The delusional playerbase. Go to Reddit and you can see how mindlessly people defend the recent DLC.
It is so obvious aoe2 became the cash cow of the franchise.
RoR is a cashgrab that tries to sell aoe1 again with minimal changes.
Mountain Royal is 50% more expensive than Dynasties of India but offers half the content.
The newest DLC is not only a lie but also a scam. 15 of the scenarios are already available in the workshop for free. All this for 13 dollars, for more money than 3 civs with 15 brand new scenarios.
Any other gaming community would’ve thought this is unacceptable and outrageous yet this community would still buy the newest DLC for even 100 dollars.
The more fanatical the fanbase, the more exploitative managers can afford to exploit. Look at Total War. It has such a massively loyal fanbase, Rome 2’s launch, Warhammer 3’s launch, Shadow of Change, etc. They got away with so much BS that the fans only have themselves to blame. Simply don’t buy it if you don’t like it or don’t like the price/content ratio. The “buying it to support the studio” people are only “buying it to support rip off practices”. It’s like those celebrities that can get away with everything because they are celebrities.
Man I am not on reddit and didn’t even know what is happening there. But I got you, what you said is what I, as well as many other players, have been saying. It’s good to bring this up once in a while.
I feel like it’s the campaign players that make most of the base and all they want is more campaign, 100%-achv grinding. They even knows there’s a bad dlc, but still buy it. I mean, what can I do about this? No.
It’s not just this game. I was a Leagues player, y’know, the community there always, at all time, have players complaing, raging, sending death threat about crappy decisions, biased champs, but the dev still act like ######## on them and they’re still OK When I complained with 'em, they agreed, when I told them to stop giving in money, they kept quiet. Anyway, just bring this up sometime to wake up a few more ppl. Also don’t buy anything you criticize or your words are nothing but air. Peace!
that’s just so incredibly naive.
-The fate of the franchise is determined more by stuff like aoe:mobile which can seriously stain the name of the franchise
-the fate of this game will be determined by its stability, bugginess etc. not the sales of DLC
-The game was growing while microsoft was doing nothing
-The game is still selling lots of new copies. Many will be buying it out of nostalgia, with this many questionable changes I wonder if they still recognize the game
I was on the League community too, and I remember players complained a LOT. However, the devs also listened… Whenever they felt like it, which wasn’t very often.
I’m also in the Total War community, and not-so-recently there were controversies surrounding the price and content of Total War Pharaoh, and also a DLC for Warhammer 3. The devs got so much hate they reduced the price of the former, refunded some money and made the very first DLC completely free. As for the latter, they added soem content as a “free update” too.
Lesson is, all devs listen, some care and some don’t. I know the AoE devs listen to the community, because when people talk a lot about something (like adding Georgians and Armenians, or buffing militia line), the devs end up adding it.
I sincerely hope they will apologize, and promise that in the future they will deliver campaign DLCs that contain, well, actual campaigns.
Yeah it’s pretty much like dice-rolling when it comes to listening from them.
TW has a really good dev team by the sound of it.
Back to this game, the release of RoR is when everything began to go south, who even asked for that ?? I played the og game, Rise of Rome, bought AoEDE first time on MS.Store, on Steam a second time! They should’ve reduced the price or made it free for ppl who owns AoEDE. If not, you called it, a sincere apology wouldn’t be that hard.
Yeah i didnt buy this DLC because its pointless. No new civs and i never play single player. To the people saying “buy it to support the game”, no i refuse, because Microsoft only understands money. If they release bad DLC and you know its bad, but you still buy it to “support the game”, you are actually destroying the game. Because you are telling Microsoft “I like this shitty recycled content with no new civs, please make more and i will keep emptying my wallet for you”.
I’m a die hard fan, if it’s new civs i will keep buying them until there are hundreds of civs for all i care. But campaigns (especially recycled copied campaigns) will never get a single cent from me. If everybody votes with their wallet, they will get the picture.
they know that and frankly they dont care. they know u or I or most other competitive players will not touch DLC miles away but they’ll still likely sell a ton because campaign players are always going to be there and they make up vast majority of player base
so whats likely going to happen from now on is that civ dlc will have very little campaigns and campaign DLC will be full fledged ones just like civ DLC and charge full price, so they can get 2x the money for similar amount of work/content and its pure win for them.
Disclaimer: I will personally not buy the DLC. I haven’t even finished all the base game campaigns yet so no need to buy more.
AoE2/3 DLC used to be super cheap. Like really cheap.
You get many hours of single player content (3 campaigns) plus some good multiplayer content (2 civilisations) for the price of a decent meal (10$).
There are usually 1-2 DLC per year. that means 20$ per year. Less then 2$ per month. And that just if you pay them on release for full price, they are often discounted to 50% or more.
15$ for 3 campaigns and no civilisations would be a fair deal in my opinion.
5$ per campaign that offers you multiple hours of fun.
Considering the frequency they make DLC and how low they price them I wouldn’t call AoE2DE a cash cow. Yeah they can pay for the development and make a profit but it’s not like it’s raining free money down on them. The volume sold is way to low for that.
And unlike most other modern games there are no ingame micro transaction or stuff like that.
You can’t buy a booster pack that allows you to use better units for 5 matches (like in Fifa)
Also this.
They told us multiple times, repeatedly that the newest AoE4 DLC was the best selling expansion in the history of AoE. Which is pretty wild.
But then again, you get 6 civilisations for 15$. And yes I count the variant civilisations too, they are way more unique then any AoE2 civilisation.
But back to AoE2.
I think it’s reasonable to be upset about RoR. If you want to have all AoE2 civilisations and don’t care about AoE1 nor about campaigns, then this DLC offers you very little value for the 15$. They should really make a Rome only standalone DLC for 5$.
This new DLC is something you can very easily just not buy. You don’t have any disadvantage in multiplayer, there is no civ you can’t play yourself.
Just vote with your wallet instead of making angry threads.
Going from 10$ to 100$ is quit a jump.
When pricing DLC, games or any software it comes down to calculating the price that makes you the most money:
Higher price → less sales but more money from each sale
Low price → more sales but less money from each sale
When you double the price will the sales go down by more or less then 50%. If they go down by less then 50% it’s worth doubling the price but if the sales drop by more then 50% it’s not worth it.
If half of the community was stupid enough to buy DLC for 100$ then the price would have already been 100$ long time ago. Why should they not want to make more money when they can make more money?
Sometime I do think of a dlc of new civs, and a separate dlc of campaigns or whatsoever for those new civs could come later. But yeah, I also wonder about how much would the cost be…
You are right, I forgot about those ones!
Well, selling separate campaigns DLC would be a nice revenue improvement for MS, from $15 (remember when it was $10) to something between $18 to $23 by selling a mix of both DLC.
But I understand they would like to slow a bit civs additiond, as well as balance between campaigns and single scenarios. Hope they will pump out full campaigns in the future…
We’re at the same dilemma as every small but dedicated userbase: “if we don’t support them then they will find it unprofitable and support will end” which usually leads to #####ier support which eventually still ends when it goes really bad.
While open donation may make them look bad so there are no other ways to “support” other than buying the ######ier and #####ier products.
Don’t think the company especially big ones will be “grateful”.
Well if the kidnapper kills the hostage because you cannot meet the demands, it’s a pity, but not your fault.
When I complained with 'em, they agreed, when I told them to stop giving in money, they kept quiet. Anyway, just bring this up sometime to wake up a few more ppl. Also don’t buy anything you criticize or your words are nothing but air. Peace!