AI War Steam sale - 50-85% off!

[Sizzle]

I'm of the impression that if you have to buy an expansion to make the game good, it's not a good game.  I made that mistake with the original Supreme Commander, which I found very underwhelming.  Forged Alliance, the standalone expansion for the original game, claimed to "fix" all the initial problems, and make it a lot better.  It was no surprise that it hardly fixed anything at all.

I don't see the logic in that at all, sorry.  You're of course welcome to the opinion; I just simply don't understand it.  So developers shouldn't try to improve their product with expansions? (and if they do, the improvements don't "count"?)  Should they name it "Awesome_game II" instead -- and heaven forbid people say "awesome game I was horrid, so II will be horrid as well"?   

I can see being skeptical when a developer states  "We fixed everything in this last expansion, trust us..." -- but in that case I'd start looking for other player's opinions as to whether the developers delivered on the promise.   In this case, the developer isn't making the statement; a player is.

[Vinraith]

I'm of the impression that if you have to buy an expansion to make the game good, it's not a good game.  I made that mistake with the original Supreme Commander, which I found very underwhelming.  Forged Alliance, the standalone expansion for the original game, claimed to "fix" all the initial problems, and make it a lot better.  It was no surprise that it hardly fixed anything at all.

That's your choice, of course, and an understandable one. It is, however, robbing you of playing my favorite 4XTBS of all time.

[Wingflier]

I'm of the impression that if you have to buy an expansion to make the game good, it's not a good game.  I made that mistake with the original Supreme Commander, which I found very underwhelming.  Forged Alliance, the standalone expansion for the original game, claimed to "fix" all the initial problems, and make it a lot better.  It was no surprise that it hardly fixed anything at all.

I don't see the logic in that at all, sorry.  You're of course welcome to the opinion; I just simply don't understand it.  So developers shouldn't try to improve their product with expansions? (and if they do, the improvements don't "count"?)  Should they name it "Awesome_game II" instead -- and heaven forbid people say "awesome game I was horrid, so II will be horrid as well"?   

I can see being skeptical when a developer states  "We fixed everything in this last expansion, trust us..." -- but in that case I'd start looking for other player's opinions as to whether the developers delivered on the promise.   In this case, the developer isn't making the statement; a player is.

If you want to improve the game, improve the game. The player shouldn't be expected to buy a bunch of expansions for the game to be good, that's common sense.

Did Arcen make a new expansion for 4.0 so that the base game could be subpar, but the 4.0 expansion could be great?

If the base game sucks, the company can either improve it, or give up and make a sequel. Making a sequel to the game is a chance for a fresh start. You can port it to a new engine, you can re-develop it from scratch, fixing all the problems of the original game; most importantly you can charge full price for it again. The thing is, I would rather a developer make the base game good or start over rather than forcing me to buy DLC or expansions to be able to enjoy the game.

I would rather the company say, "Hey, we messed up, we're starting over", then give me the choice of trusting them again, rather than making a bunch of expansions that aren't actually improving the quality of the base game. In this way I actually have the choice of trusting the developer and buying the game again, rather than being slapped in the face with additional content instead.

Like I said before, if the game can't stand alone (like for example AI War), there is something inherently wrong with it.

Companies make mistakes the first time they make a game, it's understandable. On your first try you're going to make mistakes, sometimes you learn later, so severe that you would practically have to start over to fix them. In these situations, no amount of expansions are going to fix the problems with the base game, and a sequel is understandable.

[keith.lamothe]

If you want to improve the game, improve the game. The player shouldn't be expected to buy a bunch of expansions for the game to be good, that's common sense.

I agree with that.

I'm of the impression that if you have to buy an expansion to make the game good, it's not a good game.

But that does not logically follow.

Expansions should be for making a good game better (or simply providing different experiences within the same general framework).  If you release a game and discover it's not a good game, free updates is the proper vector to make it a good game

But in either case, when I bought SotS:Complete I got a really good game.

[Red Spot]

With A.I. war, I waited for a steam sale mainly because I always do so for indie games, because it's hard to judge their quality before playing them. Some are gems that I play for hours, others get less than 15 minutes. That said, after finishing the base game tutorial I went out and bought the two expansions straight away, not caring whether they were on sale or not, cause I could tell what a deal I was getting

Somewhat the same for me, I have spend quite a bit of money on 'lets try to develop a game in 2 months and call myself an Indie-games' so am a wee bit sceptical when it comes to them (1 is like a saint, the most active people on forums/support are developers themselves .. others are A-holes, they take your money and are never seen or heard of, untill the next title is released).

I do start to use Steam a lot more in this regard, just check their forums and see what the average user has to say, for AI-war for instance their is some talk about key-registration, balance and how this game rocks and how the support rocks (I buy through steam so the key wont be an issue, and seeing that support is there means that balance is a temporary thing).

I'm of the impression that if you have to buy an expansion to make the game good, it's not a good game.  I made that mistake with the original Supreme Commander, which I found very underwhelming.  Forged Alliance, the standalone expansion for the original game, claimed to "fix" all the initial problems, and make it a lot better.  It was no surprise that it hardly fixed anything at all.

I really find it entertaining to see you like SC2 but find SC1/FA to be failing.
Not judging you or anything, just that SC1/FA are the difficult game where SC2 holds your hand and is so streamlined that it removes most of the "skill-requirement", bashing insane AIs is easy. By itself that doesnt say too much, but seeing you are a fan of AI-War I would have assumed to would have preffered SC1/FA.

[Reality]

SC2 is largely designed around human vs human combat, however, not human vs computer. Beating the campaign on hard (haven't tried insane) isn't tough, but you have to fight your way up through the multiplayer leagues kicking and screaming. A lot of their development time, I think, was spent keeping the three races balanced for multiplayer. Never played supreme commander, so I can't comment on that one

[ZedF]

Expansions should be for making a good game better (or simply providing different experiences within the same general framework).  If you release a game and discover it's not a good game, free updates is the proper vector to make it a good game

Agreed. With SotS, when you buy SotS:CC, you are not only getting 3 expansions with the base game, you are also getting a lot of free updates that went into the game over the course of development of those 3 expansions and beyond. In fact, Kerberos has still not finished giving out free updates for SotS, 4 years later, even though they are full into development of SotS 2.

The problem with SotS originally was never, IMHO, that there wasn't a good core of a game there to start with. The problem was that, being an indie start-up, they didn't have the time and money to add the feature richness and level of polish that people expect from AAA strategy titles. Moreover, the interface wasn't as transparent about what was going on in the game (and why) as it could have been.

Those issues have definitely been addressed over the last few years; it's no longer the rough-edged game some people might remember from 2006, and there is now a wealth of information available about how the game/game universe works and why it works that way, if you care to look for it.

[Wingflier]

If you want to improve the game, improve the game. The player shouldn't be expected to buy a bunch of expansions for the game to be good, that's common sense.

I agree with that.

I'm of the impression that if you have to buy an expansion to make the game good, it's not a good game.

But that does not logically follow.

Expansions should be for making a good game better (or simply providing different experiences within the same general framework).  If you release a game and discover it's not a good game, free updates is the proper vector to make it a good game

But in either case, when I bought SotS:Complete I got a really good game.

Your argument seems contradictory.  On the one hand, you agree that you shouldn't have to buy a bunch of expansions to be able to enjoy the game, then on the other hand you disagree that being forced to buy expansions to get a good game isn't a bad thing.

What I've been hearing is that SotS, the original game with no expansions, is quite underwhelming and boring compared to the game with all the expansions added to it.  From my own experience, I absolutely agree with that.  So instead of improving the base game into an enjoyable and playable state, the developer instead decided to "fix" the game using the expansions, and I find that to be unacceptable for reasons I mentioned before.

The whole "free updates to improve the base game" is, from my understanding, not what occurred here.

Not judging you or anything, just that SC1/FA are the difficult game where SC2 holds your hand and is so streamlined that it removes most of the "skill-requirement", bashing insane AIs is easy.

I've never understood this whole "more streamlined = oversimplified" argument before; it's fallacious logic.  Just because a game is more streamlined, simpler, and easier for the user(s) to grasp, does not automatically mean it is any less deep than its predecessors or games of a similar genre.

Starcraft 2 is 10x more streamlined than the first game.  You can select multiple buildings at once, you can select an unlimited number of units instead of only groups of 12, you don't have to select each individual unit in order to be able to cast their spells, on and on practically ad infinitum.  Is Starcraft 2 less of a game just because they removed these pointless and unnecessary complexities?  Because that's basically the argument you are presenting here.

Yes, SupCom 2 is more "streamlined" than the first game...And?  It's also just as deep and competitively viable a title as the first game (probably more so).  

As far as being able to bash "insane AIs" easily, I haven't experienced that.  In fact, when the PC Gamer UK crew christened it "Co-op Game of the Year", they explained that 6 of them were facing off against only 2 insane AIs, and they still ended up losing.  I guess they are all just horrible players?  I'm not saying the insane AI is impossible to beat (well to be clear, you could probably tweak them until they were, similar to AI War), but to say that it's 'easy' makes me wonder how much you've actually played the game.

[Vinraith]

@Wingflier

You're interpreting the SotS team's actions as "they made a bad game, then charged the consumer to fix it." I can understand your distaste for that model, indeed, I share it. In the case of SotS, though, I don't think it fits what really happened. The SotS team released a fairly simply, beer and pretzels strategy game. I would fundamentally dispute the claim that the game was "bad," it was reasonably bug free and fairly well crafted, it was just a very basic strategy title without much complexity and I (and clearly you) didn't find it particularly appealing. Kerberos (the developers) did vigorously support the title, adding free content, patching it up, etc, but free updates were never going to elevate it above what it was: a basic, light little TBS game that wouldn't appeal to you or I.

In releasing expansions, however, they virtually created a series of sequels, more depth, more mechanics, more races, more technologies, more of everything with each one. It wasn't a case of fixing a broken game, it was a case of taking a very simple, basic game and turning it into a very complex, deep game over several iterations. It's a subtle distinction, and I couldn't blame you if you didn't see the difference, but I think it's a meaningful one. The post-release support for each expansion has been vigorous as well, with new content added, new tweaks, and integrated feedback from the community. Indeed, prior to seeing Arcen's frankly insane support for AI War, Kerberos' support of SotS was some of the best developer support I'd ever seen.

Of course, at this point, the complete collection is regularly on sale for $10 or less, so it's hard to make the argument that anyone's getting ripped off anyway. Just treat that as the base game, in many ways Kerberos seems to regard it as a sort of SotS 1.5 themselves, and ignore the humble beginnings of the project.

[Wingflier]

After reading your explanation, I suppose I understand better now.  What I interpreted as a "bad game" (the original SotS with no expansions), was just, as you said, an extremely simple TB Space Strategy.  I guess if you are into that sort of thing, you could enjoy it, I just found it about as bland and unappealing as a saltless pretzel.  Obviously being able to buy the whole game for such a cheap price basically negates the whole problem of "improving" the game with expansions, but I just meant that I disagree with the marketing scheme on principle, because some games actually do try to market their games like that, and it's unacceptable.

[keith.lamothe]

If you want to improve the game, improve the game. The player shouldn't be expected to buy a bunch of expansions for the game to be good, that's common sense.

I agree with that.

I'm of the impression that if you have to buy an expansion to make the game good, it's not a good game.

But that does not logically follow.

Your argument seems contradictory.  On the one hand, you agree that you shouldn't have to buy a bunch of expansions to be able to enjoy the game, then on the other hand you disagree that being forced to buy expansions to get a good game isn't a bad thing.

No, I'm not saying that isn't a bad thing, I'm just saying it doesn't mean that the resulting "complete" game is not a good game.

More simply: "bad developer business practices" does not imply "not a good game".  It certainly can imply "wouldn't knowingly buy from such a developer, regardless of game quality", but that's a distinct thing.

The whole "free updates to improve the base game" is, from my understanding, not what occurred here.

From my perspective I honestly can't tell.  All I know is that there was an original release that wasn't a good game, and that there were free updates throughout the game's lifecycle (which is still somewhat ongoing) and that there have been 3 paid expansions, and that the sum total is a good game.  I'm not sure whether the original + the free updates is a good game by itself, I just don't have data on that.

[ZedF]

The whole "free updates to improve the base game" is, from my understanding, not what occurred here.

Then your understanding is flawed. The game was improved both by virtue of (many) free updates, as well as by expansions. Kinda like AI War that way.

Or, what Vinraith said, if I had read all the way through the thead before replying.

[Echo35]

I've never understood this whole "more streamlined = oversimplified" argument before; it's fallacious logic.  Just because a game is more streamlined, simpler, and easier for the user(s) to grasp, does not automatically mean it is any less deep than its predecessors or games of a similar genre.

I have never understood that argument either. A "simpler" game does not mean it's any less deep and strategic. Go is probably the simplest game in existence, but it's so deep strategically that even our best super computers can't crack it. If anything, a simpler game rules wise makes the game MORE deep, as there are less rules and balance issues to get in the way.

[keith.lamothe]

I believe Wingflier is the source of that quote, not me

[BobTheJanitor]

Soviet revisionism strikes again!