I made a post at the bottom of the second page about Eugen's announcement to offer a free update to AoA, completely overhauling the game's initial mechanics that gave it less than stellar reviews on release.
https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,16624.msg200671.html#msg200671
This overhaul will be separate from the main game and players can switch freely between them to their liking.
The reason I'm a bit confused is that this move, by Eugen, seems to be literally the opposite of ambitious. It's free DLC, everybody wins, nobody loses.
If you're still unsure about purchasing the game, you can just wait until the reviews come in about the reboot and then make your decision. Once again, I'm not sure what's ambitious about this decision. Seems about as safe as possible as far as pleasing current and future fans.
It is ambitious because it is in effect trying to support two flavors of a game at once. Precisely because it is trying to do this while not asking for additional money is gambling it will win enough new users to justify the resources. Even if that does work out, there will still be two flavors of the game going at once, resulting in a split of time/resources/attention/etc for further updates. The conservative thing to do would be to understand they will not make a game that would appeal to every crowd, rather then trying to appeal to the larger audience. That path, if fulfilled to its logical conclusion, leads to watered down games which AAA games suffer from.
The whole route about waiting for reviews is about is precisely what I am advocating. Words alone from a developer cannot sway me.
Oh, I kind of see what you're saying now.
It's 'ambitious' on the part of the developer, because of its potential to fail spectacularly. But honestly, I don't think Eugen is in any danger of going under anytime soon. They've been incredibly successful with pretty much every game they've ever made, and I'm quite positive they have a large buffer to deal with any unforeseen consequences of decisions like this. They're not exactly an indie company, or at least it doesn't seem that way considering their success or budget. Even if it doesn't work out, they probably just shrug their shoulders and spend more time improving a more successful title, or designing their next game.
I can see your reasoning, but I think it's being done more for the fans than for themselves, and in that way it doesn't seem ambitious at all.
In terms of supporting "two flavors" of the game, that's not really how I perceived it either. The old/original formula of the game hasn't been updated in about 6 months, and it will most likely stop receiving updates or support. It stays there for the people who enjoyed the more complex iteration of the game, but I would imagine it stays in its current form for the foreseeable future.
The real purpose (or so they say) of rebooting the game was precisely to
meet the original design goals they had attempted to achieve with the game. They wanted to reboot a franchise, specifically mirroring the gameplay and feel of Act of War and titles like C&C Generals. Unfortunately there were some questionable design decisions (such as adding a dozen different resources to the game) which made the game too complex or clunky to really meet those standards. In some ways you can't blame the company. They were switching gears from about ten years of creating the Wargame series, literally the most realistic RTS games of all time, to a much more "arcade-y", sci-fi style, and I think anyone could expect some errors in the transition. One of the main complaints from the Steam comments was how the game tried to be too realistic for its own good, so I believe that's one of the major issues they'll be attempting to address.
