TLDR:
- Supporting mediocre releases is not going to encourage them to do better. It will only give the message of more mediocrity is acceptable
- Forget about “but these people are different”. Maybe they are. But their C-suite and shareholders are not.
The History Lesson
We have seen enough examples of accepting what was borderline “fine” leading to something not “finer” but worse.
AOE2:
This has been discussed over and over.
AOE3:
KoTM added Maltese, a civ that massively reused the assets and voicelines of campaigns and other civs. There were also many suspiciously non-thematic additions all over the place: Polish and Cossack units as natives and mercenaries, Eastern European maps, “historical maps” as a replacement of campaigns. These all scream “hurried job”.
But these were still borderline “fine”. What came next? Another European DLC with most assets already done. Then even that got cancelled after a whole year of zero work.
AOE4:
Variants were first accepted as “fine additions” if they came with good full civs and campaigns. But WE saw it differently. They only took notes on the first part. Now variants become the main course, and people still thought it a nice filler after more than a year of waiting. Then that real big thing worth more than a year of waiting was: more variants.
AOM:
It has only one DLC released so the signs were not so obvious, but there was already the worrisome sight of Japanese reusing the Chinese ballista model. That is unprecedented for the game. If it wasn’t a placeholder or corrected in the final release, mark my words, next DLC would be far worse than that.
The Current Situation
We are giving WE increasingly more freedom to reduce efforts on research, design, and real quality works such as modeling and voice acting, while charging the same price or higher.
I’m not saying they are inherently “bad”. Some people always twist it into an attack on the innocent “devs”. No. By no means. I’d say some of the “devs” are capable and passionate. And it’s not that they are not improving either. They are, but very slow, almost voluntarily, and totally under the mercy of their shareholders who see only revenue and growth. Their genuine efforts don’t generate immediate revenue, and could easily be cut or massively delayed in favor of quarterly numbers
Because of that, if the company as a whole sees “fewer efforts for higher price” pays off, they won’t wake up and start doing better all of a sudden. They would only give you even fewer efforts and higher price. Only survival crisis would force them to do better. That’s the only language a company knows. And they will survive one or two bad releases. Trust me.
You want full civs with new unique models, voice acting and music? Don’t support cheap recycled DLCs because of that. If you don’t mind or personally like that idea, then it’s totally up to you. But don’t support them under the illusion of “that will encourage them to do better next time”. No it won’t. Many people had that illusion. I did too. Everyone will have their time of realization.
Sidenote
For people who don’t know about the industry, Creative Assembly, the developer of Total War, suddenly and magically became far more efficient and responsive, giving DLCs for free and speeding up development, after they burned money on a failed unborn project and messed up a main title and a big DLC.
Did they die? No.