I'd like to add that they marketed this to us as a "campaign focused" exapnsion, but as soon as the event was done, and it was obvious it didn't actually contain any campaigns, the FB, instagram, X posts all described it as "single player focused". they knew the community wanted campaigns, had none to sell, so tried to jedi mind trick us that what they had was what we wanted. Honest to God I'm putting together an open letter about this. Hoping to get a bunch of people on the forums to co-sign. We as a community should not be lied to.
I always said that a Campaign only DLC is a terrible idea because people can simply download scenarios made by creators that upload their own scenarios, or just simply try and learn how to use the scenario Editor. The only way I could see a Campaign DLC would work is by not only delivering campaigns ( that most or all should be brand new not like the current DLC) but also improving the Scenario Editor and adding tons of new Triggers, Objects, Buildings, Heroes and Units for being used in the scenario Editor. Sadly a lot of AOE II forums people constantly said that they wanted a " campaign only" DLC I can tell you i participate a lot on these kind of forums also i am an Administrator in the AOE Wiki in Fandom.
@papermaniac I love the idea of adding value to a campaign only DLC by expanding editor options. I think that if the DLC had only been three basic campaigns, each six scenarios long, I would probably have given it a pass if it were priced reasonably. But it definitely wouldn't excite me unless it offered some other value like what you're proposing.
@@robbylava another good trick to make campaign dlcs viable is to set up also a bundle of exclusive icons/avatar/wallpaper/whatever cosmetics (like the expensive ones currently being sold in 3 different packs) along with new editor stuff. I feel bad that the dlc went in another direction instead
I had such high hopes for an asian campaign expansion. Such a perfect oportunity to add a Japanese, Chinese and Korean campaign. I would have gladly paid even 15 dolars for that. But this shit just isn't it. I'm really disappointed
Disappointment is the price we pay for setting our sights too low. This already started with RoR, followed by the broken pathfinding... I 100% agree with what you say in this video.
ROR.......I can get the concept. No one was asking for it, but it seems like aoe1 is basically a dead game, so instead of giving up on it entirely moving it over to aoe2 they could kinda let aoe1 live on and continue to be supported. That in a vacuum I think is commendable. Execution................left some things to be desired.
@@quasibrodo923 ror is a weird one, i havent gotten it yet, mainly coz i dont care for aoe1 anymore, but i was watching ornlu? playing the ror aoe1 campaigns and man was it boring as sht. maybe because my mind has been rotten by hour long custom campaigns made by chinese guys that are complete grind fests with giant armies (which i love), but it was just so boring. ill get it on sale just for romans alone, but its a weird one imo.
I so really wanted a touch up of Korean civs, with proper unique units, and a Korean, Chinese Japanese campaign. That would have been great. But here we are................
Even the overpriced Mountain Royals DLC (Return of Rome gives so much single player content that its pricing doesn't feel too egregious) gives 15 new scenarios and 2 new civilizations with the Mule Cart theme, which is infinitely better than this infinitely worse version of Historical Battles.
the pricing of RoR to me is ok considering yo get AOE I mode in AOE II with new features for that game as well as getting Romans in AOE II. Mountain royals yep i agree that DLC should have a lower price or the same as Dawn of the Dukes or Lords of the West.
Great idea on showcasing custom campaigns. I'll look through my files tomorrow and post my favorites. But off the top of my head the best custom campaign IMO is the Jarls of Jelling by Bassi.
It's a shame since I (sort of ) like the idea despite not being a huge fan of Filly's work. But since most of it has already been released, it doesn't feel like anything new. And of course paying 17.99 Australian dollars for essentially 5 scenarios is kinda greedy. In regards to custom campaigns, I recommend 'Republic of Genoa' by Iliam8778 and 'Janos Hunyadi' by Joshua Eyebright. Edit: let me add that unfortunatley those custom campaigns I recommend did not work last time I checked them
I genuinely love the idea of single player content, and even the idea of giving some existing scenarios a new shine isn't the worst thing I've ever heard. But the pricing is just ridiculous for what they're offering. Thank you very much for your contributions to the scenario/campaign list!
Return of Rome remains unfinished to this day, nearly a year after it was released. It should have been delayed by at least that long to give players the full package, and instead they're updating it spottily, released another DLC during that time, and may even neglect building the remaining parts of it now that their roadmap involves releasing more content. Everyone should be very concerned for the future of AoE2.
Yeah I'm worrying that Microsoft is starting to go down EA games route with AoE2 of constantly releasing new content every single year and just rushing it out for release regardless of quality and selling it for extremely high prices. Well at least there's not gonna be any microtransactions right???
Something that particulary annoys me is that they didint even show any new units or props (at least for the editor) that coudl at least bring some sort of value even if the dlc overall lackluster. As for the campaigns other people already recommended all of my choices, but Dmitry Donskoy Catscientist282 deserves to be mentioned again.
@@robbylava Yeah but still, Gaiseric played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire, so he deserve better than just an unnecessarily long scenario. #WantGaiseric #SaveAoE2
@@dov6341I tried to play that scenario. It is beautiful but it is exactly what you say: It is way too long. Impossible in one sit and at the siege of Rome I was tired and not invested in the scenario anymore
Yeah this was disappointing, but the AOE developers have been hitting it out park recently. Most of us aren't complaining about the other recent DLCs. Hope this isn't a pattern or sign of things to come. I'm assuming there'll be more campaign focused DLCs and less civ DLCs just because it's hard to keep adding more civs.
For me I started having concerns with RTR, since I felt like it was extremely poorly implemented and a tremendous waste of potential. Mountain royals was okay but obviously I wasn't thrilled about the inflated price tag, this just felt like a massive step beyond either of those issues. Is it unsalvageable? Certainly not. But I do think that this creeping advance many are noticing needs to be halted.
Thanks for taking a moment to address this, Robby. Here's a few personal favorites 1. Tomislav King of Croatia, created by Hainaut183 - An entire campaign about the founder of the Croatian Kingdom with a custom Croats civ 2. Ottokar, created by hammister8159 - A campaign about Ottokar II of Bohemia, 13th century king who vied for the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Uses modified Slavs 3. Flavius Justinian, created by Jimakus21 - Justinianic reconquista campaign 4. Harald Hardrada, created by ilam8778 - Harald Hardrada's life and career, with modified Vikings.
The Ottokar campaign got broken with a patch. Many triggers don't work anymore and Hammister currently has no plan to fix it. I also think the AI voice acting (which was incredible when the campaign got released in 2020) hasn't age well at all.
Yeah, the point where it breaks the illusion. It should be noted, it was slowly growing worse sooner than VaV/SoC. In particular, I could criticize TWW design policy and lore application for hours without end. My friend enjoys probing the topic and getting me to rage about it. Personally, I like AoE (and RTS genre overall) more than TW (which is a worse version of Grand Strategy genre in my eyes) so I'll stay around here compared to jumping the ship before release of TWW3. But it certainly isn't something I'd recommend to anyone, and I'll defendly decry the lack of Vandals.
Thank you for speaking for all of us Robby. 🙏 Your words resonated with what I was thinking. It’s exactly what you said, a cash grab and a shameless price gouge. The more I think about it the more angry and disappointed I get. Respect to Filthydelphia’s work all the way, but fuck the head honchos who thought this price for a basically recycled product was acceptable. I hope someone from the development team finds this video.
I understand everyone's anger and I share people's concern for the future. I was myself sad not having 3 full campaigns (15 scenarios). But I realize it's more the shape of the content (individual scenarios) that I don't like more than others parameters of the controversy. I am glad there will be more official SP content, and hope for more SP campaigns DLC in the future, including for ROR. If it wasn't mods, people wouldn't have be so angry. I prefer to be more positive.
I hate that they are leading with something like this, at such a high price point. If it was like USD $5 or something it would be a lot more palatable. I would love to see proper single-player campaigns but this kind of thing, and the sales it is probably going to have, makes it less likely we actually see that at some point.
I really disagree with the huge price they want, 13$ for just campaigns? i mean in the other DLCs well they have almost the same amount of missions, like 15 to 18 compared to 19 from this new DLC, but at least in the others they have new civs, something like 5$-7$ feels more affordable
Something that worries me is that a lot of people (especially on Reddit) are justifying this DLC by saying "it supports the developers" and they want to pay money to keep the servers running. This consoomer mentality really bothers me... They don't care they're being sold garbage, they'll accept it because they think they're doing something good by purchasing it. Also, AoM and AoE1 are dead games and yet their servers are still running, so this argument is nonsensical.
Very well put. As if Microsoft needs pity donations to keep the lights on! I've heard some people say they are trying to test the waters with this DLC, and if that's true the thing they are testing most is to see what proportion of sawdust they are able to get away with putting in the Rice Krispies before people notice its inedible garbage.
@@robbylava Imo, best-case scenario is that they apologize and make actual campaign DLCs in the future. Most likely is they'll do this again with, say, Bassi's scenarios. Worst-case scenario, they never make a singleplayer DLC again.
I was really happy when they announced a campaign focused DLC. And, mind you, I salute Filthydelphia work: he makes so great maps and campaigns (I've just started his carthagenian campaign on RoR and it's pushing AoE1 to its limits). But I must say, a bunch of unfocused mega-scenarios isn't what I expected. I could have settled for it if it came with two or three regular campaigns. But just that? Heh.
Well said. I bought it. How you said it, it's not Fhilthipedia's fault, maybe not FE's fault, it's MS and I want to keep supporting the game and the devs for their work as much as I can. Hope.this DLc opens the door for more content creator's work to be official.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh boi. I defended the concept of RoR, I defended Romans being in the game (from a historical point of view, design is a different story), I defended the price of MR. I will neither be defending nor buying whatever this shit is. I have a lot of respect for Filthy and his work, but his scenarios are often complex and very long and unless you like this sort of scenario and/or haven't played much of his stuff yet, there really isn't much you can gain out of this. Not to mention the aspect, that 3/4 of it is just repackaging already existing and previously free content. Even the highly priced MR gave us 15 new Scenarios, 2 new civs with unique gimmicks and a free overhaul of the Persians and some other civs to a lesser degree. This really doesn't feel like Lost Empires, Filthy or whoever has been involved with the game in the past, and more like some dude in Microsoft saw that Filthy worked for them now and had some previously unofficial released content, and saw a quick cash crab. Really disappointing. There was so much potential for new scenarios, especially for civs who have been in the game for 25 years and still have no official outing outside 1 historical battle, and they chose about the worst possible route to go about this. I also loved how it was hyped as "campaign focused DLC" big time, but now only gets called "single player content", whoever is behind this clearly knows what they're doing. I really hope this was either some dumb decision of a higher up Microsoft manager or some weird attempt to test the waters, otherwise this really is a middle finger to the fame and the community. And with that, enough negativity. Let's talk custom campaigns. Since I'm quite the connoisseur of either playing them myself or watching Ornlu shenanigans, I think I might know a few good ones. My favorite developer by far is Hainaut183 aka Jaqueline, who is so good that she is officially a developer for Forgotten Empires now, which should tell you how good she is. She has designed 3 absolutely amazing capaigns: - Tomislav: A 6 scenario campaign scenario following the life of Croatian national hero Tomislav. Jaqueline designed an entire custom Croatian civ for this one with entirely unique bonuses, UTs and UUs. The campaign also offers a vide variety of different scenarios, from your classic big battles and build and destroy scenarios to escort missions or water maps where you get to use the Croatians unique trash ship. It also has voice acting and great slides. - Mihira Bohja: A 7 scenario campaign following Gujara king Mihira Bohja. While you play as the Gujaras in this one, Jaqueline did an amazing job at creating different scenarios that really highlight the strengths of the Gujaras, you get to use Camel Scouts, Shrivamcha Riders, Elephant Archers, Chakram Throwers and so on. There is once again great scenario and civ variety, Jaqueline even designed a unique variation of the Dravidians for this one with unique UTs and an UU which counters Elephants you fight multiple times, great stuff. And it also features voice acting and great storytelling. - Apranik: In my humble opinion the best custom campaign ever created. These 5 scenario campaign follows Apranik, a semi legendary female Persian military leader during the fall of the Persian empire. This one comes with amazing voice acting and storytelling, an upgraded Persian civ, great civ variety, unique campaigns and gimmicks (for example, you have to level up Appranik to earn the respect of different factions of the army in one scenario, or can spam cheap War Elephants and African Elephant Archers in another, which is about the most satisfying thing ever) and you can really feel the struggle of Apranik trying to rescue some semblance of Persian culture while everything falls apart around her. This could easily be an official campaign with 0 changes. Other amazing custom campaigns I can highly recommend: Alexander Nevski and Aegidius by MLC8896 aka Manu La Capuche Rise of Tamerlane and The Golden Horde, both by BassiAoC, another official FE developper Harald Hadrada, Robert de Bruce, Vytautis the Great, Chola Dynasty, Louis I of Hungary, Ivan III of Russia, all by ilam8778 Belisarius by JoshuaBright403 Julius Caesar by Χριστόφορος Stefan Dusan and Rise of the Ottman Empire by kitty46582 Dmitry Donskoy Catscientist282 And about anything by Filthydelphia of course.
Beautifully said and some excellent contributions to the campaign list I'm putting together. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts my friend, I'm right behind you on pretty much all of this.
“Buy the DLC and support the game”. When did this become common practice? If a band you like releases a horrible album…why would you buy it? And second of all, Microsoft, one of the biggest companies in the world, needs monetary support? The modern gaming industry is shocking.
So when you hear that, it doesn't mean support Microsoft, it means support AoE2. Microsoft doesn't need support, it's just that if a game is just not profitable they'll cut back ressources on it
I am so glad to find your video, I am so so tired of youtubers praising everything when this DLC is a cashgrab 13 dollars may not be that much but we need to set a limit and say no,dont buy it.if not they Will continue I really wish you could get into contact with the producers and let them know,I loved all previous DLC and bought them This is too much
Scrolling the comments I didn't see any of my campaigns mentioned and I'm dying a bit inside ahah... So I'm gonna self-promote which I hate doing but it's impossible not to given the market saturation lol. "Constantinople - The end of the ancient world" and my more recent "Dihya" have been praised mostly for the plot, dark humour, historical remainders and novel mechanics. I'm still very niche and I'm aware that what I do may be very divisive, not alway too well balanced and a bit raw/unpolished under techical aspects while other popular mods are often better at offering a more aoe2 proper experience, but honestly you always see the same names after a while coming up like Philtydelphia, Bassi and Hainaut (which are not that indie or underground anymore I guess since they work for Microsoft) so I may sound a bit jerky or entitled but I think they already have all the space they could aspire to since they make money out of it and are almost universally celebrated among the fanbase. Ornlu made a "best custom scenario" video just to namecheck them once again if there is still someone not knowing who they are or not liking them and that's ok, it's "best custom scenario" after all, not "best unknown mods" but still, like I would say to devs these days, let's beg to be different! For example I recently found an old scenario nobody ever quote called "Before Attila" which was kinda good to me, among many other cool and more obscure ones. So I'm very grateful to Robby for this idea to sponsor us a bit more, specially as a kind of "fuck off" to what we're getting these days from the game at those prices... I take the occasion to say that I'm gonna release in these days a new big historical battle in the vein of "Adrianople" (if anyone played it), where you will play as dark age's Slavs, guesting an obscure figure (to remain in theme!) of that era, for once not an hero nor a warlord, who accomplished something incredible under very weird circumstances, so I can pretty much say it's something unique in history. After this I'm gonna do an overhaul of all my other custom scenarios with the few feedback I received and some ideas that came to me in the meanwhile! As for the DLC, kind hard to disagree, honestly I feel sorry for them: maybe they realised it and now they're living the shitstorm but I mean what else could they expect? I can't believe they were in a Microsoft office saying "yeah this might be a good one" just until yesterday which wouldn't be better anyway because it would be highly incompetent (even if not intentionally evil like this seems)... If it was the 1st of April instead of March I would have no problem believing this was an April fish. I think DE hit its peak with Dawn of the Dukes and Dynasties of India, respectively for campaigns and for civs, and the price was always no more than 10$, then it started to fall off but never in such a catastrophic way as this last one. Return of Rome was not requested and kinda half-baked but it was ambitious at least, Mountain Royals is a standard dlc but with higher price and lower quality than let's say Lords of the West and then this... I'll try to not get political but I'm gettin more and more convinced that free market to work would need a "reset" every now and then because companies like Microsoft have no reason to risk (which is the core of creativity and of capitalism) but they just need to survive and conserve themselves. It's like when you get old and you lose that spark of rebellion and crazyness that makes masterpieces possible. For example, Jadwiga was done by Lord Basse that at the time was a new creator and that was his first official campaign... I think despite what you personally think of Jadwiga, you must admit that it had something that's hard to replicate. But at first it was a moderate risk to employ Basse, basically a fan making mods, for an official campaign. Creativity needs RISK, not cold logic and business calculations! Nothing new can come up if you don't take risks and simply try to sell and please people. They must have "forgotten" this along the way with some other empires... You could argue Ror was a bold move but really not much since it relied a lot on nostalgia instead of trying something radically new. And I say this as an enjoyer of the standard DLC formula when it's done good like in Doi and DotD. It's not that you need to throw darts in the air to impress people like they seem to think, you can do pretty straightforard things while putting in it effort, passion and something that distinguish it. Just be honest and real about it. Sorry for this huge wall of Berlin and don't be sorry for being "negative" for once ahah neither for your voice, they both have reasons to be there and I hope they will both have reasons to vanish soon!
There are a bunch of great campaigns that deserve to be showcased. The best ones are probably Bassi's; FilthyDelphia's and Jacqueline's: they produce(d) content that was on par with official stuff (I think they also all designed official campaigns). Then there's a second tier of pretty good stuff, like Hammister and Manu la capuche's campaigns, which is slightly less polished IMO (and Hammister hasn't updated his campaigns). And then there's the campaigns made by Chinese or Koreans, which have been (badly) translated into english with an AI and whose gist is usually : "the player against 6 AI with infinite ressources who spam millions of paladins for 2 hours". They are also fun, but not for everyone.
I’m disappointed but that is also why I think player feedback is important. Hopefully the devs listen and we’ll get full-fledged campaigns for next DLC.
We were actually talking about this on my Discord server! I worked in the acting industry for several years, and I can assure you that based on what I have seen there is absolutely zero chance that voice actors should even come close to 1% of the price on this.
I feel that there are two big problems with this: First, and most obvious, is the price. I said this before on your Discord but why should I have to pay 13$ for only 5 new scenarios when the Mountain royals gave you 2 new civs and 15 new scenarios for only a little bit more at 15$? But I think another not so obvious problem is the way that it was teased. They said that this would just be "campaign focused" with no other disclaimers or anything. This naturally led us to believe that it would be feature new campaigns in the traditional sense, or even a new Historical Battles colletion, not just 5 new scenarios and 13 others you could play for free but "shinier". Even if it was priced more reasonably, which I'll go into in a bit, it would still come off as a letdown, albeit not as egrigiously. The way I would fix this would first be to price it more reasonably. The old scenarios getting the official seal could be worth 1$, and the 5 new ones could be worth 3, since they're Filthydelphia ones, leading to a total of 4$. The second way would be to tease it correctly. I would probably say something like this: "For AoE2:DE we're giving some classic custom scenarios a bit of a sprucing, and maybe more..." How does that sound?
@cvampaul a noble goal! And I honestly couldn't tell you, maybe they're just doing what they think they can get away with. But I hope for that price it proves and enjoyable and fulfilling experience that you feel is worth your money
I'll pick it up when it's on sale, mostly for the voice acting, but yeah - it's overpriced, and I was really hoping they'd give us actual campaigns. There are still civs lacking a campaign, c'mon! Give me that Hardraade campaign.
They should have released Viking focused dlc. Splitting them into 3 civs. You can download most of these scenarios right now. 😂🤦🏼♂️ And this price… damn, devs really have high hopes. 🤣 This will probably sell worse than Return of Rome dlc.
@@robbylavaIf they do a split they’d probably brand one as a re-work of the current Civ then charge for access to the others, ala Hindustanis. I don’t buy a lot of these right away. I wait for a sale. I’m pretty sure I got Dawn of the Dukes and the Indian DLC for like 5 bucks each.
I don't play; though, I watch AoE multiplayer videos. This game series inspires me to mod Civ VI, which I do for free. I got really confused when I didn't see a new nation for this DLC. I thought it was a joke. Civ VI's worst DLC, Vikings "Content," also lacks a new civ and was rejected by Steam reviews. Had this been Paradox we would call it yet another new low.
Liked the video Robb and your argument about rebranding it's just bad as it is. I'll share my thoughts just on AoE2. An argument for that price on the dlc could be that it test waters on the community interest about new campaing based expansions, as SOTL well said it. Also, old veterans as myself thought of this more like a life-support line for the devs. I don't really care, I just want expansions to be honest. Down here it costs 5 USD, so it's not that much. And, I didn't know about the existence of these custom maps and campaigns so, I thinks it's a great opportunity for me to enjoy the game. Great vid as always
where did they say that the old custom scenarios will no longer be available? that's what it would have to be for you to call them paywalled. as I understand it, the old versions will remain free to play.
You're right, they did not say this, and I may have been too quick to judge on this front. Though I think it's a pretty sound guess to make -- keeping the existing stuff free just further reduces the value proposition of the DLC and would be a very strange move to make, even if a big part of me hopes they do.
While I will prolly be sucker and pay for it, I honestly feel that they should be more respectful towards less popular part of community. I'll pay only because of insane value that base game me gave already and as I actually want it to be supported as Age IV was (and prolly still is) not the game I wanted. But I would say if you really want them to churn better content, then we all need the another good RTS with similar formula as AoE but done better amd with better modding support from day 1. Which can be difficult especially considering AoE II pretty much has little to none flaws
Another solid RTS offering would DEFINITELY be a godsend. Give some proper competition for AoE and an incentive for it to rise above and beyond. Hopefully such a thing comes!
I don't even like those scenario designs. They don't fit the game design in my opinion. I like the vanilla, campaign designs we keep getting. If we had gotten normal designed historical battles I would have been fine, but these ludacris, mega maps with complex objectives, many objectives are just too much for my taste. It just doesn't complement the game itself.
The whole livestream felt really disappointing to me in general. It felt like the kind of announcement that I dislike, which is “announcing future announcements.” Could they at least tease, if not reveal what new civs are coming to the games? Just saying “there’s more civs coming, stay tuned.” Felt like I wasted my time tuning in
And originally I hoped for more new civs from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, but after seeing this I'm genuinely disappointed and I don't want the devs (at least not the current ones) to make new DLCs anymore out of the fear they'll come up with something even more horrendous and charge the players even higher.
There's always a chance they can come back from this and redeem themselves. I genuinely don't think it's the devs fault, more likely some meddling corporate manager. But even if that's the case, it doesn't make me anymore happy about this or more willing to pay such exorbitant rates.
@@robbylava By the way, would you mind checking some of my civ crafts and give some advices? That would be really helpful. I made 3 civ crafts on aoe2 wiki fandom already, the Chams, the Bo / Baipu, and the Chimu
@@robbylava By the way, maybe we could do a co-op video sometime I have already made 3 new civ crafts (Chams, Bo / Baipu, and Chimu) and I'm in the process of designing and making the 4th one (Tanguts).
Happy to give input to your designs as always! Just send them my way. And I would love to do a collaboration with you sometime! Just send a message to the email associated with my channel and we can discuss further.
I'd disagree. I enjoy the single player content, I prefer the campaigns but even some of the historical battles were really well done and I didn't even know there were custom campaigns until this expansion. Plus we don't just get 19 maps, those have to be fully fledged scenarios as in most of the campaigns we already have, the first 2 levels are extremely easy and allow you to get acquainted with how the new civilizations play while here they don't have to waste time with that. Also money for many people is relative, for me even if the scenarios cost €20 I wouldn't mind, as a grown-up €13 or €11 is the price of a meal although I can see people in regions with lower economic conditions having a harder time buying it. Ultimately entertainment costs money, for me quality is paramount to price as when you grow up your time is more valuable than money.
I think that is a perfectly valid opinion to hold. I do think though that, while I am also very happy to pay for quality entertainment, there are reasonable limits. And five admittedly good scenarios for $13 is not what I personally consider to be at all reasonable. You are of course more than welcome to use your money however you like. I do hope though that other content of higher quality for its price comes along to make your hard-earned dollars yield better results for you.
@@robbylava Thank you mate. For people who didn't play the originals, I think 19 for-us brand new scenarios for €/$11 are actually not a bad deal. Of course I can see why people who did play the originals would object paying the same price but only getting 5. I wouldn't underestimate how many players don't actually know or have bothered to explore the custom campaigns that are free. Convinience and marketing can go a long way to make things more popular, even if you have to pay for it.
@@pavelh.4515 That's also a valid point. I do still think that it's overpriced, even if all 19 scenarios were completely brand new, but it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable. Like, if they put out 19 new long form scenarios for 13 bucks I wouldn't have made a video about it even if I would personally not want to pick it up.
I will pass on this DLC. Will you make AOE III theorycraft in the future considering a DLC for III with Denmark and Poland is confirmed? or AOM Theorycraft? I am hoping Retold do what Definitive edition did for AOE II if they of course are planning to expand that game with DLC content. I don't give a shit for Mobile. mobile games just simply suck today they are full with fucking microtransactions.
price isnt that much of a problem for me tbh, not that im rich (im not) but im willing to go that high for aoe2. my issue is that devs took waaayyyyy too long to do this, its dont at the wrong time. half the campaigns i recognize from playing custom ones, and even if you were to throw coop in there, half of them have custom ones also. so any idea for a campaign only themed dlc is null and void since fans of that have already migrated to custom campaigns, and theyre amazing.
I am utterly disappointed too. I will probably buy this one - I love the creator and I like to encourage them to put more attention to campaigns. BUT I'll do that with a heavy heart and I'll probably NOT buy such a low-quality DLCs in the future if they continue to do so. I really really hope that you are wrong with your prediction about exit strategy, and I hope the manager who made the decisions for this ridiculous update gets fired immediately. Offering an overpriced, lazy and half-ass made DLC and simultaneously white-labelling a third-party chinese mobile game "Dawn of Kingdoms" as AOE Mobile is enough to fire the manager on the spot. These are such a horrible decisions that I don't even understand how they even got approved and implemented. I would gladly pay double the amount of the DLC price if they've just improved only the Mod search screen. It is impossible to find good new campaigns nowadays. I have an impression that I've played them all - and all I see now - are just translations of the existing campaigns, mostly - in chinese, or broken scenarios. Its impossible to use unless you know exactly what are you looking for beforehand. At the very least they could allow filtering campaigns by a language, civilizations, compatibility etc. I love this game and i am really mad.
Well if nothing else, I'm going to try to put together a community sourced list of great campaigns and scenarios for people to look up and play! The mod page may have garbage discoverability, but fortunately we have a lot of good people to point us in the right directions
@ava I will be very grateful if you do. I am playing since 98, and I am a die hard campaign player, enjoying any well-made campaign and almost never playing the multiplayer. At this point I feel like I've played most of them, but I usually remove them after playing, I wish I kept the list of the ones I liked the most to share with you
This DLC is just so baffling to me like how did we go from Dynasties of India AoE2 DE's biggest expansion to this shit? Plus you think $13 where you are is bad here in Canada this DLC is gonna be priced at $18.
@@robbylava Like even RoR at least gave you a completely new game mode with it's own set of civs and campaigns that justified it's high price a little bit and Mountain Royals was a fine DLC I mean it finally gave us the long requested Armenians and Georgians to the game (Even if Armenians are very controversial in it's design very similar to Sicilians in LotW) honestly it's basically the same kind of DLC that Lords of the West and Dawn of the Dukes were and if it was priced the same as those DLCs it probably wouldn't have been crapped on as much but this new "Campaign focused" DLC just feels lazy why are they charging us $13-$18 for 13 recycled scenarios and 5 new scenarios and no 6 scenario story campaigns for existing civs that don't have one yet like why doesn't the Chinese have a full campaign at this point when there's so many stories you could tell with that civ in particular this is a shame because I want to continue supporting AoE2 DE and the first 3 DLCs up to Dynasties of India have shown me that these guys can do a lot better so I don't entirely blame the devs for this I believe it's Microsoft's push to have a new DLC for AoE2 DE every year that's probably rushing a lot of the work put into them and pricing them extremely high to milk this IP (Which quite honestly is starting to sound like EA levels of mismanagement) that's entirely at fault here.
Did they say they'd paywall the old scenarios? Did I miss that? I didn't expect they would. Filty's scenarios are sometimes very weird and don't always feel like aoe2 scenarios, so I thought they might significantly rework them. I can't imagine microsoft officialy releasing something like Ragnar's saga. But yeah, the devs are getting lazy, and I guess greedy. For fuck's sake, they didn't even make a new background map for the scenario selection screen. Also for aoe3 they're releasing European civs again, so they can reuse building and unit models. Just like Knights of the Mediterranean. I always see people on reddit proudly proclaiming that they'll buy anything they release, even if the DLC doesn't interest them, to support the game and the devs. I hope people stop saying that. They don't incentivise the devs to make good DLCs. I haven't played a whole bunch of custom campaigns or scenarios, but I really liked 'the Imjin War' for Koreans by NekyChoi, and 'Kings of West Africa' by Filthydelphia. A few standalone scenarios like Cao Cao's Ambition, and Blood for the Serpent God too.
Thanks for your campaign suggestions! And you know, I didn't even consider the possibility that they would keep the original scenarios public. If they did I think I would be very slightly less frustrated with them, but I would also say it was even more ludicrous that they expect anyone to pay for it
@@robbylava Custom campaigns, especially those of Filthy, sometimes feel very different from official campaigns. I don't always like that. I bought the DLC with the expectation that these scenarios will be heavily reworked to make them feel more like normal scenarios. Also, I disagree with your hypothesis of them thinking aoe2 might be a dying game. I mean, they even announced a new dlc for aoe3. Some people thought we were never getting one anymore. Also, since we're getting separate scenarios, why not one for Ethiopians, Malians and Incas? Their campaigns are not popular.
@aoefsmrap I definitely don't think it's dying from a player base perspective, but the decisions they have been making on pricing and support are what are making me slightly worried. Like I briefly allude to in the video, it feels similar to what is going on with Creative Assembly and Total War
@aoefsmrap Go take a look at the Legends of Total War channel, he has a couple pretty good breakdowns. So suffice it to say, the company is charging higher and higher amounts for worse and worse quality, and people are sick of it. Especially considering what ridiculous amounts of overpriced DLC they were already offering in the first place.
While I completely agree and its surely the consensus within the community. I will still shell out the 13$ as I do for all the DLC's (didn't love Mountain Royals or Dynasties of India civs really either) simply because I love the game and want it to last forever. i don't think 13$ is a ton of money these days if anything the others were underpriced. I don't think all the negative press about this crappy expansion helps the AOE2 scene/ game in general though and will likely not result in better DLC's next time.
That's a totally reasonable opinion to hold. As much as I like the game and want it to last forever as well, I really don't like how it sometimes feels like it is being held for ransom. "Pay up or we're going to pull the plug on the servers!" I just feel like firm boundaries need to be drawn. If they released a DLC full of great content and priced it at 13, 15, or even higher, I would be much more understanding even if I would probably wait for it to go on sale.
I would pay 13$ happily just for an in-game chat and friends list system so i don't have to use Steam and can add any xbox/ microsoft players as friends. Also why am I always disconnecting from Multiplayer services as soon as I want to play a team game?!@@robbylava
im gona buy it, and am more than happy to pay for aoe2 DE content, even if its on the higher end. its a game that i play always and have played for decades, its a game i never get bored of, and the team behind (so far) are good and havent delved into the realm of toxic and unethical cash grabs/scams that suck the life out of the game, so till then, they can have my wallet. however my ONLY issue with it is the fact that the majority of these campaigns are merely polishing of FREE custom campaigns. half of them i could already recognize and recall playing, this i dont like and feels very scammy. i hope they learn from this and dont repeat it, im willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it has limits.
AOE1 is a functionally dead game, and they haven't delisted the servers for that. What is the price threshold at which you would consider it no longer worth it to buy in? Of course they need to monetize the game, but it is not difficult to create far higher quality content than this that people will be happy to pay for. Remember, this isn't some small indie studio, this is backed by Microsoft for christ's sake. I'm pretty sure they won't have any trouble keeping the lights on.
Am I the only one who thinks 13$ is nothing? Then again, I'm the guy who would pay 100$ just to get unique castles for all civs. Speaking of which, do we at lest get new castles to go along with these campaigns?
You're a sweet and generous fellow, but save those hard-earned dollars for content that deserves it! If I'm honest, a DLC that gave a full, proper, historical set of skins to all units and buildings for a single civilization costing $10 would be far less unreasonable in my eyes then what they are doing here. Or even like a castle pack with unique skins for all the civilizations who don't yet get them! That would totally be worth like 5 to $10
Actually thinking you are way overreacting. 1) Have you played the DLC? No? Then how do you know it is shit? Jfc. Having played most of these, I can say that many could have used smaller changes to serious overhauls (ie the Saxon Revolt). The official polish might just be what these need to reach a new level of quality. Without playtesting it yourself the outrage is pretty ridiculous. 2) Inflation is a thing. I know, gamers in general arent used to it AT ALL, and will foam in the mouth even thinking about the concept of a game costing more than $60, but 4 years have passed. $13 is not what $13 were 4 years ago. This is nowhere near an outrageous price for the work put in. I will go even further and say that it is not a steep price even for the 5 new scenarios alone from arguably the best AoE2 scenario designer. 3) AoE2 DLCs go on a deep sale very quickly and relatively often. The Mountain Royals went on a -50% sale 3 months after its release. It is entirely possible that VoV will go on a similar sale during steam summer sale, which could be ~$6.5, much closer to what you think the DLC is worth.
You are more than welcome to consider this an overreaction, but you'll notice I never once called the scenarios shit. I have no doubt they will actually be extremely high quality. Do not put words in my mouth. What would an outrageous price for this be in your eyes? Inflation is a very weak argument, considering less than 2 years ago we got Dynasties of India, a fantastic DLC that delivered 20 scenarios, many of which are considered some of the best the game has ever gotten, plus three civilizations and a free overhaul of a fourth. That cost $10, and people were thrilled by it and more than happy to buy it in droves. If they released another dynasties of India tier DLC and priced it at $15 I wouldn't bat an eye. If they put it at 20 I would be a little disappointed but certainly wouldn't make a video about it. But you are telling me, with a straight face, that five admittedly good scenarios are worth $13 when 13 such scenarios were free up until very recently? You are welcome to do what you want with your money and you are welcome to hold what opinion you want, but I think that pricing such as what you suggest will drive this game into the ground.
@ava I believe anything below the base game price cant be called outrageous, but preferably not more than 75%. So I think below $15 is a fair game and is completely acceptable for any DLC, then let people decide if they find the content in it worthy of the price. I havent bought RoR bc I exclusively play AoE2 and the value isnt there for me for just one playable civ. If you find VoV too expensive, just dont buy it 11. That all there is to it. Yes, I will tell you with a straight face as a campaign lover that 5 high quality scenarios (that are usually much longer than your average campaign scenario) + all the others I am eager to replay with the official polish are worth $13 for me ($11 bc I preordered it but w/e). Yes, DoI is probably a better bang for your buck, but it doesnt mean that DLCs must be priced compared to each other. Also do we have a confirmation that the mods will be pulled from the mod section? Is that what you are saying? Bc ngl that'd be scummy, but if they wont, you can keep on playing the mod versions and go about with your day. You are just disappointed, bitter and angry bc the DLC wasnt like what you imagined it would be. There will be other DLCs in the future Im sure you will find adequately priced for the content.
@zepwafels you know? That's a pretty fair point. If you can concede that other DLCs have been better bang for your buck, then I can fully acknowledge that I am disappointed because this isn't what I was hoping for. I am less willing to say though that this is a one-off instance and future DLCs are likely to give me and many others what we want, namely fairly priced content. To me it feels like testing the waters to see what they can get away with, and if people go along with it then I can only imagine the prices will continue to creep up. Along similar lines, are you a fan of the Total War games perchance? If so, do you think what's happening in that community and the reaction to the DLCs they've been getting is also overblown?
@@robbylava yep I do think that DoI and DotD are overall the best bang for your buck for the average player. But FE need to experiment with new types of DLCs in the future bc the new civ fatigue is palpable within the community, the civ board is arguably too bloated as it is even now. I think we are getting very close to the end of new civs added to the game. The classic 3 campaign 1-3 new civ style DLC model is just not sustainable anymore without damaging the game. I think we can expect FE trying more unorthodox DLCs in the future, and I dont think RoR and VoV are a bad start. Im sure we will get just campaign pack DLCs in the future w/o the new civs. Ive played some TW games, but Im not deep enough in it to care about whatever drama in the community
@gaiusiulius7724 well I hope it gets the attention it deserves in future. Are you pleased with what was announced? I've heard mixed reviews, some people are thrilled that some of the last major missing European powers are getting added, others are irritated that other parts of the world aren't getting filled out
I'm happy that the game will get a dlc, I'm one of the people that wanted an Asia focused dlc since the last one was Asian dynasties from 2007 but PLC and Denmark are fitting additions (it just wasn't their turn imo). I'm also one of a bigger group within the community that is frustrated by the lack of advertisement for and presentation of the game. Especially since communication was more or less nonexistent for more than a year and now we got 30 seconds and two pictures of flags, no screenshots, no artworks and not even a name. In conclusion the stream was disappointing at best for the AoE3 community.
I'd like to add that they marketed this to us as a "campaign focused" exapnsion, but as soon as the event was done, and it was obvious it didn't actually contain any campaigns, the FB, instagram, X posts all described it as "single player focused".
they knew the community wanted campaigns, had none to sell, so tried to jedi mind trick us that what they had was what we wanted.
Honest to God I'm putting together an open letter about this. Hoping to get a bunch of people on the forums to co-sign.
We as a community should not be lied to.
I agree. Really feels like a bait-and-switch.
I'd be happy to co-sign once you put that together
I always said that a Campaign only DLC is a terrible idea because people can simply download scenarios made by creators that upload their own scenarios, or just simply try and learn how to use the scenario Editor. The only way I could see a Campaign DLC would work is by not only delivering campaigns ( that most or all should be brand new not like the current DLC) but also improving the Scenario Editor and adding tons of new Triggers, Objects, Buildings, Heroes and Units for being used in the scenario Editor. Sadly a lot of AOE II forums people constantly said that they wanted a " campaign only" DLC I can tell you i participate a lot on these kind of forums also i am an Administrator in the AOE Wiki in Fandom.
@papermaniac I love the idea of adding value to a campaign only DLC by expanding editor options. I think that if the DLC had only been three basic campaigns, each six scenarios long, I would probably have given it a pass if it were priced reasonably. But it definitely wouldn't excite me unless it offered some other value like what you're proposing.
@@robbylava another good trick to make campaign dlcs viable is to set up also a bundle of exclusive icons/avatar/wallpaper/whatever cosmetics (like the expensive ones currently being sold in 3 different packs) along with new editor stuff. I feel bad that the dlc went in another direction instead
@@robbylava I emailed you a link to the google doc with the first draft. I hope you find it worthy of your support.
I had such high hopes for an asian campaign expansion. Such a perfect oportunity to add a Japanese, Chinese and Korean campaign. I would have gladly paid even 15 dolars for that. But this shit just isn't it. I'm really disappointed
Disappointment is the price we pay for setting our sights too low. This already started with RoR, followed by the broken pathfinding... I 100% agree with what you say in this video.
Very well put
ROR.......I can get the concept. No one was asking for it, but it seems like aoe1 is basically a dead game, so instead of giving up on it entirely moving it over to aoe2 they could kinda let aoe1 live on and continue to be supported. That in a vacuum I think is commendable. Execution................left some things to be desired.
@@quasibrodo923 ror is a weird one, i havent gotten it yet, mainly coz i dont care for aoe1 anymore, but i was watching ornlu? playing the ror aoe1 campaigns and man was it boring as sht. maybe because my mind has been rotten by hour long custom campaigns made by chinese guys that are complete grind fests with giant armies (which i love), but it was just so boring.
ill get it on sale just for romans alone, but its a weird one imo.
@@robbylavamy
I so really wanted a touch up of Korean civs, with proper unique units, and a Korean, Chinese Japanese campaign. That would have been great.
But here we are................
The disappointment is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Can't say I blame you, I feel the same.
I’m sure you aren’t as disappointed as they’ll be in the sales.
I *wish* I had thought of this line
Even the overpriced Mountain Royals DLC (Return of Rome gives so much single player content that its pricing doesn't feel too egregious) gives 15 new scenarios and 2 new civilizations with the Mule Cart theme, which is infinitely better than this infinitely worse version of Historical Battles.
the pricing of RoR to me is ok considering yo get AOE I mode in AOE II with new features for that game as well as getting Romans in AOE II. Mountain royals yep i agree that DLC should have a lower price or the same as Dawn of the Dukes or Lords of the West.
If it wasn't for the price and that most scenarios can be found in the mod browser, nobody would have complained so much.
Great idea on showcasing custom campaigns. I'll look through my files tomorrow and post my favorites. But off the top of my head the best custom campaign IMO is the Jarls of Jelling by Bassi.
A great start! I'd love to hear more contributions If you find time to do so
It's a shame since I (sort of ) like the idea despite not being a huge fan of Filly's work. But since most of it has already been released, it doesn't feel like anything new. And of course paying 17.99 Australian dollars for essentially 5 scenarios is kinda greedy.
In regards to custom campaigns, I recommend 'Republic of Genoa' by Iliam8778 and 'Janos Hunyadi' by Joshua Eyebright.
Edit: let me add that unfortunatley those custom campaigns I recommend did not work last time I checked them
I genuinely love the idea of single player content, and even the idea of giving some existing scenarios a new shine isn't the worst thing I've ever heard. But the pricing is just ridiculous for what they're offering.
Thank you very much for your contributions to the scenario/campaign list!
This is how I learned I went to the same school as Filthydelphia himself (never intersected tbf)
12 dollars for campaigns is absurd lol
what is the point for paying for essentially modded maps.
Return of Rome remains unfinished to this day, nearly a year after it was released. It should have been delayed by at least that long to give players the full package, and instead they're updating it spottily, released another DLC during that time, and may even neglect building the remaining parts of it now that their roadmap involves releasing more content.
Everyone should be very concerned for the future of AoE2.
Yeah I'm worrying that Microsoft is starting to go down EA games route with AoE2 of constantly releasing new content every single year and just rushing it out for release regardless of quality and selling it for extremely high prices. Well at least there's not gonna be any microtransactions right???
Something that particulary annoys me is that they didint even show any new units or props (at least for the editor) that coudl at least bring some sort of value even if the dlc overall lackluster.
As for the campaigns other people already recommended all of my choices, but Dmitry Donskoy Catscientist282 deserves to be mentioned again.
All chances to have Vandals civilization and a proper Gaiseric campaign are gone 😢
I really hope not. Won't stop me from saying they deserve to be there though!
@@robbylava Yeah but still, Gaiseric played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire, so he deserve better than just an unnecessarily long scenario.
#WantGaiseric #SaveAoE2
@@dov6341I tried to play that scenario. It is beautiful but it is exactly what you say: It is way too long. Impossible in one sit and at the siege of Rome I was tired and not invested in the scenario anymore
Well said. I hope they learn from this and actually give us a campaign dlc.
I very much do too. I still don't think the idea is at all hopeless!
Yeah this was disappointing, but the AOE developers have been hitting it out park recently. Most of us aren't complaining about the other recent DLCs. Hope this isn't a pattern or sign of things to come. I'm assuming there'll be more campaign focused DLCs and less civ DLCs just because it's hard to keep adding more civs.
For me I started having concerns with RTR, since I felt like it was extremely poorly implemented and a tremendous waste of potential. Mountain royals was okay but obviously I wasn't thrilled about the inflated price tag, this just felt like a massive step beyond either of those issues.
Is it unsalvageable? Certainly not. But I do think that this creeping advance many are noticing needs to be halted.
Thanks for taking a moment to address this, Robby.
Here's a few personal favorites
1. Tomislav King of Croatia, created by Hainaut183 - An entire campaign about the founder of the Croatian Kingdom with a custom Croats civ
2. Ottokar, created by hammister8159 - A campaign about Ottokar II of Bohemia, 13th century king who vied for the title of Holy Roman Emperor. Uses modified Slavs
3. Flavius Justinian, created by Jimakus21 - Justinianic reconquista campaign
4. Harald Hardrada, created by ilam8778 - Harald Hardrada's life and career, with modified Vikings.
Excellent list! Thanks for sharing bud
The Ottokar campaign got broken with a patch. Many triggers don't work anymore and Hammister currently has no plan to fix it. I also think the AI voice acting (which was incredible when the campaign got released in 2020) hasn't age well at all.
Don't know what you're talking about. Been playing it just now and it works fine.
We enter our Shadows of Change era
God I hope not
Yeah, the point where it breaks the illusion. It should be noted, it was slowly growing worse sooner than VaV/SoC. In particular, I could criticize TWW design policy and lore application for hours without end. My friend enjoys probing the topic and getting me to rage about it.
Personally, I like AoE (and RTS genre overall) more than TW (which is a worse version of Grand Strategy genre in my eyes) so I'll stay around here compared to jumping the ship before release of TWW3. But it certainly isn't something I'd recommend to anyone, and I'll defendly decry the lack of Vandals.
Thank you for speaking for all of us Robby. 🙏 Your words resonated with what I was thinking. It’s exactly what you said, a cash grab and a shameless price gouge. The more I think about it the more angry and disappointed I get. Respect to Filthydelphia’s work all the way, but fuck the head honchos who thought this price for a basically recycled product was acceptable. I hope someone from the development team finds this video.
Thank you very much for the words of encouragement my friend. I'm glad it resonated! And hopefully, somehow, it makes a tangible positive difference
這是很好的反對意見
I understand everyone's anger and I share people's concern for the future. I was myself sad not having 3 full campaigns (15 scenarios). But I realize it's more the shape of the content (individual scenarios) that I don't like more than others parameters of the controversy.
I am glad there will be more official SP content, and hope for more SP campaigns DLC in the future, including for ROR. If it wasn't mods, people wouldn't have be so angry. I prefer to be more positive.
I hate that they are leading with something like this, at such a high price point. If it was like USD $5 or something it would be a lot more palatable. I would love to see proper single-player campaigns but this kind of thing, and the sales it is probably going to have, makes it less likely we actually see that at some point.
^^^^^^
Totally agree with u sir for me it's not even about the price I was just hoping for a completely new campaign with new civs and units.
I really disagree with the huge price they want, 13$ for just campaigns?
i mean in the other DLCs well they have almost the same amount of missions, like 15 to 18 compared to 19 from this new DLC, but at least in the others they have new civs, something like 5$-7$ feels more affordable
They are not even campaigns.
Something that worries me is that a lot of people (especially on Reddit) are justifying this DLC by saying "it supports the developers" and they want to pay money to keep the servers running. This consoomer mentality really bothers me... They don't care they're being sold garbage, they'll accept it because they think they're doing something good by purchasing it. Also, AoM and AoE1 are dead games and yet their servers are still running, so this argument is nonsensical.
Very well put. As if Microsoft needs pity donations to keep the lights on!
I've heard some people say they are trying to test the waters with this DLC, and if that's true the thing they are testing most is to see what proportion of sawdust they are able to get away with putting in the Rice Krispies before people notice its inedible garbage.
@@robbylava Imo, best-case scenario is that they apologize and make actual campaign DLCs in the future. Most likely is they'll do this again with, say, Bassi's scenarios. Worst-case scenario, they never make a singleplayer DLC again.
it's really expensive
I was really happy when they announced a campaign focused DLC. And, mind you, I salute Filthydelphia work: he makes so great maps and campaigns (I've just started his carthagenian campaign on RoR and it's pushing AoE1 to its limits). But I must say, a bunch of unfocused mega-scenarios isn't what I expected. I could have settled for it if it came with two or three regular campaigns. But just that? Heh.
Well said. I bought it. How you said it, it's not Fhilthipedia's fault, maybe not FE's fault, it's MS and I want to keep supporting the game and the devs for their work as much as I can. Hope.this DLc opens the door for more content creator's work to be official.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh boi.
I defended the concept of RoR, I defended Romans being in the game (from a historical point of view, design is a different story), I defended the price of MR. I will neither be defending nor buying whatever this shit is. I have a lot of respect for Filthy and his work, but his scenarios are often complex and very long and unless you like this sort of scenario and/or haven't played much of his stuff yet, there really isn't much you can gain out of this. Not to mention the aspect, that 3/4 of it is just repackaging already existing and previously free content. Even the highly priced MR gave us 15 new Scenarios, 2 new civs with unique gimmicks and a free overhaul of the Persians and some other civs to a lesser degree.
This really doesn't feel like Lost Empires, Filthy or whoever has been involved with the game in the past, and more like some dude in Microsoft saw that Filthy worked for them now and had some previously unofficial released content, and saw a quick cash crab. Really disappointing.
There was so much potential for new scenarios, especially for civs who have been in the game for 25 years and still have no official outing outside 1 historical battle, and they chose about the worst possible route to go about this. I also loved how it was hyped as "campaign focused DLC" big time, but now only gets called "single player content", whoever is behind this clearly knows what they're doing.
I really hope this was either some dumb decision of a higher up Microsoft manager or some weird attempt to test the waters, otherwise this really is a middle finger to the fame and the community.
And with that, enough negativity. Let's talk custom campaigns. Since I'm quite the connoisseur of either playing them myself or watching Ornlu shenanigans, I think I might know a few good ones.
My favorite developer by far is Hainaut183 aka Jaqueline, who is so good that she is officially a developer for Forgotten Empires now, which should tell you how good she is. She has designed 3 absolutely amazing capaigns:
- Tomislav: A 6 scenario campaign scenario following the life of Croatian national hero Tomislav. Jaqueline designed an entire custom Croatian civ for this one with entirely unique bonuses, UTs and UUs. The campaign also offers a vide variety of different scenarios, from your classic big battles and build and destroy scenarios to escort missions or water maps where you get to use the Croatians unique trash ship. It also has voice acting and great slides.
- Mihira Bohja: A 7 scenario campaign following Gujara king Mihira Bohja. While you play as the Gujaras in this one, Jaqueline did an amazing job at creating different scenarios that really highlight the strengths of the Gujaras, you get to use Camel Scouts, Shrivamcha Riders, Elephant Archers, Chakram Throwers and so on. There is once again great scenario and civ variety, Jaqueline even designed a unique variation of the Dravidians for this one with unique UTs and an UU which counters Elephants you fight multiple times, great stuff. And it also features voice acting and great storytelling.
- Apranik: In my humble opinion the best custom campaign ever created. These 5 scenario campaign follows Apranik, a semi legendary female Persian military leader during the fall of the Persian empire. This one comes with amazing voice acting and storytelling, an upgraded Persian civ, great civ variety, unique campaigns and gimmicks (for example, you have to level up Appranik to earn the respect of different factions of the army in one scenario, or can spam cheap War Elephants and African Elephant Archers in another, which is about the most satisfying thing ever) and you can really feel the struggle of Apranik trying to rescue some semblance of Persian culture while everything falls apart around her. This could easily be an official campaign with 0 changes.
Other amazing custom campaigns I can highly recommend:
Alexander Nevski and Aegidius by MLC8896 aka Manu La Capuche
Rise of Tamerlane and The Golden Horde, both by BassiAoC, another official FE developper
Harald Hadrada, Robert de Bruce, Vytautis the Great, Chola Dynasty, Louis I of Hungary, Ivan III of Russia, all by ilam8778
Belisarius by JoshuaBright403
Julius Caesar by Χριστόφορος
Stefan Dusan and Rise of the Ottman Empire by kitty46582
Dmitry Donskoy Catscientist282
And about anything by Filthydelphia of course.
Beautifully said and some excellent contributions to the campaign list I'm putting together. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts my friend, I'm right behind you on pretty much all of this.
@@robbylavaHappy to be of service as always. Hope the 2 newly spawned villagers are doing great!
@Edelweiss1102 heheheh thank you my friend! Both overall healthy and happy
“Buy the DLC and support the game”.
When did this become common practice? If a band you like releases a horrible album…why would you buy it?
And second of all, Microsoft, one of the biggest companies in the world, needs monetary support? The modern gaming industry is shocking.
Well said!
So when you hear that, it doesn't mean support Microsoft, it means support AoE2. Microsoft doesn't need support, it's just that if a game is just not profitable they'll cut back ressources on it
Oh certainly. But there are many ways to make this game much more profitable than this. If people are interested I might even make a video about it!
I am so glad to find your video, I am so so tired of youtubers praising everything when this DLC is a cashgrab
13 dollars may not be that much but we need to set a limit and say no,dont buy it.if not they Will continue
I really wish you could get into contact with the producers and let them know,I loved all previous DLC and bought them
This is too much
Scrolling the comments I didn't see any of my campaigns mentioned and I'm dying a bit inside ahah... So I'm gonna self-promote which I hate doing but it's impossible not to given the market saturation lol. "Constantinople - The end of the ancient world" and my more recent "Dihya" have been praised mostly for the plot, dark humour, historical remainders and novel mechanics. I'm still very niche and I'm aware that what I do may be very divisive, not alway too well balanced and a bit raw/unpolished under techical aspects while other popular mods are often better at offering a more aoe2 proper experience, but honestly you always see the same names after a while coming up like Philtydelphia, Bassi and Hainaut (which are not that indie or underground anymore I guess since they work for Microsoft) so I may sound a bit jerky or entitled but I think they already have all the space they could aspire to since they make money out of it and are almost universally celebrated among the fanbase.
Ornlu made a "best custom scenario" video just to namecheck them once again if there is still someone not knowing who they are or not liking them and that's ok, it's "best custom scenario" after all, not "best unknown mods" but still, like I would say to devs these days, let's beg to be different! For example I recently found an old scenario nobody ever quote called "Before Attila" which was kinda good to me, among many other cool and more obscure ones. So I'm very grateful to Robby for this idea to sponsor us a bit more, specially as a kind of "fuck off" to what we're getting these days from the game at those prices...
I take the occasion to say that I'm gonna release in these days a new big historical battle in the vein of "Adrianople" (if anyone played it), where you will play as dark age's Slavs, guesting an obscure figure (to remain in theme!) of that era, for once not an hero nor a warlord, who accomplished something incredible under very weird circumstances, so I can pretty much say it's something unique in history.
After this I'm gonna do an overhaul of all my other custom scenarios with the few feedback I received and some ideas that came to me in the meanwhile!
As for the DLC, kind hard to disagree, honestly I feel sorry for them: maybe they realised it and now they're living the shitstorm but I mean what else could they expect? I can't believe they were in a Microsoft office saying "yeah this might be a good one" just until yesterday which wouldn't be better anyway because it would be highly incompetent (even if not intentionally evil like this seems)... If it was the 1st of April instead of March I would have no problem believing this was an April fish.
I think DE hit its peak with Dawn of the Dukes and Dynasties of India, respectively for campaigns and for civs, and the price was always no more than 10$, then it started to fall off but never in such a catastrophic way as this last one. Return of Rome was not requested and kinda half-baked but it was ambitious at least, Mountain Royals is a standard dlc but with higher price and lower quality than let's say Lords of the West and then this...
I'll try to not get political but I'm gettin more and more convinced that free market to work would need a "reset" every now and then because companies like Microsoft have no reason to risk (which is the core of creativity and of capitalism) but they just need to survive and conserve themselves. It's like when you get old and you lose that spark of rebellion and crazyness that makes masterpieces possible. For example, Jadwiga was done by Lord Basse that at the time was a new creator and that was his first official campaign... I think despite what you personally think of Jadwiga, you must admit that it had something that's hard to replicate. But at first it was a moderate risk to employ Basse, basically a fan making mods, for an official campaign. Creativity needs RISK, not cold logic and business calculations! Nothing new can come up if you don't take risks and simply try to sell and please people. They must have "forgotten" this along the way with some other empires... You could argue Ror was a bold move but really not much since it relied a lot on nostalgia instead of trying something radically new. And I say this as an enjoyer of the standard DLC formula when it's done good like in Doi and DotD. It's not that you need to throw darts in the air to impress people like they seem to think, you can do pretty straightforard things while putting in it effort, passion and something that distinguish it. Just be honest and real about it.
Sorry for this huge wall of Berlin and don't be sorry for being "negative" for once ahah neither for your voice, they both have reasons to be there and I hope they will both have reasons to vanish soon!
There are a bunch of great campaigns that deserve to be showcased. The best ones are probably Bassi's; FilthyDelphia's and Jacqueline's: they produce(d) content that was on par with official stuff (I think they also all designed official campaigns).
Then there's a second tier of pretty good stuff, like Hammister and Manu la capuche's campaigns, which is slightly less polished IMO (and Hammister hasn't updated his campaigns).
And then there's the campaigns made by Chinese or Koreans, which have been (badly) translated into english with an AI and whose gist is usually : "the player against 6 AI with infinite ressources who spam millions of paladins for 2 hours". They are also fun, but not for everyone.
i guess it's kind of a good thing in a way that the DLCs needed for competitive equality are less expensive than the pure fanservice ones
Oh, paywalling existing levels? That's sad
This is why I love the aoe community.
I’m disappointed but that is also why I think player feedback is important. Hopefully the devs listen and we’ll get full-fledged campaigns for next DLC.
I really hope so. I genuinely have a lot of faith in campaign DLCs as a concept!
Maybe it's to pay the voice actors. IDK how company's money works tho 😅
We were actually talking about this on my Discord server! I worked in the acting industry for several years, and I can assure you that based on what I have seen there is absolutely zero chance that voice actors should even come close to 1% of the price on this.
I feel that there are two big problems with this: First, and most obvious, is the price. I said this before on your Discord but why should I have to pay 13$ for only 5 new scenarios when the Mountain royals gave you 2 new civs and 15 new scenarios for only a little bit more at 15$? But I think another not so obvious problem is the way that it was teased. They said that this would just be "campaign focused" with no other disclaimers or anything. This naturally led us to believe that it would be feature new campaigns in the traditional sense, or even a new Historical Battles colletion, not just 5 new scenarios and 13 others you could play for free but "shinier". Even if it was priced more reasonably, which I'll go into in a bit, it would still come off as a letdown, albeit not as egrigiously.
The way I would fix this would first be to price it more reasonably. The old scenarios getting the official seal could be worth 1$, and the 5 new ones could be worth 3, since they're Filthydelphia ones, leading to a total of 4$. The second way would be to tease it correctly. I would probably say something like this: "For AoE2:DE we're giving some classic custom scenarios a bit of a sprucing, and maybe more..." How does that sound?
For $4 I would happily pick this up
In India it's around $3.85, with the 15% discount, I preordered it for around $3.27
If that's what it was priced in America you wouldn't hear a peep out of me!
@@robbylava I am confused why it's cheaper here. I preordered this in hopes to promote single player content in the future
@cvampaul a noble goal! And I honestly couldn't tell you, maybe they're just doing what they think they can get away with. But I hope for that price it proves and enjoyable and fulfilling experience that you feel is worth your money
Regional pricing is unfair
I'll pick it up when it's on sale, mostly for the voice acting, but yeah - it's overpriced, and I was really hoping they'd give us actual campaigns. There are still civs lacking a campaign, c'mon! Give me that Hardraade campaign.
They should have released Viking focused dlc. Splitting them into 3 civs. You can download most of these scenarios right now. 😂🤦🏼♂️ And this price… damn, devs really have high hopes. 🤣 This will probably sell worse than Return of Rome dlc.
Don't need to split them, just a campaign for them and 2 more civs
I'd love a split, but only for a reasonable price. They better not release Swedes, Danes, & Norwegians and gate them behind $20 or some bull!
@@robbylavaIf they do a split they’d probably brand one as a re-work of the current Civ then charge for access to the others, ala Hindustanis. I don’t buy a lot of these right away. I wait for a sale. I’m pretty sure I got Dawn of the Dukes and the Indian DLC for like 5 bucks each.
@@josephszakovits7330 Oh yeah, I ALWAYS endorse waiting for sales. I haven't bought a DLC above $5
No need to split the vikings, other civs have much better arguments for splitting
I don’t even really play the game and I was disappointed
I don't play; though, I watch AoE multiplayer videos. This game series inspires me to mod Civ VI, which I do for free. I got really confused when I didn't see a new nation for this DLC. I thought it was a joke. Civ VI's worst DLC, Vikings "Content," also lacks a new civ and was rejected by Steam reviews. Had this been Paradox we would call it yet another new low.
You are not the first Civilization VI player who has said something like that to me!
Liked the video Robb and your argument about rebranding it's just bad as it is.
I'll share my thoughts just on AoE2.
An argument for that price on the dlc could be that it test waters on the community interest about new campaing based expansions, as SOTL well said it. Also, old veterans as myself thought of this more like a life-support line for the devs. I don't really care, I just want expansions to be honest.
Down here it costs 5 USD, so it's not that much. And, I didn't know about the existence of these custom maps and campaigns so, I thinks it's a great opportunity for me to enjoy the game.
Great vid as always
A very reasonable and nuanced take, thanks for sharing it my friend
it seems that those discharges are really paying off, ISNT IT MICROSOFT?
where did they say that the old custom scenarios will no longer be available? that's what it would have to be for you to call them paywalled. as I understand it, the old versions will remain free to play.
You're right, they did not say this, and I may have been too quick to judge on this front. Though I think it's a pretty sound guess to make -- keeping the existing stuff free just further reduces the value proposition of the DLC and would be a very strange move to make, even if a big part of me hopes they do.
While I will prolly be sucker and pay for it, I honestly feel that they should be more respectful towards less popular part of community.
I'll pay only because of insane value that base game me gave already and as I actually want it to be supported as Age IV was (and prolly still is) not the game I wanted.
But I would say if you really want them to churn better content, then we all need the another good RTS with similar formula as AoE but done better amd with better modding support from day 1. Which can be difficult especially considering AoE II pretty much has little to none flaws
Another solid RTS offering would DEFINITELY be a godsend. Give some proper competition for AoE and an incentive for it to rise above and beyond.
Hopefully such a thing comes!
Holy cow, that is egregious. Worst DLC yet (even more than Return to Rome)
I don't even like those scenario designs. They don't fit the game design in my opinion. I like the vanilla, campaign designs we keep getting. If we had gotten normal designed historical battles I would have been fine, but these ludacris, mega maps with complex objectives, many objectives are just too much for my taste. It just doesn't complement the game itself.
The whole livestream felt really disappointing to me in general. It felt like the kind of announcement that I dislike, which is “announcing future announcements.” Could they at least tease, if not reveal what new civs are coming to the games? Just saying “there’s more civs coming, stay tuned.” Felt like I wasted my time tuning in
Completely agree with your opinion. I won't purchase this so-called "new DLC", it's price-gouging. It doesn't worth the amount.
And originally I hoped for more new civs from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, but after seeing this I'm genuinely disappointed and I don't want the devs (at least not the current ones) to make new DLCs anymore out of the fear they'll come up with something even more horrendous and charge the players even higher.
There's always a chance they can come back from this and redeem themselves. I genuinely don't think it's the devs fault, more likely some meddling corporate manager.
But even if that's the case, it doesn't make me anymore happy about this or more willing to pay such exorbitant rates.
@@robbylava By the way, would you mind checking some of my civ crafts and give some advices? That would be really helpful. I made 3 civ crafts on aoe2 wiki fandom already, the Chams, the Bo / Baipu, and the Chimu
@@robbylava By the way, maybe we could do a co-op video sometime I have already made 3 new civ crafts (Chams, Bo / Baipu, and Chimu) and I'm in the process of designing and making the 4th one (Tanguts).
Happy to give input to your designs as always! Just send them my way.
And I would love to do a collaboration with you sometime! Just send a message to the email associated with my channel and we can discuss further.
I'd disagree. I enjoy the single player content, I prefer the campaigns but even some of the historical battles were really well done and I didn't even know there were custom campaigns until this expansion. Plus we don't just get 19 maps, those have to be fully fledged scenarios as in most of the campaigns we already have, the first 2 levels are extremely easy and allow you to get acquainted with how the new civilizations play while here they don't have to waste time with that. Also money for many people is relative, for me even if the scenarios cost €20 I wouldn't mind, as a grown-up €13 or €11 is the price of a meal although I can see people in regions with lower economic conditions having a harder time buying it. Ultimately entertainment costs money, for me quality is paramount to price as when you grow up your time is more valuable than money.
I think that is a perfectly valid opinion to hold. I do think though that, while I am also very happy to pay for quality entertainment, there are reasonable limits. And five admittedly good scenarios for $13 is not what I personally consider to be at all reasonable.
You are of course more than welcome to use your money however you like. I do hope though that other content of higher quality for its price comes along to make your hard-earned dollars yield better results for you.
@@robbylava Thank you mate. For people who didn't play the originals, I think 19 for-us brand new scenarios for €/$11 are actually not a bad deal. Of course I can see why people who did play the originals would object paying the same price but only getting 5. I wouldn't underestimate how many players don't actually know or have bothered to explore the custom campaigns that are free. Convinience and marketing can go a long way to make things more popular, even if you have to pay for it.
@@pavelh.4515 That's also a valid point. I do still think that it's overpriced, even if all 19 scenarios were completely brand new, but it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable. Like, if they put out 19 new long form scenarios for 13 bucks I wouldn't have made a video about it even if I would personally not want to pick it up.
The mobile game art looks over designed and overly intricate.... just like all the other horrendous mobile game "RTS" scams
I will pass on this DLC. Will you make AOE III theorycraft in the future considering a DLC for III with Denmark and Poland is confirmed? or AOM Theorycraft? I am hoping Retold do what Definitive edition did for AOE II if they of course are planning to expand that game with DLC content. I don't give a shit for Mobile. mobile games just simply suck today they are full with fucking microtransactions.
AoM definitely! I've never played AoE3, so no promises but I might try in the far future
Yeah, it's a good concept and idea, but the price is too steep.
I think nothing will ever top the value of 10 bucks for 3 civs 3 campaigns
price isnt that much of a problem for me tbh, not that im rich (im not) but im willing to go that high for aoe2.
my issue is that devs took waaayyyyy too long to do this, its dont at the wrong time. half the campaigns i recognize from playing custom ones, and even if you were to throw coop in there, half of them have custom ones also. so any idea for a campaign only themed dlc is null and void since fans of that have already migrated to custom campaigns, and theyre amazing.
I am utterly disappointed too. I will probably buy this one - I love the creator and I like to encourage them to put more attention to campaigns. BUT I'll do that with a heavy heart and I'll probably NOT buy such a low-quality DLCs in the future if they continue to do so. I really really hope that you are wrong with your prediction about exit strategy, and I hope the manager who made the decisions for this ridiculous update gets fired immediately. Offering an overpriced, lazy and half-ass made DLC and simultaneously white-labelling a third-party chinese mobile game "Dawn of Kingdoms" as AOE Mobile is enough to fire the manager on the spot. These are such a horrible decisions that I don't even understand how they even got approved and implemented.
I would gladly pay double the amount of the DLC price if they've just improved only the Mod search screen. It is impossible to find good new campaigns nowadays. I have an impression that I've played them all - and all I see now - are just translations of the existing campaigns, mostly - in chinese, or broken scenarios. Its impossible to use unless you know exactly what are you looking for beforehand. At the very least they could allow filtering campaigns by a language, civilizations, compatibility etc.
I love this game and i am really mad.
Well if nothing else, I'm going to try to put together a community sourced list of great campaigns and scenarios for people to look up and play! The mod page may have garbage discoverability, but fortunately we have a lot of good people to point us in the right directions
@ava I will be very grateful if you do. I am playing since 98, and I am a die hard campaign player, enjoying any well-made campaign and almost never playing the multiplayer. At this point I feel like I've played most of them, but I usually remove them after playing, I wish I kept the list of the ones I liked the most to share with you
I hope I can deliver something that will be of service to you then!
This is rancid. They should be busy fixing the broken pathfinding instead of pulling this scummy move.
Shame on them
Huh? Wasn't that already released on update 104954? I haven't seen that many complaints about it lately
Skipan, Eyravir.
This DLC is just so baffling to me like how did we go from Dynasties of India AoE2 DE's biggest expansion to this shit? Plus you think $13 where you are is bad here in Canada this DLC is gonna be priced at $18.
That's brutal, I'm so sorry
@@robbylava Like even RoR at least gave you a completely new game mode with it's own set of civs and campaigns that justified it's high price a little bit and Mountain Royals was a fine DLC I mean it finally gave us the long requested Armenians and Georgians to the game (Even if Armenians are very controversial in it's design very similar to Sicilians in LotW) honestly it's basically the same kind of DLC that Lords of the West and Dawn of the Dukes were and if it was priced the same as those DLCs it probably wouldn't have been crapped on as much but this new "Campaign focused" DLC just feels lazy why are they charging us $13-$18 for 13 recycled scenarios and 5 new scenarios and no 6 scenario story campaigns for existing civs that don't have one yet like why doesn't the Chinese have a full campaign at this point when there's so many stories you could tell with that civ in particular this is a shame because I want to continue supporting AoE2 DE and the first 3 DLCs up to Dynasties of India have shown me that these guys can do a lot better so I don't entirely blame the devs for this I believe it's Microsoft's push to have a new DLC for AoE2 DE every year that's probably rushing a lot of the work put into them and pricing them extremely high to milk this IP (Which quite honestly is starting to sound like EA levels of mismanagement) that's entirely at fault here.
Did they say they'd paywall the old scenarios? Did I miss that? I didn't expect they would. Filty's scenarios are sometimes very weird and don't always feel like aoe2 scenarios, so I thought they might significantly rework them. I can't imagine microsoft officialy releasing something like Ragnar's saga.
But yeah, the devs are getting lazy, and I guess greedy. For fuck's sake, they didn't even make a new background map for the scenario selection screen. Also for aoe3 they're releasing European civs again, so they can reuse building and unit models. Just like Knights of the Mediterranean.
I always see people on reddit proudly proclaiming that they'll buy anything they release, even if the DLC doesn't interest them, to support the game and the devs. I hope people stop saying that. They don't incentivise the devs to make good DLCs.
I haven't played a whole bunch of custom campaigns or scenarios, but I really liked 'the Imjin War' for Koreans by NekyChoi, and 'Kings of West Africa' by Filthydelphia. A few standalone scenarios like Cao Cao's Ambition, and Blood for the Serpent God too.
Thanks for your campaign suggestions!
And you know, I didn't even consider the possibility that they would keep the original scenarios public. If they did I think I would be very slightly less frustrated with them, but I would also say it was even more ludicrous that they expect anyone to pay for it
@@robbylava Custom campaigns, especially those of Filthy, sometimes feel very different from official campaigns. I don't always like that. I bought the DLC with the expectation that these scenarios will be heavily reworked to make them feel more like normal scenarios.
Also, I disagree with your hypothesis of them thinking aoe2 might be a dying game. I mean, they even announced a new dlc for aoe3. Some people thought we were never getting one anymore.
Also, since we're getting separate scenarios, why not one for Ethiopians, Malians and Incas? Their campaigns are not popular.
@aoefsmrap I definitely don't think it's dying from a player base perspective, but the decisions they have been making on pricing and support are what are making me slightly worried. Like I briefly allude to in the video, it feels similar to what is going on with Creative Assembly and Total War
@@robbylava I have no idea about CA and TW. What's happening there?
@aoefsmrap Go take a look at the Legends of Total War channel, he has a couple pretty good breakdowns. So suffice it to say, the company is charging higher and higher amounts for worse and worse quality, and people are sick of it. Especially considering what ridiculous amounts of overpriced DLC they were already offering in the first place.
I was really hoping for some new civs...
While I completely agree and its surely the consensus within the community. I will still shell out the 13$ as I do for all the DLC's (didn't love Mountain Royals or Dynasties of India civs really either) simply because I love the game and want it to last forever. i don't think 13$ is a ton of money these days if anything the others were underpriced. I don't think all the negative press about this crappy expansion helps the AOE2 scene/ game in general though and will likely not result in better DLC's next time.
That's a totally reasonable opinion to hold. As much as I like the game and want it to last forever as well, I really don't like how it sometimes feels like it is being held for ransom. "Pay up or we're going to pull the plug on the servers!"
I just feel like firm boundaries need to be drawn. If they released a DLC full of great content and priced it at 13, 15, or even higher, I would be much more understanding even if I would probably wait for it to go on sale.
I would pay 13$ happily just for an in-game chat and friends list system so i don't have to use Steam and can add any xbox/ microsoft players as friends. Also why am I always disconnecting from Multiplayer services as soon as I want to play a team game?!@@robbylava
Right bro
im gona buy it, and am more than happy to pay for aoe2 DE content, even if its on the higher end. its a game that i play always and have played for decades, its a game i never get bored of, and the team behind (so far) are good and havent delved into the realm of toxic and unethical cash grabs/scams that suck the life out of the game, so till then, they can have my wallet.
however my ONLY issue with it is the fact that the majority of these campaigns are merely polishing of FREE custom campaigns. half of them i could already recognize and recall playing, this i dont like and feels very scammy. i hope they learn from this and dont repeat it, im willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it has limits.
I can't Buy it 😢 My steam got problems 😢
they want money for the servers. Moaning like this will just lead to AOE2 subscription fees.
AOE1 is a functionally dead game, and they haven't delisted the servers for that. What is the price threshold at which you would consider it no longer worth it to buy in? Of course they need to monetize the game, but it is not difficult to create far higher quality content than this that people will be happy to pay for.
Remember, this isn't some small indie studio, this is backed by Microsoft for christ's sake. I'm pretty sure they won't have any trouble keeping the lights on.
@@robbylava im pretty sure AOE1 is bigger in Vietnam alone than all of the worlds AOE2 community
Am I the only one who thinks 13$ is nothing? Then again, I'm the guy who would pay 100$ just to get unique castles for all civs. Speaking of which, do we at lest get new castles to go along with these campaigns?
You're a sweet and generous fellow, but save those hard-earned dollars for content that deserves it!
If I'm honest, a DLC that gave a full, proper, historical set of skins to all units and buildings for a single civilization costing $10 would be far less unreasonable in my eyes then what they are doing here. Or even like a castle pack with unique skins for all the civilizations who don't yet get them! That would totally be worth like 5 to $10
Really how about $18 in Canada?
Actually thinking you are way overreacting.
1) Have you played the DLC? No? Then how do you know it is shit? Jfc. Having played most of these, I can say that many could have used smaller changes to serious overhauls (ie the Saxon Revolt). The official polish might just be what these need to reach a new level of quality. Without playtesting it yourself the outrage is pretty ridiculous.
2) Inflation is a thing. I know, gamers in general arent used to it AT ALL, and will foam in the mouth even thinking about the concept of a game costing more than $60, but 4 years have passed. $13 is not what $13 were 4 years ago. This is nowhere near an outrageous price for the work put in. I will go even further and say that it is not a steep price even for the 5 new scenarios alone from arguably the best AoE2 scenario designer.
3) AoE2 DLCs go on a deep sale very quickly and relatively often. The Mountain Royals went on a -50% sale 3 months after its release. It is entirely possible that VoV will go on a similar sale during steam summer sale, which could be ~$6.5, much closer to what you think the DLC is worth.
You are more than welcome to consider this an overreaction, but you'll notice I never once called the scenarios shit. I have no doubt they will actually be extremely high quality. Do not put words in my mouth.
What would an outrageous price for this be in your eyes? Inflation is a very weak argument, considering less than 2 years ago we got Dynasties of India, a fantastic DLC that delivered 20 scenarios, many of which are considered some of the best the game has ever gotten, plus three civilizations and a free overhaul of a fourth. That cost $10, and people were thrilled by it and more than happy to buy it in droves.
If they released another dynasties of India tier DLC and priced it at $15 I wouldn't bat an eye. If they put it at 20 I would be a little disappointed but certainly wouldn't make a video about it. But you are telling me, with a straight face, that five admittedly good scenarios are worth $13 when 13 such scenarios were free up until very recently?
You are welcome to do what you want with your money and you are welcome to hold what opinion you want, but I think that pricing such as what you suggest will drive this game into the ground.
@ava I believe anything below the base game price cant be called outrageous, but preferably not more than 75%. So I think below $15 is a fair game and is completely acceptable for any DLC, then let people decide if they find the content in it worthy of the price. I havent bought RoR bc I exclusively play AoE2 and the value isnt there for me for just one playable civ. If you find VoV too expensive, just dont buy it 11. That all there is to it. Yes, I will tell you with a straight face as a campaign lover that 5 high quality scenarios (that are usually much longer than your average campaign scenario) + all the others I am eager to replay with the official polish are worth $13 for me ($11 bc I preordered it but w/e). Yes, DoI is probably a better bang for your buck, but it doesnt mean that DLCs must be priced compared to each other. Also do we have a confirmation that the mods will be pulled from the mod section? Is that what you are saying? Bc ngl that'd be scummy, but if they wont, you can keep on playing the mod versions and go about with your day. You are just disappointed, bitter and angry bc the DLC wasnt like what you imagined it would be. There will be other DLCs in the future Im sure you will find adequately priced for the content.
@zepwafels you know? That's a pretty fair point. If you can concede that other DLCs have been better bang for your buck, then I can fully acknowledge that I am disappointed because this isn't what I was hoping for.
I am less willing to say though that this is a one-off instance and future DLCs are likely to give me and many others what we want, namely fairly priced content. To me it feels like testing the waters to see what they can get away with, and if people go along with it then I can only imagine the prices will continue to creep up.
Along similar lines, are you a fan of the Total War games perchance? If so, do you think what's happening in that community and the reaction to the DLCs they've been getting is also overblown?
@@robbylava yep I do think that DoI and DotD are overall the best bang for your buck for the average player. But FE need to experiment with new types of DLCs in the future bc the new civ fatigue is palpable within the community, the civ board is arguably too bloated as it is even now. I think we are getting very close to the end of new civs added to the game. The classic 3 campaign 1-3 new civ style DLC model is just not sustainable anymore without damaging the game. I think we can expect FE trying more unorthodox DLCs in the future, and I dont think RoR and VoV are a bad start. Im sure we will get just campaign pack DLCs in the future w/o the new civs.
Ive played some TW games, but Im not deep enough in it to care about whatever drama in the community
IDK I knew it would be around this price, I spend more on takeout pretty much every day so I pre-ordered it already. I'm terrible
Heheheh, you goofball! Totally valid though, I won't judge you for it
Just like Microsoft, he ignores aoe3 😢
I'm sorry! I've just never played it before, don't know much about it at all.
All good, the game got (no joke) 30 seconds of attention, so not much to talk about.
@gaiusiulius7724 well I hope it gets the attention it deserves in future. Are you pleased with what was announced? I've heard mixed reviews, some people are thrilled that some of the last major missing European powers are getting added, others are irritated that other parts of the world aren't getting filled out
I'm happy that the game will get a dlc, I'm one of the people that wanted an Asia focused dlc since the last one was Asian dynasties from 2007 but PLC and Denmark are fitting additions (it just wasn't their turn imo). I'm also one of a bigger group within the community that is frustrated by the lack of advertisement for and presentation of the game. Especially since communication was more or less nonexistent for more than a year and now we got 30 seconds and two pictures of flags, no screenshots, no artworks and not even a name. In conclusion the stream was disappointing at best for the AoE3 community.
@@robbylava Persians still missing at this point, is particularly glaring.