A deeper problem of this franchise than one DLC: the lack of a clear vision

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Let’s talk about this. I feel WE has been trying all different things one after another, and rarely continued any of them.

I’ve been more involved in 2 and 3 so I use them as examples. And hell that’s a lot.

AOE2:
Serial campaigns: only in DOTW
Porting AOE1 campaigns to ROR: discontinued after one round
ROR campaigns: discontinued after the DLC
V&V: it itself is a bad product, but “polishing” community maps as DLCs is not such a bad idea…as long as it is really polished. Yet you guess it, not anymore.
Chronicles: this new DLC has every reason to be a perfect Chronicles DLC, yet they refuse to do so
I highly doubt the “chronicles civ on ranked” thing will continue into the next DLC either

AOE3:
Event challenges: only one
Historical battles: discontinued after two rounds
Historical maps: discontinued after one round
Hero cosmetics: discontinued after one pack
Community monthly challenges: only set 12 rewards, rotating every year (there are lot of unused skins as potential new rewards, for those who don’t know)

The ROR campaigns, chronicles, AOE3 historical battles/maps, even V&V styled DLCs are all great ways to expand the games’ scope into not-so-saturated themes and offer single player contents with guaranteed quality and reception, yet none of them had more than two trials and they directly jumped to “more innovative” ideas.

And I’m not even talking about game concepts and designs.

What we are left with is a trail of inconsistent directions, each taking one step, then sharp turned.

It seems they just drop most attempts and experiments after one trial because they…didn’t go very well? Really? Or because they become more ambitious for the next one? Many formula needs time to refine before they become more profitable and perfect. How do you even decide it’s not a good idea with only one attempt? This lack of a direction makes me really baffled.

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yeah it’s been about three years of, expect surprises, oh we wanted to try an experiment, we haven’t forgotten you bread and butter dlc people, rinse and repeat.

LK-DoI was not perfect. LK wasn’t terribly balanced. Not a fan of the one time effects of LotW. DotD…well that was just plain awesome. DoI, I think no knights was offputting to some people, but it seems to have accomplished what it set out to do.

It feels like the devs responsible for developing aoe2 have gotten bored with aoe2. Pretty much since DoI it’s been a long string of experiments, sans the bare bones TMR.

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You missed V&V in the analysis.

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Thanks. Added.

20 chars

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I’d support their “experiments” if there is also a steady flow of “traditional” content.

But neither happened. They are not doing experiments. They are only jumping here and there.

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Yeah, some of these have definitely not been experiments.

BfG, absolutely was an experiement and one that paid off IMO.

tin foil hat theory, but V&V was a last minute slap-dash dlc made when BfG was delay from march 2024 to november 2024.

RoR was a last ditch effort to keep aoe1 alive.

V&V2 is a pandering plea toward the chinese mobile gaming market. cause aoe mobile wasn’t enough apparently.

yes they’re just jumping to the next hot thing trying to monetize what they can.