[Leif_-]

Originally posted by Vynd:
But do proteus and his brother and whoever else have the right to complain about it? Heck yeah!

This is going to be a rant, just so that you're warned:

There's complaining, and there's complaining incessantly, ignoring the explanations and arguments against their complaints.

They certainly don't have a right to demand that Illwinter does this or does that, which is what they are doing. Unlike what they seem to think, computer games are bought as-is. Caveat emptor. Any support ontop of what you get in the box is a bonus and a matter of good service, rather than something you're entitled to.

In my opinion Illwinter has done a great job supporting the community around the game - remember that for most other games "patch" usually means "bug fixes" rather than "game improvements" which is what we've gotten used to. That makes it especially grating to see them harp upon Illwinter as if Illwinter hadn't given the community any kind of support or service at all, just because Illwinter hasn't prioritized their unreasonable requests.

So they paid $50 for the game. So what? The Dominions AI is not any weaker than what's common for full-price strategy games, so it's not like they could really expect something better for that price anyway. Sure, there are games out there with better AIs, but then it's not reasonable to compare Dominions 2 only with the best AI games out there.

They are also both still playing Dominions 2 after several months, so they can hardly argue that they didn't get their monies worth or that the AI makes the game unplayable in single player.

So, no. I don't think they've really got a right to complain. They've gotten what they paid for, and more; they have been explained why it's unreasonable to demand heavy improvements in the AI; they've been told that Illwinter doesn't have the resources a major software house has, and they've been told that the Dominion AI isn't really weaker than what's standard for similar games. Yet still they persist in their complaining and, frankly, whining.