Initially the console version was produced by a different company. I’m not saying they did a good or bad job, just wanted to point out that the initial console port wasn’t done by InifinityPlus2.
A lot of the quality of life things you’ve mentioned have been requested (and the devs have listened to similar requests in the past) so we can hope they will be added at some point.
The issue with the AI cheating has been addressed by the devs. The following support article explains it a lot better than I could.
I’m thinking my opinion on this might not agree with most people, but here goes. To me this thinking is a little flawed. Comparing a standalone game (with or without expansions) against a free to play game is not a true comparison. Standalone games are pretty much WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) out of the box. Yes there will be a few expansions, but they usually won’t be free either, and will be packaged as DLC. Also the amount of sales a standalone game has after a year quite likely a lot lower than it’s initial release. (barring peaks when new expansions come out).
This likely would have been worked into the games original budget, and after a certain length of time, the game is not expected to make a significant amount of money. This is where sales help with small boosts to the developer at a point where they are not likely to be expecting much money from the game any more. As such the lower price isn’t as much of an issue to them, than if they released at $30 total for the game and all the expansions put together. (where as if you bought the game and all it’s expansions on release, you’d probably have paid around $100 all up, assuming $50 for base, then $25 each for the expansions).
On the other hand we have F2P games that are considered ongoing concerns. They are updated on a regular basis (weekly in GoW’s case) with new content and fixes. On top of this the game itself is entirely free to play, meaning someone could get the whole experience of the game, and not pay a single dollar. So in a player base of thousands, the devs have to account for the fact that their not getting their “$50 base game” fee from every player, yet they still support and provide content to all players irrespective of whether they have paid or not. So the price point for various in game purchases are set slightly higher to compensate. Also the actively supported life time of a F2P game is likely on average a lot longer than a standalone game.
Also if we look at number of hours played, many many people on these forums will attest to the fact they have multiple hundreds of hours played on Gems of War, (I’m at 469 hours at the time of writing, which doesn’t count my time on my phone) and most triple A games that have one off payments for a game will be 30-40 hour experiences at best. Using myself as an example again, my next highest game on Steam in terms of time played is Shogun 2: Total War, in which I’ve racked up 222 hours. This includes half a dozen or more play-throughs of single player campaign, an expansion, and a handful of DLC. And for that I’ve probably paid somewhere in the area of $130-$150 for a game that I’ve played less than half as much as I’ve played GoW. Yes I could probably get Shogun 2 for a lot less if I bought it now ($40 AUD for the pack at the time of writing), but this game is also 6 years old now.
Apologies for the long winded response, it’s more directed towards the debate about in app purchases in F2P games in general, that towards you specifically.
EDIT: For those reading after the fact, (ie most of you) I initially made reference to linking up of PC and Console, as I misinterpreted Mad_Butch’s comment. I’ve since removed my comments on it, as they made no sense, and just caused confusion.