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Ugh I don't see this as an argument to buy the game though ... why should I pay money for something that isn't fun out of the box? Shouldn't I be paying modders instead for making the game enjoyable? I guess that's no longer the developer's job?
Yes but with both of those examples, I had a good time for a while with the content they shipped with before using mods. Total War games, such as Rome, Medieval II, and even Empire/Napoleon were fun right of the gate. Mods just made them that much better. I played the hell out of vanilla Warband before eventually trying mods. And occasionally I still go back to it.You can say that about all games.
Same story with Total War games. In Empire or Shogun2/FoTS AI ain't so good. You can trick enemy easily and with higher difficulty levels AI gets cheat money to buy ridiculously huge armies. Units feels the same and there is no huge difference between them. Everything seems to be balanced to hell.
Solution: mods, where gameplay is way more enjoyable.
Mount and Blade: Warband: stock game is OK, but why would you avoid great mods made for that game, which improve gameplay?
ArmA 2 - I wouldn't touch stock ArmA 2 game anymore. I cannot imagine playing it w/o ACE, ACRE, AI mods and great community.
Stock game - don't touch it.
w/ ACE/ACRE/etc - great tactical MP game
Last time I checked A2 combined ops is perfectly playable in its own right in coop, but then again my standards for "playable" is something you can put together with 3-6 guys total in short notice without spending 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000,000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years configuring mods, updating them and then finding 90% of missions are broken because of an mod update.
Guys from my unit make campaigns (each ~10 missons) for 40+ people w/o problems. Since I joined my unit in 2010 I played like 6 campaigns which are superb compered to public games or others missions.
If you don't want to bother with that, you can always download mission from armaholic, there is many of them.