You can't complain that this game is costly

[Gandalf Parker]

I agree with most of that. For a game like this one, the support will never be enough. As amazing as it is, people will always come up with things they want "fixed" or changed.

Definetly not costly. I get far more for my money than any other game I remember.

I suppose that Shrapnel could package 2 of their other games with it, but as you say it would feel like cheating if thats what it takes to get some people to buy it. As for the 9.99 thing studies have shown that people often make decisions based on even amounts. As long as $9.99 sells so much better than $10 then we will see it being done.

Gandalf Parker

[Edi]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

For a game like this one, the support will never be enough. As amazing as it is, people will always come up with things they want "fixed" or changed.

I suppose that depends a bit on how you define support. Personally, I have found the support for the game exceptional, but that may be a function of my perspective as the person who maintains the bug shortlist and the modding wishlist.

The black section of the shortlist may still look pretty daunting, but compared to what (and what severity) has been fixed, there's not a lot left and relatively little of it is serious. The more recent slew of things we have gotten with the new modding stuff is humbling. So much more has been unlocked that enables mods to be much better than they used to be. The number of mods that have been updated to take advantage of that in the past couple of weeks is staggering.

That's not even going into all the other brand new content in the patches, such as 9 new nations to date. We may or may not get new nations with new patches. We may or may not get some other new mechanics such as new terrain types. We will probably get some more modding commands, depending on how easy they are to do and how enthusiastic Illwinter is about them.

Outside of this, realistically the only other things left are broadly two categories:

1) Network side for automating server setup and game setup and management somewhat

2) Altering, tweaking and balancing existing things.

Of these, number 2 is an endless bone of contention, because you can never satisfy everyone. Or necessarily even the majority. Some people will be ecstatic if certain things are altered, some will cry nerf an others will go meh, no matter what is done. This is the only place where the argument that support is never enough gets any traction and there it is by definition true, since there is never an end to wishes, desires and demands from players. And I'm not talking about just the people registered here at Shrapnel Games.

At the end, it boils down to what kind of support expectations are reasonable and what has been done, and in this regard I think Dominions 3 has been one of the best supported games I have ever seen. Best supported by far. On top of that, the value for money you get out of it in terms of replayability and the price per hour of gaming wrt initial cost of purchase is pretty eye-opening.

With that combo, Dominions 3 is hard to beat. Very hard.

Of course, this post expresses my opinion and is NOT some pronouncement of The One & Only Truth from on high. Your experience and mileage may vary, depending on your expectations.