If you look at the disaster of V&V then you can see how its a very bad idea to release SP only content in that state. Despite people advocated for cosmetic DLC for far too long…
Instead of doing that, what we can expect devs to do is with each DLCs, we should see regional unit changes each time. For now we got regional Monks, civ specific Castles and few tweaks here and there. But hopefully with next DLC, we hope devs will simply make regional villagers for free instead. Then you are left with M@A, Archer, Knights, Scouts, Skirmisher, Spearman to receive its regional skin treatment. But simply doing cosmetic could left with bad taste and might lead to the path of AOE3DE/AOE1DE abandonment… One step at a time for regional unit treatment is much better.
Dont forget we have Chronicles which first introduced Antiquity Villagers. Really hope we get more unique content from that…
As you said yourself the problem was the state the DLC was released on. Also the fact that it was basically entirely recycled content.
Costed more then previous DLC
Almost no new scenarios
No real “campaign”
0 new game assets (like hero units or cosmetics)
A lot of bugs
It didn’t fail because it was single player only.
All military units at once would be a huge update compared to “just” Monks and Villagers.
Doing military units one unit line at a time would be very strange and make the game feel awkwardly mixed.
No.
AoE1DE never got a cosmetic DLC at all.
AoE3DE did but that had nothing to do with the abandonment.
I think the best option would be to make it a free DLC.
This way people can simply disable the DLC and not even download the unique sprites and save some disk space.
Actually no. you have Militia-line, Archer-line, Skirmisher-line, Pikeman-line, Knight-line, Scout-line left only. Who shares the current generic unit line for now. May or may not be a big task. Could be Chronicles level of effort for regional skins.
It’s happening primarily due to x1, x2 sizes. My honest opinion, devs should simply stick into one file instead of whatever weird thing they are doing ever since AOE1DE. Just sticking to x2 sizes alone can free up so many file spaces. There is weird GPU sprite loading which results in current bad performance which should’ve been easy fix. So that alone can reduce like 33% of current file space and leaves the room open for new sprites.
Actually a bad solution for M$ in term of money while DLC and changes across time to time is a lot more healthier. Many posts across the forums proved its possible to make new sprites while keeping the readability ok. Its really awkward to see European units in places like Africa/Asia/ME.
I also disagree treating it like the game from 1999. Game received so many updates and changes to the point its hardly the old game. Most of the players are from this era very few old era players are sticking when comparing to the new majority that came with DE release. Takes time but people mostly adjusted to the new changes…
Chronicles is just one new set though not like 5-10 new sets.
I personally totally agree but I play AoE3, AoE4 and AoM too so I’m used to civilisations having many different looking units.
I personally agree with that too but there is a not small part of the community that hates the idea of regional skins. The game has to give them an option to disable them.
If it will be forced onto everyone it will cause the small anti innovation crowd to riot.