TLDR: the real innovations that should be encouraged were those of gameplay and contents (good or bad, they always could fix it), not “innovations” as excuses for less work and less thought
What were real innovations
Universal techtree updates in the Conquerors
Regional units
QoL improvements
Elite unit skins
I’d even count Chronicles
You don’t just need to come up with them. You need to think about how to make them work well
Why V&V is not
You need to think, do the research, do the writing, do the programming, to make a good campaign
“Let’s break that mode and invent a new DLC concept” only takes you a second, and their only purpose was to reuse work and milk the fanbase. That was not innovation
Why 3K is not
Is there anything new it really offers? Heroes? You can add it to basically any civ
Most of the campaigns added before were not extremely popular ones. Was El Cid 3K-level popular when AOC was released? Why did it still work? Because ES spend their efforts. The previous DLC campaigns required research into unknown topics and writing. They need to dig into materials within the game’s theme and try to fit them in.
You just need a five minute talk with a whiteboard to come up with 3K
They did it because they want to reuse work and borrow some free advertising material. They didn’t want to think about other ways to make the DLC more appealing like they did to previous ones. “Breaking the formula” is the cheapest one.
Conclusion
On the surface, WE had been “bold” that they kept breaking their games’ formulae. In fact, they had become more and more afraid of real changes, and only made “changes” to avoid them. They broke the formula only when it led to less thinking and less work.
I’d even go as far to say V&V is an insult to the playerbase’s intelligence. If you are selling someone free mods for real money, then you don’t respect that person.
It does. It added fictional civilizations and campaigns to a historical game and butchered it’s identity. Very innovative…
Because it’s not possible to generate hundreds of unique but non-gimmicky bonuses. It’s the inevitable consequence of adding so many civs.
The most interesting bonuses are actually the simplest yet most distinctive ones, like the Huns’ no-house requirement, Britons’ extra range, or Goths’ cheaper infantry bonus. These simple bonuses shaped their civ identities exceptionally well. And here’s some random bonus from the new civs:
Can garrison mills with herdable animals to produce food.
Stone miners generate 33% gold in addition to stone.
Meat of hunted and livestock animals does not decay.
Chemistry and Hand Cannoneer available in Castle Age.
These bonuses just feel off, and they nowhere shape the civs’ identities like the old civ bonuses did. And some of these are rip-offs from already existing bonuses.
I beg to disagree. I can pull up many civ concepts from an era when you were yo be lambasted for daring to consider auras or special interactions based on hardcoding
It has something to do with something called the Users patch?
How mystical people are able to break the laws of hardcoding still baffles me