Think I'm done with paradox

[Gauge]

I'm an old paradox fan, and I mean REALLY OLD. I've been around for a long time. I think with CK3, I'm pretty much done. They have lived long enough to see themselves become the thing that we hated. The game releases in september, and there is already paid DLC. Not only that, the DLC has a name and content defined. This many months in advance of release they are already working on a DLC. Why wouldn't you put that into the actual game you haven't released yet.

For me personally, they are trending more and more towards the AAA microtransaction heaven with each and every release. I'm done. I won't be buying this. This is sad too, because I own a lot of their titles and have been a fan of their work for a long time. Guess it's inevitable for studios to continue growing endlessly and expanding revenue streams endlessly. I look forward to the new paradox coming.

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by Traror:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

We're not looking at me, are we?

Ya i just now realized that. my bad.

Since you're interested, my numbers are 122 and 212 for games owned and DLC owned, several hairs under 2 per game. But that's not distributed evenly, of course. Guess how many DLC I got from some CK2 pack I picked up on sale for... eh, can't remember, $40 I think?

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by Traror:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Since you're interested, my numbers are 122 and 212 for games owned and DLC owned, several hairs under 2 per game. But that's not distributed evenly, of course. Guess how many DLC I got from some CK2 pack I picked up on sale for... eh, can't remember, $40 I think?

Price is subjective, why you buy some DLC when you think they should all be free, but randomly object to PDX, is something ill never understand, mostly because it is arbitrarily and illogical.

Sometimes they're donation DLCs, either to the devs or actually to charity, sometimes they actually add enough content to justify the price, most of the time they're from bundles. That was a serious question, by the way, guess how much DLC just CK2 contributes to that number?

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by Traror:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Sometimes they're donation DLCs, either to the devs or actually to charity, sometimes they actually add enough content to justify the price, most of the time they're from bundles. That was a serious question, by the way, guess how much DLC just CK2 contributes to that number?

the DLC tends to be 15-20$ i think. maybe 20-25$..

It's still arbitrary and illogical to me, why not 20$? 40$ 60$ 100$? 5$ What really is the difference, on why is one not ok, and the other one is? What about the future with inflation? will 40$ suddenly be a non-greedy price to charge for DLC? What are you measuring it by?

With companies, the measurement is clear, whatever makes them money that people are still willing to pay, the free market fixes the prices rather than one arbitrary dude on the internet. Why should you decide the prices? What about me, shouldn't i decide? what about the government?

I think it's best if we just let natural forces take it's course, if it's too expensive vote with your wallet and don't buy it, but don't complain about the price or other people buying it, or as you seem to want, try to start a communist revolution to make all games free.

Oh no, it wasn't all the gameplay DLC when I bought it a few years ago, and it's certainly not all the gameplay DLC now. Since you don't want to guess, though, I'll just say it. 47. 1/122 games contributes 47/212 of my DLC. Just from a bundle, mind you.

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by Traror:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Oh no, it wasn't all the gameplay DLC when I bought it a few years ago, and it's certainly not all the gameplay DLC now. Since you don't want to guess, though, I'll just say it. 47. 1/122 games contributes 47/212 of my DLC. Just from a bundle, mind you.

Alright, now on to my point, the one that actually matters. ( i don't think anyone here really cares how much DLC some random has.)

You did, and the person who brought it up did. Your "point" is silly, there's a lot of factors that go into it, but I, and very many others, know it when we see it.

[The Doctor]

Both CK2 and EU4, the first two games to pioneer PDS's long term post release development, have a considerable number of DLC, far more than any other game in my collection. It's hardly a dirty secret as anyone can see for themselves simply by looking at the store page. And, yes, it looks bad in 2020 if you simply look at the volume and don't take into consideration what happened along the way.

At first, PDS released DLC in something more alike to an expansion. The music, art and actual features were all part of one DLC. But there were a considerable number of folks who only wanted the features and didn't want to pay for music or art that they didn't want. So PDS split what was one DLC into 3 or more DLC. This made folks happy but of course...

Later, folks started to complain about the number of DLCs that were on the store page and they moved back to the one bundle DLC. PDS also started bundling some of the smaller DLC for EU4 to reduce the number of DLC on the store page. You have to search carefully if you want to find the Indian ship models for EU4 now because they're part of a bundle.

Looking at CK2, if you ignore all the music, the ebooks and the costume packs, you don't actually have a lot of DLC for a game that was supported for 7 years. It's roughly 2 a year and IMO one of them is unnecessary, Sunset Invasion. If they hadn't unpacked the DLC into seperate packs, you'd have far less but you'd still pay the same.

So, yes, long term support has resulted in a very long list of DLC on the store page, a prohibitively expensive entry price for latecomers to the series and other lesser problems. It's a trailblazing project and so some mistakes are made. PDS are aware of these issues and are working to improve the situation.

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by Traror:

As ive said somewhere, not sure if it's this thread.

Paradox's new DLC model is what made CK II and EU4 great.

Agreed. But if we have a look at the store page for Hearts of Iron 4, we see a very different DLC history.

base game released 6/6/2016
first DLC 15/12/2016
second DLC 14/06/2017
third DLC 08/03/2018
fourth DLC 01/03/2019
fifth DLC 25/02/2020

I skipped the Axis vehicle pack and radio music packs as they're not essential. I don't have the vehicle pack but I do have the music because I like music. But not Sabaton!!!

So, four years of support and only five DLC + a unit pack and three music bundles. Not in the same league as either EU4 or CK2.

But yes, HOI4 is the black sheep of the fold. What about Stellaris?

Eight actual content DLC over 4 years with an ebook (no thanks) the soundtrack, three species packs and the galaxy pre-order DLC pack.

That's not nearly so scary and is in line with many other games I've bought and played over the same time period. Some other games are even worse. But we need to keep the focus on EU4 and CK2 because of the numbers. They're the only ones that fit their narrative, right? ;)

[Super_]

Just play CK2. It's free so you don't have to give paradox anything to have fun.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Super_:

Just play CK2. It's free so you don't have to give paradox anything to have fun.

And yet people still find ways to complain about it.

[meraco]

Originally posted by Awakened Saxon:

I think what many people would like to see would be for Paradox to release a sequel that pretty much delivers the fully loaded experience of the predecessor upon release, at least in terms of features, mechanics and functionality, and then goes on to polish and improve what's there while developing the concept further.

The problem is they have a tendency to dial back features and mechanics that we all know they could easily include, knowing that they will be added later in order to make the DLC's more desirable, they openly admit that quality of life fixes should come with a price tag.

Yep, 100%

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by meraco:

Originally posted by Awakened Saxon:

I think what many people would like to see would be for Paradox to release a sequel that pretty much delivers the fully loaded experience of the predecessor upon release, at least in terms of features, mechanics and functionality, and then goes on to polish and improve what's there while developing the concept further.

The problem is they have a tendency to dial back features and mechanics that we all know they could easily include, knowing that they will be added later in order to make the DLC's more desirable, they openly admit that quality of life fixes should come with a price tag.

Yep, 100%

Isn't that pretty much what we've been told we're getting with CK3 though? You can play as Muslims, launch raids as a Norse faction, start the game back in the 9th Century in India and play as a pagan in a custom empire and a custom religion on release. No Republics or Horse Lords though but otherwise, it's pretty much all there. You are also forgetting that some of what we got in CK2 is being improved upon further. Take, for example, religion.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/dev-diary-21-custom-faiths-and-pagan-reformation.1372700/

That's just one of three DDs concerning religion in the game.

EU4 also carried forward pretty much everything that EU3 had at the end of its life. That's one of the reasons why I was so impressed by it.

HOI4 stripped out HOI3's OOB but introduced several all-new systems to the game. We got the OOB back in a free update. Lend Lease, quite an important system to have in a WW2 game I would say, was sold in a DLC so there is that one. But you could argue that it was not in the game at the start and removed but rather the development resources to put it in were allocated to some other feature deemed more important prior to the release.

Overall, each new game in the franchise has most of (Note: MOST OF, not ALL of) what was in the previous game so there's no actual history of stripping out content to sell it back to us.

If the devs had been largely silent on the matter of what would be in from CK2 and what would be out, I could understand some of the 'concern' being expressed here. I would be concerned too. However, since thay have been communicating with us very openly since the game was announced, there's no excuse other than 'I don't have time to read all that crap! I have a life!!!' It's just 2-3 minutes a week of your time to read, that's all, to keep abreast of developments in a game you seem to be concerned about.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by The Doctor:

It's just 2-3 minutes a week of your time to read, that's all, to keep abreast of developments in a game you seem to be concerned about.

Its because broadly speaking the 'I'm concerned' crowd actually mean...

"I don't like PDX for reason x/y/z so I presume the absolute worst of their new game and came onto their forum to whip up some drama"

Not all of them, but most (IMO)

[shigad]

Originally posted by Gauge:

Not only that, the DLC has a name and content defined.

Out of curiosity, where did you find the DLC's name and content?
Cause I can't find anything about it.
Unless you are talking about the clothing packs.

[t-blud]

I'm curious to know whether CK3 will have the same options as CK2 after all the DLC.

Basically will CK3 be a continuation of CK2 just with updated graphics and an improved UI and AI ?

Would take the biscuit if we have to wait seven years to be able to duel again for example. Not that I've bought Holy Fury yet :)

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by Phineas T. Phreak:

I'm curious to know whether CK3 will have the same options as CK2 after all the DLC.

Basically will CK3 be a continuation of CK2 just with updated graphics and an improved UI and AI ?

Would take the biscuit if we have to wait seven years to be able to duel again for example. Not that I've bought Holy Fury yet :)

From the developer rather than some random dude on the boards...

Now, you might say: “Cool, but I took the time to master CK2, bought all the expansions, and now it provides me an enormous breadth of options. Why should I buy CK3?”

That’s a fair question! As I mentioned earlier, we decided not to carry over all features from CK2, so if you play CK2 primarily for, say, the nomads or the merchant republics (the only faction types that were playable in CK2 but not in CK3), you might be disappointed. There are likely other features and content that will be missed by some players, but, in return, we believe that everyone will find the core gameplay far more fun and rewarding! To be clear, CK3 is a vastly bigger game than CK2 was on release.

That's from from this DD so if you want the context, here it is...

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ck3-dev-diary-0-the-vision.1265472/

And then there's this goldmine...

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ck3-faq-developer-diaries-questions-from-the-community-dev-answers-and-important-information.1289830/

If you're just looking for a TL:DR version, not all but almost all as well as improvements to existing systems.

So you will be able to start in 1066 or 867, play as a Norse raider, an Indian noble, a Muslim lord, etc. If you read the Q/A in that last link you'll find answers to most of your questions and more depth in the links to the diaries above.

[t-blud]

Originally posted by The Doctor:

Originally posted by Phineas T. Phreak:

I'm curious to know whether CK3 will have the same options as CK2 after all the DLC.

Basically will CK3 be a continuation of CK2 just with updated graphics and an improved UI and AI ?

Would take the biscuit if we have to wait seven years to be able to duel again for example. Not that I've bought Holy Fury yet :)

From the developer rather than some random dude on the boards...

Either or... not fussed