Dear Paradox Interactive,
Thank you for making the greatest grand strategy games for decades. Thank you for continuing to expand on your offerings in various historical settings and even dabbling in the fantastical and SciFi.
And thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart, for expanding into console ports. I had played many of your PC games but as my PC got outdated, I had no plans to buy a new one: my work provides me one, and my friends are all multiplayer on Xbox, so I personally would have no reason to buy a PC other than to play Paradox games.
Imagine my joy, then, when in 2019 I discovered Stellaris was coming to console. I was nervous: as we all know, porting strategy games to a controller input had a notorious history. But it was amazing. The updates, DLCs and upgrade to Xbox Series X/S optimization have made a great game extraordinary.
Tantalus did an exemplary job, and most importantly they ditched the traditional console strategy game UI feature: the wheel. Yes, they ditched the clunkiness of the wheel for selecting various menus in favor of using the D-pad to select various sidebars. And it was beautiful. It is so smooth.
You can now imagine the pure ecstasy I felt when it was announced that Crusader Kings 3 would be coming to console. I pre-ordered it immediately (something I almost never do), such was my faith and excitement after such a successful outing for Pdox on console with Stellaris. (I had also tried Cities: Skylines on Game Pass and it was very good, though city builders are just not as much my cup of tea)
And woe was me to discover over this past year-plus the absolute travesty that lab42 has dealt us by mauling the console release of arguably the best game Paradox has ever developed. Inexplicably, they did not follow Tantalus' successful lead and introduced a very clunky wheel-and-joystick-centered UI instead of using the D-pad's precision to their advantage.
And most tragically of all, I have not yet been able to play a game past 150 years due to all the game-breaking bugs extensively documented on this forum. I held out hope these might be fixed along with the Royal Court release, but they have only been made worse and more numerous. They acknowledged it, at least, and a week after the release, had a patch ready, so they said. It did nothing to fix the game-breaking, save-destroying crashes.
CK3 Console will not get another penny from me, but do not abandon Consoles!
In the future, please:
1. Select a port publisher who will use Dpad+sidebars like Tantalus' Stellaris
2. Make sure your publisher will ensure the ports are actually beta tested to be able to play a full game, and not release them until that low bar is met (I feel like this should be a basic standard)
Love you, Paradox, and I eagerly await a Vicky 3 Console Edition announcement! (from someone like Tantalus, hopefully)
Thank you for making the greatest grand strategy games for decades. Thank you for continuing to expand on your offerings in various historical settings and even dabbling in the fantastical and SciFi.
And thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart, for expanding into console ports. I had played many of your PC games but as my PC got outdated, I had no plans to buy a new one: my work provides me one, and my friends are all multiplayer on Xbox, so I personally would have no reason to buy a PC other than to play Paradox games.
Imagine my joy, then, when in 2019 I discovered Stellaris was coming to console. I was nervous: as we all know, porting strategy games to a controller input had a notorious history. But it was amazing. The updates, DLCs and upgrade to Xbox Series X/S optimization have made a great game extraordinary.
Tantalus did an exemplary job, and most importantly they ditched the traditional console strategy game UI feature: the wheel. Yes, they ditched the clunkiness of the wheel for selecting various menus in favor of using the D-pad to select various sidebars. And it was beautiful. It is so smooth.
You can now imagine the pure ecstasy I felt when it was announced that Crusader Kings 3 would be coming to console. I pre-ordered it immediately (something I almost never do), such was my faith and excitement after such a successful outing for Pdox on console with Stellaris. (I had also tried Cities: Skylines on Game Pass and it was very good, though city builders are just not as much my cup of tea)
And woe was me to discover over this past year-plus the absolute travesty that lab42 has dealt us by mauling the console release of arguably the best game Paradox has ever developed. Inexplicably, they did not follow Tantalus' successful lead and introduced a very clunky wheel-and-joystick-centered UI instead of using the D-pad's precision to their advantage.
And most tragically of all, I have not yet been able to play a game past 150 years due to all the game-breaking bugs extensively documented on this forum. I held out hope these might be fixed along with the Royal Court release, but they have only been made worse and more numerous. They acknowledged it, at least, and a week after the release, had a patch ready, so they said. It did nothing to fix the game-breaking, save-destroying crashes.
CK3 Console will not get another penny from me, but do not abandon Consoles!
In the future, please:
1. Select a port publisher who will use Dpad+sidebars like Tantalus' Stellaris
2. Make sure your publisher will ensure the ports are actually beta tested to be able to play a full game, and not release them until that low bar is met (I feel like this should be a basic standard)
Love you, Paradox, and I eagerly await a Vicky 3 Console Edition announcement! (from someone like Tantalus, hopefully)
- 8
