it is not. they can release DLC and in the spirit of supporting mods and and majority of players, hence it should never be a paid DLC for skins only as it gives the possibility of management putting restrictions.
they should keep it as what it is now, civs DLC with access to civ and thats it. if its skins related they can simply do the monthly event like they always have been.
im all for new features, of course bug is a major problem and it definitely should be improved on how quickly they address them but if thats paired with mod restriction thats a giant no no.
You think the management would never allow a payed DLC that could easily be pirated so they would force the developers to build in DRM ruining mods?
I hate this.
âOh cool Iâm on vacation, now I can never get those skins.â
or
âOh there was an event 3 years before I started playing the game and I will never get the chance to get those skins.â
If you have lotâs of free time and no money then yes unlockable skins are nice.
But if you have a job and other hobbies you donât want to be forced to play a certain game in a certain time frame to get what you want.
I mean they could do it like they did with the USA in AoE3. There was an event where you could unlock them for free. Or you just pay 5âŹ/$ (half the price of a full DLC) which is less then the price of a single meal for many people.
maybe you can tell us in the specifics how it would not repeat whats happening with DE graphics porting to HD part of the game. if its to prevent potential of losing profit I could see this happening. perhaps I am worrying too much, I would like without having to have paid skin only DLC. paid civ DLC is completely fine.
whats there to hate when every skin mod thats an event was released on mod page?
canât agree with you there. refer to above quote.
yes which I have been saying for the 5th time for god sake, paid civ DLC is completely fine, which is what has been happening so far. maybe dont just reply on the first thing you disagree and ignore the rest.
The monthly events can never make what we are talking about. We are talking about a complete overhaul for every basic unit for diverse regions. This events are always a kick in the nuts for me (because i know there are people creating pinguins and glowing horse models instead of actual unit skins that could help the immersion and visual appeal of the game ALOT). Even if event skins would be regional units you could never use them only for specific civs/regions. And i really donât want to pick single unit skins seperately to make the game more immersive. It should be a base thing in the game (just my opinion).
We are not talking about a skin ingame shop with seperate skins/packs to buy. One DLC for regional unit skins. thatâs it.
I mean i really get your point. I personally think regional unit skins should have been there since the release of the DE. But would i pay for it? definitely. If they now put devs and artists on it i wouldnât have problems to pay for that work. But i get your point that this would open a new path for piracy via modding and that this could lead to new modding restrictions.
The thing is, just from my perspective, it would be worth it.
its honestly not that much. regional monk skins, villagers, unique units. most of the stuff is already there, the biggest being the âgeneric unitsâ that requires the most work.
regardless of event mod or not, to make them will take same amount of time. they can easily release it as multiple event mod over the year rather than just 1 DLC that may come with several bugs untested, ontop of charging money and possibly leads to restriction down the road. the former is clearly better by far.
not even close. also Iâd like to see why make claims without any additional info. just to name a few top of my head.
AOC allowed players to add civs up to designated civ slots, HD removed that ability for players.
DE added particle effect, removed graphical mirroring in genie, removed layers in genie and replaced with partial working particle effect that HD had access to.
and AOC/HD all are on genie engine. so your claim is false.
honestly if they wish to change something they will, it is not difficult for them to do so. but it seems extremely difficult to get them to prioritize bugs in which they do not think of them as priority. the only really care about competitive side where theyâd get free marketing and coverage from T90 or pro players.
on first line, you clearly havenât been around this for long, ofc they eventually take away free costumization to sell it (literally any new game proves that)
on other lines, explain then why whenever payed skins become a thing it magically becomes extremely hard to do anything in that department, or the free ones suddenly start to be bad in comparison to sold ones
thats what it eventualy turns into, it never stops with one DLC
while i wouldnât hate DE for making regional units look regional, its ultimately not a necessity, and iâm absolutely against payed cosmetics, because its just a case of devs trying to cut costs on their end, while eventually charging way too much for a skin, would it cause problems with graphical mods, absolutely, and restricition would occur no matter the backlash
from my perspective, its not worth it, but you are inclined to have an opinion
I still think you are a little too pessimistic but I get why you would prefer them not monetising skins.
Do you personally use any visual mods in AoE2DE? Besides the common ones like small trees.
You ever worked as a developer?
Fixing bugs is hard, frustrating and gives you little praise.
People might always complaint a little about how many bugs there still are but most people just skip over the âbugfixâ section of a patch release and only look at the new features even though fixing those bugs took a lot more time and effort.
For an outside it is hard to tell how long it takes to fix a bug. I mean even for most developers it is hard to tell how long it will take to do so before it is done. It can take you very deep down into very old code very quickly and they are working on code that can be from like 1995 and most of it was done by people that donât work for Forgotten Empires.
Imagine they would only release bug fixes for a year. How many people would complaint that there are no new features.
You always have to find a balance.
Sorry I have only been playing AoE since 1999.
We are talking about Microsoft here not EA.
The whole AoE franchise is not targeted at Fortnight kids so they know that Fortnight methods donât work here.
What games removed modability later in their life cycle?
I think you shouldnât compare a regional skin DLC with traditional skins you can buy in must multiplayer games.
In most games one of the most important reason people buy skins is to show them off. They want others to see how âcoolâ their character looks.
We are here talking about something that is local only. Itâs a local setting and only changes what you can see.
Me and others would like to see more visual variety in the game. But making a lot of new sprites is not cheap. They have to pay artists for that.
But itâs not that expensive either.
But itâs hard to make the make an analysis of how much it would cost and how much money it would make without having internal numbers.
I guess the AoE3 hero skin DLC was maybe a test for what the AoE community things about paying for skins.
I would probably release the regional skin DLCs for each region separately over time and always bundle it with one of the usual civilisation DLCs. So you could buy the Indian DLC + Indian regional unit skins DLC in a bundle for a discount.
Normal DLC = 10⏠(translate that to whatever DLCs cost in your country)
Regional Skins DLC = 5⏠(half as much as normal DLCs or as much as single civilisation DLCs in AoE3)
Bundle = 12.50⏠(If you already bought the DLC you can upgrade to the bundle for just 2.50⏠at last on Steam)
Thatâs how Paradox Interactive did it in their games (not sure if they still do it like that). They also never removed the modability for it.
definitely agree on that
i can tell aoe4 is making them as we speak, but my gut feeling tells me they are trying to avoid poking into hornets nest with aoe2
now to answer microsoft not EA, lets ignore numerous examples of games that did just what EA did, all halo since reach, the kind of diablo 3 auction house (yes activision but thats just as bad as EA) level microtransactions in minecraft bedrock, i could continue but its not worth it, i understand you have made up your mind, but i hoped people learned from oblivionâs horse armor fiasco, but clearly nothing was learned
its up to us to draw the line on what is okay and what isnât in games we play
Before we start to discuss in circles again i want to mention that i love the fact, that people are so dedicated for a game since 1999. I can understand all the fear caused by the idea of paid DLC for visuals. Iâm not the biggest fan of ingame shop skins in games too. I donât think that a regional unit skins DLC will lead to something like that because they know their playerbase better. Maybe it will come completely free. Itâs absolutely makeable. I look at you, regional trade carts. You have no idea how big this update was for me haha.
iâll conclude, while i doubt they wouldnât attempt at least a few cosmetic dlcs, i would prefer if its not touched personally, and i think many will agree, reduces the clutter of having 10 visuals or more for 1 unit to memorize,
other than that, have a nice day and donât feel bad about having an opinion, weâre not the same person after all
yea and I listed the stuff as they can easily take them away by changing how things can work, even if its same engine.
yea but to his argument, heâd treat them the same as they are the same engine so original AOK = DE. I implied that engine dont matter here because restriction is something they can simply add which goes back to my original post.
we all like to think âit wont change and it hasnât changed for decadesâ. well good things dont last forever and it will definitely out last even the former. once they get it going its not if, but matter of when.
no, I do not use small tree but I make custom graphic my self. also, refer to earlier posts for my earlier reply.
no, but when money is involved and when you cant deny the people whos paying you asking you to do specific work, being a developer or not is irrelevant. management > dev, thats how it is for almost everything out there. also going on this route is kinda way off topic and I would prefer not to have bunch of squabble over irrelevant stuff, if you canât find the correlation in some of things ive said then theres really not much to discuss here, as our fundamentals and semantics differ.
perhaps the FE group can correct me if im wrong, afaik the original FE are players like us and fan of the game. they are experienced with genie, scenario, skins, audio, AI and UI editing of HD (unsure about exe editing as it was already with steam at the time) were hired by MS for DE, but I dont think any of them (from the old FE members) worked on editing the exe which has a lot to do with implement QoL and otherwise new features such as caravanserai or serjeantâs build UI.
this meant there are definitely some disconnect between the devs. my understanding is the people who fixes the engine/backend arenât the ones play testing the game, which is mostly the case anyway. I dont think they even playtest at all tbh, otherwise they could easily catch the garrison bug they introduced just two patch ago.
I know some people that work in game development and I can tell you, that is not an uncommon issue.
A lot of smaller developers donât take testing seriously enough. Also often there is no time set aside for testing because the pressure of adding more things faster.
Good game developers force everyone in the team to play the game at last once a week.
But I donât think the addition of Regional Skins would require a lot of code changes.
just because it is common does not make it ok. consumers have come too far for their own good and compromises thus settle for less or âgood enoughâ. companies will continue to cut away quality and get away with stuff as much as they possibly can. there should be plenty of examples out there and is self evident.
they could be good game developers, but if the people who hired them dont ask them to play test theres nothing they can do and only hope of the best.
lastly, it seems what I said still didnât reach you. Regional skin does not take any code changes at all, what would require code change is when they decide to restrict graphical mod by implementing it into DE.
There is no way that will happen.
That would kill a lot of popular mods like Romae ad Bellum and I donât think they would ever want to risk that.
You must believe that the management is pure evil if you think that would be the case.
They didnât mind either that people made mods for AoE2DE using AoE1DE sprites without requiring the players to purchase AoE1DE.
