Dear Paradox,
It was a week before CIV5 came out, that I was lured to the Steam platform (CIV5 was Steam only), and Steam told me I was possibly interrested in EU3. It was my first contact with Paradox and it was love on first sight.
In the months after I bought the expansions for EU3, EU:Rome with its expansion, V2 with its expansions and HOI3 with its expansions. I was amazed by the level of detail in all these games. (1)
Then came CK2, the game that literally took most my free time for the next 5 years. It wasn't love, it was passion...
So far, so good...
I don't remember the moment I first got the feeling, but lurking these forums it seems I was not the only one... Those games in the generations marked by (1) felt complete, and barely had bugs, but the new generation of games - that started with CK2, then EU4 and now HOI4 and Stellaris, - although much more polished than the (1)-generation, always gave me a "in construction" - feeling.
There is always a DLC in the making, and when one is just released, the game is in a barely playable state because of bugs and/or balance issues. It took from the release of Stellaris to Utopia to make it in a OK-ish state to play. We're almost 3 months after M&M and I play without the DLC, because it is WOL-seduction all over again: everyone and his mum is in a society. Nobody in the world is following his original religion after 50 years of play... Seriously?
It also feels like the DLC quality is getting worse. M&M is in almost al vocal players eyes not finished. Some things who were told in the developer dairies were not existent in the actual DLC... I won't go so far to start comparing with No Man Sky, but the fact that I am mentioning this and that I was a real fanboy not so long ago, says a lot about the changes that PDS went through.
So far the rant...
Now for the constructive bit:
I understand why you, as a developer/publisher need frequent influx of money and the DLC model, where you release a new piece of code every 3-4 months, [edit] is perfect for that,[/edit] but it doesn't take a genius to see that you don't have a lot of time left to squash bugs and balance things in such a timespan. I would strongly advise to change the time between DLC's to 7-10 months. Make the DLC's a bit bigger, and ask 150% of the price, that seems fair if content is also 50% more in quantity and quality, but put more time in bugsquashing and balancing, please.
We had one patch after M&M that kinda balanced the satanists out, but I am starting to realise that I will not be able to use this DLC before the patch that will come out with the next DLC, because of the issues mentioned earlier. A DLC should have a quick patch in the week after to squash obvious game-breaking bugs (and you do that, thank you), then it should have another patch a week or two after to balance it out (and you do that, thank you), but this should continue until it is in a good state (so M&M should have had another patch 6 weeks ago to balance the secret societies and if, after that, there were still obvious problems, another patch should have been release soon after).
The future of PDS in my eyes:
You have brought the niche of grand strategy to the wider audience and have done that in an extraordinary way. I am very happy about that. That wider audience made PDS grow quite fast and the growing pains are getting obvious. There is a choice now: walk the path that the big developers go: full cashcow-style with less and less respect for your customers (this way you will lose your old fanboys, but there are enough casuals who play your games now, so who cares...), or take a deep breath, think about what made you great in the first place, and maybe earn a bit less in financial gains, but earn the respect and reputation you once had in the eyes of the fanboys.
A note to the developers:
It might look like I'm shooting at you, here. I am not. Although I don't always like the direction of the decisions you take, I am not blaming you for these problems. We all know capitalism is a bitch and it's the shareholders and CEO's that decide how long you can work on a DLC. I only know the name of one of the big bosses of PDS and it would be unfair to call him the villain of the story, because it's not only his call.
Sorry for the long post and the typos that will have accompanied it. English is only my third language and I'm writing this during my first cup of coffee.
It was a week before CIV5 came out, that I was lured to the Steam platform (CIV5 was Steam only), and Steam told me I was possibly interrested in EU3. It was my first contact with Paradox and it was love on first sight.
In the months after I bought the expansions for EU3, EU:Rome with its expansion, V2 with its expansions and HOI3 with its expansions. I was amazed by the level of detail in all these games. (1)
Then came CK2, the game that literally took most my free time for the next 5 years. It wasn't love, it was passion...
So far, so good...
I don't remember the moment I first got the feeling, but lurking these forums it seems I was not the only one... Those games in the generations marked by (1) felt complete, and barely had bugs, but the new generation of games - that started with CK2, then EU4 and now HOI4 and Stellaris, - although much more polished than the (1)-generation, always gave me a "in construction" - feeling.
There is always a DLC in the making, and when one is just released, the game is in a barely playable state because of bugs and/or balance issues. It took from the release of Stellaris to Utopia to make it in a OK-ish state to play. We're almost 3 months after M&M and I play without the DLC, because it is WOL-seduction all over again: everyone and his mum is in a society. Nobody in the world is following his original religion after 50 years of play... Seriously?
It also feels like the DLC quality is getting worse. M&M is in almost al vocal players eyes not finished. Some things who were told in the developer dairies were not existent in the actual DLC... I won't go so far to start comparing with No Man Sky, but the fact that I am mentioning this and that I was a real fanboy not so long ago, says a lot about the changes that PDS went through.
So far the rant...
Now for the constructive bit:
I understand why you, as a developer/publisher need frequent influx of money and the DLC model, where you release a new piece of code every 3-4 months, [edit] is perfect for that,[/edit] but it doesn't take a genius to see that you don't have a lot of time left to squash bugs and balance things in such a timespan. I would strongly advise to change the time between DLC's to 7-10 months. Make the DLC's a bit bigger, and ask 150% of the price, that seems fair if content is also 50% more in quantity and quality, but put more time in bugsquashing and balancing, please.
We had one patch after M&M that kinda balanced the satanists out, but I am starting to realise that I will not be able to use this DLC before the patch that will come out with the next DLC, because of the issues mentioned earlier. A DLC should have a quick patch in the week after to squash obvious game-breaking bugs (and you do that, thank you), then it should have another patch a week or two after to balance it out (and you do that, thank you), but this should continue until it is in a good state (so M&M should have had another patch 6 weeks ago to balance the secret societies and if, after that, there were still obvious problems, another patch should have been release soon after).
The future of PDS in my eyes:
You have brought the niche of grand strategy to the wider audience and have done that in an extraordinary way. I am very happy about that. That wider audience made PDS grow quite fast and the growing pains are getting obvious. There is a choice now: walk the path that the big developers go: full cashcow-style with less and less respect for your customers (this way you will lose your old fanboys, but there are enough casuals who play your games now, so who cares...), or take a deep breath, think about what made you great in the first place, and maybe earn a bit less in financial gains, but earn the respect and reputation you once had in the eyes of the fanboys.
A note to the developers:
It might look like I'm shooting at you, here. I am not. Although I don't always like the direction of the decisions you take, I am not blaming you for these problems. We all know capitalism is a bitch and it's the shareholders and CEO's that decide how long you can work on a DLC. I only know the name of one of the big bosses of PDS and it would be unfair to call him the villain of the story, because it's not only his call.
Sorry for the long post and the typos that will have accompanied it. English is only my third language and I'm writing this during my first cup of coffee.
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