They should consider to adjust either the price or the content of this DLC. Why so high price for 14 already played scenarios by most of us? 13 euros for 5 new single battle scenarios???
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£9.99 (£8.49 with discount) for something initially free community content and five new scenarios with modified existing scenarios. I don’t know how to feel about this. I was feeling excited at first but as the news kept coming in it just turned into disbelief more than anything. The wording implied earlier suggested a fully-fledged campaign(s) as we know it. I would like to buy it to support the franchise and the devs but I don’t know if I can support this practice…
The last traditional DLC(TMR) went for £12.49, ROR for £9.99. The rest, by £7.99 but this feels like robbery.
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Yeah, i’m not nearly as opposed to the contents of the DLC as most seem to be (to be fair the scenarios are kept with the campaigns in game, I could see MS internally considering scenarios and campaigns to be the same, though I also see why the community views it the way they do) but 13 euros (whatever that comes out to in USD for me, i’m guessing $14) is like 2x what the price should be for this content IMO.
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100% down to boycott.
At least me personally, the lying is worse than the price point. The price point I could justify. Some games have subscriptions that cost more, etc, etc, etc.
But I will not support anyone who lies to me. Give us a campaign or an apology or I’m keeping my money.
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I’d go futher than this. the most expensive DLC we had was mountain royals. that was 3 full campaigns and 2 civs. Assuming civs are worthless that still only gives 5 eur per campaign.
I don’t think I would consider any price of over 5 eur acceptable for this “campaign”-DLC. more like 2-3 eur
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better yet: buy, leave a negative review, refund
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Its not worth inflating sales numbers
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having a high refund-rate is really bad. it’s what killed “the day before”
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The scenarios of Ragnar Lodbrok, Bjorn Ironsides, Harald Fairhair, and Thorfinn Karlsefni sound epic Viking Saga’s, but I would prefer full-fledged campaigns in the North Sea DLC. Vortigern as a Briton ruler would also fit this - a scenario inspired by the legend of King Arthur and the Round Table…
Gaiseric could be the perfect for Vandals civ campaign. Otto the Great could be the perfect for Saxons civ campaign.
All of this is wasted potential.
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I would prefer Mule Carts for all civs, it makes no sense for it to be reserved only for Georgians and Armenians civs.
Also give the Caucasian civilizations a Lumber Camp and a Mining Camp, because without them these civs are strange!
The icon left of the stop button is for what? Villager follow crazy pathing before garrisoning?
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Yep, this is my take as well. Probably some guy in marketing or management thought that “Campaign-focused” was an appropriate umbrella term for all singleplayer content. Which was a very stupid mistake, mind you, but I think some people are being a little dramatic about it.
Like it’s weird to me that people seem to be reacting worse to this than the Icon DLC in terms of being a cashgrab, considering the latter provided no actual gameplay content and opened the door to a very questionable form of monetization. Or than to RoR or the Roadmap in terms of building up massive hype over a long period of time only to largely subvert those expectations. Or than to the general laxity towards quality, bugfixes, or lack of new visual content over the last couple years, and the numerous claims to have fixed pathing. Overpromising and underdelivering is the rule more than the exception, so I guess I’m surprised so many people made it this far into DE with so much hopeful credulity intact.
That said, no time like the present for the DE dev team to improve their communication. And definitely reduce the price of this DLC to something closer to what players think is fair.
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rather remove them from the game entirely
yes please, that would make them playable for me
it’s expectation management, the one thing a community manager should be good at:
they announced that they would try out new ways to support the game by giving us premium icon. it’s exactly what they present it as. The steam page shows you exactly what it is. The price is low. you know exactly what you get.
I got the information about what it is, decided this is not for me, didn’t buy, moved on.
compare and contrast:
a big hype about an all new campaign-DLC, announced at some special “new year, new age”-livestream. and then it’s just some recycled community content, that many will have already played at a completely absurd price-tag. They were even straight up lying about 19 custom scenarios and 5 exclusive scenarios when the steam page went up (I think this has been fixed at least).
It’s just way more disappointment from “campaign DLC” to “a handful of new scenarios”
Also look at the expectations that were up in the community: many were hoping for/expecting campaigns for the civs that don’t have them (in particular China, Korea, Japan). people (eg spirit of the law) were also voicing what kind of price tag they considered appropriate: about 8 eur
lesson: don’t build hype if you are going to underdeliver
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For me I thought the icon dlc’s were stupid, if they want to try to sell us stupid things more power to them. But they never characterized the icon dlcs as something they weren’t.
The icon dlcs are just as focused on campaigns, and Victors and Vanquished.
Honestly i’m ok with the price. I think it’s on the steep side, but not so much as to be upset about. yes, it’s 19 scenarios as opposed to the 15-18 of a normal DLC, but they’re recycled, but it’s $13 not $15, etc, etc.
The deceit, at least personally, is what I find unacceptable. I’ve never EVER heard of single scenarios being referred to as campaigns by anyone, and it just so happens that “mistake” happens right before they announce and expansion with a bunch of scenarios but no campaigns??? Like I CAN IMAGINE that mistake happening but it’s EXTREMELY suspicious. AND they managed to correctly describe the nature of the content right after the event on the FB post promoting it.
If MS needs a couple extra $ to justify keeping aoe2 going, fine, but I won’t accept being lied to. I won’t be buying this until either at least one campaign is added or we have an apology from those responsible.
We as a community should not accept being lied to.
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I agree, but part of my point is, DE has never been particularly good at this. The Icon DLC kind of worked precisely because they didn’t tease or hype it up, they just released it. Almost every time they announce/hype something months in advance, some portion of the playerbase is disappointed that the eventual content didn’t meet their expectations.
I do want to push back on this though. This kind of sounds like they just took stuff created by random users and decided to charge for it. It’s plausible that all of these have been changed substantially, both in terms of dev investment and in terms of creating a novel experience even for people who have played the older versions. (That’s what they implied, but I don’t put much stock in promotional hype until the goods are in hand). We don’t know. But it does irk me a little that everyone is waving this away as “basically nothing” without actually knowing the extent to which they were changed.
Yeah, that was dumb, and there’s no excuse to write that off as a misunderstanding on their part.
This one is entirely on the people who made these assumptions though. AFAIK no official message was made that lends to this conclusion, people just read the tea leaves and saw what they wanted to see. Which is why I’m encouraging people to temper their expectations and not set their hearts on something that was not promised.
The phrase comes to mind: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” There was nothing for them to gain by intentionally misrepresenting the contents of the DLC for a month or so, only for the deceit to become obvious before pre-order became available. Even they would have known such a “trick” would only generate ill-will, not sales. So I have to suppose it was just a stupid mistake that’s emblematic of their frequently subpar communication. (There are other possible explanations as well; perhaps the DLC was originally set to include a campaign but it ran into some snag and couldn’t finished by the deadline. But I of course have no evidence to back this up.)
Yes, this absolutely would be the wise thing to do. It costs them nothing and will help rebuild the damaged trust.
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I envy your optimisim, but I watched the stream where welin was playing it. it looked a lot like the original version of it. Ornlu said the same, someone even said it was the same intro slides.
kind of agree. however the fact that they miscommunicated consistently before the announcement and then fixed it instantly is super sketchy.
people who didnt watch the announcement might just buy it once it releases on steam, hoping for an actual campaign
not entirely. they did call it a “campaign”-DLC. More importantly it showed what people considered reasonable pricing. especially someone like SotL who tends to be quite conservative in his predictions and guesses.
And to reiterate: the pricing for this is completely absurd
More agnosticism than optimism TBH, but I’ll trust the opinions of those who are more attuned to the content of the original scenarios. They did mention new mechanics though, which I’m cautiously optimistic may have some bearing on improved gameplay potential.
I guess that’s a possibility, but I tend to think that the Venn Diagram of people who were aware of the previous announcement of a “campaign-focused DLC” that they would want to pre-order and people who would tune into a stream/look for announcements about the new DLC is two almost entirely overlapping circles.
Yeah, my comment was regarding people who had their hearts set on a particular region. Of course the “campaign”-DLC would be supposed to include a campaign, but that discussion has gotten plenty of airtime already.
Absolutely, I think half price at most is a must.
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Couldn’t they at least add one civ or different architectures?
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it was always going to be a DLC for existing civs, so either east asia or europe/medi. I don’t mind the region
and even then wait for -50%
I’m really happy they aren’t adding more civs
I think architectures could be sold as individual DLCs, it’s not something I want to pay for