Dominions II - Low Budget and Overpriced? I think not.

[UNIVAC]

Originally posted by ceremony:

quote:

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Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
add some more sound tracks, and offer it to customers as a "patch" (more medieval music in the form of a downloadable mp3 "patch" would be totally wonderful, and it can't be all that expensive to hire performers since the intellectual property rights to authentic medieval pieces have long since expired).

Why not just buy the CD of medieval music available from the group that did the music for Dom2? That's what I did.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/falsobordone

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Or try Hedningarna or Dead Can Dance...similar formations

[Karacan]

Hmm, I forgot to add two points:

Is it worth the price? Yes, for me, it is. Although I had to think about it.

Why is it worth the price? And this is the point: Not only because of a good game design that offers a lot of fun, but mainly because I supported with my money a cool low budget company with great ideas about games and excellent ideas how to make them work (have a look at any other shareware fantasy strategy stuff to know that this is apparently not an easy feat).

I am still left with the (subjective) impression that Dom II is not a shareware game, not for this price. And as a non-shareware game, the critics are more unforgiving for polish and shine, too.

[SurvivalistMerc]

You will laugh at me...I don't buy many music CDs. I had no idea this was commercially available. And actually I don't recall hearing Medieval music until the Dom 2 background music, which I totally loved for the first 3 days and then (due solely to lack of variety) it got old.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

[Lord Hammer]

One important point IMHO is how many games we've bought for $50 without blinking an eye because so and so made them or it's "title" 2 or 3. I consider myself a professional gamer and have bought/played just about every turn-based fantasy or wargame ever made and was blown away with all Dominions 2 has to offer. AOW2:SM has all the eye candy, more races...sites etc. and after playing all the previous iterations of it i still felt there was nothing really new, a rigidly structured campaign where you were forced to master the "race de jour". Hundreds of turns later after finishing the game once or twice i felt no desire to do it all over again, i can't change my starting race or opponents and every map was the same...yeah, so i got better at "getting it over with" ...big deal! That is just one of the "popular" games of that type. I have been playing Dom2 since the release only as the different Undead armies against 6 or 7 ai races so far one or two at a time and EVERY game has been radically different plus i still have 10 ai opponents/races to go against. Then i will pick another race to play as...well, do the math: i have only scratched the surface of this deep game...a small percentage of gaming goodness. Replay value is not a strong enough word for Dominions 2...it's a handful of games all in one package. If we were able to buy this game "by the race" for $10 each that would be a steal,right? So in my eyes i'm getting $170 worth of game for $50 . The ironic thing is i happened upon the demo quite by accident, a Holiday buying guide from a gamers website, i shudder at the thought of not having found Dominions 2...call it Divine intervention or just good luck but i call it the best game experience to happen to me in all my jaded years as a gamer . Now i am spoiled and the bar has been raised!

[olaf73]

Low budget=low price

At least that is the way it usually works for video/computer games. So that is why people (myself included) bring it up when discussing Dominions 2.

olaf

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Lord Hammer:
I have been playing Dom2 since the release only as the different Undead armies against 6 or 7 ai races so far one or two at a time and EVERY game has been radically different plus i still have 10 ai opponents/races to go against. Then i will pick another race to play as...well, do the math: i have only scratched the surface of this deep game...a small percentage of gaming goodness. Replay value is not a strong enough word for Dominions 2...it's a handful of games all in one package.
. . .
i shudder at the thought of not having found Dominions 2

Well put. In terms of a someone new to Dominions I think you have said it all - Dominions 2 is an incredible buy because of the amount you get.

I think some people who upgraded from Dom1 to Dom2 are not so happy as they already had a great game and hoped that Dom2 was going to be slick with it.

I'm very happy because I have a new Dom to play with and there is so much about it I love. For me only games of the ilk of Neverwinter Nights, Stars! and Ultima Online can really be compared to Dominions in terms of value for money. Dominons2 is suberb value for money for me.

cheers

Keir

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by olaf73:
Low budget=low price
At least that is the way it usually works for video/computer games. So that is why people (myself included) bring it up when discussing Dominions 2.

Understandable but I think its usually that low budget means it COULD be low priced. Dom1 was. And we all continually bombarded the devs with requests to bring the game (graphics, music, interface) more in line with the mainstream games.

Dom2 seems to be an effort at moving in that direction. OK some of its not there yet but its the chicken-vs-egg thing. They will need to make some real money BEFORE being able to move this little hobby project into a more central thing in their lives (or hire others). If I remember correctly they both have families and jobs. Picture THAT conversation. "But the players said..."

Anyway Im still happy to have sent in my support for Dominions. And I do feel I got my money worth.

[ December 25, 2003, 13:34: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Sammual]

For the Last month there have been 3 days where I did not play Dom2 for at LEAST 3 hours. On weekends I put in at least 4 hours. In terms of 'bang for the buck' only Everquest has Dom2 beat (Give me another month and ask if Dom2 beat EQ in bang for the buck yet).

Sammual

[Endoperez]

Originally posted by olaf73:
Low budget=low price

At least that is the way it usually works for video/computer games. So that is why people (myself included) bring it up when discussing Dominions 2.

olaf

No, I have to correct you.
Low Budget => Low Quality => Low Price
That is the norm, that is how it usually works. Luckily, as Illwinter are an exception and made Dom2 with low budget (in money, not in work), this low budget game is of very high quality and, because of that, actually worth more than a bad big budget game.
It's still your choice, though: do you want to support the publishers and sellers of decent games to publish and sell those games, or Illwinter and Shrapnel to make and sell great games? You should also notice that games in the bargain bins only bring money for the shops and publishers... That's why Shrapnel doesn't let Dom2 to go down there.

[sfsuphysics]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

So. Can anyone tell me why they continually bring up the "low budget" status of Dominions as a relevant factor to its pricing? I'd love to hear a coherent, rational explanation. -Cherry

(back from an Xmas flu that hurt)

I think the reason why so many will bring up 'low budget' is because the first thought that comes to mind when playing this probably is something like "did I have a copy of dos5.0 to run this?" Seriously, it looks like you'd have to fiddle with high-mem for days to get it to run type of game (read: wrong decade). Now before anyone gets their panties in a twist about eye candy, you have to admit that a certain amount of eye candy is required for sanity purposes. Now I loathe FPS games and most console games so dont stick me into that boat that I know some of you were itching to type away. This game to me seems like a medieval Version of Risk is all. Sure its decently fun, granted I dont think its as fun as a majority here think, but getting opinions about the game from here is slightly biased (usually). Maybe because the game is incompletish? No editing possible? Well thats a feature a lot of these types of games require, not 'wait for the patch' type responses.

I dunno, maybe its because of the multi-platform aspect of it that the graphics look the way they do, you need the code to work for multiple platforms you usually lose on custom platform techniques, similar to how I had much higher expectations for Moo3. This is not to say that Dom2 is a 'low budget' game, it just looks like it was made in the 80's (or maybe early 90's), this you can not argue (unless you're on a solaris machine then this is top of the line graphics for a game). Most game stuff you can't see, and even though I have no idea how hard it is to program a good challenging AI or whatever, it doesn't look too much indepth either.

Anyways that's my 2 cents.
Happy New Year to all