Subscription for continued support (so we wont need new civs and the devs can fix the game faster)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Many have seen that there will be a new DLC. This will most likely contain two new civs. I get that the devs keep adding new civs through DLC’s. They need to generate income and new civs will simply sell the best.
Howerver I, and many like me think we have enough. 37, which will probably become 39 is allready a hughe amount. We fear the new civs will be unbalanced or gimmicky and it will hinder new players from entering.

The devs however need to generate money to keep the support up, so this is my proposal:
Let the community donate money through a subcrition fee. This sould be made clear that the subscription is as a support for the game and will not give additional content (apart from maybe a profile icon or so). We would NEVER want a paid to win structure of some kind. In return, these gifters sould be able to have a say in what the developers put there attention too.

This will give the devs money, and the comunity a say in where the development of the game goes. This will also stop the need for more and more civs. We are a little over 2 years in and we will get 3 DLC’s with 6 civs. At this rate we will be at 50 civs in 4 years.

The AoE2 community is an amazingly loyal and dedicated community and i think they will happily give some money for the game we love most.

Let me know your thoughts and if you’d contribute if it were an option.

EDIT: Well the thing is, the devs resources are limited. How long ago was it that they talked about ranked death match lobbys?
If they do not HAVE to put out DLC’s to keep money comming, they can foccus all there attention to fixing and updateing the game. If they need to put out 2-3 DLC’s a year, they lose a lot of time doing that, and so dalaying to fix or add the things we really need them too

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Broken MM and meaningless TG ladder, cheaters, point traders,etc, none of that has been fixed after a year of full paid DLC’s, i am afraid they can release 10 more dlcs and not even bothering fixing what really matters…and you want to subscribe to give them more money for exactly what? what will change? the answer is nothing.

Honestly if we don’t want more civs to get added we need to microsoft to cut the sponsor for aoe2 and abandon the project and move to sc2 DE, that is the only way i see no more civs being added, otherwise they wont stop until you see missisipeans and tiku(polynesians) as the most powerful medieval civs.

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I’d imagine a large majority of the community enjoy getting new civs as it keeps the game interesting and fresh (me included). Seems strange you’d prefer the game to stand still rather than keep evolving and growing. Its a great system that works really well. We get new content and the devs get funded.

I’d imagine new players would be enticed by the fact the game is still getting support and new content via DLC’s. I know I’d rather pick up a game that’s still receiving a live service rather than one that’s been left for dead. If you don’t want to play the new civ’s as a beginner then just don’t buy the DLC’s until you feel like you want some new content. New players have just supported the game with their purchase anyway.

None of the new civs are unbalanced or even in the top 5 winrate civs for TG or 1v1. Coustilliers were broken when they released but were quickly nerfed appropriately.

I cant really understand why you are saying this as a bad thing. I Think you’re in the tiny minority of players who’d prefer to not get new content and subscribe to a game you’ve already payed for.

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Well the thing is, the devs resources are limited. How long ago was it that they talked about ranked death match lobbys?
If they do not HAVE to put out DLC’s to keep money comming, they can foccus all there attention to fixing and updateing the game. If they need to put out 2-3 DLC’s a year, they lose a lot of time doing that, and so dalaying to fix or add the things we really need them too

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Well, I agree with OP insofar that new civs do not necessarily make the game better. From my perspective, there are already too many civs in the game to play it properly [in multiplayer] if you are not a professional gamer.

I also disagree that not adding more civs is equivalent to the game “being abandoned”. There are so many things that could be fixed and added beyond civilizations (campaigns, graphics, etc). However, this will be difficult to sell as DLC on its own. This is why I appreciate the OP suggestion, although I think it is unlikely that a system like that is going to be implemented.

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Pay to win has never been the structure of this game. Some new civs might have had some op bonuses but that was changed after respective first balance change for these. And while at some point we won’t need more civs your suggestion of pay to balance (or whatever you wanna call it) is a horrible approach. It’s true that there is quite a lot of issues that haven’t been addressed in a long time but you seriously want people to pay money to influence how the game will look like??

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Well the best solution would be to opensource the game and let the community fix the problems, but that would be even further away from my proposal.

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No. The problem with that, is that the community can’t even always agree on the problems. For example, some people see the ranked ladder as an issue, and ranked lobbies the solution. I see ranked lobbies as a death sentence for ranked, something that should never happen, and a good reason why control should not go to the community. I agree with most people that ranked has it’s issues, but it is a modern standard, and something I would expect as a baseline for most modern PvP games. I’m also not a fan of using subscriptions as a way to bribe the devs into making changes that may not be for the good of many of the players. If you want to donate a heap of money, feel free, just don’t suggest that it becomes part of the system.

Also, we actually have 39 civs right now, and I would be happy to go all the way to the 48 hard cap. I’m no pro gamer, but I don’t consider it an overload of information or anything.

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I think the dlc system is a very neat and fair system. (I don’t mean dlc system in general, but HOW it is made is imo fair. And that’s surprisingly refreshing and out of the norm in the world we currently live in. And that’s why I support it.)
What probably can (and maybe even should come at some point) would be “classic” matchmaking where for each map there is a set of 10-20 “classic” civs to chose from. Intentionally made for beginners to not confuse them with too much content.

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Same as in the past, the Singleplayer community will keep this game alive, i personally prefer more new stuff than any multiplayer fixes. But that’s my opinion.

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Death match ranked lobbies are incoming within the next patch or so, it’s already in the public test area.

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Single player content has 0 viewers on twitch, 0 tournaments, not even a speed run community for the campaigns, most modders create content and map scripts for MP usage.

SP users are short term users, while MP users have been carrying aoe2 DE on the top 100 of most played games on steam for 2 years, 62k players using the MP services every month and the vanilla game was alive after MS killed gaming zone back 2006.

While SP users somehow don’t represent more than 6% of the total players based on the campaign global completion rate and yeah lets ignore that also MP users have contributed to those numbers. At the end this game has been carried by their MP player base and it has been remastered targeting those customers.

I really don’t understand based on which argument there is this crazy belief that aoe2 has a larger SP community and that they have kept the game alive, if aoe2 wouldn’t have MP it would have perished back at 2006 with gaming zone and never got more content or any remaster, cheers.

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Ok, have you even seen TWest’s or OrnLu’s Youtube channels? There are definitely streamers and youtubers who do a lot of SP content.

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Why even start the ‘MP vs SP’ argument? They’re both important pillars that hold the game up and it wouldn’t be what it is without either of them. SP players are less inclined to watch streams & such. They just like to play & aren’t worried about what the best MP players are doing and how they’re playing, why would they be?

I am mainly a MP guy but there is no need for this pointless debate. They both matter greatly.

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I wonder why M$ made a modpack an official DLC for a game with only MP people 11111.

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And Viper even do campaign gameplay

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New civs dont do much for me anymore. About the 2nd civ expansion for AoE2:HD is when I got oversaturated with new civs. They all graphically and functionally blend together for me now.

In fact, coincidentally, I just watched the Dawn of Dukes trailer because it is on sale on Steam, and they so closely resemble past civs I can’t really see much difference.

For me, I pay much more attention to environmental things, on average, than civ-specific differences. Appreciate them more, too. New maps, map features, terrains, animals, sounds, trees, landmarks, etc. are way more meaningful to me at this point in my AoE career.

I’d probably pay $20 just for a tree and water pack because I’m desperate for something other than new civs, lol. $10 for a font pack that makes the font look exactly like AoE2:HD as one of the options. $15 for a new gold, stone, rocks, waterfalls collection. $25 for an FX, dynamic weather, and lighting pack. $40 for an alien civs and worlds expansion pack with 4 civs in it. $35 for an expansion pack with some truly new unique evolutions in the game (a 5th age, sub-ages, unique units/buildings/techs added to each existing civ, ), etc. Expansions and DLCs don’t always need to be medieval or compatible with current game. There’s nothing wrong with having modules we can load up and play. E.g., Red Dead Redemption 1 had a zombie pack as a completely different experience, but it leveraged or used the base game and its engine. I just think there is room for other options than always just new civs and campaigns for the expansion packs and DLCs.

The pool of civs to choose from in AoE is already huge. I always pick the same civ to play with anyways. The rest just blur together in my mind, for the most part. I’m ready for more creativity in DLCs and expansions, personally :slight_smile:

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new civ is needed in order to keep the game fresh. But not that frequent TBF, maybe 2 civs every 2 years. improving the game experience is more important