Why was she burnt at stake?
French didn't really care to have a popular, king-making, revolutionary traipsing around freely, that's not a good idea for the now freshly ruling elite in a fragile state of the country - she served her purpose, it was time for her to go (from their point of view).
AoE 2 DE is a cash grab focused on players craving nostalgia, these players play campaigns, vs AI and are very satisfied, as is reflected in popular reviews, ratings and sales; which is what management looks at to evaluate their business strategies. Multiplayer just doesn't bring enough return on investment.
AoE 2 DE = Working as intended.
If the intention is to make a cash grab from players seeking nostalgia and tease AoE4, it is a great success.
I am trying to look at it from a business POV, not a developer or a (online) player's POV.
All those DE remasters now are just a marketing campaign for Age of Empires IV - to drum up interest of all the old, forgotten people, and get them ready to spend more money on the franchise in promise of good old times. It has really nothing to do with truly pleasing the standing, active communities - as you can clearly see by what and how they do. And as you say, it's working perfectly. And on the side, they also get to test some AoEIV features on live audience who pays for it. And of course make tons of nostalgia money.
Sad part is, and that's where I disagree, that they don't see that it could be going miles better if they actually managed to please the community, as, in the end, that is the biggest marketing tool - or who else is exactly making the big tournaments and streams, who is having friends join for a few games during the world situation now, who is creating all the game-related content from memes to mods that attracts new players? Yeah, the standing, active, mostly multiplayer, community. Because multiplayers are the ones invested in the game more than anyone else, as they are here often because of friends, and therefore they have better motivation to take care of the game as well and improve on the overall experience for everyone. They just chose the easy way to pay (directly or indirectly) the influencers to overshadow the problems and call it a day kind of. And it's to a good degree working well enough. So in a significant way we, as a community, are also doing it to ourselves, unfortunately.
If you compare this for example with CDPRs community manager Burza for Gwent, it's day and night difference. He posts in CDPRs forums, his own twitter, subreddit etc... Not only in patch times, but nearly every day. You can always reach him somewhere and expect an answer.
I dont understand why gaming companys behave so differently. Is it that difficult to hire a community manager who, like his title says duh..., manages the community?
The more corporate the company gets, the more careful and reserved it becomes in communication, usually unnecessarily so, but it's easier for the managers to keep their jobs that way, as the less you talk or say, the lower chances of bad mishaps. Similar to other decisions - it becomes more about the KPIs than actual good/best work done, as they don't know if they'll be here for the next bonus-handout round, so they need/want to cash in now (hence more short-term decisions taken than long-term, even if they would yield more profit, and strict adherence to set project terms and scopes, even against common sense - just like playing the long game with the community and the game by making it satisfactory from the beginning, as opposed to just rushing the release and have the immediate sales, and then maybe something happens, who knows, who cares).
CD Projekt, with GOG, are seemingly resisting that rather well.
What's amazing to me though is that there's seemingly not much coordination between MS and FE, even though they're working on the same games - at least it's not very apparent.
I like Cysion approach to community outreach. When game is launching he acts like poster boy , does many interviews, talk shows etc, gets all the clap on the back.
After release when the **** show of bugs start, he goes in hiding waiting for another new launch to happen. This approach has been consistent in HD, AOM, AOE1 DE, AOE2 DE.
So true :d That's how FE get the most good vibes, they're touted everywhere as that group of community people in all the good PR - buy the game, it's done by you, the community! And then when the problems come, Forgotten Empires are not at fault, never ever, it's always someone else, to keep the image clean for the next rinse and repeat time. But the money tastes good.