Microtransaction the bane of gaming, please don’t add bull crap like that into this game. Please add DLC and expansion, but please never ever add cosmetics like skins and other crap with fire sword and clown suits. If you want please do events like in AOE 2, AOE 3 where you give out skins after a reward track, but please never ever add MTX to this game.
MTX will be the death of AOE franchise, AOEO once did and killed the game, until HD and DE came, now the community is recovering and slowly coming back, please don’t add MTX and kill it and I don’t think the franchise has stooped so low to reach that level.
You just need to do it right, like dota, league of legends and others.
Make everything which effects gameplay available thru experience points OR actual money.
This is what they hsould have done for AoE4, only make 1 civ available in multiplayer, the rest you have to buy or earn thru experience points. Add skins and visual stuff on top which one can buy and make the game free instead.
So you actually think they make those games just for fun and as a donation to the community ?
Each company within Microsoft is its own entity, they all work towards making profit.
Microtransaction is great guys, they did it on SC2 and it was a success (a second youth), but it’s good only if it don’t become a pay to win (like AoEO).
In general I’m against any microtransactions. I much more prefer normal expansions that were released for AoE series - from Rise of Rome to African Royals.
But if having a different support strategy, with smaller content patches like new maps, single civs without campaigns or single historical missions means that is not viable - then yes, cosmetics is THE best place to include microtransactions.
It still would be nice to have a way to earn at least some of them, for dedicated fans, but these are things not related to gameplay so ultimately it doesn’t matter that much. As long as default skins are not terrible- no reason to be outraged like with paid maps splitting the community or even worse - paid gameplay features.
Having to pay to unlock player color changer or treaty option in skirmish is a nightmare scenario.
It’s hard to come up with a modern monetization strategy for a classic RTS game like AoE. I think expansions work fine for them, but also I imagine they have bigger expectations than ones for 2DE and 3DE.
I’ve posted pics of, I think, first skins in AoE series, outside of cosmetics in AoE Online and (recent) event mods in AoE2:DE:
Could something like that be charged for? Well, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. As long as normal skins looks good, and new ones don’t give gameplay advantage or look like crap (with some RGB flashing colours etc lol) I guess it’s ok.
It would be a bummer to haviing stock crossbowman skin and paid, cool skin oif much more detailed verison from some Italian kingdom, but hey as I’ve said- maybe they could tie it with event and challenges. Just like USA civ that was free for people that completed event goals.
why charge? AOE 2 and AOE 3 are doing ti as events, keep them as it is. They can release DLCs and Expansion but not MTX. USD 60, DLC, Expacs and on top of MTX? no thanks. You give an inch, they takes a mile, cosmetics should be earned via playing game, not by paying money again.
I’m not a Microsoft CEO, nor saying I like microtransactions or they should be introduced to AoE IV. You don’t have to say that to me.
Of course they can just stick to normal expansions. I wrote above what could happen if that was changed and IV was designed to receive smaller content updates.
Instead of releasing something like regional, thematic expansions (Warchiefs, Dawn of the Dukes) they could stretch that content over a longer period of time:
free maps included in normal game updates
civs that can be unlocked in events or bought right away
cosmetics that could be at least partially earned in various challenged or bought justl like civs
Nobody knows how AoEIV campaigns even look like and certainly it’s not guaranteed they will release new, big campaigns related to civs, like one in 2DE expansions. So I wouldn’t be suprised if support for this game is very different from what we have now.
At least in 2DE.
I don’t make it sound like the game is free.
Microtransactions only make sense if it would be free.
And it would make a lot of sense if they would give it away for free with limitations I mentioned (you start with 1 or 2 civs, the rest you need to buy or unlock with experience points which you get thru playing the game).
With AoE2 this would have worked great actually, since you are not that limited with new civilizations. You could have added a new one every month or 2nd month, like heroes in league of legends.
