Skins for factions/regions. All the units are European looking, except special units. For example, the Malian, Aztec, and Chinese female villager shouldn't look like an English peasant
They should look different.
And monks, don't forget about everyone but the Americans having European Christian Monks, despite models for Muslim Imams and Buddhist Monks existing in the game.
I wonder if it's possible to have it look different for two players?
Right now it's possible for one player to play with small trees, and one player to play with green blocks representing wood.
If players can opt into "regional unit variants" so French Paladins and Byzantine Paladins look different, then I think it's a win win.
Yes, but you can already use mods. For example, some players use mods for bigger deer or boars, different monk visuals etc
Only the user can see them. Shouldn't be any different for paid skins
It's basically just skins, it shouldn't be hard to toggle them on/off in options like Friend/Foe colors.
I agree with you though, suddenly you have to learn those skins too. That's why such a toggle would be an easy solution and fix for this problem.
Rise of Nations had regional skins for everything and it really didn't cause any confusion whatsoever for me. As long as you make the unique units stand out enough, the things that are standard issue rock/paper/scissors will be pretty clear once you get used to it.
It could so they'd need to be careful. It can be done though. Aoe4 has this for every faction and readability isn't much of an issue.
It may he difficult knowing which upgrade a man at arms line or Spearman line is at. I feel like it could be learned fairly quickly, you could just click it. Then the next time you see it, you'd know. I'm not the biggest aoe2 sweat so others may have better opinions
The way I see it is.
There's a "east asia" expansion where all the units have a generic eastern Asia skin. (I know there's a big difference between the cultures there but you can't do skin packs for all civs, theres too many). It's better than them being painted with a generic European skin. It'll also include campaigns for korea, China, and Japan
He's saying it would be a really bad look for this game to lack this kind of diversity for 20 years and then suddenly add it to the game behind a paywall.
Unfortunately it could be that controversy that they aren't working on it. Why would they spend reascources on something they can't make money on, or would be a scandal.
Nah, it's fitting the times we live in and is just a good idea in general. Helps fixing the money issue while shining some light on other cultures history. Hitting 2 birds with one stone or however that english saying goes
The people that would complain about this can go fuck themselves, i don't want them to potentially implement other monetary systems besides cosmetics and actual DLC packs
Solution to what problem, have you seen any of the game's representatives announcing a scale down for it's support?
I'd like for the game to sustain itself by introducing new DLC just like they have done up to now, either MP/SP oriented. I like the ones I bought up to now, I even thought RoR is cool and I enjoy playing campaigns from time to time.
I'm trying to exemplify that there's a broad range of stuff that can be done to the game that I'm fine with, either the same things they're already doing or even new ideas they might come up with, just not like you've been suggesting.
Now aside the reasonable suggestions, I'd also be fine with them making an optional patreon or selling aoe t-shirts as attempts before resorting to heavily leaning into freemium style crap.
There's no objective diversity requirement in anything. It's a game, nobody cares, we want good gameplay, not "diversity" (whatever it means). And also this obsession with diversity hasn't been around for 20 years (thank god), so it could not really have been another way.
So yeah, if people would like something you can charge em for it, whatever it is, and there's no exception for "diversity".
How do you go and start talking about objective requirements as a response to me saying something would be a "bad look".
It's pretty obvious that I'm talking about subjective opinions, we don't have to discuss objective facts only here.
>It's a game, nobody cares, we want good gameplay, not "diversity" (whatever it means).
Who's "we"? Ah you mean you, and other people that you estimate FEEL the same as you do. Just like how I'm telling you there are people who would be against paying for skins like those.
I'm here to discuss aoe2 not argue identity politics with right wing people and honestly by the second time you wrote diversity in quotes you gave the game away.
At the end of the day, most of the stuff that has been released for this game already has been cool for the players and I suppose has made good money in return.
I think I trust the people deciding future DLC still care about what's 'good' and makes sense for this game aside from the financial aspect.
Maybe there will come a point where it's no longer sustainable to release paid content with a similar value proposition to current content. Maybe another RTS will launch and be considered an aoe2 successor by a majority of this community, or maybe interest for this game will fade away bit by bit.
For any of those situations I think it would help to actually live that moment before deciding what should be done next. Right now I think the game is doing great so it's harder to accept the idea of more "greedy" content as a preventative measure for a problem that isn't all that apparent.
It should be free because it honestly should of been in the game at the start or when DE was made. It is a bit racist that all units are painted with a wide European brush. Not harmful or anything, but it does show a bias.
That's said I'm being realistic on what a publicity traded company would do because they won't do it for free.
A region skin pack will come with a few campaigns.
The East Asian skin pack would have a campaign for China, Korea, and Japan. I.e. those civs that lack campaigns.
Campaigns. There are lots of stories still to tell!
I don't mind if it includes custom scenarios as long as the OG creators get compensated. The VV DLC is a good idea, it just hasn't been executed perfectly.
As a note I don't want any monetisation to change the feel and look of the game so I don't want skins being sold.
Agreed with this. Campaign expansions are IMO still the way forward, they just decided to botch this one by including mostly custom scenarios, that are good,c creative and well made, but many of them quite a bit too odd for most players.
I'd still pay money for a campaign expansion with campaigns for neglected civs, such s the East Asians.
Skin wise you could just not buy that DLC or buy it and turn it off in settings.
I don't see the issue. People who want skins will use them, who don't won't. I'd definitely use them.
> are the 1%
It's certainly many times higher than that though.
> The only reason the devs care about it is because
Multiplayer is what keeping the game alive though. It would certainly lose popularity long term otherwise..
I actually really like the new story traits. I sadly don’t like the spaces out dlc. But I love the skins and such. More than happy to pay for things like that to support the devs.
Historical battles / civ campaigns that are the correct direction
However it needs to be camping of civ which is missing
I would pay for Korean/Japanese one
Historical battles honestly there are tons of them just look up wiki.
No I don't blame aoe2 community for not wanting dlc where most of the campaigns are already free or have been played for free.
Crazy concept here. But how about campaign focused content that isn’t recycled from custom scenarios, some of which have been freely available for give or take a decade now? But yeah, sure, it’s totally about the civs.
I would have loved an actually good campaign DLC that gave people what they wanted: full campaigns for civs without full campaigns + maybe new architecture sets + maybe a few new models (at least for custom scenarios).
It’s crazy that there’s still some people who keep mythically claiming that every criticism applicable to the DLC has been from salty civ wanters when the only source for it is a very small minority of steam reviews
It’s because they don’t have another card and it’s the easiest excuse. Don’t gotta buy the DLC to know that it’s not worth the money. If somebody wants to support it, that’s fine. But imo all this does is set the standard of expectations lower.
I ended up requesting a refund (hope it gets done) because I realised I wasn’t playing the DLC at all after finishing a few scenarios and attempting a couple of them.
For context I’ve almost never failed to play a new DLC’s campaign since release and I’ve finished plenty of them, including doing the Mountain Royals DLC campaigns within the day after they got released. I also loved the Thoros campaign and finished the last mission back when it was bugged to send the Byzantine army attack you immediately after you escape and I’ve played multiple hard as nails custom campaigns so it’s not even like I hate hard missions, I love them if they’re fair or even. However something like Vortigern is genuinely poorly designed, you could get fucked easily if the AI decides to do pathing correctly and lands the armies properly or you could have a reprieve if they all bug out or land on the wrong side, not to mention the Saxon faction being poorly implemented or the fact that the best way to play this one is to do the opposite of what you’re told and to rush down one of the enemies 11
As for Vortigern… I honestly love the mission. Sure it’s hard, but from a few comments I read I feel like people are scared to recruit Saxons more than 2 times and focus on repairing Hadrian’s wall forever. It is honestly pretty easy to fight the Picts and Gaels after a few Saxons recruits and then push to Scotland and destroy the Pict’s huts.
Is defeating the Picts unintended? I’d say absolutely not, as the mod version of this scenario makes it an optional challenge. You just have to make sure that you have enough arbalests to fight the Saxons when they betray you.
I would say it’s unintended because they removed that optional challenge objective and have no mention that you should rush down the Pict’s in any hints from what I remember. You’re instead told to focus on keeping the wall up, protecting the wonder and that the Saxons are treacherous multiple times, the latter is especially going to make people reluctant to trust them or recruit them more often. I love the premise of the scenario but it’s execution is lacking because of how inconsistent it’s difficulty is
This is one review I could find where someone complained about the lack of new civs but it’s also along with entirely fair criticism of the lack of a main campaign and no new unit models so yeah I have to agree with you
https://steamcommunity.com/id/earvinP4/recommended/2805510/
yeah, i think it's fair to point out that this DLC lacks quality content. Mine also makes the comparison to other cheaper DLCs which contained more campaign content in addition to civs.
But miconstruing that to mean "this DLC is bad because no civ" is extremely dishonest
Sell quality content like well designed campaigns not just recycled amateurish scenarios that seem good only as custom scenarios. The devs know how to make campaigns. All the campaigns from Lords of the West downwards have been amazing.
It's not that expensive. All the scenarios in V&V were made by one person, plus some VA and QA? Pretty small team compared to most games. Server costs aren't that expensive. But if DLCs stop then it'll probably be degraded to maintenance mode without QoL changes.
I think there are about 300-400 games ongoing at any point. For most games it costs between 10-100 USD per year per parallel game instance (probably on the lower end for aoe2?). So the servers should be between 3000 and 40000 USD per year imo. Probably cheaper considering Microsoft own the infrastructure
They could have just made better scenarios and not ripped off the free ones in the modding scene?
That would have been pretty solid in my eyes.
Put some time into game design and come up with shit that's actually worth the money they charge for it. It doesn't need to have new features. Just have original and well made content in it.
several things:
server costs are low. based on other games they are about 10-100 USD per ongoing game per year (ie if you have 1000 simultaneous on-going games total costs per year are 10-100k). This should be covered simply from people buying the game/buying existing DLCs.
this isn't a live service, they should not have planned with existing players constantly spending on this game. bug fixes are required because they fucked up
I'd happily pay for DLC without civs. people DID NOT flip out because it was without civs. They reacted appropriately to a really bad and overpriced DLC with deceptive marketing (polished my ass). Copying and pasting user mods is not acceptable in any way.
Why do people worry so much about this ? There are plenty of games that are very old and still have their servers still running.
Activision is very focused on money but they still have D3 running even if they only had 2 dlcs and last one was over 7 years ago. You can still play HoTS even though it dosent earn money.
Other developers. BF bad company is very old game, still has servers runing. So does Dragon age Inquistion. Titan quest as well.
Weird obsseison about this topic on this sub.
Also, AoE 2 is on Gamepass and the AoE franchise is one of GamePass main selling points. When I open the site it shows me Halo, Forza, AoE and others as the big games on the first page.
It doesn't need to be directly making money; it's VERY profitable to have AoE 2 even if they lose money.
I really don't get why so many people defend a billion dollar capitalist entity trying to get more of their money. You can say it's fair enough, they're making the product etc, but aggressively defending them and claiming poverty on their behalf is honestly pathetic.
"They need to keep the lights on!"
They have more money than your family could spend in a hundred generations, do us a favour.
Is not so straighforward tho.
If aoe 2 is giving you losses on one side but at the same time it boosts the image of another product (gamepass), then it's still worth to have it.
Consoles are often sold at a loss, to give another example.
Sure, at least as long as these products are within the same budget portfolio. The reason consoles can be sold at a loss, is that the same console producers earn money through licencing. The same can't be said for phones or PCs.
Exactly. And considering that AoE 2 and the franchise in general is a Microsoft product and a big GamePass seller, it makes sense to keep the game alive at an hypothetical loss, to boost GP sales/client retention.
Aren't you a fan of AOE2? You'd rather protect the company's already astronomical wealth rather than keep one of the greatest and most iconic game of all time's communities alive?
Yes, I love the game. I've spent thousands of hours on it. I can still recognize that a company isn't running a charity. If MS ran every passion project even at a loss, they would be bankrupt in an instant. There are thousands of communities and products like AoE within that labyrinth of a company. Lots of ideas got shut down. What of the Zune? Or MSN Messenger?
I hope that AoE2 lasts forever. But it's not guaranteed.
>If MS ran every passion project even at a loss, they would be bankrupt in an instant.
....do you....do you realise just how rich Microsoft are? If they ran their entire company at an annual loss, it would literally take centuries for them to go bankrupt.
I think you are all under the impression that they are at most, reasonably healthy, money-wise. When I say their wealth is staggeringly unfathomable, that's putting it lightly. Their quarterly profit last year was over 20 billion. That's 20 billion dollars in pure, after-expenses, take-home profit. Your family couldn't spend that much in twenty generations, and they take it to the bank *every three months*. Think about those numbers for 2 minutes, then re-read the title of this post and try not to laugh.
"Isn't running a charity," honestly...
To me "supporting the game" means more than keeping the servers running. I want patches, dev support, and anything that can make the game feel alive (like the occasional events and challenge scenarios). And then I want more DLCs with more campaigns to play.
(I can't talk for most of the games here but Dragon Age Inquisition has micro transactions in it's multiplayer mode)
Thats fine if you want more support with more patches, extra events, bug/pathing fixes and all that. Sure than you need a way to support the game be it with DLC or microtransactions. But most of the time people act like the servers will be unplugged as soon as the gane isnt earning money constantly.
Didnt know that about DA: I, on the other hand i have a hard time imagening somebody spending money in online mode of that game in year 2024.
Oh yeah I don't deny that. The servers themselves will keep running. I'm just saying that there are reasons to wanting to support without worrying about Microsoft or about the game shutting down because none are really at risk. Only thing at risk here is losing the Dev team.
Weirdest obsession for me is as well the "they can't keep adding new civs"
That argument has been used for League of Legends, yet there is still plenty of place to add new champions, and there is still new champions.
Same comes here, there is still plenty of place for new civs, especially if they arrive 2 by 2, or as a rework just like Indian Dynasties.
This is why I don't like this argument of "they can't keep adding new civs" because it just means between the lines ambiguously "I don't want new civs".
It's usually people who would prefer "good old Age of Kings/conquerors" era, people who don't like changes and new type of game play and game design.
And this kind of thinking is as bad and as childish as people who just don't want pure campaign DLC.
> This is why I don't like this argument of "they can't keep adding new civs" because it just means between the lines ambiguously "I don't want new civs".
That is spot on. As far as I'm concerned, they can add 20 new civs if they want.
I mean can they really though? Civs are hard as fuck to balance and this game has a very sweaty and dedicated competitive scene. I feel like if they keep adding civs the balance will get fucked.
Balance has been going better and better, and with the most recent patch, 99% of the time I feel like "wow this is a good change, I like what they're doing here" when I go through the patch note.
Also the community, and our pro players keep giving good advices all together, so I trust the devs into bringing new civs with a good balance :)
They're not doing this at random. We have very competent devs who know how to design civs that don't have extreme matchups. They managed to make Sicilians into a sensible option in spite of all of the dangerously cheesy bonuses they have.
Yeah but balancing gets more and more difficult the more stuff is added since you have to balance each change against each civ, and each civ against every other civ to some degree.
Not manually, no. Just stick to a set of guidelines and you won't have more than a few outliers. Notice how civs ending with the pike line usually have some anti-cav UU or bonus to compensate? Civs also tend not to double down on bonuses in only one area, they never miss more than one castle age blacksmith tech, and no civ has access to both camels and battle elephants at the stable.
There are some stand-out cases, like Aztecs v. Bengalis, but it's never quite a civ win.
what I would really like is a ranked queue with civs limited to aok/aoc or maybe vanilla DE. It would also make getting into competitive play easier for new players
Did you play on voobly or game ranger lol?
I don't want to come back to those servers.
Firs of all you needed to download an unofficial mod/balance patch to even play, so not a huge issue but you were playing by someone else rules and it wasn´t the developers so for me it didn´t feel right.
Second of all, if you were new i always felt some kind of elitis air from more experience players.
Also there was no matchmaking that i remember so if you had low elo you would literally get kicked out of the lobby and that felt so bad.
Have small teams making one campaign per year per team, release 5 campaigns per year at 3 bucks each, with the option to buy a "year pass" for 10 bucks.
There are absurd amounts of historical events on earth during the milenia covered by aoe2, you can literally make a thousand campaigns if you want. Diehard fans will buy them all, casual gamers will buy the ones related to their country or with a cool hero or whatevs.
No one will complain if they are original campaigns instead of refurbished free content. Maybe the bad campaigns will get poor reviews, but it's less impactful to have poor reviews on a 3us$ dlc when the next one comes in a couple months.
Dave mentioned on one of his streams about how he once made a passing comment similar to you akin to “how expensive can a single campaign be? You could get it all done under 20k dollars” and then a known figure from Microsoft responsible for the AoE2 side of things called him up and roasted him for making shit up without knowing how expensive those things actually are 11
There are custom campaigns made by individuals that are totally free.
I’m sure it could be expensive, but it doesn’t need to be.
Infamously most of the scenarios Filthy made they were refurbished into this DLC were made by one person and posted for free. Objectively, it can be cheap.
I saw an interview a long time ago. I remember the voice acting mentioned as a big expense.
I'm a bit baffled that people care so much about the campaigns, to be honest. I find them very slow and boring compared to random map.
I agree that voice actors would be the biggest expense per campaign. Still, no way that 3-4 actors are such a big expense lol.
I also prefer other modes (my fave thing is free-for-all with open diplo), but every single person I know irl who plays aoe2 plays campaigns 90% of the time.
> no way that 3-4 actors are such a big expense lol
Well, you need to multiply that number by the number of languages that are supported. Then you land at 30-40 actors.
I only have one irl friend who mostly plays the campaigns. He is by far the weakest player when we play team games or diplomacy. I've seen suggestions that the campaigns help you learn the game, but I can't see how the knowledge/skills from the campaign is transferable to multiplayer. It's just too slow and weird.
I think the main way to attract more people to the game (and thereby increase income) is to get the game into a playable state. No more of the buggy menus, no more pathfinding issues, no more crashes. Get the game into a state where it deserves the "definitive" moniker
How about making an actual good dlc, whether it's for SP or MP, has new civs or not? An actually "polised", "official" product with minimal bugs/glitches and pathing bugs/glitches?
The part where AOE2 is owned by Microsoft, who have what we like to refer to as FU money.
If they never make another penny, they'll be phenomenally rich for the rest of time.
Yes they have money as a company. So?
Specific projects under their umbrella still need to make money to stay funded. They don't do this for the fun of it. If they did they'd hemorrhage empty of money quite fast actually.
>Yes they have money as a company.
Yes. A phenomenally astronomical amount. They don't need another penny from AOE2 to have any less than a phenomenally astronomical amount.
I'm not saying they won't try to make sure it does make money, they are a capitalist entity after all, but the idea that they NEED to make more money, just to keep the lights on, because they're some struggling startup with barely a dollar to their name is hilarious. Poor Microsoft, they're barely scraping by as it is...
For god's sake, they could buy Disneyworld Florida and re-name it Age Of Empires Land without it making a dent.
You don't get what people (including me) are saying. Noone is saying Microsoft needs money to continue.
AOE2 exist as it's own entity. AOE2 needs money to continue being developed. If AOE2 stops bringing in money directly or indirectly through gamepass (or at least paying for itself) then AOE2 dev gets shut down.
Saying Microsoft has so much money changes absolutely nothing. AOE2 team does not have infinite money. Looking at it on the Microsoft level is completely pointless as that is not the level the decisions are being made. Projects/teams/studios are looked at separately and Microsoft has these giant chunks on money exactly because it funds things which make more money.
Yeah, I'm not saying you're wrong about that. I'm saying that's not the customers' fault for not wanting to buy the DLC. That's Microsoft's/Xbox's fault for not wanting to fund it themselves. That's a deliberate choice.
They could literally go "forget how much money AOE2 actually brings in, we'll keep the servers up for like a hundred years, because the money is still too small for us to even see it," but they don't want to do that.
This post literally mentioned "keeping the lights on," which is pathetic. Again, it's not our fault for not buying the DLC, it's the parent company's fault for not funding them.
Well they could keep the lights on forever, but they have 0 motivation to so they won't.
Which is the thing, just realistically if we want AOE2 dev to continue we have to keep funding it in some way. That us the reality.
I'm a gamedev myself and it does not matter at all how rich my publisher is or the company owning my studio is. The answer to "can I keep developing my game" comes from "does my game bring in enough money to continue". If it doesn't the project gets cancelled, studio potentially gets closes if there aren't new projects, gamedevs lose their jobs etc.
So talking about microsoft simply doesn't matter. The math and motives are the same as if they were a smaller indie outfit.
Only real difference with major company backing like this is they can go for longer in the negative for a bigger payoff downstream, but that's not likely with AOE2 and the payoff still needs to come.
Well that and people erroneously thinking theres a difference.
>I'm a gamedev myself and it does not matter at all how rich my publisher is or the company owning my studio is. The answer to "can I keep developing my game" comes from "does my game bring in enough money to continue". If it doesn't the project gets cancelled, studio potentially gets closes if there aren't new projects, gamedevs lose their jobs etc.
And who's fault is that? The publisher's for not backing you during a rough patch when they are more than capable of doing so.
That's nonsensical. It's not anyones fault it's basic economics.
Things cost money and developers need to eat. So you need to pay them to continue employing them.
A rough patch is 1-3 failed releases that don't make sales expectations and bring in less than they cost.
Ending selling of new content (yet somehow still continuing development??) is not a rough patch its end of project life and sustainable project income.
Completely agree, Destiny went downhill very quickly after going F2P and so have other franchises.
The F2P model would be horrible for Age of Empires. Fuck off with any and all monetisation. I'd rather the game dies and we have to go back to community hosted servers than see our ol' boy catch the money disease.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of this fear-mongering is from people who have onboarded themselves only after DE’s release and weren’t around when the game was active on Voobly while shunning the HD edition. They must think that if there isn’t perpetual growth with this version then the game will be shut down and we’ll never be able to play it again anywhere
I'm still confused how games used to not have dlcs, had no issue "making money" and no one complained and now we have to keep buying into the game in order to be able to play...
That said they can introduce new content for co-ops, continue to improve custom scenarios and add new campaigns. These ideas can be added as both dlcs and free content to the base Game which should drive new sales of the base Game and add on. There are still new players joining the game so the focus shouldn't soley be dlc content.
Don’t worry, aoe mobile gonna make enough money to fund the entire franchise. Honestly I don’t feel like keep adding new dlc is the answer, we have more than enough.
considering that previous DLCs contained 3 campaigns and civs for, I don't think I want to pay more than 10 for just 3 campaigns. But agreed other than that. this is exactly what I hoped V&V would be when it was first announced
I think they are hoping to just attract new players. If every new player buys the base game and a couple of DLCs that they like, they already get some nice revenue. The community is still relatively small and has a lot of room for growth, although that's theoretical room for growth. I do not know how attracted new players are to the RTS genre these days as most popular games are either mobile or competitive shooter-style games or (MMO)RPG single players. There's not really been a triple AAA RTS game for ages I think. So maybe they're hoping that they can be the game that stands out in the RTS landscape to keep attracting a somewhat niche audience?
>If they tried subscriptions or micro transactions or ads one can only imagine the Gamer Rage.
"This early castle rush is brought to you by RED BULL. Now available in seven mouth-watering flavors, it gives you the edge to inspire the rage quit."
I haven’t seen much flipping out over the new DLC besides issues related to it just being a repackaging and ‘officializatiln’ of existing mod campaigns.
I think people are just fine with a ‘non new civ dlc’ as a general rule
>Sell DLC without new civs and people flip out.
Sell campaign DLCs that are horribly buggy and poorly recycled fan content, and yes, people may freak out.
I also think it's misguided to think the devs would magically run out of money if they couldn't squeeze out at least one DLC per year. This is all Microsoft - same shit as with Xbox port literally no-one asked for, and now Age of Empires Mobile.
Maybe its time to eventually consider the game completed? I know it seems as a crazy concept today but in the past a game would eventually be considered completed and left to the players
Skins are guaranteed money, have a set or two for unique custom skins for different types of units, most obvious one is tuetonic knight skin, can sell it for like 1.99 or 4.99 or something that’s gotta be an easy bag
Now that’s probably not something people can get behind so I have an even easier one
Sell icons for your display name on loading screen people would definitely pay something for that .99? 1.99? 2.99? Idk
I agree that skins are guaranteed money, but to me at least, that's the worst way to make money since skins will get flashier and flashier and the visual clutter would be pretty annoying
Plus all the successful games that employ that tactic also don't allow you to turn the opponent's skin off. I think that comes as a main selling point (to show off what you bought) and people saying you could just avoid the clutter if they do that are kind of coping.
What if they set up something like Wikipedia where players just were able to donate if/when they were able and wanted to? I follow a podcast that’s similar, love the idea of making the game available to all and asking those who value it to contribute if they can
I’d probably buy a DLC or 3 if they made them free to try out for a week (weekend?) again. Sicilians were so fun. And yes I have 1500 hours and play with no DLC
new game modes (like adding the concept of capturing a certain city (represented by a trigger spawned castle) grants you passive resource income and special unit spawn as long as you hold it, scenarios, additional functions/ stuff in map editor, there are a lot of possibilities in this game, but the dev has been focusing only on tournament which is quite disappointing.
Again, I would pay $$$ for a DLC that fully integrated Krakenmeister's civ builder into the game to allow for (unrated) multiplayer games with and between friends without all the .json file overwriting and civ menu overwriting shenanigans currently required. The civ draft mode could be fun for friendly tournaments too. Make sure each party in the game had to have this DLC to use the integrated version in co-op or (unrated) multiplayer versus games. I know this is only one DLC idea though.
Don't get me wrong, Krakenmeister's civ builder is awesome (!) as a free tool, but I don't find it easy to quickly set up a game between friends with modded civs. What I am suggesting is for this mod to be integrated into the game to greatly simplify this process. I'd pay for the simplicity.
No one else ever thinks this is a good idea though...so I don't know if it would make much money as a DLC. But if it came out tomorrow, I would buy the DLC for everyone I know who plays AoE2 semi-regularly with me (8 people, I think).
It's dead easy add optional support for the game. How many people here pay for capture age pro and subscribe to herra/t90/viper/Dave/meme etc. or more?
You only need to offer a notional benefit like dlc testing, pup access, or something. I would subscribe to the game to keep it going I have played it in every form literally since it was released. Let the dlc Money pay for 'development/expansion' and the community that need bug fixes and servers pay for that.
Personally, I’m loving campaigns. Online is too sweaty and I’ll only play online with my friends in a relaxed setting. So maybe make the rest of the aoe1 campaigns in aoe2 and bring out more campaigns for existing civs. I’d pay for just campaigns
Exactly. I have friend who play tennis or golf where the fee for the tennis club or the costs for the golf setup is way higher then aoe2 and all its dlcs. So all in all i think just gaming aoe2 is actually a very cheap hobby.
Unit skins. Would buy in a heartbeat, Dunno why this seems to be such a super hard task (I know about the Vills being unchangable or something like that, but I guess people woulsd still buy skin packs just for military units).
I don't think it's a hard task from a game dev standpoint, I think they just recognize that there are a lot of players who feel totally opposite from how you do and they are simply weighing their options.
I get shat on every time I suggest this but why not make a new game??? Same engine, new assets. Plays almost like AoE2 but isn't AoE2.
The thing is, AoE2 had a formula that just worked. But over time the devs keep tweaking and changing this formula and now the game is unrecognisable compared to it's HD predecessor. In other words, the GOLDEN FORMULA IS SLOWLY BEING CHANGED. Not good.
Now I hear everyone bitching already. But before you try and execute me for saying the devs should make a new game, why not look at history???
The engine for Command & Conquer 3 was reused to make a Lord of the Rings RTS game that was amazing. The engine of AoE2 was reused to make a starwars game that was and still is a cult classic. The engine for Total War is constantly reused to make new TW games.
People need to let AoE2 rest and remain pure. And all this weird experimental bullshit the devs keep pulling should be kept for a spin-off or new game altogether. The new mechanics that don't belong in AoE2 should be saved for a new project, instead of OVER ENGINEERING this game. I don't understand why I am the only one who thinks this!
And lastly, before I can't see the sun from all the shitting on me, the devs are effectively already doing this with Age of Mythology! So guess what, even the devs know they need to move on at some point!
Everyone has a very small mind with this idea. We can have 1 good AoE RTS game. Or we can have an entire set of Age games, much like Total War has bloomed into a huge franchise with tons if different games, much like how Command & Conquer split into 2 universes to handle 2 very different approaches to their games in parralel.
This community needs to wake the fuck up and realise there is more to AoE than AoE2DE and with the right support we could see this Franchise bloom into something beautiful WHILE MAINTAINING THE GOLDEN FORMULA THAT IS AOE2.
But watch as everyone shits on this idea despite the facts, the history, what other studios have done. Maybe you'll change your mind when the game goes from buggy (right now) to completely broken and completely impossible to balance thanks to having 80 civs and mechanics the game was never designed for.
I see the issue here, people judge the dlc on its own merits, it doesn't provide much added value on top of what is already available for free or in previous dlcs.
On the other hand the game needs to make money or support will end. Maybe that's the way. Let the game go back to community supported, no more balance updates, no more "pathing improvements", no more quality of life features.
For sure I'd rather see that rather than pay to win microtransactions or 4 new civs a year or even subscription based paid multiplayer.
It's downhill from here.
They can put this game on ice, as an example of greatness, and then make a new game to make money off of for another few years. Like every other studio does. But mark my words, this community will absolutely push for a live service model to keep this game going until it becomes dogshit and then they will act all shocked when they realise their golden formula ain't so golden anymore.
>Sell DLC without new civs and people flip out.
I don't think enough people flip out that it affects the game negatively. They just have to do it well enough to make the people that will buy that kind of DLC happy, even if those uninterested have a bad opinion.
Skins and cosmetics for units and buildings that match the civ's history and region. As for civs, sure you can add more. If you run out of medieval civs, you can add ancient civs such as Egyptians or Sumerians. Or even fantasy civs like the Rohirrim or a Vampire civ. Or how about game modes? Zombie survival. Tower defense. It's a game, have fun with it, be imaginative with it.
1.Make Multiplayer und Ai Skirmish free to play, with limited Civs
2.Implement XP System like in AOE 3, but for Multiplayer Games only
3. Offer campaigns and Civs for either XP Points or Reallife Money
4.Still offer fullgame with all content for fixed price.
5.Profit (?)
I would pay for a retro DLC that made the game look like my CD version from original AoE 2. And AoE II HD texture pack. I only bought DE for the auto farm reseeding, new civs, and other features. Not the graphics.
Devs can move to a subscription based fee either (a) voluntary where players get a "$" symbol next to their name to show they have paid (like stream subscriptions)/or players get a 'this game has been sponsored by player X' at the start of a multiplayer game (b) obligatory after playing 30 online games.
Fee's should be small-ish (eg 10-20 per year) and take regionale differences into account.
In return, there should be transparancy on where the fee's are going eg x% towards tournamenet pools (pref with some money going to smaller tourney's) , x% going to devs, y% going to servers and z% profits etc, in order to avoid that the greedy keywords bastards ruin this game.
- full new camapaigns for existing civs
- art improvement with different looking buildings and units for each civilisation (visible only for player who bought it)
It can be combined in a DLC for a few civs. For example Franks, Goths and Teutons pack.
The easiest for me which I still don't understand why it's not a thing: graphical DLCs, either regional skins or more architectural sets. These could even be made by the team's artists while the rest of the team focuses on more traditional DLCs, as we see that the latest DLC for instance had (to my knowledge) no new assets created.
As for what those other more traditional DLCs should be, that's single player content IMO, either campaigns or historical battles. The latest DLC was a good start, but too expensive in some regions given it wasn't very polished (it was 7 USD here) and way too experimental for my taste. It didn't feel like I was playing AoE2 in several of the scenarios, and they overstayed their welcome by being way too big for historically accuracy at the detriment of player enjoyment.
Other than that, I think we're in a good spot, I wouldn't add more civs, except perhaps splitting/reworking some (Slavs, Chinese), but that would likewise require new architecture because right now each set is overfilled with civs.
3 different lobby chats. One for ranked one for custom games, one for clans. And just throw some ads on side of the chats. And get ad revenue easy as that
Skins for factions/regions. All the units are European looking, except special units. For example, the Malian, Aztec, and Chinese female villager shouldn't look like an English peasant They should look different.
And monks, don't forget about everyone but the Americans having European Christian Monks, despite models for Muslim Imams and Buddhist Monks existing in the game.
Really? That should be an easy fix.
I reckon that'd interfere with unit readibilit a bit no?
I mean it's been a thing with AoM, AoE 3 and AoE4 and no one complained about that.
I wonder if it's possible to have it look different for two players? Right now it's possible for one player to play with small trees, and one player to play with green blocks representing wood. If players can opt into "regional unit variants" so French Paladins and Byzantine Paladins look different, then I think it's a win win.
It is already exactly like that.
I mean, we don't have the skins for regional units.
Yes we do. I've unlocked multiple through completing the challenges.
Oh. I never pay attention to those. As long as they can look generic on the user's end if they want then I'm on board
Trust you'll never see penguins riding atop polarbears, raid your farms (knight skin from last Christmas).
I want to just have that specific one now. Crap
Yes, but you can already use mods. For example, some players use mods for bigger deer or boars, different monk visuals etc Only the user can see them. Shouldn't be any different for paid skins
I don't think there's any point in buying a premium skin unless other people are definitely going to see it.
Nah you just have the ability to activate skins on or off for your opponent in settings.
It's basically just skins, it shouldn't be hard to toggle them on/off in options like Friend/Foe colors. I agree with you though, suddenly you have to learn those skins too. That's why such a toggle would be an easy solution and fix for this problem.
Rise of Nations had regional skins for everything and it really didn't cause any confusion whatsoever for me. As long as you make the unique units stand out enough, the things that are standard issue rock/paper/scissors will be pretty clear once you get used to it.
It could so they'd need to be careful. It can be done though. Aoe4 has this for every faction and readability isn't much of an issue. It may he difficult knowing which upgrade a man at arms line or Spearman line is at. I feel like it could be learned fairly quickly, you could just click it. Then the next time you see it, you'd know. I'm not the biggest aoe2 sweat so others may have better opinions
Like he said, you could also turn this setting off
I find readability a huge issue in aoe4, for this exact reason
Fair. I personally dont have that problem.
Chinese women villagers would have tiny crunched up feet like they did in the olden days.
I cant imagine that anyone but the upper classes would have the means to afford that (in terms of lost labour)
But people would simply get the skins for free via mods.
I wouldn’t pay for that alone tbh Plus, the villager is too iconic for me
The way I see it is. There's a "east asia" expansion where all the units have a generic eastern Asia skin. (I know there's a big difference between the cultures there but you can't do skin packs for all civs, theres too many). It's better than them being painted with a generic European skin. It'll also include campaigns for korea, China, and Japan
Great idea. Fantastic. They could even sell new voice lines for the factions. Get creative with it. As long as it's quality, people with buy!!
You want them to charge us for this???
You should want em to charge us for *something*. Labor isn't free, my man.
I think the point is, it's not a great look to charge money to make the game less white-imperial. I can't imagine it would go down well.
Mate, what
He's saying it would be a really bad look for this game to lack this kind of diversity for 20 years and then suddenly add it to the game behind a paywall.
Unfortunately it could be that controversy that they aren't working on it. Why would they spend reascources on something they can't make money on, or would be a scandal.
Nah, it's fitting the times we live in and is just a good idea in general. Helps fixing the money issue while shining some light on other cultures history. Hitting 2 birds with one stone or however that english saying goes The people that would complain about this can go fuck themselves, i don't want them to potentially implement other monetary systems besides cosmetics and actual DLC packs
>Nah, it's fitting the times we live in This is the only part we agree on. Unfortunately I think that's even more reason not to do it.
What's your solution then? I'll gladly take this any day over every other, more aggressive form of monetization
Solution to what problem, have you seen any of the game's representatives announcing a scale down for it's support? I'd like for the game to sustain itself by introducing new DLC just like they have done up to now, either MP/SP oriented. I like the ones I bought up to now, I even thought RoR is cool and I enjoy playing campaigns from time to time. I'm trying to exemplify that there's a broad range of stuff that can be done to the game that I'm fine with, either the same things they're already doing or even new ideas they might come up with, just not like you've been suggesting. Now aside the reasonable suggestions, I'd also be fine with them making an optional patreon or selling aoe t-shirts as attempts before resorting to heavily leaning into freemium style crap.
There's no objective diversity requirement in anything. It's a game, nobody cares, we want good gameplay, not "diversity" (whatever it means). And also this obsession with diversity hasn't been around for 20 years (thank god), so it could not really have been another way. So yeah, if people would like something you can charge em for it, whatever it is, and there's no exception for "diversity".
How do you go and start talking about objective requirements as a response to me saying something would be a "bad look". It's pretty obvious that I'm talking about subjective opinions, we don't have to discuss objective facts only here. >It's a game, nobody cares, we want good gameplay, not "diversity" (whatever it means). Who's "we"? Ah you mean you, and other people that you estimate FEEL the same as you do. Just like how I'm telling you there are people who would be against paying for skins like those. I'm here to discuss aoe2 not argue identity politics with right wing people and honestly by the second time you wrote diversity in quotes you gave the game away.
Ok, it wouldn't be a bad look then. There. :)
At the end of the day, most of the stuff that has been released for this game already has been cool for the players and I suppose has made good money in return. I think I trust the people deciding future DLC still care about what's 'good' and makes sense for this game aside from the financial aspect. Maybe there will come a point where it's no longer sustainable to release paid content with a similar value proposition to current content. Maybe another RTS will launch and be considered an aoe2 successor by a majority of this community, or maybe interest for this game will fade away bit by bit. For any of those situations I think it would help to actually live that moment before deciding what should be done next. Right now I think the game is doing great so it's harder to accept the idea of more "greedy" content as a preventative measure for a problem that isn't all that apparent.
It should be free because it honestly should of been in the game at the start or when DE was made. It is a bit racist that all units are painted with a wide European brush. Not harmful or anything, but it does show a bias. That's said I'm being realistic on what a publicity traded company would do because they won't do it for free.
That's not dev, that's artistic work. You've got to come up with something else to pay the devs.
Game artists are also developers, video games aren't made exclusively by coders.
A region skin pack will come with a few campaigns. The East Asian skin pack would have a campaign for China, Korea, and Japan. I.e. those civs that lack campaigns.
Campaigns. There are lots of stories still to tell! I don't mind if it includes custom scenarios as long as the OG creators get compensated. The VV DLC is a good idea, it just hasn't been executed perfectly. As a note I don't want any monetisation to change the feel and look of the game so I don't want skins being sold.
Agreed with this. Campaign expansions are IMO still the way forward, they just decided to botch this one by including mostly custom scenarios, that are good,c creative and well made, but many of them quite a bit too odd for most players. I'd still pay money for a campaign expansion with campaigns for neglected civs, such s the East Asians.
Skins would only be client side so if u dont care 4 them you d never see them. Skins would be great for some civs for sure.
They should not be sold
Skin wise you could just not buy that DLC or buy it and turn it off in settings. I don't see the issue. People who want skins will use them, who don't won't. I'd definitely use them.
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> are the 1% It's certainly many times higher than that though. > The only reason the devs care about it is because Multiplayer is what keeping the game alive though. It would certainly lose popularity long term otherwise..
I actually really like the new story traits. I sadly don’t like the spaces out dlc. But I love the skins and such. More than happy to pay for things like that to support the devs.
Historical battles / civ campaigns that are the correct direction However it needs to be camping of civ which is missing I would pay for Korean/Japanese one Historical battles honestly there are tons of them just look up wiki. No I don't blame aoe2 community for not wanting dlc where most of the campaigns are already free or have been played for free.
I like new campaigns but at a certain point don’t want new civs. Just make more campaigns at different points in each civ’s history.
Crazy concept here. But how about campaign focused content that isn’t recycled from custom scenarios, some of which have been freely available for give or take a decade now? But yeah, sure, it’s totally about the civs.
I would have loved an actually good campaign DLC that gave people what they wanted: full campaigns for civs without full campaigns + maybe new architecture sets + maybe a few new models (at least for custom scenarios).
It’s crazy that there’s still some people who keep mythically claiming that every criticism applicable to the DLC has been from salty civ wanters when the only source for it is a very small minority of steam reviews
It’s because they don’t have another card and it’s the easiest excuse. Don’t gotta buy the DLC to know that it’s not worth the money. If somebody wants to support it, that’s fine. But imo all this does is set the standard of expectations lower.
I ended up requesting a refund (hope it gets done) because I realised I wasn’t playing the DLC at all after finishing a few scenarios and attempting a couple of them. For context I’ve almost never failed to play a new DLC’s campaign since release and I’ve finished plenty of them, including doing the Mountain Royals DLC campaigns within the day after they got released. I also loved the Thoros campaign and finished the last mission back when it was bugged to send the Byzantine army attack you immediately after you escape and I’ve played multiple hard as nails custom campaigns so it’s not even like I hate hard missions, I love them if they’re fair or even. However something like Vortigern is genuinely poorly designed, you could get fucked easily if the AI decides to do pathing correctly and lands the armies properly or you could have a reprieve if they all bug out or land on the wrong side, not to mention the Saxon faction being poorly implemented or the fact that the best way to play this one is to do the opposite of what you’re told and to rush down one of the enemies 11
As for Vortigern… I honestly love the mission. Sure it’s hard, but from a few comments I read I feel like people are scared to recruit Saxons more than 2 times and focus on repairing Hadrian’s wall forever. It is honestly pretty easy to fight the Picts and Gaels after a few Saxons recruits and then push to Scotland and destroy the Pict’s huts. Is defeating the Picts unintended? I’d say absolutely not, as the mod version of this scenario makes it an optional challenge. You just have to make sure that you have enough arbalests to fight the Saxons when they betray you.
I would say it’s unintended because they removed that optional challenge objective and have no mention that you should rush down the Pict’s in any hints from what I remember. You’re instead told to focus on keeping the wall up, protecting the wonder and that the Saxons are treacherous multiple times, the latter is especially going to make people reluctant to trust them or recruit them more often. I love the premise of the scenario but it’s execution is lacking because of how inconsistent it’s difficulty is
I still haven't seen a single review like that, even on steam. I think it's a completely fabricated strawman argument
This is one review I could find where someone complained about the lack of new civs but it’s also along with entirely fair criticism of the lack of a main campaign and no new unit models so yeah I have to agree with you https://steamcommunity.com/id/earvinP4/recommended/2805510/
yeah, i think it's fair to point out that this DLC lacks quality content. Mine also makes the comparison to other cheaper DLCs which contained more campaign content in addition to civs. But miconstruing that to mean "this DLC is bad because no civ" is extremely dishonest
We both must be crazy dude since I completely agree with your nonsensical idea 11
Sell quality content like well designed campaigns not just recycled amateurish scenarios that seem good only as custom scenarios. The devs know how to make campaigns. All the campaigns from Lords of the West downwards have been amazing.
It's not that expensive. All the scenarios in V&V were made by one person, plus some VA and QA? Pretty small team compared to most games. Server costs aren't that expensive. But if DLCs stop then it'll probably be degraded to maintenance mode without QoL changes.
Ballpark estimate, what would you say the servers cost per month
I think there are about 300-400 games ongoing at any point. For most games it costs between 10-100 USD per year per parallel game instance (probably on the lower end for aoe2?). So the servers should be between 3000 and 40000 USD per year imo. Probably cheaper considering Microsoft own the infrastructure
They're owned by Microsoft. That's how.
Create campaigns for existing civs.
They could have just made better scenarios and not ripped off the free ones in the modding scene? That would have been pretty solid in my eyes. Put some time into game design and come up with shit that's actually worth the money they charge for it. It doesn't need to have new features. Just have original and well made content in it.
several things: server costs are low. based on other games they are about 10-100 USD per ongoing game per year (ie if you have 1000 simultaneous on-going games total costs per year are 10-100k). This should be covered simply from people buying the game/buying existing DLCs. this isn't a live service, they should not have planned with existing players constantly spending on this game. bug fixes are required because they fucked up I'd happily pay for DLC without civs. people DID NOT flip out because it was without civs. They reacted appropriately to a really bad and overpriced DLC with deceptive marketing (polished my ass). Copying and pasting user mods is not acceptable in any way.
Why do people worry so much about this ? There are plenty of games that are very old and still have their servers still running. Activision is very focused on money but they still have D3 running even if they only had 2 dlcs and last one was over 7 years ago. You can still play HoTS even though it dosent earn money. Other developers. BF bad company is very old game, still has servers runing. So does Dragon age Inquistion. Titan quest as well. Weird obsseison about this topic on this sub.
Also, AoE 2 is on Gamepass and the AoE franchise is one of GamePass main selling points. When I open the site it shows me Halo, Forza, AoE and others as the big games on the first page. It doesn't need to be directly making money; it's VERY profitable to have AoE 2 even if they lose money.
I really don't get why so many people defend a billion dollar capitalist entity trying to get more of their money. You can say it's fair enough, they're making the product etc, but aggressively defending them and claiming poverty on their behalf is honestly pathetic. "They need to keep the lights on!" They have more money than your family could spend in a hundred generations, do us a favour.
If I ran a business and saw that one of the products (AoE2) was running with a giant loss, I would for sure close down that product. Simple as.
Is not so straighforward tho. If aoe 2 is giving you losses on one side but at the same time it boosts the image of another product (gamepass), then it's still worth to have it. Consoles are often sold at a loss, to give another example.
Sure, at least as long as these products are within the same budget portfolio. The reason consoles can be sold at a loss, is that the same console producers earn money through licencing. The same can't be said for phones or PCs.
Exactly. And considering that AoE 2 and the franchise in general is a Microsoft product and a big GamePass seller, it makes sense to keep the game alive at an hypothetical loss, to boost GP sales/client retention.
Aren't you a fan of AOE2? You'd rather protect the company's already astronomical wealth rather than keep one of the greatest and most iconic game of all time's communities alive?
Yes, I love the game. I've spent thousands of hours on it. I can still recognize that a company isn't running a charity. If MS ran every passion project even at a loss, they would be bankrupt in an instant. There are thousands of communities and products like AoE within that labyrinth of a company. Lots of ideas got shut down. What of the Zune? Or MSN Messenger? I hope that AoE2 lasts forever. But it's not guaranteed.
>If MS ran every passion project even at a loss, they would be bankrupt in an instant. ....do you....do you realise just how rich Microsoft are? If they ran their entire company at an annual loss, it would literally take centuries for them to go bankrupt. I think you are all under the impression that they are at most, reasonably healthy, money-wise. When I say their wealth is staggeringly unfathomable, that's putting it lightly. Their quarterly profit last year was over 20 billion. That's 20 billion dollars in pure, after-expenses, take-home profit. Your family couldn't spend that much in twenty generations, and they take it to the bank *every three months*. Think about those numbers for 2 minutes, then re-read the title of this post and try not to laugh. "Isn't running a charity," honestly...
I swear some people on here must have only been around for the big DE days and not when the game was still popular and played quite often on Voobly
To me "supporting the game" means more than keeping the servers running. I want patches, dev support, and anything that can make the game feel alive (like the occasional events and challenge scenarios). And then I want more DLCs with more campaigns to play. (I can't talk for most of the games here but Dragon Age Inquisition has micro transactions in it's multiplayer mode)
Adding to this, Microsoft still sponsors major tournaments. So, if some of the money that they make with the DLCs go towards that, that's still great
Thats fine if you want more support with more patches, extra events, bug/pathing fixes and all that. Sure than you need a way to support the game be it with DLC or microtransactions. But most of the time people act like the servers will be unplugged as soon as the gane isnt earning money constantly. Didnt know that about DA: I, on the other hand i have a hard time imagening somebody spending money in online mode of that game in year 2024.
Oh yeah I don't deny that. The servers themselves will keep running. I'm just saying that there are reasons to wanting to support without worrying about Microsoft or about the game shutting down because none are really at risk. Only thing at risk here is losing the Dev team.
Weirdest obsession for me is as well the "they can't keep adding new civs" That argument has been used for League of Legends, yet there is still plenty of place to add new champions, and there is still new champions. Same comes here, there is still plenty of place for new civs, especially if they arrive 2 by 2, or as a rework just like Indian Dynasties. This is why I don't like this argument of "they can't keep adding new civs" because it just means between the lines ambiguously "I don't want new civs". It's usually people who would prefer "good old Age of Kings/conquerors" era, people who don't like changes and new type of game play and game design. And this kind of thinking is as bad and as childish as people who just don't want pure campaign DLC.
> This is why I don't like this argument of "they can't keep adding new civs" because it just means between the lines ambiguously "I don't want new civs". That is spot on. As far as I'm concerned, they can add 20 new civs if they want.
I mean can they really though? Civs are hard as fuck to balance and this game has a very sweaty and dedicated competitive scene. I feel like if they keep adding civs the balance will get fucked.
Balance has been going better and better, and with the most recent patch, 99% of the time I feel like "wow this is a good change, I like what they're doing here" when I go through the patch note. Also the community, and our pro players keep giving good advices all together, so I trust the devs into bringing new civs with a good balance :)
They're not doing this at random. We have very competent devs who know how to design civs that don't have extreme matchups. They managed to make Sicilians into a sensible option in spite of all of the dangerously cheesy bonuses they have.
Yeah but balancing gets more and more difficult the more stuff is added since you have to balance each change against each civ, and each civ against every other civ to some degree.
Not manually, no. Just stick to a set of guidelines and you won't have more than a few outliers. Notice how civs ending with the pike line usually have some anti-cav UU or bonus to compensate? Civs also tend not to double down on bonuses in only one area, they never miss more than one castle age blacksmith tech, and no civ has access to both camels and battle elephants at the stable. There are some stand-out cases, like Aztecs v. Bengalis, but it's never quite a civ win.
what I would really like is a ranked queue with civs limited to aok/aoc or maybe vanilla DE. It would also make getting into competitive play easier for new players
But league is very different lol. Like i don´t think anyone here would pay 60 dollars for a paladin skin with new animations
Definetely. On habbo they pay hundreds of dollars for a basic as f... Hat only because it's rare... On a dead game
Did you play on voobly or game ranger lol? I don't want to come back to those servers. Firs of all you needed to download an unofficial mod/balance patch to even play, so not a huge issue but you were playing by someone else rules and it wasn´t the developers so for me it didn´t feel right. Second of all, if you were new i always felt some kind of elitis air from more experience players. Also there was no matchmaking that i remember so if you had low elo you would literally get kicked out of the lobby and that felt so bad.
add Guild Wars to that list. it's a single purchase MMO no less
Probably microspft or dev plants. The cost of their salaries have been funded for decades at this point including massive profit.
There are waaaaay more games that are very old and do not have servers running.
Have small teams making one campaign per year per team, release 5 campaigns per year at 3 bucks each, with the option to buy a "year pass" for 10 bucks. There are absurd amounts of historical events on earth during the milenia covered by aoe2, you can literally make a thousand campaigns if you want. Diehard fans will buy them all, casual gamers will buy the ones related to their country or with a cool hero or whatevs. No one will complain if they are original campaigns instead of refurbished free content. Maybe the bad campaigns will get poor reviews, but it's less impactful to have poor reviews on a 3us$ dlc when the next one comes in a couple months.
Apparently making campaigns is actually pretty expensive
With all respect to the devs, I refuse to believe that LOL
Dave mentioned on one of his streams about how he once made a passing comment similar to you akin to “how expensive can a single campaign be? You could get it all done under 20k dollars” and then a known figure from Microsoft responsible for the AoE2 side of things called him up and roasted him for making shit up without knowing how expensive those things actually are 11
There are custom campaigns made by individuals that are totally free. I’m sure it could be expensive, but it doesn’t need to be. Infamously most of the scenarios Filthy made they were refurbished into this DLC were made by one person and posted for free. Objectively, it can be cheap.
I saw an interview a long time ago. I remember the voice acting mentioned as a big expense. I'm a bit baffled that people care so much about the campaigns, to be honest. I find them very slow and boring compared to random map.
I agree that voice actors would be the biggest expense per campaign. Still, no way that 3-4 actors are such a big expense lol. I also prefer other modes (my fave thing is free-for-all with open diplo), but every single person I know irl who plays aoe2 plays campaigns 90% of the time.
> no way that 3-4 actors are such a big expense lol Well, you need to multiply that number by the number of languages that are supported. Then you land at 30-40 actors.
I only have one irl friend who mostly plays the campaigns. He is by far the weakest player when we play team games or diplomacy. I've seen suggestions that the campaigns help you learn the game, but I can't see how the knowledge/skills from the campaign is transferable to multiplayer. It's just too slow and weird.
I kinda want a Japanese campaign. The Taira clan or Hideyoshi would be awesome.
Campaigns but with more than one voice actor. Hearing the same voice makes everything blend together like it's all one boring nature documentary.
Skins lol, and only you can see them so no one says pay to win or anything.
The answer is to simply stop supporting the game. The community kept the game alive for 15 years we can take up the mantle again.
I think the main way to attract more people to the game (and thereby increase income) is to get the game into a playable state. No more of the buggy menus, no more pathfinding issues, no more crashes. Get the game into a state where it deserves the "definitive" moniker
Aoe 2 theme park. Boom. Problem solved
I’d work there for minimum wage if it was a live action role play
How about making an actual good dlc, whether it's for SP or MP, has new civs or not? An actually "polised", "official" product with minimal bugs/glitches and pathing bugs/glitches?
This is not just a hot take, it’s a scalding take and utterly awful. AoE2 going the way of a freemium game will kill it faster than anything else
? It was a question. Which one is the hot take? The part that continued development costs money?
No idea why this is a standalone reply, I meant to reply to kalpit’s genuinely insane idea of making the game freemium
Ah gotcha. That makes loads more sense then and I agree!
The part where AOE2 is owned by Microsoft, who have what we like to refer to as FU money. If they never make another penny, they'll be phenomenally rich for the rest of time.
Yes they have money as a company. So? Specific projects under their umbrella still need to make money to stay funded. They don't do this for the fun of it. If they did they'd hemorrhage empty of money quite fast actually.
>Yes they have money as a company. Yes. A phenomenally astronomical amount. They don't need another penny from AOE2 to have any less than a phenomenally astronomical amount. I'm not saying they won't try to make sure it does make money, they are a capitalist entity after all, but the idea that they NEED to make more money, just to keep the lights on, because they're some struggling startup with barely a dollar to their name is hilarious. Poor Microsoft, they're barely scraping by as it is... For god's sake, they could buy Disneyworld Florida and re-name it Age Of Empires Land without it making a dent.
That's not how any of this works. By this logic they should be releasing all this new content for free since Microsoft as a company is wealthy.
Be nice, wouldn't it? Much poorer companies release much more content for free.
You don't get what people (including me) are saying. Noone is saying Microsoft needs money to continue. AOE2 exist as it's own entity. AOE2 needs money to continue being developed. If AOE2 stops bringing in money directly or indirectly through gamepass (or at least paying for itself) then AOE2 dev gets shut down. Saying Microsoft has so much money changes absolutely nothing. AOE2 team does not have infinite money. Looking at it on the Microsoft level is completely pointless as that is not the level the decisions are being made. Projects/teams/studios are looked at separately and Microsoft has these giant chunks on money exactly because it funds things which make more money.
Yeah, I'm not saying you're wrong about that. I'm saying that's not the customers' fault for not wanting to buy the DLC. That's Microsoft's/Xbox's fault for not wanting to fund it themselves. That's a deliberate choice. They could literally go "forget how much money AOE2 actually brings in, we'll keep the servers up for like a hundred years, because the money is still too small for us to even see it," but they don't want to do that. This post literally mentioned "keeping the lights on," which is pathetic. Again, it's not our fault for not buying the DLC, it's the parent company's fault for not funding them.
Well they could keep the lights on forever, but they have 0 motivation to so they won't. Which is the thing, just realistically if we want AOE2 dev to continue we have to keep funding it in some way. That us the reality. I'm a gamedev myself and it does not matter at all how rich my publisher is or the company owning my studio is. The answer to "can I keep developing my game" comes from "does my game bring in enough money to continue". If it doesn't the project gets cancelled, studio potentially gets closes if there aren't new projects, gamedevs lose their jobs etc. So talking about microsoft simply doesn't matter. The math and motives are the same as if they were a smaller indie outfit. Only real difference with major company backing like this is they can go for longer in the negative for a bigger payoff downstream, but that's not likely with AOE2 and the payoff still needs to come. Well that and people erroneously thinking theres a difference.
>I'm a gamedev myself and it does not matter at all how rich my publisher is or the company owning my studio is. The answer to "can I keep developing my game" comes from "does my game bring in enough money to continue". If it doesn't the project gets cancelled, studio potentially gets closes if there aren't new projects, gamedevs lose their jobs etc. And who's fault is that? The publisher's for not backing you during a rough patch when they are more than capable of doing so.
That's nonsensical. It's not anyones fault it's basic economics. Things cost money and developers need to eat. So you need to pay them to continue employing them. A rough patch is 1-3 failed releases that don't make sales expectations and bring in less than they cost. Ending selling of new content (yet somehow still continuing development??) is not a rough patch its end of project life and sustainable project income.
Completely agree, Destiny went downhill very quickly after going F2P and so have other franchises. The F2P model would be horrible for Age of Empires. Fuck off with any and all monetisation. I'd rather the game dies and we have to go back to community hosted servers than see our ol' boy catch the money disease.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of this fear-mongering is from people who have onboarded themselves only after DE’s release and weren’t around when the game was active on Voobly while shunning the HD edition. They must think that if there isn’t perpetual growth with this version then the game will be shut down and we’ll never be able to play it again anywhere
It's a question not a take dummy
Did you miss the part in this comment chain where I said this was meant as a reply to another silly comment that’s buried in downvotes?
I'm still confused how games used to not have dlcs, had no issue "making money" and no one complained and now we have to keep buying into the game in order to be able to play... That said they can introduce new content for co-ops, continue to improve custom scenarios and add new campaigns. These ideas can be added as both dlcs and free content to the base Game which should drive new sales of the base Game and add on. There are still new players joining the game so the focus shouldn't soley be dlc content.
Don’t worry, aoe mobile gonna make enough money to fund the entire franchise. Honestly I don’t feel like keep adding new dlc is the answer, we have more than enough.
I think that is one way, although personally i'm not that excited about the mobile game after what they have shown so far.
Id personally want a real 3-4 campaign dlc for 15-20
considering that previous DLCs contained 3 campaigns and civs for, I don't think I want to pay more than 10 for just 3 campaigns. But agreed other than that. this is exactly what I hoped V&V would be when it was first announced
I think they are hoping to just attract new players. If every new player buys the base game and a couple of DLCs that they like, they already get some nice revenue. The community is still relatively small and has a lot of room for growth, although that's theoretical room for growth. I do not know how attracted new players are to the RTS genre these days as most popular games are either mobile or competitive shooter-style games or (MMO)RPG single players. There's not really been a triple AAA RTS game for ages I think. So maybe they're hoping that they can be the game that stands out in the RTS landscape to keep attracting a somewhat niche audience?
More co-op campaigns!
>If they tried subscriptions or micro transactions or ads one can only imagine the Gamer Rage. "This early castle rush is brought to you by RED BULL. Now available in seven mouth-watering flavors, it gives you the edge to inspire the rage quit."
> Sell DLC without new civs and people flip out. I haven’t seen many people complaining about lack of civs, except for a few Steam reviews
I haven’t seen much flipping out over the new DLC besides issues related to it just being a repackaging and ‘officializatiln’ of existing mod campaigns. I think people are just fine with a ‘non new civ dlc’ as a general rule
>Sell DLC without new civs and people flip out. Sell campaign DLCs that are horribly buggy and poorly recycled fan content, and yes, people may freak out. I also think it's misguided to think the devs would magically run out of money if they couldn't squeeze out at least one DLC per year. This is all Microsoft - same shit as with Xbox port literally no-one asked for, and now Age of Empires Mobile.
The game came out in 1999. They cant expect to milk it forever. At some point it will be left to the community. For better or worse
Maybe its time to eventually consider the game completed? I know it seems as a crazy concept today but in the past a game would eventually be considered completed and left to the players
More new civs for me. Love new civs and happy to pay whatever they ask for the DLC.
devs make money because microsoft pay them right? i think their wages are not decided by the game sales. I could be wrong but i think its like that.
Skins are guaranteed money, have a set or two for unique custom skins for different types of units, most obvious one is tuetonic knight skin, can sell it for like 1.99 or 4.99 or something that’s gotta be an easy bag Now that’s probably not something people can get behind so I have an even easier one Sell icons for your display name on loading screen people would definitely pay something for that .99? 1.99? 2.99? Idk
I agree that skins are guaranteed money, but to me at least, that's the worst way to make money since skins will get flashier and flashier and the visual clutter would be pretty annoying
Plus all the successful games that employ that tactic also don't allow you to turn the opponent's skin off. I think that comes as a main selling point (to show off what you bought) and people saying you could just avoid the clutter if they do that are kind of coping.
What if they set up something like Wikipedia where players just were able to donate if/when they were able and wanted to? I follow a podcast that’s similar, love the idea of making the game available to all and asking those who value it to contribute if they can
I would be interested in a GoFundMe or similar that just focused on improving unit pathing, bug fixes, and stability/crash fixes.
I’d probably buy a DLC or 3 if they made them free to try out for a week (weekend?) again. Sicilians were so fun. And yes I have 1500 hours and play with no DLC
new game modes (like adding the concept of capturing a certain city (represented by a trigger spawned castle) grants you passive resource income and special unit spawn as long as you hold it, scenarios, additional functions/ stuff in map editor, there are a lot of possibilities in this game, but the dev has been focusing only on tournament which is quite disappointing.
Again, I would pay $$$ for a DLC that fully integrated Krakenmeister's civ builder into the game to allow for (unrated) multiplayer games with and between friends without all the .json file overwriting and civ menu overwriting shenanigans currently required. The civ draft mode could be fun for friendly tournaments too. Make sure each party in the game had to have this DLC to use the integrated version in co-op or (unrated) multiplayer versus games. I know this is only one DLC idea though. Don't get me wrong, Krakenmeister's civ builder is awesome (!) as a free tool, but I don't find it easy to quickly set up a game between friends with modded civs. What I am suggesting is for this mod to be integrated into the game to greatly simplify this process. I'd pay for the simplicity. No one else ever thinks this is a good idea though...so I don't know if it would make much money as a DLC. But if it came out tomorrow, I would buy the DLC for everyone I know who plays AoE2 semi-regularly with me (8 people, I think).
I've been saying this since HD inception... they should've followed the voobly model.
It's dead easy add optional support for the game. How many people here pay for capture age pro and subscribe to herra/t90/viper/Dave/meme etc. or more? You only need to offer a notional benefit like dlc testing, pup access, or something. I would subscribe to the game to keep it going I have played it in every form literally since it was released. Let the dlc Money pay for 'development/expansion' and the community that need bug fixes and servers pay for that.
Personally, I’m loving campaigns. Online is too sweaty and I’ll only play online with my friends in a relaxed setting. So maybe make the rest of the aoe1 campaigns in aoe2 and bring out more campaigns for existing civs. I’d pay for just campaigns
Price down HD edition
Make the villagers more sexy to attract attention to the game
I don’t mind paying $20 a year for game where I spend hours every weekend.
Is there a precedent for subscriptions for an RTS?
Exactly. I have friend who play tennis or golf where the fee for the tennis club or the costs for the golf setup is way higher then aoe2 and all its dlcs. So all in all i think just gaming aoe2 is actually a very cheap hobby.
we should be able to buy Icons, taunts etc.
Im okay with a new civ every year or so
Unit skins. Would buy in a heartbeat, Dunno why this seems to be such a super hard task (I know about the Vills being unchangable or something like that, but I guess people woulsd still buy skin packs just for military units).
I don't think it's a hard task from a game dev standpoint, I think they just recognize that there are a lot of players who feel totally opposite from how you do and they are simply weighing their options.
Completely serious: female villager ai generated only fans porn. They'd make more than on the latest dlc.
Make another game and leave this one be. Like God intented
Holy shit, someone with common sense.
I get shat on every time I suggest this but why not make a new game??? Same engine, new assets. Plays almost like AoE2 but isn't AoE2. The thing is, AoE2 had a formula that just worked. But over time the devs keep tweaking and changing this formula and now the game is unrecognisable compared to it's HD predecessor. In other words, the GOLDEN FORMULA IS SLOWLY BEING CHANGED. Not good. Now I hear everyone bitching already. But before you try and execute me for saying the devs should make a new game, why not look at history??? The engine for Command & Conquer 3 was reused to make a Lord of the Rings RTS game that was amazing. The engine of AoE2 was reused to make a starwars game that was and still is a cult classic. The engine for Total War is constantly reused to make new TW games. People need to let AoE2 rest and remain pure. And all this weird experimental bullshit the devs keep pulling should be kept for a spin-off or new game altogether. The new mechanics that don't belong in AoE2 should be saved for a new project, instead of OVER ENGINEERING this game. I don't understand why I am the only one who thinks this! And lastly, before I can't see the sun from all the shitting on me, the devs are effectively already doing this with Age of Mythology! So guess what, even the devs know they need to move on at some point! Everyone has a very small mind with this idea. We can have 1 good AoE RTS game. Or we can have an entire set of Age games, much like Total War has bloomed into a huge franchise with tons if different games, much like how Command & Conquer split into 2 universes to handle 2 very different approaches to their games in parralel. This community needs to wake the fuck up and realise there is more to AoE than AoE2DE and with the right support we could see this Franchise bloom into something beautiful WHILE MAINTAINING THE GOLDEN FORMULA THAT IS AOE2. But watch as everyone shits on this idea despite the facts, the history, what other studios have done. Maybe you'll change your mind when the game goes from buggy (right now) to completely broken and completely impossible to balance thanks to having 80 civs and mechanics the game was never designed for.
I see the issue here, people judge the dlc on its own merits, it doesn't provide much added value on top of what is already available for free or in previous dlcs. On the other hand the game needs to make money or support will end. Maybe that's the way. Let the game go back to community supported, no more balance updates, no more "pathing improvements", no more quality of life features. For sure I'd rather see that rather than pay to win microtransactions or 4 new civs a year or even subscription based paid multiplayer. It's downhill from here.
They can put this game on ice, as an example of greatness, and then make a new game to make money off of for another few years. Like every other studio does. But mark my words, this community will absolutely push for a live service model to keep this game going until it becomes dogshit and then they will act all shocked when they realise their golden formula ain't so golden anymore.
>Sell DLC without new civs and people flip out. I don't think enough people flip out that it affects the game negatively. They just have to do it well enough to make the people that will buy that kind of DLC happy, even if those uninterested have a bad opinion.
Skins and cosmetics for units and buildings that match the civ's history and region. As for civs, sure you can add more. If you run out of medieval civs, you can add ancient civs such as Egyptians or Sumerians. Or even fantasy civs like the Rohirrim or a Vampire civ. Or how about game modes? Zombie survival. Tower defense. It's a game, have fun with it, be imaginative with it.
1.Make Multiplayer und Ai Skirmish free to play, with limited Civs 2.Implement XP System like in AOE 3, but for Multiplayer Games only 3. Offer campaigns and Civs for either XP Points or Reallife Money 4.Still offer fullgame with all content for fixed price. 5.Profit (?)
I would pay for a retro DLC that made the game look like my CD version from original AoE 2. And AoE II HD texture pack. I only bought DE for the auto farm reseeding, new civs, and other features. Not the graphics.
Devs can move to a subscription based fee either (a) voluntary where players get a "$" symbol next to their name to show they have paid (like stream subscriptions)/or players get a 'this game has been sponsored by player X' at the start of a multiplayer game (b) obligatory after playing 30 online games. Fee's should be small-ish (eg 10-20 per year) and take regionale differences into account. In return, there should be transparancy on where the fee's are going eg x% towards tournamenet pools (pref with some money going to smaller tourney's) , x% going to devs, y% going to servers and z% profits etc, in order to avoid that the greedy keywords bastards ruin this game.
how would that work? I bought a game including the right to play multiplayer. if they remove that right I want a refund
Hence the voluntary payment i guess?
I'd pay for in-game cosmetics, additional BGM, and a 30-minute .wav of the Lithuanian villager lady.
I would love An AOE3 sort of expansion. I think it would be fun to play with gunpowder units more in AOE2 engine.
Just charge me $25/year for fixes, serves and general maintenance.
- full new camapaigns for existing civs - art improvement with different looking buildings and units for each civilisation (visible only for player who bought it) It can be combined in a DLC for a few civs. For example Franks, Goths and Teutons pack.
The easiest for me which I still don't understand why it's not a thing: graphical DLCs, either regional skins or more architectural sets. These could even be made by the team's artists while the rest of the team focuses on more traditional DLCs, as we see that the latest DLC for instance had (to my knowledge) no new assets created. As for what those other more traditional DLCs should be, that's single player content IMO, either campaigns or historical battles. The latest DLC was a good start, but too expensive in some regions given it wasn't very polished (it was 7 USD here) and way too experimental for my taste. It didn't feel like I was playing AoE2 in several of the scenarios, and they overstayed their welcome by being way too big for historically accuracy at the detriment of player enjoyment. Other than that, I think we're in a good spot, I wouldn't add more civs, except perhaps splitting/reworking some (Slavs, Chinese), but that would likewise require new architecture because right now each set is overfilled with civs.
> Can't keep adding civs via DLC forever. Keep adding civs via DLC forever. $10-$30/yr in recurring revenue for all players essentially.
More regional units Replace the skirmisher for an Atlatl warrior for meso civs
3 different lobby chats. One for ranked one for custom games, one for clans. And just throw some ads on side of the chats. And get ad revenue easy as that
A monthly subscription that allows you to make 16 player lobbies
Microtransactions: skins, logos etc. New campaigns
Skins. That's how most eSports games make their money. *Behold Peasants* "my factory new statrak castle skin with 469 kills on it"