New DLC Idea

So far, it has only grown in playerbase and profittability, the more DLCs the game got.

2 Likes

I would prefer a DLC focused in new units and mechanics
 more civs are boring for me

New units and mechanics would mess up balance far more than new civs ever will, which is why we get no new units or mechanics.

-The last common units they introduced opened up Water play in Feudal, and now you have people complaining that they took out Galley Wars.
-Arrowslits had to be removed from a lot of civs, because it made civs with purposefully bad Towers, actually have good Towers.
-Siege Towers are a forgotten and almost useless unit, that never got the buff it deserves (Archers should attack from it).
-Both Battle Elephants and Steppe Lancers had to be nerfed until they were below Knights in efficiency.

New civs is definitely the way to go.

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I think we’ve already seen Polish, Bohemians, Wallachians, Serbs, Croats & Swiss as DLC ideas on these forums, but if more people suggest them, maybe they’ll actually get made? :smiley:

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Introducing new mechanics and effects would be the oportunity to give these «useless» units a good buff that no implies stats modifications directly, some ideas:
-Terrain effects units movility
-weather affects units visibility and accuracy
-context affects units performance, like umbalance numbers in a fight, precense of special unit rise «moral» of the close army
-Some units could make feel fear to units making them running away temporaly.

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I would prefer to keep the game simple in the surface and let the complexity emerge from those simple elements.

These kind of mechanics imo make the game awkward
clumsy. They may be cool for singleplayer games, scenarios or campaigns. But it wouldn’t work the same in multiplayer. Let’s see the game as a real-time chess, and not a battle simulator.

6 Likes

CoH2 has all these elements and is a dead game.
AoE2 has none of them, and has been alive for 20 years.

If you want a videogame to remain relevant for long, make it simple.
AoE2, Doom2, Tetris, Pokemon
 all simple games, all eternally replayable, all still have large followings.

Those new mechanics may sound fun on the surface, but then muddy up the gameplay a lot, feel brutally unfair, and kill off the playerbase.

A game has to remain a game, not a simulation. A focus on “realism” killed off all the RTS series that tried it.

Make it simple, make it gamey.

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It has become very hard to add units to the game without screwing up something in the process. Not saying it’s impossible, just very hard to do.
That’s however for land combat. Naval combat could use both new units and structures. There’s a reason water maps are disliked and avoided by most people, and that’s because water combat is boring. Lack of variety, narrow options and almost impossible to comeback if you fall behind. I think there’s a lot of room for gameplay improvement there, with both new structures and units.

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It can be done in layers of complexity and keep simple and intuitive at the same time. I’m not proposing too many complicated things like idk, weapons durability, or limited ammo for archers. There is a high ground bonus, why not a swamp speed penalty? individualy these mechanics are very simple, but putting it all togheter generate differents and richs experiencies in game.

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No, modern RTS games already proven that the experience is not more rich, but actually more annoying and unbalanced.
It really does not work for a game. Simulations lose the appeal very quickly.

There too many factors. AoE was complex when it showed up. AoE2 rised the complexity with formations, UU’s, Ut’s. AoE3 rise it in a kind of board game way
 It didn’t work

Civilization franchise is very complex and is still alive. GTA is not simple. Goat simulator is simple, and is just a meme. Simple is not the only key.

No it was not, at all. There were RTS games at the time with a lot more complexity, specially in terrain, firing ranges, sight ranges, weapon ammo differences, and many other “realistic” conditions.

Dark Reign and Total Annihilation for example.
You may have not heard of those, and if you look at what games actually survive long enough to be played for over a decade, you realize why you probably haven’t.
Almost all timeless games are extremely simple, with complexity based on player moves, not pre-existing conditions, all the back to Chess.

The key to a great game, is player agency, not having the player navigate environmental conditions, but the actions of another player, with the least amount of barring elements as possible.

Civilization games are not complex, at all.

GTA is a power fantasy, and simple as white paper.

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Those ideas should be in AoE 4, don’t try to change the overall gameplay experience of AoE 2 with terrain and weather effects.

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And if AoE4 goes in on these ideas, I can guarantee you it will by hyped to the stars, but no one will be playing it 5 years after release, while AoE2 will retain it’s playerbase.

Realistic and simulation mechanics sound amazing on paper, but in reality, at best they muddy up the gameplay, at worst they take away player agency or control.

Morale mechanics were such a bad design, that DoW expansions basically ignored them for the most part, and neither DoW2 or DoW3 had them; for example.

Simulations may look visually stunning, but are stressful to play, and how much a player can master is hampered by the wall of effects he has to navigate.
Chess has been a hit for thousands of years, and it has only one terrain mechanic, and it mostly only affects the Bishop piece, for example.

Keep it simple, keep it clean, keep it engaging. Make the player feel like he has all the power, like winning or losing depends on his choices, not random and hapzard pre-existing buffs and debuffs, based on aspects the player cannot control in any way.

The map layout itself already provides you terrain to navigate, and the height mechanics make elevation meaningful enough as it is.

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Well said. Agree 100%

Actually, one of these enviromental mechanics we’re talking about is already in the game. I’m talking about that cracked ground in african ambienced map, where buildings set there take more damage. It kind of appeal to immersion and realism, but in practice players just avoid to build there and, if something, it’s just an annoyance when you’re walling.
It may seem like a “new layer of complexity” or “It gives players new ways to interact with the enviroment”. No. In practice it’s just an obstacle while trying to build up your game and a trap for noobs.

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I was creating a thread in which I was suggesting the same idea. I think that a DLC called Defensor Fidei - latin motto that means Defender of the Faith - including Wallachians, Venetians, Serbs and Poles, who all fought Ottomans and defended the Christian Faith, is needed. Venetians, Serbs and Poles are important medieval civilization and should be in the game.

PS: in Sforza’s campaign Venetians are pictured as Portuguese and not as Italians to differenciate them. I think that devs have already the idea to put them in game.

Nobody, really nobody wants a DLC - they should try to fix the game first as its almost unplayable and a pain in the rectum right now (Pathing, Boar Lure Dice). And its literally unplayable for a few players with certain Computer builds (having literally crashes and technical issues)

When the game framework (Lobby System, Friend System, Restore and Spectator system) is on pair with Voobly, then we can talk about DLC’s - but what they are doing is just straight up a scam and a insult to the community (sponsoring thousands of dollars in a game that has so many issues and require QoL improvements)