they advertised a “campaign”-focussed DLC for weeks and then fix their “mistake” once they release it on steam.
for the first hour or so the steam pages was also phrased to sound like it was offering 19+5 new scenarios, not 19, 5 of which are new. This is such a dumpster fire
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I feel we have reached the new low since ROR, or since last year’s abysmal management.
But hey we have got the “best selling expansion ever” so who cares.
BTW I have been disappointed for too many times to still believe in “if I support the developers by buying low effort cashgrabs, they will have more money to eventually make some high quality contents I want”
No. They will find low effort cashgrabs profitable and keep producing more of them.
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Choose to play as one of six different unique factions. Will you lead the Takeda and crush your enemies with the best cavalry in Japan? Or, will you command the Otomo and find your advantage in the arrival of strange people with new weapons? Or, if subterfuge and assassination is more your style, try the Mori clan and leverage your criminal network to recruit unsavory characters.
I wonder what "Oda #########(信長) scenario is. In this explanation, we can see some daimyos who were hostile to Oda ########(信長). It isn’t a scenario that I command ########(信長) army, is it? It seems that the title should change to “Sengoku”.
And “New weapon from strange people (Hand Cannon)” are used mainly by ########(信長) (more than Otomo). Otomo and Mori(毛利?) didn’t battle against ########(信長) (but against Hideyoshi). Mori wasn’t such a dirty man (oh I didn’t know “unsavory characters” mean ninja), his policy was decentriailithization. Moreover why does only Shimazu have own scenario?
Devs could make a campaign with ########(信長). How did this happen… (Is it early to be disappointed? But there seems no localized voices…)
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More like shogun 2 total war: the map, rather than an actual 信長 scenario.
Otomo being THE foreign gunpowder faction obviously comes from Shogun 2 not real history because many daimyos imported foreign gunpowder.
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Wow. Back then when I downloaded these scenarios (right after they were released) I remember seeing something like 10% of that figure. I’m curious to know how much % of the total playerbase 48k is.
I guess tho many people who have played will buy it and like it. Though I didn’t like the whole rework/pricing issue I can’t wait to play it.
Just to be clear, I bought ROR and enjoyed it as well. It’s just that no one was asking for it, they didn’t copy over all the campaigns, which felt cheap, and I don’t care for the corporate double speak that aoe1 isn’t dead cause ROR exists.
I’m not in the camp that hates ROR, even if I have some critiques about the game and the circumstances surrounding it’s existence.
I only brought up ROR to differentiate it and V&V.
ROR wasn’t a marketing s l a m d u n k (IDK why that was being censored) but they didn’t just outright lie to us like they did with V&V.
Some of its understandable, for sure. But when the a completely possible alternative is that Microsoft pulls the plug on any and all official development on a 24.5 year old game because fans of the franchise become toxic because marketing said ‘campaign’ instead of ‘scenario’ at some point pre-launch (even though saying campaign makes sense to a certain set of players and may attract average gamers to buy since it’s in the campaign tab of the game), or because it’s fan-made content becoming official, then I guess if everyone’s okay with MS prematurely ceasing all development on the beloved game, then don’t be surprised if it happens. Who enjoys spending time and money trying to make something you think players will like, hoping to at least break even on the costs, only to hear onslaughts of cynicism about it
I bet when the fan-turned-dev originally released the scenarios years ago they were universally acclaimed because they were free. Even if the voice acting was second-rate, or bugs made odd gameplay at times. That’s the case with a lot of fan-made mods. But as soon as the giant dollar symbol gets associated with it, even if you’ve hired professional voice actors and professional musicians, employed professional developers to squash bugs and create quality of life improvements, and done a bunch more work to bring it into the modern version of the game, all the sudden it’s evil? Seems weird, but I guess if that’s how it goes, then that’s how it goes.
Having never played the original scenarios, I look forward to trying them. And am glad I don’t have to sit through less-than-ideal voice acting recorded with a variety of microphones and equipment, as is usually the case with mods. Some characters in the scenario with a “p” pop filter, some without. Some with audio compression beyond belief, some with too boomy bass, or some as if they’re on speakerphone… because all the mod actors are recording in their living room on Logitech mics and a wide array of other $10 mics bought at the local store. And I’m glad the graphics will be updated, as well as several bugs removed and new music added. What a great time to be an AoE2 fan
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hmmmmmm objecting to being lied to is toxic apparently…a most singularly interesting ethical philosophy you must possess.
So MS can’t make enough money if they don’t lie to us and thus will need to shut down the game??? Surely the previous decade of them developing the game and not lying to us must have been done at a loss, therefore necessitating the current lie. Weird that a CFO at a top 500 company would continue to invest in an old game at a loss, only to break out the really money making scheme a decade later.
If you want to defend MS, if that makes you happy, don’t let me stop you but I can’t begin describe how un-obligated I feel to validate that laughably erroneous worldview.
MS is not the victim. You stan for MS, I’ll stan for the truth. (I apologize to everyone who read that dad-joke.)
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Why are people thinking that’s the alternative???
AoE II is a timeless classic. The game stayed alive without dev support for 10 years, it would do just fine without it now. It’s currently #42 on the best sellers list on steam (atm it has a sale, but still).
Stopping development won’t kill the game, releasing cash-grabs, janky mechanics, and patches that break the game will.
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I’ll re-read the posts above later (dont have time at moment), but it is more ‘how’ the objections were stated. The phrasing. (As opposed to just raising objections.)
Maybe I just need to re-read using a gentler tone of voice in my head. Sorry if I misconstrued the posts! They seemed a little inflammatory and I thought conveniently left out certain relevant details upon initial reading. I’m fully okay admitting if I was wrong
EDIT:
Yes, sorry, it is “an” alternative. I mis-spoke earlier (or I maybe thought it would be colloquially understood) when I said it was “the” alternative. I edited my post a few days ago to say it is a “completely possible alternative”
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I’m sorry if I turned the dunking and sarcasm to 11.
I’m the OP, and to summarize at least personally I feel like the community was lied to.
I’m not trying to be some literalist and get artificially upset about nothing. I had an open mind when going into the event. But one-off scenarios just aren’t and have never been campaigns.
It seems like the community wanted campaigns, MS/FE/Worlds Edge had no campaigns to sell, so tried to jedi mind trick us that these scenarios they just had lying around, are somehow related to campaigns and would just hope no one noticed or cared when the truth came out.
And I’m not trying to be some rules-lawyer literalist so I can be upset over nothing. I’d have been ok, if for example they were scenarios that were unlocked after beating a campaign that were tied to that campaign. Like if you beat Ghengis khan you unlocked a scenario about the mongol invasion of japan. Maybe even play as the japanese. Or maybe the DLC could have had campaign only castillian or romanian civs for el cid and dracula. Make them obvious mashups of existing civs so we don’t have a repeat of the romans being not multiplayer then the devs caving and making it multiplayer. Or maybe a architecture selector for the campaigns so those people who were really upset that persians didn’t get the central asian architecture could at least have it in the campaigns (I wasn’t upset about the persians not getting central asian architecture but i saw a lot of people who wanted that.) Or maybe import the barbarian ai and have a super difficult setting for the campaign missions. Anything. Something.
I’m not upset cause I didn’t get what I wanted. We were promised a dlc that focused on “campaigns” and what we were delivered did not in any way that is intellectually honest focus on campaigns.
I came in with a very open mind about what “campaign focused” could mean, and still I am unable to square what was revealed with being “campaign focused”.
You see the problem is not the fact that they hired philtydelphia, that’s actually great, I’d like to create official campaigns myself and get payed for that.
The issue that is at the very least questionable is that there’s basically no new content except for 5 scenarii that you’re gonna pay 13 dollars (remember when something like dotd and doi was released priced 10 dollars?).
At this point (provocation) why not make pay for every custom campaign? At least I’d gain something out of months of work for free just for Microsoft to one day put an M on it and make it pay 15 bucks…
Adding voice acting is not what I call something new or creative, it’s just putting a nice dress on an old lady. Yes I admire most of philtydelphia scenario and his style but wouldn’t have been better to make new scenarii / campaigns instead of recycling old ones which they could have slowly added with time? What is the message you’re sending?
There are people in this community who have great ideas, often better than what ends up becoming official. Custom campaign designers, theorycrafters… Yes at times they’re a bit wacky or buggy but there’s SOUL in it, something that despite AI, “polishing” and other technical crap you cannot buy nor replicate.
I’m not ideologically against the free market but without creativity, passion and new ideas (that usually come from the community and people who don’t get anything out of it) the fate of every big corporation is to become a self conservative oligarchy with nothing new to say but just to cash from an old brand. The forgotten came from a fan mod, not from Microsoft.
So if they really wanna support creators, this at least to me it’s not a good message to send. Philtydelphia is in the team since years, there’s nothing new or risky to remake it again. They’re not investing in new ideas coming from the community, just milking a brand. There’s still a lot to add, to invent and to do in this game because, here we agree, it’s a great one but I don’t know how much merit the current Devs have in it. It simply feels they don’t know what to come up with next.
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pretty sure the plural of scenario is scenaripodes lol.
So I might be in the minority on this, but I don’t really care that much about this aspect. I do feel there’s this air of cheapness surrounding the DLC, but we aren’t required to buy anything. Whether you buy or not is up to you, your finances, preferences, and perceived value. and you can always wait until it goes on a sale where the cost is commensurate with the value you perceive the content to have.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing, with the stance it’s a lazy cashgrab it’s just not what I’m personally upset about. Maybe I’m showing some of my own privilege, but a couple dollars this way or that, every 6ish months to support a game I’ve played for 20 years, doesn’t really bother me.
What I personally can’t excuse is the deceit. I feel we as a community deserve better than being lied to.
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A wise man once told me: Either they aim at your heart or at your purse. It’s true for so many aspects of life, economy, politics, religion etc. And I might add, effective marketing always aims at both, frequently at your heart first, then your purse.
Here, the devs / MS (whoever decides on DLC strategy, marketing and pricing) want to make and keep us hyped and then sell overpriced stuff. And our reaction should not be “I’ll buy it to support the game, although I don’t like it” but instead only buy if we really think it’s a good deal. PC games are nearly always overpriced nowadays to leave room for discounts, so I normally only buy on sale.
When I look back to AoE 2, I bought AoE 2 and Conquerors in 1999, it was gorgeous. I played the free Forgotten mod with friends, it was fun and I was amazed by the modding capabilities, then bought HD edition + Forgotten, still played a bit. I even bought African Kingdoms and Rise of the Rajas, although I hardly played at that time, because I liked the game, the broadening of geographical and political scope and the new civs. Never played the campaigns after TC though. A friend gifted DE to me about a year after its release so I didn’t have to buy the game a third time 
. When LotW came out, I did not buy it, not only because the civs seemed unnecessary, but also because 10 euros for only 2 civs and 3 campaigns seemed much to me - compared to HD DLCs with a new architecure set, 4 civs and 4 campaigns. Same for DotD. I later bought both on a sale for 5 euros each and liked them. Only DoI did I buy for the full price, because I championed for new Indian civs, and was very happy about this realizing. Now, after badly-received RoR and overpriced TMR, they bring out a scenario pack for a price way too high. All of these I did not and will not buy for the regular price. Look at TMR: it’s already halved in price after less than 4 months. For V&V, 7-8 euros could be okay, better 5. And I think so, although I suggested releasing fan-made scenarios as offical DLCs.
So in a nutshell, devs and MS are losing us on the purse aspect (prices are too high) and for some players that also means a disappointment and thereby they lose us a bit on the heart as well. To win back trust, they need to either lower the prices or be much more transparent on what they are doing, how and why. For example, for all DLCs with UGC, I would like to know which share goes to the creators directly (in this case Ramsey). Some players may say, if a substantial share goes to him, that’s great because he deserves it and be willing to pay a higher price than if he gets no percentage share.
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Agreed in most of what you are saying.
TBF, the prices seems ok for a DLC if you compare it to others DLC in the current market. Inflation and MS/Devs need to make money.
About give some money to Ramsey, I don’t think so. He is employee of FE, MS will take the money.
What he really deserves is recognition. Which I think is the main subject (or should be) on this DLC.
Sure is important everything what you stated, but the man deserves his campaign to be official.
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Agreed. This shit is abominable.
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Oh, I learn just now that “unsavory characters” are Ninja who are told as men got on the wrong side.
Idk Mori’s ninja group and how ninja were thought by other people. I know Iga/Kouga ninja (near Kyoto) are familiar and ninja were active all over Japan. But according to a blog, Mori is thought to have hired many ninja for less death in battle. I think they were hired normally as other army were (however the way of employment would be vary, there would be really unsavory ninja).
I seem to be able to have some hope in the 信長 scenario even if that have some fictions (but it remains that the wondering thing the main character isn’t 信長).
Oof… I regret even mentioning this on steam… (hopefully, this is not all because of me.) While I do stick by my post, I do not think they deserve this much hate. We are only human. People make mistakes. (whether or not, it was one or not, technically speaking, they are still 1 scenario campaigns. so, it is the truth.)
In the end, as much as I agree that ‘someone is to blame’, we need to get out of this ideology as society… I am not ‘agreeing/siding’ with them either though… I’ve always wanted to be neutral on things as much as it pains me at times. I am/still upset at the UGC scenarios but, as long as they had permission from the author, I guess it’s fine. Although, lame since it’s usually ‘free’. That aspect in modding I always considered the following:
If the modder made it for free, the company should also consider it ‘free’ (unless, they modify it in some way AND get permission from the author. Which they did I believe.) As much as I feel it is kinda lame, these days, I don’t think we really have much of a choice anymore. (economy wise/real world issues.) SIGHS
Anyway, chill out people okay? I understand your frustrations. I get it. They are doing what they can/best they can.
edit: Well, I kinda got off topic there but, there is still some relevant sections in it. I am ‘assuming’ it was a ‘mistake’ which most likely it is. Which is a very silly thing to get upset over. As I said, we are only human.