What is your opinion on the DLC communication style?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Howdy,

What is your opinion on the DLC communication style?

I have been a fan since the original release and saw an evolution, or change, in FE’s or WE’s communication in regards to DLC and news on our beloved game. Ocasionally you had dev diaries on how parts of the game were made or a dev diary for upcoming content. I even remember when FE was hyping up it’s mod back in (even hosting a little enigma with morse code in a map, on Facebook!)

While i do not want to live in the past, i compare this close communication to what we have now … and well -

I understand that the overall growth and possibly bureaucracies made them change, but the instagram (where i have found out about all the DLC announcements since DE until the current date) and forum posts on their page seems more distant. Moreover, we have months of silence (which they have recognized in the past that happen) and little to know expectations on what we can look forward to next. Best example is the latest DLC, when back in February a sneak peak was teased → wait almost 4 months until you get to know 100% what the dlc would be about :wink:

Speaking of expectations: the way hype is generated can either be a hit or a massive flop - if you are still reading this post, you and I are thinking the same. We, the fans, have zero notion of what is to come. Perhaps tease us with a roadmap with actual clues on what is to come and no “surprises”. The video by RobbyLAVA and Admiral Wololo AoE2 percectly sum it up:
Do not promise great surprises and be silent about it until the last minute. Perhaps the best surprise here was providing what fans were specifcally asking. I am looking forward for the next Chronicles adventure with and i am extremely curious to what they will do next for the “main” game. Imo, this DLC could have been the holy grail but alas! when will we ever see the Tanguts, Bai or dare i say Tib - …

There is visible criticism on the DLC and it’s content. If you promise to fix it and actually fix it, us fans will glorify FE forever for doing so. Keeping radio silent and pretending everything was okay, won’t be sustainable. On a final summary, i believe the immense backlash on the DLC was due to this poor communication, zero and expectation management and radio silence (or PR, if you can name it that).

What do you think? And what could FE/WE do to improve? I want Age to last forever!

Small note: i could not have more than 2 links attached to the copy, but if needed be i can provide the references!

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I think their communication ranges from awful to downright deceptive as of late.

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I think it’s good in this title.
Eg I liked RoR (despite some flaws) because I got what I paid for - an AoE I DE port I didn’t already own. Can’t remember something being announced and then not delivered like they did with AoEIII.

Imo the problem lies with some part of the community who likes to hype up DLCs based on their own assumptions and wishes, which inevitably will always differ with the real product. Then we get 50+ threads of “why is game not like my fan project ???”

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Pre-2022, it was alright. They communicated what they had to, and even teased contents of upcoming DLC, giving us minigames and all. It wasn’t a whole lot but it was nice and helped hyping the community.

Post-2023 it feels like they have no communication team at all. All they do is post cringe memes on social media, and only communicate with their audience by writing posts on their website right when a DLC releases. No teasers like before, there’s no more minigames. And the few times they tease content, they end up lying about the DLC.

They can improve by doing the bare minimum. Do stuff like in pre-2023 days. Tease content, make roadmaps maybe, give us a heads up about what the DLC is going to be so we don’t receive “surprises” that end up being bad. And most importantly, no more lies…

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This is a very valid point often not mentioned!

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They need to be more upfront about what they are doing if it strays away from classic-style DLCs (which is what is expected by default). And take the temperature of the water before a controversial decision, should 3K be put in the regular mode or be a separate chronicles-like mode ?

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The most controversial part of RoR was having the AOE2 Romans in it. While it was intended as a harmless bonus, it felt like locking that civ behind RoR, “forcing” players to buy the full package for just one AOE2 civ (which on top of that, is very strong).

Similar problem for 3K who locks the Jurchens and Khitanguts, unless the devs make them available from a future east asian DLC (the precise one everyone is asking for…)

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It used to be fine, but then they figured out there are enough bootlickers within some part of the community that will swallow everything WE feeds them and does not feed them, then come up with the PR speech on WE’s behalf, far beyond anyone official dares to admit (like “The company is NOT making games for YOU! It’s fine to ditch parts of the players! F off if you don’t like it! They do this for $$$!”)

So WE doesn’t have the motivation to dirty their own hands.

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I don’t even care if they don’t add a single more civilization to the game, as long as they don’t add non-civilizations into the game as (fake) civilizations, which is just insulting

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It’s ok. The Romans didn’t think of some barbarians like Celts or Germani or Slavs as civilizations either. Let’s just say you have the proper medieval mindset for this game

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My opinion on the communication is that there is no communication. Only disinformation.

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You know what would stop that? The devs actually announcing the project instead of being secretive and “surprising” us

OR even better, listening to the community and making what we are asking for! I don’t know when this idea that giving your audience what they are asking for is bad came from, but I hate when people use the word “fan-service” as a criticism, yes, you can do bad fan service (generally low effort nostalgia bait) but you can also do good fan-service, listening to what your community wants!

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I don’t disagree with this, but if they had come out in front and said “Hey, we’re adding 3K, Jurchens, and Khitans” it at least would have made people not get as disappointed when what they expected didn’t come, because they know at least generally what to expect.

Hell, they haven’t had a classic-style DLC since Mountain Royals nearing 2 years ago. If they want to do innovative/controversial stuff then fine, but if they could at least alternate between classic style and “innovative” even that’d be appreciated.

And yeah, very much this. Despite my disdain for the 3k material, i’d love to have Jurchens and Khitans in my game (I also want them to have campaigns and unique voice lines, but whatever…)

Maybe they can make a Medieval Chinese DLC, include Jurchens & Khitans in it again, and give a discount to people that already own the 3k DLC, that way us non-3k folks can get them, and they can monetize Jurchen and Khitan campaigns along with a couple other E. Asian civs. I’m not holding my breath for this, but at this point this is probably my ideal outcome (that or putting 3k in a Chronicles-style silo, which I would love but again I’m not holding my breath for it)

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But that’s exactly what happened
we got a few teasers and then they announced the whole thing along with an extra sneak peek patch with all content
Some live in an alternative reality apparently

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That precisely sounds like a communication issue: being out of touch with their most engaged fans.
There are numerous threads and posts about what the community are hyped about. What’s the point of community engagement if people should expect to exactly not get what they like?

Nobody expected the DLCs to be the same as expected. This time it’s uniquely phenomenal how derailed and surprising in a bad way it is. You’ve not seen civ crafters even considering three kingdoms civs as sensible options, nor was in the civ icon crafter megathread.

Even if most of us would have been completely cool with 3K separate game mode using AOE2 engine. We’ve been stretching our minds hard to accept contents not made for the base game since RoRome, V&V, and Greece. I myself was happy to see Greece DLC getting favorable feedback despite not being for me (at introduction I was concerned it’ll be in the base game).

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Exactly. This isn’t “Oh, I think i’m getting 5 civs and 7 campaigns”, but when I only get 5 civs and 3 campaigns I throw a tantrum. This isn’t “Oh I thought I was getting the Bai” but actually we got the gokturks.

They said they weren’t splitting china. They said they needed 5 civs to tell the stories they needed to tell. They showed a castle and UU, that absolutely, 100%, incontrovertibly, cannot be for any other civ than Tanguts.

Then they split china, Jurchens and Khitans are irrelevant to the DLC, and Tanguts weren’t even added.

You can’t even argue that tanguts are umbrella’d under khitans. Khitans were paramongolic. Tanguts were tibeto burman.

None of the units they showed off in the teasers were exclusive to the 3k era.

100% bait and switch. I’m not angry because I was wrong. I’m angry because I was lied to.

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Shhhhh. Very soon the entry criteria for “most engaged fans” would be defending everything WE said and done.

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maybe because the community is bigger than this board + reddit?
The company can’t cater to a specific minority unless that specific minority is willing to pay an exorbitant amount as compensation.
Would you like a season pass? Would you like lootboxes?
So what they did instead is have a look at the mod section and go from there:
Turns out the most popular campaign mod was a campaign about… drums 3K.

Crazy huh?

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Had the most popular mod been Lord of the Rings, should they have added Mordor and the Elves as new civs, especially in the base game’s module ?

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Yes reasonable comparison. We all know Chinese are like Easterlings and Mordor amiright?! Upvooted