Thoughts on DLC

[kingobirds]

Heard someone say, quite eloquently and with original punctuation:

"I"m not paying $30 to go to a wedding or have a joust. Its Over"

So dude has played 1100+ hours, just like me. I'm not so great with math but I think that puts me at about $0.05 per hour played. A nickel per hour, cause, you know, like a fanboi I bought all the content.

Does anyone else think the fact that enjoying a certain amount of inordinate value compared to investment may mitigate an opinion that it's not worth paying again to support the source of said enjoyment even if it only marginally increases said enjoyment?

Fact is you don't even know doodly excrement about how much enjoyment you personally may potentially extract from whatever investment you may incur to enjoy said enjoyment until you try it. You may get it on sale, you may get it free, I don't know. In which case said investment for said enjoyment would be even less per enjoyment increment.

In which case, oh wise and wonderful Steam Forum, why do you even care that they released this content the way they did at the price they did?

An analogy and apologies if it's already been said. But someone talked about a franchise, You're supporting CK3 like you would Star Wars or some other brand. But I wonder if you look at it more like comic books. I'm probably going to buy their latest issue because I like this title. I'm into "Spiderman" let's say.

I'm not sure what I'm going to get is going to tie in to the last issue or if it'll be something new. I don't know if it'll be as good. But I expect the panels to be drawn and the plot to kinda go somewhere and there be some bam biff stuff and maybe some references to other things and something cool I couldn't even predict because I didn't write/draw/compose/code it.

I mean like if you like that kinda stuff maybe you buy it. I never bought comic books but I could see how someone who was really jazzed about it - like I am about CK3's potential - would rush to the store to buy the latest release.

So I ask you, oh irascible and uncouth CK3 Steam Forum, did you begrudge Stan Lee, rest his soul, that he charged you for Spiderman 2? I mean Stan Lee has to charge again so he can (eat) continue to make more Spidermans. Oh that's right Steam Forum isn't even old enough to remember Spiderman 2.

Forget I mentioned it. Carry on with your day.

[Rex is back, baby!]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย CrUsHeR:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Ēarendel:

I can agree with you the performance part. I have my suspicions that developers have yet to consider optimizations, and the game easily croaks at a certain memory limit. Levies size also bloats performance.

Actually there was this developer diary pre-release (which seems to have been deleted from the news history). The programmers showcased the technical details, how they changed stuff for best performance.

And this actually was the case, after disabling the ironman cloud saves, the game was lightning fast. IIRC you could clock like 3 months gametime in 1 second realtime. And this only changed very suddenly with one of the updates later on.


Now i have a PC which is a whole 7 years newer (workstation for 5000€), but it still lags like crap when raising larger armies. Not as bad as it used to - one GHW on the old PC, i had to wait like 20 seconds for 1 day to pass - nevertheless it is a notable issue.

And in a game where you basically only wage one war after another, and have to go through the army raising process every single time, it gets dog-damned annoying.

Oof, I agree with that.
The "wage one war after another" routine combined with "the army raising process every single time" is so very "dog-damned annoying."

Especially if you have 10k+ troops vs someone with... less. I've tried doing the "raise local troops" thing, but I just find it easier to move your flag to near the border and just use that >.>, I play on the lowest graphics, so I haven't seen much HORRIBLE lag, but I have heard your account multiple times from many different people. In two weeks, I'm getting a new CPU (i7) and GPU (3070 RTX), so hopefully I can experience CK3 with better performance or share in comradely the same issues you face :D

[myperfectvictory]

im excited for this dlc. it looks like a step in the right direction. i dont care if its 30 or 50 dollars, i would pay the price willingly for added developer content.

[Tigre]

30€... for this

[Aven Oul]

incoming low % ratings

[taomastercu]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Rex is Returning in March 2023:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย taomastercu:

Have you only played 50 games? CK3 is mid at best. Paradox and their little minions are gonna have a rude awakening when a game that takes feudal story generation seriously comes out and it is revealed just how lacklustre CK3 is. Except the graphics I guess. Those are pretty good for a map&menu game, even if the UI is trash.

Ranking a game and being critical depends on exposure of stimuli. For example, if I've only played three games in my life, and CK3 is the best of the 3 games I've played, that's going to be #1 and not mid. Also, recency bias is totally at work here.

I also do find the base game boring, especially after I form a kingdom. I have to use mods to make the AI much harder. The game is very easy to exploit and 'cheat/cheese.' Thus making it even less fun.

I recently did have fun in an Iberia playthrough, but after I took out half of France, 1/3rd of Iberia, and North East Africa, there wasn't much I could do satisfactory.

Yes, this game is probably "mid" but, it's also a decent time-passer. I'll play it for a bit, until I get stressful/frustrated bored, and move onto another game.

I've only recently started playing again to experience the FoI gameplay, because when I last played, during "Castle" It was broken.

Still, I have enjoyed CK3 for it's narrative role play, that allows me to imagine great stories. I can't really defend it or explain it, as it's subjective and more a 'feeling' thing. I do agree with you, it's very 'mid.' Not a masterpiece. I don't really have any 4X or grand strategy games as a masterpiece in my book. Right now, however, it fills an itch, and on a scale of 'pass fail' it passes.

Still, measuring impact, time played, emotional attachment/memory formation. This game is a GOAT. Look back at all the games you've played, are your top 10 all masterpieces like RDR2, Witcher 3? Or is there some janky-ass mid-tier game up there?

My #1 all time favorite game is Hades from Supergiant Games. So if you must judge my tastes, that's my #1 :b. Is it objectively the best? No. RDR2 resonated with my SOUL. But, unlike RDR2, I can play Hades over and over again. RDR2 is, for me, a one-and-done playthrough. Where, if I get that itch, I just watch content about it on YT, or listen to the songs like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkWGQ3u1Lxs


Most games that people feel fond over, is not technical, but emotional attachments.
Another example if Youtube channels you watch. Have you ever thought "I liked XXXCreator pre2020" or something similar? The creator mostly has stayed the same, but you have grown and like the nolstagia and memories that the time period XXXCreator(pre2020) gave you.

Hope that makes sense^^

I do agree with you, if an honest-to-gosh competitor of CK3 comes out, and it is both objectively and subjectively better in all regards, and sells better-if-not-on-par with the sales CK3 has gotten, PDX is going to have to adapt to free-market competition.

One big question is how important the real time aspect is. I've seen some people say no amount of superior gameplay would convince them to play a turn based game. But from a practical perspective the depth of character consciousness and interaction would be far less limited in a turn based game.

You could give characters actual personalities. Ideology, personal Personality, actual Interests like horseback riding or herbology or weapons training, various specific desires like one king might be really invested in marrying his beloved daughter to someone who is a good person and will treat her well and one king might sell her off for any new duke level vassal with more than 3 counties etc. I've never understood the hype about CK3, or 2 really, as a roleplay experience because the scaffolding for players to build stories is anemic. Characters are forgettable and interchangeable unless you really put effort into it.

In a proper turn based game with even lightly simulated consciousness for characters you could replicate things like Alexander's father being super interested in, studying deeply, and carrying back, with a coterie of like minded friends with the same interests, that knowledge to his home country to make the Macedonian army one of the most modern in the world at the time. Macedon was considered a backwater ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ prior to his administrative and military reforms. But characters don't have real interests or desires in CK2-3 and they also don't have skills, just 5 attributes that are very bland and abstract, so characters can't really be "likeminded" even if they have similar traits like both being ambitious. You can't really have 2 ambitious characters commited to changing the future of their country where one is really loyal to the other, since ambitiousness in CK2-3 is so unstructured and mostly generates opinion maluses.

Not only could you construct these kinds of situations yourself to some degree but NPC characters could end up creating that level of involved story line all by themselves. But in a real time game like CK3 you don't have the spare processing power or multithreading capability for that to happen without just squanching performance.

Of course there are improvements you can make even in a real time with pause style game but they are more limited.

[Stars-N-Stripes]

This is one of the most ridiculous DLC's I could have envisioned. I'll be skipping it

[Johnny 5]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Mr. A:

im excited for this dlc. it looks like a step in the right direction. i dont care if its 30 or 50 dollars, i would pay the price willingly for added developer content.

Do you not see the problem here? If you have a mindset that you will pay 50 dollars for added developer content, it encourages the devs to produce sub par content.

I would posit that it's customers like you who are helping to undermine the development of the game by supporting so recklessly.

[Footman Connaisseur]

I just want nomad mechanics and merchant republics back. I feel we gotta wait till 2025 when they add the China and the Mongols DLC and Bookmark

[Sputnik]

I just want to finally unmask the Science Officer who gives the technological uplift to make my species into a Space Faring Race.

Wait a minute . . . what forum is this?

[jerrypocalypse]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Sputnik:

I just want to finally unmask the Science Officer who gives the technological uplift to make my species into a Space Faring Race.

Wait a minute . . . what forum is this?

CK3 as a way to play a medieval civilization before being uplifted to become space-faring would be cool.

Almost like a PDX version of Spore where you have drastic changes in tech and setting

[Kimlin]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Sputnik:

I just want to finally unmask the Science Officer who gives the technological uplift to make my species into a Space Faring Race.

Wait a minute . . . what forum is this?

Funny, there’s actually dialogue you can get from executing a heretic that references the uplifting in stellaris.

[Sputnik]

Cool an Easter egg! Can that be read in a wiki somewhere?

[myperfectvictory]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Johnny 5:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Mr. A:

im excited for this dlc. it looks like a step in the right direction. i dont care if its 30 or 50 dollars, i would pay the price willingly for added developer content.

Do you not see the problem here? If you have a mindset that you will pay 50 dollars for added developer content, it encourages the devs to produce sub par content.

I would posit that it's customers like you who are helping to undermine the development of the game by supporting so recklessly.

Don't make a claim like this if you're not going to back it up. How exactly does it make the devs produce "sub par content" if the DLC has a $50 price tag?

[Gingy]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย kingobirds:

@Hullaballoo

I remain fascinated. Earendel was on to something with "Because some people are like that. They throw ultimatums, unload their angst and vitriol then casually buffer another 200+ hours on the game."

This is why I created this post. You do you.

Its not polite to make blanket statements about people and then apply them to me or others. You know people are welcome to leave a negative review and voice their concern and distaste with the direction the development team has taken the game that people thought they loved or still might like. If they want to even voice discontent and continue to play, let them. they paid; And if they no longer are having fun (like me) they will uninstall as well.

Perhaps you can end your subtle hostilities towards others.

You're not a victim, please dismount from your high horse and stop attacking others, including myself with your subtle slander.

[Sputnik]

I'm sure I'd agree with someone on some side of this argument. But for all the usual bickering: YAWN.