I mean, if it is just cosmetics and doesn’t become a pay-to-win (i don’t think it will, but just saying) then i’m fine with it, it could help them make more money from the game to use for more development.
Nothing wrong with cosmetics as long as they are optional and you don’t get harassed to buy things.
Take Quake Champions for example, it’s still Free2Play and has often new content, even if the game has its issues but that’s another matter.
Or Elder Scrolls Online, you can buy skins etc. but it’s mostly cosmetic, it’s not a pay2win.
Oof, don’t like the sound of this at all, although IMO this is broadly consistent with the direction the game has gone in this year, and my (admittedly cynical) reading of the motives behind those decisions. I frankly found the rollout of the Xbox port/RoR pretty disturbing (yet bearable) in terms of the game’s quality and future direction, but this is on a whole other level. Going all-in on this is an absolutely foolproof way to destroy the game.
At some point I’m going to move on from AoE2, but I was hoping that would happen organically within ~10 years due to IRL stuff and shifting priorities, not within a year or so due to MS getting greedy and killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Don’t worry, people will give lots of potentially bad changes “a chance” because they love the game. Hardcore fans like myself are pretty hard to shake off, but it definitely looks like they’re trying. BTW the things they’ve reversed in the past are a handful of balance changes and a few other relatively low impact decisions that are entirely within the domain of the dev team (Romans in ranked, more RoR campaigns - both of which could have been seen from miles away if they were more in touch with the playerbase). Major decisions about the game’s business model that almost certainly came from higher up and have made it to the point of being clues in a PUP will likely have orders of magnitude more momentum behind them than deciding whether Chinese start with 2 or 3 extra villagers. It still might be possible to change, or more realistically, limit the scope and impact of this type of monetization, but it would probably take significantly more pushback than we saw with RoR.
I’m sure if the majority of the player base abandoned ship, they would get the message. Hitting them in the wallet is the only language they understand. On the other hand it really depends what is being proposed. If the monthly subscription model vs. 1 or 2 DLC a year isn’t that different when you compare the total amount we’d be spending then I guess we should try to be open minded. As long as it doesn’t turn into pay to play for better civs or more maps etc. I’m hoping it won’t come to that though. I’d much rather pay one-off fees for DLCs than a monthly micro subscription.
@xWHIT3W0LFx Thanks so much for bringing this to our attention! I’ve put out a video sharing / reacting to this, and I want to make sure you’re credited for turning on the spotlight.
If the monetization is just skins and scenarios I’m fine with that.
The larger part of the fan base are single player only. Campaign sales I don’t think would be negatively affected. We have quite a few civs with no campaigns and nothing is stopping us from having more.
I personally don’t like the idea of adding too many new skins into my game, I like visual clarity. But if someone else wants a bazillion skins and I don’t have to look at them if I don’t want to then I think that’s great. Let people spend money on what they like in the game.
You could even use that as the new avenue for new civs hypothetically. Every 6-12 months a new civ drops. Might be confusing with civs in old DE dlcs and new micro transactions, but it’s not impossible per se.
I’m very open to spending more money on AOE2 but i don’t want to be forced to pay cause someone at Microsoft says FU give me money. We’ll see. The people at FE seems like die hard fans to me. I’m sure they have good intentions.
Great video, you bring up very good points! I’m a little torn with the idea of including campaigns, civs or even game modes in the Age Pass. People who don’t have that much time to play are then forced to invest time to unlock these things, which is a bad thing. As you pointed out with FOMO, you should never feel forced to play, this could ultimately drive players away.
I’d rater limit the Age Pass content to profile pictures and unit/building skins. Skins have absolutely no gameplay impact, they just make your game look prettier and more immersive. So, I could imagine something like a Nomadic-themed season for example, where you unlock unique skins for generic units and a new nomadic building set.
Something I think they could do is, instead of locking civs being the subscription, they could give early access to DLCs to subscribers, and free tests of DLC civs they don’t have yet. This I think could be a decent compromise that doesn’t force you to subscribe to the Age Pass or whatever its called, but gives you some nice bonuses nonetheless.
Very likely not the devs choice. I think most devs don’t like this stuff, but they work for a corporation that wants it. Always remember who pays the bills for the devs. Sometimes, if it’s an indie dev, then it really is the devs being dumb. But in this case, it’s Microsoft.