achieve high Fame.

Gold has become so much harder to generate, but the costs also are now sky high! Certainly we were buying way too many things before, but now I could rarely buy anything. Shave a turn off here or there, woohoo. Just like with Science vs Era, I hope SUPER investment into Gold lets you rush buy maybe half of the things, normal investment lets you rush buy maybe 1/8 things, and low investment means you have to spend money elsewhere only.

The biggest issue I've been feeling is that most of the game plays quite similarly to the rest of it: incremental yield gains beget more yields which produce more yields. The yields in the Medieval era are the same type of thing as Classical, but more, for example. Again, I want the game to play *drastically* differently from era to era. Gold yields increase by a lot in Early Modern because you can *now* build off of Harbors? Great. I can start taking advantage of 2 parts of a Region in Medieval because I can place a Hamlet, allowing me to disconnect Territories I was using for that purpose? Great (this one already is in the game). Armies can move huge distances quickly via Trains in Industrial? Great (also already in the game). Trains work like Hamlets for district building? Great.

The combat does a great job of getting different rules each era. Now I want the economy to do the same. The diplomacy does it somewhat, just by virtue of meeting more players in different situations over time. Now I want the civics to do the same, unlocking new abilities and creating Ideological gameplay.

And I understand if the developers are waiting for an expansion to do this. But I worry that they'll add more content with the expansions, rather than create interesting limitations that you can overcome. That we'll end up with even MORE of a yield-fest than Civ.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

Humankind is perfectly balanced, do not listen to the naysayers! "Sipping on Yorkshire Tea intensifies."

Don't actually have the game, and can't buy it, so I'm stuck listening to opinions here on the forums.

Edit:

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Humankind is perfectly balanced, do not listen to the naysayers! "Sipping on Yorkshire Tea intensifies."

Don't actually have the game, and can't buy it, so I'm stuck listening to opinions here on the forums. And from what I'm hearing, it's far from the Civ killer some people said it would be.

I'm just glad I stayed on the "excited, but not overhyped" section.

The Bad News, as many have pointed out here and on other platforms, is that the game has severe balance and pacing issues and Release is less than 2 months away.

The Good News is that they are well aware of the problems, since they've been reported on platforms that the developers are watching closely and in the feedback from the Open Devs and they have almost two months left to fix them.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

Humankind is perfectly balanced, do not listen to the naysayers! "Sipping on Yorkshire Tea intensifies."

Don't actually have the game, and can't buy it, so I'm stuck listening to opinions here on the forums. And from what I'm hearing, it's far from the Civ killer some people said it would be.

I'm just glad I stayed on the "excited, but not overhyped" section.

Never once have I seen anyone here call it a 'Civ killer' I cant speak for anyone else but I think its just refreshing to have an alternative to civ and to see someone else's take on a historical 4x game. Honestly I get frustrated to see these types of comments as it implies if Humankind comes short of toppling one of the biggest franchises in video games it will be considered a failure. Not a fair expectation at all.

 

[leif erikson]

Humankind is perfectly balanced, do not listen to the naysayers! "Sipping on Yorkshire Tea intensifies."

Don't actually have the game, and can't buy it, so I'm stuck listening to opinions here on the forums. And from what I'm hearing, it's far from the Civ killer some people said it would be.

I'm just glad I stayed on the "excited, but not overhyped" section.

Moderator Action: This does not belong in this thread. It is off topic and borders on trolling. It represents a reaction to some of the most critical civ players from the Civ6 GD forum as they have called Humankind a civ killer. Please let us not turn this forum into a Humankind versus Civilization debate. They are different version of the 4x game genre and let us appreciate and hope that they may improve each other.

Back to topic please.

 

[Stringer1313]

I think, to summarize my experience and, apparently, that of several others, that as the game stands now, a little less than 2 months from Release:


4. Another potential problem is Too Much Of Everything. By this I mean Infrastructure which, by my count, has about 3 times more components/structures to build as in Civ VI, in a game that's supposed to have fewer turns in it. It sometimes seems as if you are constantly 'running in place' just to keep up with all the possible goodies being thrown at you, even with slow Tech Progression compared to the rest of the game. I understand the game is designed for a player not to research every Tech or build every Infrastructure piece, but most of the Infrastructure provides only incremental effects, so you are really encouraged to 'stack' them for best effect, and that requires more building time than you have, seemingly. Again, this may be part of the Pace Problem from (1) above.

I'm sad to see this. I played all the betas except for this most recent one and this is my constant gripe with Amplitude 4x games in general (though if they take this approach to their other games, which are successful, they probably feel no need to change it). There are too many infrastructure options all of which are too inconsequential to be worth the brain energy in deciding what to build. I'm just randomly clicking color blobs to boost the thing I need. It would be one thing if they were graphically represented on screen, but the fact that they aren't just contributes to the "spreadsheet" like quality of those choices. I wish they would eliminate 2/3 of infrastructure options and make the remaining ones more consequential, and force you to choose between two infrastructure options like Civ VI sometimes does. Or perhaps they should limit the # of infrastructure you can build (does it do that already?)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'm sad to see this. I played all the betas except for this most recent one and this is my constant gripe with Amplitude 4x games in general (though if they take this approach to their other games, which are successful, they probably feel no need to change it). There are too many infrastructure options all of which are too inconsequential to be worth the brain energy in deciding what to build. I'm just randomly clicking color blobs to boost the thing I need. It would be one thing if they were graphically represented on screen, but the fact that they aren't just contributes to the "spreadsheet" like quality of those choices. I wish they would eliminate 2/3 of infrastructure options and make the remaining ones more consequential, and force you to choose between two infrastructure options like Civ VI sometimes does. Or perhaps they should limit the # of infrastructure you can build (does it do that already?)

The only limitation on Infrastructure, I believe, is that you can build each one only once in a city, because the majority of them apply to all of one kind of Quarter/District or situation (more food on all river tiles, for instance). But given the fact that there are over 50 of them just in the first 2/3 of the game, that's not much of a limitation. I haven't done the math, but I suspect that it is impossible to build all of the Infrastructures during the time allotted in the average game - you'd have to Rush Buy some, or so concentrate your resources on Production that you wouldn't have anything left for anything else, like building the Quarters that the Infrastructure is supposed to provide Bonuses to.

The more I think about this, the more it bugs me, because it amounts to a game designed to Frustrate the Player: provide oodles of goodies for your cities and Faction/Civ, which you Cannot Have in any game you play because the game itself seems to be designed to make that impossible. If I want to be frustrated by the unattainable, I can just watch the nightly news and expect rational decision making from politicians: I don't have to spend any money on their game . . .

 

[Elhoim]

The more I think about this, the more it bugs me, because it amounts to a game designed to Frustrate the Player: provide oodles of goodies for your cities and Faction/Civ, which you Cannot Have in any game you play because the game itself seems to be designed to make that impossible. If I want to be frustrated by the unattainable, I can just watch the nightly news and expect rational decision making from politicians: I don't have to spend any money on their game . . .

Yes, seems to be balanced around the "opportunity cost". So you can potentially build everything, but since everything is costly you have to chose what to focus on. I dislike that design a bit, though, as it creates these feeling that you are doing something "wrong" and that's because you can't build things, or even dangling everything in front of the player but nope, you can't have it.

Plus the infrastructures are a bit "boring" to build, just a long list of seemingly "minor" bonuses. By minor I mean it on the visual impact. You place a quarter, you see +25 production on a tile. Here, you see "+1 on Maker Quarter". That's something I disliked on the policies in Civ VI, and really liked the mod that showed the concrete yield effect.

It would be great if in later expansions they moved some of them to districts, as some of them can really feel good as them (like the dams and different power plants, the aqueducts, etc).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Yes, seems to be balanced around the "opportunity cost". So you can potentially build everything, but since everything is costly you have to chose what to focus on. I dislike that design a bit, though, as it creates these feeling that you are doing something "wrong" and that's because you can't build things, or even dangling everything in front of the player but nope, you can't have it.

Plus the infrastructures are a bit "boring" to build, just a long list of seemingly "minor" bonuses. By minor I mean it on the visual impact. You place a quarter, you see +25 production on a tile. Here, you see "+1 on Maker Quarter". That's something I disliked on the policies in Civ VI, and really liked the mod that showed the concrete yield effect.

It would be great if in later expansions they moved some of them to districts, as some of them can really feel good as them (like the dams and different power plants, the aqueducts, etc).

It was especially annoying to me when on numerous occasions in the Open Devs an Infrastrcture which gave an incremental +1 and gave no visual, graphic representation of its existence in the game cost more and took longer to build than a Quarter which gave a fat set of bonuses based on the surrounding tiles and adjacencies and showed up graphically on the map.

 

[Atlas627]

Well the Infrastructures should obviously just indicate the total amount they would grant in their current state (along with their actual +1-per-thing effect), much like how the district placement consolidates all the various yields into a single display while also showing the separate yields.

As far as opportunity cost being a thing, seems like good design to me.

 

[Kwami]

Nah, you can totally build all of the infrastructure in a city. In multiple cities, even. Between normal production, buying with Money, and sacrificing population, you can build everything very quickly by the 4th era or so.

The problem is that population is worthless. They're just a drain on resources. You can kill them all to buy more infrastructure, which gives way more FIMSI than keeping the pops around.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Nah, you can totally build all of the infrastructure in a city. In multiple cities, even. Between normal production, buying with Money, and sacrificing population, you can build everything very quickly by the 4th era or so.

The problem is that population is worthless. They're just a drain on resources. You can kill them all to buy more infrastructure, which gives way more FIMSI than keeping the pops around.

One of the 'counter-intuitive' things in the game is that what it calls 'population' is actually 'Excess Population' because it is not required to produce any tile bonuses or man any infrastructure/Quarters/tiles at all. Furthermore, if you convert the excess population into units, they stop costing you any food, only money/gold, yet still count towards Fame Stars just as if they were 'population' still. It takes some getting used to, and unfortunately is both counter-intuitive and unrealistic, for whatever that's worth. More importantly, it gives the gamer a complete control over population versus resources, because you can 'spend' (work to death) excess population to build infrastructure, or convert population to units to change the cost from Food to Gold, or disband the 'excess' population in units at will in cities or outposts as desired/required.

It's all a bit much, if you ask me, but doubtless the Near Total Control will appeal to many gamers . . .

 

[Taefin]

Even in Victor, I was more successful in a game where I let pop build than when I worked them all to death. Now that forced labor is 3x more expensive, I would have thought the balance was pretty good there.

I like all the infrastructure. Yes, totally agree that it should pop up in some helpful/satisfying fashion how much resources one will give currently. It’d be cool to see those highlighted on the map too, I find that part of the UI pretty satisfying when placing a quarters. It’d also be cool to see resources change on the
outpost attach and city merge buttons too, since it’s hard to track how infrastructures will stack up.

Regarding all the choice, I’d anticipate that after 5-10 games I’ll know them all well enough to know what I want to stack together. Also, you need something to do when you take builder cultures, the production gets out of control and they begin to be more valuable individually than a CQ+xQ combo.

But… I am mindful of the fact that I have completely finished 6-7 games of Civ6 (I am one of those critical fans mentioned above) because even if the game becomes unbalanced, I sometimes do want to spend all Saturday finishing a game I have no doubt I’ll win just because I want to see if I can pull off CV before SV, and because it feels rewarding to use that pretty Civ I’ve labored over. The game ends and I think of what game parameters I want to change for my next game. In contrast, in my few weeks trying Endless legend after playing humankind Victor, I never had the remotest interest in entered the last era. It just gets so boring and there is nothing to achieve that I expect will feel rewarding.

In this regard I am both hopeful and nervous about humankind. It has lots of parameters to tune, which should allow players to emphasize their favorite dimensions of the game. Also the game allows AI to lead in fame despite not being particular strong relative to the player, and this creates the tension of, I need to get this army there or delay era advancement to tip the scale. It’ll be nice that the AI doesn’t need to be 2x ahead of the player to win, like in Civ6.

To me it is the most exciting when a game pushes me to take a dramatic action (a window opens up, or the AI declares war) before I am quite ready to take that action. If the AI will just take advantage of a non-defended border (eg when my entire army is mustered against a distant rival, or if I neglect army for infrastructure too long) then I expect the steady pressure will keep me engaged to the end. Lately, I’ve been discovering how really fun it is to get declared on in Stellaris, not knowing if I can tip the scales in my favor or if it’s hopeless. Having a similar war support system I am hopeful will really help humankind.

 

[CivLuvah]

The more I think about this, the more it bugs me, because it amounts to a game designed to Frustrate the Player: provide oodles of goodies for your cities and Faction/Civ, which you Cannot Have in any game you play because the game itself seems to be designed to make that impossible. If I want to be frustrated by the unattainable, I can just watch the nightly news and expect rational decision making from politicians: I don't have to spend any money on their game . . .

For me, the frustration isn't in the amount of infrastructure that you get to build but rather the stability cost of plopping districts. Of course, having to build all infrastructures in every new city you have in the contemporary era is annoying to say the least, and I would recommend upgrading them like how a player upgrades units.

With regards to stability, its state in the closed beta is frankly just punishing. I did not have this kind of experience in Victor. Every time I want to improve my production by plopping down maker’s quarters, I get a large stability hit in my city. I want to prepare a strong army in the event that I defend myself from my rivals, or build infrastructure easily so that I wouldn’t need any more districts. It almost feels like a loop in which the negatives outweigh the positives. In order to maintain my stability, I build as less districts as possible and build infrastructures to improve the ones that I already have. However, the infrastructures take too long to build, and I’m well behind my fame score, so I have no choice but to build a district that lowers my stability, which prevents me from building more than I already have, and so on. There is less incentive for me to place districts. I could just build a lot of garrisons and commons quarters, but there can be instances when even that isn’t enough. I would suggest lowering the stability cap to about -2 or -5 than to -10 as it stands. Or have a proportional system, as it should be in proportion to how far the district is to your administrative centre.*

Spoiler :

*This was copy-pasted to a post at the Games2Gether forums on my experience of the Closed Beta and previous OpenDevs as a casual player