They definitely have a history of occasional doomposting from what I’ve seen.
5 Likes
My personal opinion is that V&V was definately a “spin-off” and the next DLC is already in development for months. 27 September is a very possible release date or announcement date. The single new achievement isnt related to this DLC it might be something related to a special event the same date.
Don’t forget that the hidden achievements for the DLC are always added 1-2 months after the DLC is registered in steamdb and they are multiple.
6 Likes
As stated, that’s my birthday, so it would be very special if something released then.
6 Likes
I really wish this will happen bro! Amazing to have birthday the same day with the Aoe2 anniversary date 
3 Likes
That’s not only your opinion but basically also backed by the game files.
There are a couple of text files inside AoE2DE\resources\en\strings\key-value:
key-value-strings = Base game texts + campaign texts of everything up to Lords of the West. Also contains leftovers from the orginal game
key-value-modded-strings = Used for mods. If you e.g. want to replace a text from the regular string file, you can copy-paste the exact string ID here
PDLC2 = Dawn of the Dukes campaign texts
PDLC3 = Dynasties of India campaign texts
PDLC4 = Mountain Royals campaign texts
PDLC6 = Victors & Vanquished campaign texts
The texts for Return of Rome are stored in AoE2DE\modes\Pompeii\resources\en\strings\key-value
So the DLC must be in development for quite a while now and V&V was just a side project.
12 Likes
I’m hoping that the reason this DLC is taking so long is they’re adding new architecture sets. I already elaborated on that before, but it would be a nice surprise.
6 Likes
fingers crossed for at least 3 civs
10 Likes
Whatever it is that’s being added, it’s clearly time-consuming to make.
Yeah. Would be nice to go back to the bigger DLCs again.
2 Likes
Hopefully no more European Civs.
9 Likes
I don’t think that HAS to be true. FE is also working on AoM:Retold ATM. It is conceivable that a “regular” dlc is in the works and it’s just taking longer cause resources were diverted to V&V and/or AoM.
I’ve for a while assumed that AoM was the reason we haven’t seen a balance change since the end of april. Presumably personnel had been temporarily re-assigned to assist with an end of development crunch. We’d for a long time gotten a bi-monthly update sometimes with smaller monthly updates in between. so it was odd when we’d gotten to three months with still no balance changes and now we’re nearly four months since our last balance update. And no i’m not counting the “map balance updates”, if you look through the changelog on those, the majority of those are, if not strictly bug fixes, then polishes to make things more behave more consistently. Little in the way of actual BALANCE changes.
That all being said, perhaps this DLC, and not AoM, is the cause for the recent slowdown in balance updates. If ever there was a time to go BIG with a DLC, take some extra time, skimp out on balance changes, it’d be this fall. 5 years since DE released, and 25 years since AoK.
Also there’s something else that occurred to me. There was about 8 months between the release of LotW and DotD, about another 8 months between DotD and DoI, and even tho RoR was about a year after DoI, TMR was released 17 months after DoI.
If you assume that an 8 month interval is the target for these DLCs, AND DLC 5 is going to be a big one and won’t be released until about a year after TMR, as opposed to the more standard 8 months, then it’d make sense you’d want to slot something inbetween TMR and DLC 5 that’d be quicker to make to maintain cashflow, which is where we get V&V.
The only thing that doesn’t make sense is if you know 8 months is your preferred interval, and you’re PLANNING on releasing something that doesn’t align with your preferred timetable, why not plan V&V to begin with, as DLC5 for a q1 release, and this upcoming DLC as DLC6 for a q3/q4 release.
Seems like to me DLC 5 was originally supposed to be released q1-ish. maybe plans changed and it became an anniversary dlc and consequently the scope of the project was increased to be commensurate with the occasion. Alternatively perhaps there were was a development dead-end or other problems so q1 release was no longer realistic. Regardless presumably sometime during development it became clear DLC 5 would not be ready in q1, so V&V was quickly greenlight and pushed out the door to maintain cashflow and buy time for DLC 5 to be ready
3 Likes
Or DLC 5 was scraped completely.
4 Likes
Why not make DLC 6 DLC 5 then?
4 Likes
Because marketing =)
Often file names are not changed as there are too many lines of code where the file is imported.
Or an animated icons pack.
3 Likes
Imagine the disappointment.
3 Likes
What are we looking at here?
5 Likes
This confirms that it is a new full DLC and will be released soon. It is in the last stages of development.
4 Likes
ACHIEVEMENT_319
913
2024/9/13
2 Likes