Thanks very much folks! I think that, at this point in time, it's 99% chance that we'll be working on expansions.
A big mistake we made with Valley 1 was just working on free DLC for three months straight after release without any form of expansion content. That was bloody expensive and ultimately did a number on our ability to actually break even on that game (aka, we didn't).
For Skyward I think what my most likely course of action will be is to both start work on major free DLC post launch (aka more woes and all sorts of good stuff, along with general balance), as well as starting on larger expansion stuff that would be in a for-pay package. It may be worth it to make a thread about what people would want to see there. Personally I'd want at least one more faction, but I think limiting it to one might be best so that the rest of the new additions could be core ones that affect all factions: ie new buildings that everyone can use, new land tiles, etc. So you get the variety of a new faction, but also the increased scope across all factions (without directly adding units that would be exclusive to preexisting factions). If that makes sense.
Pricing for the expansions would be a tricky thing. If its $5 for the base game, is the expansion the same price? That's kind of going to cause customer rebellion. Is it $2.50? Holy heck, there's a limit to how much we can put in an expansion for that low of a price. Either way the expansion needs to be the same sort of "OMG this is a great value" sort of thing that the AI War expansions always have been. And I guess one thing of note is that the cheapest of those expansions was the one that was least impressive on that score. So that says something right there.
Anyway, it's not kosher to talk about expansions on day one I guess, but I think that doing that plus loads and loads of new free stuff for everyone is always the best course. I want to see the woe count in the triple digits! I want each of the ages to become increasingly distinct for reasons unrelated to the gods themselves (and the gods are just icing). I want, if at all possible, a more robust citybuilding sim that is more economy-for-economy's sake rather than everything backing the military. And I want, essentially, alternate win conditions relating from that. Still "survive to the end and reach a certain score," don't get me wrong. But a completely different way of accomplishing that.
Quests or great works of some kind could be interesting. Those literally could be alternate win conditions, like building a ship to alpha centauri in civ. Dangerous ways to win the game before the clock runs out could be interesting.
I've just described several expansions' worth of stuff, really; if we're going to do mechanics like that right, and really give each one a lot of details and variance, then each thing there would have a ton of sub-components that would warrant an expansion on its own, probably. The great works expansion, with tons of complexity on those lines, and lots of other things thrown in. The citybuilding expansion with economic paths to victory, and this whole "separate from the military" type of gameplay in it.
Who knows. There are a lot of things I've thought about, and a lot of things that I'm sure you guys have ideas for, too. I'm not sure what I'm most interested in pursuing yet, as my focus has been so tunnel-vision on this release (and not knowing how it would do). But I do want to do something. And in the meantime, of course, free DLC while we figure that out. Unless something drastic happens to our current sales trajectory. Knock on wood!
