@jartigerx>

Yeah, but then you are willing to shell 40 EUROs minimum for Heart of Swarm. Its pointless to argue about, how significant those new units and gameplay adjustments there will be, cause this is rather subjective - same way as with Rebellion. But going by objective measures - added content, which seems to be major source of complaints with Rebellion anyway, HoS wont be no more of a sequel than Rebellion is. 

Ok... where to begin with this. Firstly I want to say that I understand your sentiment and your disappointment. However that being said I have to ask you a fairly simple question. Do you not understand how business works? Retail perhaps? The whole point of a company is to make a product and/or service and sell it. Once upon a time you sold good products and gained merit thus more sales for and it became a chain of "Good branding".

Throw that out the window. In today's market it has nothing to do with good products and services it has to do with simply selling selling selling. These days deception in the marketplace is common. Do you know how many crappy products there are on the market that if you were to actually value them they'd be say... $50 but they are overvalued by hundreds if not thousands of percent to the 500-2000 dollar range. You know why? Because they can hype up the product so much that people will buy it even though it's crap and the company/brand doesn't even have to have any real reputation. We are a cheap and disposable society and it has filtered into every corner of the capitalist market including the game industry.

Now I don't want to apply that to Ironclad or Sins because that isn't really fair. Rebellion is $40 because Rebellion is a STAND ALONE game. Which means if you did not purchase sins and the expansions you are getting the full game for afaik around the same price you would have had you bought the full game back when it first came out plus expansions. Now yes that kind of shafts everyone who has already bought the sins series (especially like myself who bought Sins... then bought Sins Trinity so I've essentially bought the game 3 times now). The thing is you really did know what you were getting unlike other companies who sell you on BS and features that don't exist or never make it into a game I don't think Ironclad really decieved anyone with Rebellion. Perhaps they didn't use the best terminology but did we get new factions? Yes if you go by the definition of what a "faction" is in modern gaming YES we did get that. Did we get new tech trees? I see quite a few new tech that wasn't in the original + expansion so again... YES. Did we get new ships and new abilities? Well YES that one is obvious. Graphical overhaul? YES! New UI? YES! Sure they might have been built off the old and simply improved and rebranded as new... but that concept is certainly not new and EVERY company does that. It's an annoying concept but it's one that is here to stay. Buy v1 of something which is really the same as v2 but they intentionally took features out so they could resell you the same thing later. But wait! There's v3 on the horizon which is still the same product with a few more bells and whistles that probably cost them very little to add... but guess what? Not only are you paying roughly the same as you did for the previous two iterations... you're gonna pay MORE for it. See what I mean? This is a marketing trend that has been going on for probably around 30-50 years and it's getting worse and worse and worse. But Ironclad/SoSE isn't doing anything different to any other company and what they have done isn't even near the worst of the worst when it comes to these sort of marketing ploys.

(Btw you know of World of WarCraft right? Do you realize that a good 40-80% of the content in each expansion is really rehashed content from the previous base game? Models... Items... Abilities... save for the few they do create new tech for... it is ALL built off the same previous content. They make billions if not trillions of dollars and they don't even TRY to make unique stuff so yeah... don't fret too much about it)

Stop it bgilliford, you are speaking logic and reason.

Only if you don't factor in the giant campaign that's in HoS that has no equivalent in Rebellion whatsoever.

Expectation...a preconceived resolution to have reasons to dislike something.

This is the single biggest reason to despise blizzard. Gamers pay a premium price for sub-premium service(yet even as sub prime, its better then most games made today).  Reminds me of my ISP.

The only reason I support stardock and ironclad is that they have in the past and will in the future provide some actual competition in the video game market by making great games.  But since there are so few well designed games out there, I HAVE to play blizzard products as well, and endure their underlying annoying game design idealogy. 

In reality, the game industry is the way it is because big money wanted to infiltrate the game market(to make loads of cash), and they did so the best way big money knows how.  Buy out the best, combine the best, invest shitloads of cash into it so that there is no real quality competition, and profit excessively because you are the main provider of the "thneed"(dr. suess reference).  Its a tried and true ancient battle plan that will always be relevant as long as people compete for resources.

Gamers get angry at other developers for not providing them with the same quality of merchandise, yet at the same time the developers themselves aren't creative enough (due to legal constraints, mainly loss of control of their product) to create new cashflows, because their specialty isn't in creating new cashflows, its in game design.  I am not insulting them by any means, as I consider creating new cashflows to be the enterprise of dull, boring individuals.  But that's my own personal bias.

Having a lot of money means you can hire entire teams of people to incorporate much more cashflow into your game.  Teams of boring cashflow creators.

To me, an angry gamer is a trukula tree(dr. suess reference, same story as before), the trust can be regrown over time but the reaper has already come for it.  Other game designers get upset by how the market is because in all reality, blizzard's/EA's exploitation of the market has trained gamers to want more for their money.  Game companies that can provide this (stardock/Ironclad) will do well in this market. Gamers that want more for their money will be the gamers that will buy blizzards TITAN mmo.  They are completely in control of the mmo market.

Blizzard has a good position, yet the problem with being one of the top dogs is that ANY game company that starts to make good games will be a threat.

Sins doing well is a threat to their attempted monopoly, as it could revive the importance of RTS game play by actually evolving the game genre past blizzards simple starcraft 2 (same as starcraft 1, with a shiny coat of paint).  This provides competition in the marketplace which will ensure that game players will get more for their money's worth.  When there isn't competition gamers lose, and we are all forced to live with mediocrity.  This trickles down into other areas of our lives and could be used effectively as a social "glass ceiling".  I'm not by any means suggesting that this is the ONLY glass ceiling out there, i'm just pointing out that another ceiling is being made.

As for the efficacy of this social glass ceiling, the jury is still out.  This is a social experiment by big money interests to ensure that the class system is maintained, with them at the top.  You can prove this yourself by creating a viable new control scheme and prove to the ruling class that you can provide another form of control for them to exploit.  You will get more funding you desire.  Yet so few of us are in a position to do this that the experiences of this form of business isn't widely known, and people go on avoiding the fact that big brother is watching you.  I'm going to add a line to that famous quote (from the book 1984), Big brother is holding you back, intentionally.

food for thought.

Ive played Rebellion quite a bit actually.  Ive owned SoSE since 2009 and as stated, I love the game.  I just dont feel and probably wont feel that the content was worth the cost.  And thats ok.  My opinion wont shut down Ironclad or force change on any level.

Since neither game is advertised as a sequel, I fail to see why that's relevant whatsoever to the discussion. Disregarding the campaign is silly, since it's huge with really high production values, and is something that has been in demand in Sins since it came out (but never done). I mean really, I could also say that Rebellion is bad because they only added Titans (ignoring Corvettes because I dont' like them). It's a pretty nonsensical argument.

And if we're talking MP... Rebellion doesn't add more then Entrenchment and Diplomacy did combined, and is 50%-100% more expensive then the duo. The only upside is that you don't have to buy Sins first... but most of us already had it so that's not a selling feature here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying it. But the value for money isn't near what it used to be out of Ironclad.

Might as well add my 2 cents....... I bought Sins when it first came out, I have the boxed version $60 bucks.....I then bought both expansions 10$ a pop, so a total of 80 bucks....While I wasnt expecting a totally new and improved everything with Rebellion, I was expecting much more than a few techs and a few new ships. So after putting down another 30$ for a total of 110 bucks, I do feel like I overpaid for what has been provided.  When I started up Rebellion, I was excited, when I started actually playing the game, I was confused at first, and then dissapointed....I felt like I was playing the same old game.....

And to compound the issue, The Single most annoying Bug that has happened since initial release of Sins, Ships flying way way out of the system and forcing every enemy ship that enters the system to go after them....causing massive fleets of ships to basically become useless and go on a never ending chase.

And guess what I had happen after 30 min or so of playing? A enemy ship in a star system started flying straight down.....I didnt catch it till after my fleet had flown way way down towards it, finally some fighters caught up to it and blew it up, but if it happened once, it will be happening again and again, just like it always has......How much money do they want from me to fix this dang bug? So it they are going to release sub par expansions, at least polish the game up nice.......and fix that stupid bug!!!!

Edit: I do love Sins, and I will reserve my final judgement for the release.....Titans are cool though, but not sure if they are 30 dollars cool....

Nope, but its far more of an expansion than Rebellion based on the campaign alone, the new (even if just a couple) of new units, the adjustments to the game play, maps & usability (IE actually using my computers specs to make the game *gasp* not lag).  My internet blows but thats because I live 15 miles outside of town.

Your lucky then....it happens almost every single game I play through.....seems to happen more near wormholes and stars.....

Well, compare this expansion to Entrenchment and Diplomacy. Those micro-expansions were $10 each, so does Rebellion add at least three times as much stuff as either of those? The last $10 is for the fact that it's a stand alone game.