They will not return that type of dlc because they need to release 2 dlcs a year… at most the dlcs will be like the last 3 dlcs…
No, because now mankind has another lazier and more progressive mentality…
Yes, for this reason I am not even considering buying the dlc and I am passing along their versions of the workshop instead…
Yes, we go from AoE 3 being mistreated to the entire saga being mistreated…
We don’t know, they could always announce something in the middle of the year…
Good point…so for the first time in the saga, AoE 3 will have a better dlc than AoE 2…
Yes, I agree with everything…
Things as they are…
The campaigns in the Age of Empires games are separate series of scenarios based on historical or mythical events that feature cinematic cutscenes, narrative elements, often special objectives, and unique units. (from the Wikia)
That is a good option, the other would be to remove Gaiseric from VaV and make it a campaign of 5 scenarios: in Gaul the first, in Hispania the second, in North Africa and Carthage, the third, in the Mediterranean the fourth, sacking Corsica and Sardinia and destroying the Roman navy and in Rome the fifth… you add the Rome campaign with Aetius and make a RoR and VaV bundle at 15 usd and that’s it…
Yes, if you play The Siege co-op scenario, you play Fetih and Constantine XI in one…
I played Vortigern and it’s easy… you only defend the northern area, you use the bases in the center and south to gather resources and you create troops without having to recruit the Saxons, in the wonder you put scorpions and archers and that’s it, when the Celts send troops towards the wonder, they run out of time and you win…
Because they were ancestors of the Boyars, although they could have been made into units that can dismount from horses…
It’s a nod to the Portuguese from AoE 3… Feitoria is the same (they are the European factories from the third game)…
If “modders” have their own job and do mods as a hobby out of their interest, it is up to them to whether charge people or not. They have their own jobs that feed them and support their hobbies. Do you get paid for playing the game or writing on this forum?
If “modders” work for MS or WE then the latter should think of ways of supporting their employee without selling overpriced zero effort crap. Or may be they do not have to because they have survived for years without selling overpriced zero effort crap. You never proved such crap is the ONLY way the company can pay its employee.
In either way “modders” will not starve. This is very fair.
@SamePorpoise303 That’s what the dictionary did. And all other games that offer similar content manage to correctly use these terms. Seems like it’s only impossible for aoe2.
aoe2 had a given menu, added content not well categorized by the menu, and instead of creating another menu item, cluttering the UI, they put this content where it fit best but not where it was accurately described.
@Darkness01101 Snark aside, this is the menu as it would be in any other game. Not sure why aoe2 thinks it can redefine terms used industry wide.
That being said, I personally needn’t the menu to change. I never believed the menu dictated the nature of the content. I’d only need the menu changed if I believed that to be true, which seems to be believed by others who defend the “V&V is campaign” focused. It’s a nice and clearer menu, but I’m not the intended audience.
Because it doesn’t work amongst all scenarios. If Drake depicts an in world campaign, like tamerlane 5, and that makes it a campaign, then conversely Ghengis 6 and Lake Poyang wouldn’t be a campaign because they only depict single battles.
I apologize if this sounds harsh, I don’t mean it to sound harsh, but it’s the truth and it’s very important to understand.
Us in the “campaign is a scenarios of scenarios telling some unified narrative camp” can always agree what is and isn’t a campaign and why. Those who disagree, have to ad hoc themselves into the either the “unrelated campaigns can be a campaign”, or “single scenarios can be a campaign”, but each has so many exceptions and more importantly are mutually exclusive with each other. But based on the argument one needs to go back and forth to whichever works best with the present argument. It’s not dissimilar from listening to flat-earthers trying to debate. They can’t ever agree on their cosmology. Is the sun 3k miles away or 5k? Does the sun travel always above us or does it go under the flat earth? is the earth infinitely large or finitely large with retaining ice wall.
If you need two mutually exclusive theories to explain the totality of the evidence perhaps there is error to be found in those theories. I hope with consideration you’ll agree this to be true. Flat earthers don’t/can’t/refuse to understand this. I do not believe you to be that kind of person.
The dictionary is not truth itself lol. It’s based on a social convention and a long history of customs and whatnot just like common law in Britain (correct me if I’m wrong in this particular example, but still the point remains).
There are things that we can agree on even without a dictionary like what is a dog or what is a cat because there is empirical proof of it but just try to discuss on what is a woman or a man for example…
The concept of campaign is even worse because it’s abstract and doesn’t refer to a static object (like words try to, most of the times failing) but to a dynamic process which is very contextual and relative (are aoe2 campaigns the same as idk total war campaigns? Are those the same as real campaigns which is what the dictionary refers to? It’s pointless to argue about something so vague and arbitrary). I hope you got the point, I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, just that it’s a pointless discussion since there’s no way to prove your point objectively as there’s no way to counterargue you. It’s just circular logic.
If you focus on the actual lack of substance this DLC offers you would find better arguments, way harder to objectively disprove, since it’s quite objective that the dlc doesn’t add anything in terms of assets (but at the same time gives you hours of gameplay even if not entirely new). From there it’s easier to draw a conclusion.
I won’t reply anymore about this dlc lacking quality because we already repeated this over and over and I said a million times that I agree.
Don’t use this against another point which is the effort of modders to put out their content. It took me 9 months to make a campaign of 7 scenarios, it will probably took me the whole year and beyond to make the next one because ambitions grow. And this working on it something like 80% of my free time.
You can ignore this of course but that’s arguably unfair I think to just use passion as an excuse, it was the same excuse that people used against artists when pirating music and movies on the internet (and I did it myself many times), but can you say this is fair?
Art is work, passion doesn’t mean it all becomes easy. It’s still one heck of a job, thousand of hours of designing and testing to put out a custom campaign, even the 5 big scenarios filthydelphia created for this dlc (again I’m not defending it, I’m just talking the truth).
As a side note but this is personal and you don’t necessarily need to care about this but, yes I’m starving ahah! Not literally but I could for sure do something else more useful (like earn money?) rather than create content for this game but guess what, I’m passionate. I’m so passionate in the things that I do that it’s often more of a problem for me than an advantage, at least until I know I won’t starve the next years of my life just because I did what I wanted (and that other people enjoyed for free).
Of course I’m not saying this should happen but at least it should be a concern. I’m not gonna die on this hill, at a certain point to not starve for real I will sadly need to stop making campaigns and find another source of income, but if there’s the chance to make ends meet for something like 3 dollars per X new content of quality why not? You give passionate and qualitative creators (we can discuss about what qualify as that further if the premises of this argument are at least accepted) the chance to keep up the good work and players to come to know and play that, at a small price of course, like literally everything in the world (unfortunately).
Because both modders that act individually or hired by MS did not starve BEFORE this crap. So it never has been a problem. I don’t know why it suddenly becomes a problem.
Logic 101. You’re welcome.
Modders voluntarily put their contents online for free.
Nobody is forcing them to do it for free.
Nobody is forcing them to do it in the first place.
They earn both their joy making mods and gratitude from the community. That’s called a hobby.
If they think it is not enough and they need to make a living from it, they could charge people for their work, or open a paetron, or find a job in the gaming companies, or just quit, openly and directly, instead of concealed in a $13 “pOliShED” dlc. There is nothing against either of these.
I’m not using passion as an “excuse”. Modders are. That’s the driving force for 99% of modding communities. If modders think passion is not an “excuse”, they could charge people for their work, or open a paetron, or find a job in the gaming companies, or just quit.
Now, did the artists VOLUNTARILY have their pirated music posted online for free?
I have played this game for almost 20 years and they take up 80% of my free time.
Has anyone payed me for that? No. I actually payed them more and more until they are charging $13 for a zero effort crap.
Yes, all the Asian scenarios, especially the Japanese ones, use the same intro and outro assets from TC…only in AoE 2 do they do this because AoE 1/RoR has new assets and narrators and AoE 3 uses in-game cinematics, so there you have to mess around with the scenario editor…
Yes, that is mentioned on the wikia that VaV uses the original multiplayer icon…
Yes, that is light years away from this… ES is missed right now…
Yes, it was for more immersion…
Yes,VaV is simply Historical Battles 2 or 2.0…
Yes, all AoE Heaven maps and scenarios are perfectly playable in their respective DE games…
Yes, it seems good to me…
Yes, next to the name of the historical battle, you have the year, then you can play them chronologically… Bukhara (557) is the earliest historical battle, although now with VaV, it is Gaiseric (406)…
Yes, exactly…
Seeing the rejection they are receiving now, they will probably do it in future dlcs… they have to do something with the Japanese campaign, right?; AoE 1 has Yamato and AoE 3 Tokuwaga (actually Kichiro and Mototada)…
Technically there are three campaigns, since Historical Battles are a world apart…
It’s 0.7 away from CNC4…I’m just saying that…
In my case, I was hyped for this dlc until they showed what was going to be in this dlc…
For me they are waiting to put a barbarian dlc in RoR to put the Roman campaigns of Rise of Rome, swap places with the First Punic War with the Reign of the Hittites… and then another East Asian dlc to put Yamato…
RoR was the biggest dlc of the entire saga… it didn’t affect AoE 2 too much, but for AoE 1 it was a second life…
[quote=“TommoChocolate, post:246, topic:250665”]
Either way, yes, The Conquerors was way more expensive than any of DE ############## [/quote]
We must also remember that before it was more difficult to make expansions due to the technical limitations of the time, which is why the high price of TC is understandable…
They better…it has to be a super and incredible DLC that drives us all crazy (it was a battle pass xd)…
What a shame, because AoE 1 has a lot of potential if they can carry it well within AoE 2… otherwise they squeeze AoE 2 too much, and AoE 1 dlcs would feel fresher…
Maybe TAK 2/Kings of West Africa, but with new real African civs and campaigns…
Yes, we have to remember that they are with Retold and the Baltic dlc of AoE 3 and that must surely take them a long time… more the first than the second…
Hopefully, a “Dynasties of China” type dlc would be great…split China into 2 or 3 civs and give campaigns to the Koreans and Japanese…that gives you like 5 campaigns of 5-6 scenarios each…
Yes, the units and buildings in AoE 1 are larger than those in AoE 2…
Yes, I don’t think they would add new UU or UT, but the Celts, Goths and Xiognu would be great…
Of course, but they were trying to maintain the spirit of AoE 1, within AoE 2, not to make an AoE 2 with AoE 1 skin…
That’s what it says on the Wikia…
True, or else lower the price a lot…
Yes, the 19 VaV scenarios are equivalent to 3 campaigns of 6 missions or 4 campaigns of 5 missions…
Yes, I feel that for now they will not put any Viking or Japanese campaign in the game…
What 3 TC missions? only Kyoto and Noryang Point are related to each other through Hideyoshi…
Seems to be specific enough for a the games with similar content.
If some social convention of a non-defined threshold is what defines a word, then I suppose I can say that I alone can determine the meaning of the word. I’m a member of society and if you suggest more people than I are required to satisfy “social” then you and I just happen to fall into different social conventions of what “social” means. Now with my inferred ability to determine whatever words mean, I can say whatever I want, hateful, false, misleading, etc, and if you try to correct me then you just don’t understand the meaning based on my social convention.
Either words mean things or they don’t. You can’t have it both ways, or only when the stated meaning is congruent with your preference.
I categorically disagree with everything stated here, in the absolute strongest terms possible. I acknowledge tho you seem to sincerely believe what you’re saying.
So a common dictionary definition, agreed upon by half a billion english speakers, and basically every other game in the genre is the thing that’s cherry picked, not the two examples among 40-ish in a single game. A most interesting definition of “cherry picked”. I could not more strongly disagree with the use of cherry-picked in this example.
Many battles of V&V are too long. Clearly they are worth splitting into 5 or 6 scenarios and making a standard campaign.
Vandals as a new civ with Gaiseric campaign, of course.
Roman campaign, yes.
Rather than introducing as many as 4 separated Vikings scenarios and making them such complexed, they could be simplified and compiled into a Viking campaign that is named “The Sagas”.
Okay, I looked, you’re right – not cherry-picked. I guess I mean it seems like you’re narrowly using it to have it apply only to the 39 or so campaigns you mention. When, I feel, in reality, it can also be applied to scenarios… or at least the ones I’ve played… because the scenarios have an “organized course of action” going on “to achieve a goal” over the hour(s) spent playing each one. Each scenario is a campaign, imo. You brought up Ghengis 6 and Lake Poyang as possible outliers because they only depict single battles. I’ve never played those, but if you are using strategies, implementing sequences of actions in an organized way to ultimately win the one battle depicted, then I don’t see how they couldn’t, technically, be seen as campaigns. Can’t the sequence of actions implemented to win the battle not be construed as a campaign?
Yes, according to Wiki, at least, a campaign may include a single battle:
However, if there are V&V or Historical Battles scenarios that only amount to sandbox playgrounds with no courses of action or goals/objectives and no battles, then I guess those wouldn’t be campaigns. Are there any such sandbox playgrounds in them, though? If so, then yeah, let’s just create my mocked up button, learn from this V&V experience, and knock the next DLC out of the park
I’ve seen 39 or 40 vs. 1 argument used to justify not calling them campaigns. In reality, for my definition of campaign, it would be 39 vs. 16 before V&V, and 39 vs. 35 after V&V. I consider each scenario a campaign, and so did Filthydelphia like four years ago. So in my mind, the disparity in the game isn’t that great now and hasn’t been for like 20 years.
Trust me, in my mind I’ve always (up until Filthy’s AoE2:DE content releases in this forum approx four years ago) considered campaigns in the game to be the Joan of Arc and William Wallace type of campaigns. That was my ignorance, though, as I’m not really a campaign player. Being made aware, and reminded, that scenarios exist (single-scenario campaigns), I’ve broadened my in-game definition of campaigns and it doesn’t seem like a huge stretch to me for some reason.
Maybe if I had been paying attention to the V&V marketing as much as everyone else here, and had I been an avid campaign player, then, yes, hearing that the campaign content is only repurposed free scenarios would likely be a big let-down. If they were all brand new single-scenario campaigns, though, then probably no let-down. I feel fortunate I was a late-comer to the V&V marketing and discussions, and luckily didn’t have any preconceived expectations. Maybe if the DLC was for an area of the game I’m more passionate about (unranked Skirmishes) and DLC reality didn’t meet expectations, then I could relate more. For now, though, it’s still a little hard for me to see how campaign couldn’t or doesn’t apply to Filthy’s content I think hearing him classifying it as such must have expanded my horizons and biased me a little.
I assume you’ve worked at companies before. Not everyone thinks the same… not everyone wants to flag stuff for fear of losing their job… sometimes majority rules… sometimes things are missed… sometimes deadlines loom and you can’t do everything you want… sometimes higher priority items get addressed while lower priority ones are on the back-burner for a long time or forever… sometimes different educations and backgrounds come into play with wording things… and so on.
If nothing else, if adding a Scenarios button was never a thought before or was low on the priority list, the visibility V&V brought to the issue of how single-scenario campaigns (or scenarios) are classified will probably lift the priority a bit. Still may never be changed, but at least they know it’s a potential problem… whereas for twenty years, they probably didn’t know it was – and I’m thinking it probably wasn’t. But, who knows, maybe there were some old MS Zones chat frustrations about how Historical Battles should not be considered Campaigns and it lied dormant for a couple decades.
Yes, maybe this is the answer everyone needs. But by having everything in single-scenario campaigns that Filthy has, isn’t it more immersive that way? So you’re not leaving the game/map, going to a menu, and diving back into the game/map
To the OP’s credit, they gave what they felt their solutions would be for moving on. Maybe the thread got hijacked by campaigns vs. scenarios discussions
Only when you have dialogues and sufficient storytelling to make up for the loss of cutscenes, not one narrator reading few instructions with the same tone.
Not sure if I agree. I feel like many people are primarily objecting to the upcycling, and everything else is secondary. For me it’s the reverse, I primarily object to the revisionist definition and everything else is secondary. I know I’d still object, but you might be directionally correct. Perhaps 80% of the current objectors wouldn’t be objecting??? Hard to say.
If an arbitrary sequence of actions, let say achieving objectives, can be considered a campaign, then could not one conceive of a scenario, that has multiple sequences of objectives unrelated to the other sequences, each sequence satisfying the definition of a campaign, therefore allowing a scenario to contain multiple campaigns?
Fair. tho then if a scenario contains two unrelated battles, like Ghengis khan 4 which depicts the mongols taking khwarezm and defeating the cuman-cipchaks and the russians, then should not Ghengis khan 4 be considered two campaigns?
And it otherwise stands that if a single scenario could be called a campaign, then shouldn’t Ghengis khan be considered 7 (or 8??) campaigns? one for each scenario (or two for ghengis khan 4) and one as the collective?
And this is what I was alluding to earlier with my flat earther analogy. The idea that campaign could equal a single scenario, does when making certain arguments, work well. It also at certain other times work extremely poorly. Conversely the “collection of scenarios” definition does tend to work well in the situations were “campaign = scenario” doesn’t work well, but itself also doesn’t work elsewhere. These are two mutually exclusive definitions, that you must invoke simultaneously to explain the totality of the evidence.
It seems clear to me, what a campaign is, is extremely obvious. The vast majority of the evidence draws one to the conclusion a campaign need be a collection of scenarios, intended to be played in a given sequence, telling a unified narrative. Trying to come up with alternative explanations there’s so many exceptions and inconsistencies, and you still end up largely coming to the conclusion that a campaign is a campaign because you believe it to be a campaign. The definition I put forth, which seems to be what most people intuited before this fiasco, is predictive and about as objective as one can get. Only because historical battles was wrongly called a campaign 20+ years ago presumably so it wouldn’t be confusing for people trying to find the content in the menu, now people have to try reverse engineering the requisite reality to support this erroneous classification, instead of the much easier thing of just acknowledging they were wrong.
think about your own experience. You had a belief more or less what I described above, then someone told you differently. They didn’t explain why their definition was superior, you didn’t come to that realization by looking at the content itself, and from first principles reasoning what a campaign is. Only because it was filthy did that erroneous definition seem credible. Filthy is fallable. He is completely capable of using a term wrongly. If some rando on the forums had said the same thing I’m sure you’d have dismissed them out of hand for the patently false thing that it is.
If FE tomorrow said, “Meso civs have access to knights” my reaction wouldn’t be to try to reverse engineer the requisite reality to explain how xolotl warriors are actually knights, and jump through mental hoops of how the mayans would need access to redemption, which they don’t, but somehow if they did which I guess you could imagine they could, so I guess that’s accurate, etc, etc, etc. The perceived credibility of the person making a statement is irrelevant in the face of the objective reality. “Meso civs have access to knights” is a factually incorrect statement, not a statement that should dictate how I should incorrectly perceive reality to facilitate the perception the inaccurate statement is actually accurate.
Sure, that all checks out, but if the menu just wasn’t high enough on the priority list, or it was missed, etc that still wouldn’t change reality. If I had a menu items of cats and of rocks, and now I need to add dogs to the menu, but I just didn’t have enough time, so I was forced to add dogs to the cats menu item, I wouldn’t think now the definition of cats and dogs had changed to be congruent with my menu. My primary objection isn’t the menu. I think that’s what they should have done to begin with, but it’s not really the crux of my objection. My objection is that content was added to a menu for reasons that are not taxonomically justifiable, but then later on used that erroneous placement to justify incorrect use of words.
What can I say… It’s not a point of believing it or not, I studied this stuff and I tried going your route, it just doesn’t work. Eventually you’ll get there yourself. Read Wittgenstein and specially his “change of mind”, that’s my advice, if you want to introduce yourself to this discussion and the nature of language Vs logic.
@ArrivedLeader22 you’re not getting the point on purpose because understandably so from your side you prefer to get things for free. I guess it’s pointless to reply, I hope you’ll never find yourself in the position where you spend most of your time doing something while getting nothing, not even what you need to fulfill basic needs, out of it.
And I’ve tried going down your route and inexorably it leads to truth is meaningless. I tried for about a year and a half, during which time I challenged pretty much every fundamental belief Ive ever had. I couldn’t get it to work.
I’m not here to argue philosophy. You want to ascribe to a philosophy, if it works for you, be my guest. I couldn’t get it to work for me.
I felt that way with return of rome but don’t think that’s the case now. I just feel like its a good attempt to target the campaign players but with a poor hasty plan. Don’t think the civ DLCs are going to be that way. I think former pro Feage is now a part of the team. So quality and balance of new civs and units should be quite good in the future.
We’ve had some phenomenal screwups in the past. Like mangonel doing 2x damage to tc, units passing through walls, units gliding through buildings etc. They haven’t and won’t apologize or anything. I think they are too few people, paid very less and yet have some tight deadlines set by Microsoft. So they’re releasing patches without proper testing.
Best thing they could do is a gift voucher partially covering the cost for next DLC or some other Microsoft game.
Mostly I feel like old bugs from very old patches loop back when a new DLC is released. Probably they don’t have good version control or fail to update and merge changes properly when they’ve developed a new DLC.
They might and probably are doing this but we wouldn’t know it.
Logic 101. You’re welcome. Next time I’ll charge you for basic logic classes because you are getting them for free.
“I do not want to be charged $13 for such a low effort product” does not mean I want everything for free. It means I want to pay the price for whatever worth it
FE itself was a mod. It was free. They did a lot of work to justify releasing a paid DLC from it. It’s not that they simply put an official stamp on it. I was willing to pay for the new content, improvement and optimization, even though I can get the mod for free (because the mod version lacked many things, that’s why it was free)
BTW did the FE staff all starve because they spent efforts on it?
If the game is handled by some small indie team or amateur developers, and charge me nothing, I would not complain on their progress, their response, or anything they do. Because it’s free.
If you want to charge me $13 but for even worse service than free, I have every right to complain. I can skip this one but I have a strong sense this attitude will continue and become worse.
What has happened between “we cannot just tr-release a mod, we need to add new models and new campaigns so that people will buy it” and “we have to do the least effort and charge a higher price otherwise filly would starve”?
YOU yourself said this crap is the only way some poor modder can eat. YOU said it. YOU need to prove why it is the case.
BTW I paid full price for all AOE games and DLCs, to “sUpPorT tHe DeVs”. Turns out I was naive. This is how that mindset leads to. I won’t anymore. Next time I’ll serious weigh whether the content is worth the price.
If you spend most of the time making mods and not getting anything from it, while you don’t have any other source of income, Find a job
Or marry someone rich.
I learned since primary school that if you cannot find a way to support your basic living needs, you should not put all your time into your hobby. Now you’re getting this piece of very valueable knowledge for free, again.
Also, what you said is “FREE time” and now you are switching to “time”. I don’t think you did it on purpose. Obviously.
I’m not talking about this dlc since 3 comments ago, you’re not even trying to follow the point, anyway it doesn’t matter. You’re totally missing the point of my argument because probably (and rightly so) you feel betrayed by this dlc, but that’s not what I’m discussing. Maybe you’re just blinded by that right now, once you calm down you can realise what I’m saying and ponder on it.
I’m sure when the first writers or artists appeared the majority of people were close minded like you saying they don’t deserve anything for the effort they put out there for anyone to enjoy and they should get a job (in a world where people make money out of farts lol).
Thank you daddy for the free lessons!
I think hearing him classifying it as such must have expanded my horizons and biased me a little.