DLC should be free

[Boz]

$15 DLC for a game thats 20 years old? What a joke.

[Quarantined_villager]

Don´t buy it

[TaxOwlbear]

Nice how you, a person show plays a game from 20 years ago, thinks the DLC should be free based on the fact that the game is 20 years old.

[Age]

YEah, and so should movies, and music and tv and

[aflashman]

It's not as if the game has had no work done over the past 20 years.

As a big fan of AoE2 I am very glad for all the releases since 2013. And right now with the DE edition, the new servers, the Elo ratings and the matchmaking, AoE2 is better than ever.

But programming costs money. And if the game didn't bring in revenue then it would not have received all this support. Indeed if sales dropped a cliff and if no one ever bought the DLC (the only source of new revenue) the game would die.

Aside from AoE2, the profitablity of the game incentivize keeping the franchise alive and RTS development in general.

One thing that people say is that relative to the cost of the base game the DLC is expensive. But what this misses is the base game is cheap. So I think it is reasonable the devs recover some money from DLCs (which are the price of a pizza - so they're really not expensive).

The only people I can understand balking at the cost are people with either no or low income (children, students, unemployed or people in developing countries with an exchange rate that makes the game expensive to them). But really they need those who can afford to buy the DLCs to keep putting money into the game so that there servers etc can be supported.

[merlinkun]

Maybe you can suggest how the devs can make money and support themselves and the work they do when you want the DLC to be free then. These are new content that takes time and effort to do.

[Flickmann]

Originally posted by merlinkun:

Maybe you can suggest how the devs can make money and support themselves and the work they do when you want the DLC to be free then. These are new content that takes time and effort to do.

Perhaps release content and patches that actually work and don't make the game completely unplayable? Reports galore of crashes within minutes of playing, old bugs like the multiplayer lobby bug still not fixed and new doozies introduced like Lithuanian cavalry getting +50 attack from exploiting relics. And the devs are seemingly on a major damage control mission, with threads getting closed all over. If you paid money to support this, you're a sucker.

[76561199096712327]

The fact that you cannot afford it is a joke.

[wetbandit1986]

10E for dlc is too much. but you have 700E pc to play base game ? gtfo

[Enger]

no and its 10€

[djcarey]

Ummm the release was in 2019

[Dayve]

People said AoE 2 DE should have been free as well. They were wrong then and they're wrong now. Why should you get the work of someone else for free? Unless they owe you money and can't pay then you shouldn't.

[Blegh]

Yet the 20 year old game is still one of the highest played rts games out there, and known by many people as the best rts of all time. hmmm

[Candesco]

Originally posted by Borbz:

$15 DLC for a game thats 20 years old? What a joke.

Not enitirely right. The original was from Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. I still have the original cd's myself, including manuals and skilltree. Originally i had it in a big carton box, but i lost that box somehow. I've got the original AoE II: The age of kings and it's expansion The Conquerors. Spend many hours to it, even played through directIP then against someone else.
What you got here is a pimped version of the original, much of what Beamdog did with a couple of DnD games and what Nordic did with Titan Quest and Kingdoms of Amalur. And that versions isn't that old. Seems they also release dlc then. That is a thing those companies do alot when they revive a classic and just add fancy visuals to it. Awfull business in my opinion. And often those "upgraded" versions are worser then the original. I just wouldn't bother with those extra dlc's. And otherwise just look out for the original.

Originally posted by bwcamp:

Yet the 20 year old game is still one of the highest played rts games out there, and known by many people as the best rts of all time. hmmm

The original yes, which was made by Ensemble Studios. That one is still played alot and is regarded as one of the better rts games of all time. Though some also say that the first AoE holds that title. I have both, but i like AoE II more. I got from both the original version from Ensemble Studios. Played it alot back then on Windows 98SE and a bit on Windows Xp as well, but it was a win98 game. These pimped versions ain't that polular.

[aflashman]

Originally posted by Candesco:

These pimped versions ain't that polular.

Pimped? Like AoE2 DE? Not popular? With as many as 30,000 people playing at any one time?

AoE2 DE was the highest grossing RTS game on Steam in 2020. (Unless you count Warhammer 2 as an RTS in which case AoE2 DE was number two).

AoE2 DE is a significant improvement over the original CD game. Not just the graphics but things like quality of life improvements - better hotkeys. Easier to view game stats (such as how many villagers are on each resource type). The original was great. And this version is true to the original but better in every way.

One thing I really appreciate is how much better the matchmaking system is these days. You can always find a game with someone at about your level, even eternal noobs (like me).

[Bruce]

Originally posted by Borbz:

$15 DLC for a game thats 20 years old? What a joke.

It's just you and a couple more people that can't probably afford it and are mad/jealous about it.
The rest we're enjoying and we're grateful for new content. End of story.