I donât think the problem was some lack of consideration, or some oversight.
First there was the âcampaign focusedâ debacle. I know you shared with me a time filthy used campaign to indicate scenarios. Already not a great start but if that was the only problem then that could be overlooked as honest if incompetent communication.
The promises given to aoe3 and AOM were pretty suspect as well, and the ethics of up cycling content are debatable at least, and the value proposition has been criticized, AND they demoâd V&V on the PUP, so upcoming free features looked like paid dlc features, but letâs put aside all that for the moment.
If, despite those earlierâŠâŠmis-steps letâs call them, if V&V was congruent with what had eventually been promised, was the polished and high production value scenarios they indicated they would be. then yes, Iâd agree with your characterization. They just lacked proper foresight and consideration but had good intentions.
Then we learn that the scenarios arenât very polished or updated. People running into the same bugs from the free versions, Byzantines werenât updated to Romans in vortigern, absolutely 0 new skins, graphics, assets, of any kind to go with these scenarios. They reused not only the historical battles map but all the graphics in the cutscenes are also reused. Fetih, a supposedly new scenario, is just Constantine xi, an upcycled scenario but youâre player swapped. The voice acting, where previously weâve gotten a VA for each individual campaign and historical battle, now a single VA has done all cutscenes and hints for all the scenarios.
Not to mention it doesnât currently work for Xbox players cause it wrongly says they havenât bought it. Iâm sure thatâll be hotfixed but that is just self inflicted damage icing on a pr nightmare cake.
I may be missing stuff but I think the point is clear. V&V doesnât represent an honest effort that was simply a bit misguided. Itâs seems quite clear the objective was to charge nearly as much as a regular DLC, and represent the content as tho theyâd really gone all out making these the best scenarios they could, but in reality put in as little effort as possible, re-use as much as possible, spend as little as possible making this, and just hope we wouldnât notice the incongruousness of the promises and what we were delivered.
This, to use an analogy, isnât a husband who in the midst of a mid-life crisis gets a motorcycle cause itâs supposedly actually a great idea when in reality it was pretty dumb. More this is the husband in the midlife crisis who starts philandering but says heâs gotta work all these extra hours and just hopes the wife doesnât put 2 and 2 together. An âoopsie I guess I hadnât thought it thru 100%â isnât gonna quite cut it.
They didnât know scenarios should have custom cutscene graphics? They didnât know they should use only one VA? They didnât know they needed no new skins or graphics of any sort to make scenarios pop? These are things they have known for many DLCs but now, suddenly, inexplicably, presumably only now just slipped their mind.
I think the pattern of less than honest statements and cutting corners with V&V is inescapably obvious. They wanted to see what they could get away with and they over-estimated. Itâs a regrettable state of affairs but apparently the allure of higher profits has finally overcome their sense of duty to be honest with the community that has kept this game going for decades.
