Anyone else generally pleased at the DLC trend?

[CannaeCogitate]

What I mean specifically is that barring the super lil' DLC (like northern attire and the great monuments pack) the DLC have very clearly been building off of each other.

Tours and Tournaments overhauled travel and your character's relationship with the map, which was continued by Roads to Power adding landless play and Administrative government (which utilize the camp/estate system to good effect) and now the Nomads DLC is very obviously iterating off Roads to Power by using these travel and estate systems to bring us Nomadic Governments.

I did not play much CK2 but one thing that keeps getting brought up to me is that DLC largely could *not* build on each other because of the systems being locked behind the DLC, I'm pretty confident that the systems introduced for free in Chapter IV will point right towards Chapter V and so on.

 

[Arcvalons]

Yeah, that's good, but still the new systems shouldn't be so isolated. i.e. a new type of mana for every DLC (supplies for landless, influence for admin, etc.)

Like supplies is something everyone should use. Hopefully Herd gets merged into supplies before Steppe Bros is out.

 

[CatilinamSum]

Broadly speaking, I do think these forums complain too much. With a few major exceptions (Royal Court, Legends of the Dead), CK3's DLC has mostly been good, with some exceptional standouts (Tours & Tournaments, Roads to Power). The team has shown us that they learn from their mistakes, too. Wandering Lords was easily the best Event Pack, and the Iranian Struggle feels much more interactive and less tedious than the Iberian Struggle.

The game still has serious problems, of course. It is much easier to exploit than CK2 was, even if the player is not trying. And there's definitely truth to the criticism that each major expansion adds unnecessary new mechanics and resources rather than expanding on what already exists.

I have great faith in the developers and their vision for the game. The consensus is correct; CK3 isn't CK2, and it doesn't need to be. It is its own game and I love it as much as I do its predecessor.

My biggest hope is that the devs will pay more attention to the overall cohesiveness of the game as time passes. I don't blame them for their focus on new content, and it's not as if they've entirely forgotten about prior DLCs. But the current "cluttered" feel of the game damages their vision and holds the game back from its full potential.

On an optimistic note, I want to remind everyone that many of CK2's best DLCs (Jade Dragon, Holy Fury) came very late in its development cycle; they helped tie disparate elements of the game together while revisiting topics like the Crusades. Mid-development major DLCs like Rajas of India and Horse Lords were absolutely panned at the time of their release... anyone who was on the forums at that time probably remembers.

 

[WTH666444]

Broadly speaking, I do think these forums complain too much. With a few major exceptions (Royal Court, Legends of the Dead), CK3's DLC has mostly been good, with some exceptional standouts (Tours & Tournaments, Roads to Power). The team has shown us that they learn from their mistakes, too. Wandering Lords was easily the best Event Pack, and the Iranian Struggle feels much more interactive and less tedious than the Iberian Struggle.

The game still has serious problems, of course. It is much easier to exploit than CK2 was, even if the player is not trying. And there's definitely truth to the criticism that each major expansion adds unnecessary new mechanics and resources rather than expanding on what already exists.

I have great faith in the developers and their vision for the game. The consensus is correct; CK3 isn't CK2, and it doesn't need to be. It is its own game and I love it as much as I do its predecessor.

My biggest hope is that the devs will pay more attention to the overall cohesiveness of the game as time passes. I don't blame them for their focus on new content, and it's not as if they've entirely forgotten about prior DLCs. But the current "cluttered" feel of the game damages their vision and holds the game back from its full potential.

On an optimistic note, I want to remind everyone that many of CK2's best DLCs (Jade Dragon, Holy Fury) came very late in its development cycle; they helped tie disparate elements of the game together while revisiting topics like the Crusades. Mid-development major DLCs like Rajas of India and Horse Lords were absolutely panned at the time of their release... anyone who was on the forums at that time probably remembers.

The whole late game doesn't work because the AI is laughably bad. The conqueror band-aid is an insult, rather than a genuine attempt at improving things.
I don't mind CK3 not being MEIOU (/EU5), but I do think they've veered terribly off-course with the undue focus on 3d assets and totally random events as their substitute and vehicle for storytelling. There are better ways.

Really vehemently disagree with your last point. What's the point of a decade-long, nigh live-service development undertaking, if no lessons are learned and you can't, having just hit your stride, transfer your momentum but immediately stall out? When CK3 released, I had as little interest in at as Imperator at launch and went back to CK2 for probably two years because it was just totally empty. It's been a further couple of years, and outside the ERE, not that much has changed.

Point is, CK3 is progressing at an unbearably slow pace (I blame 3d assets) while extracting a really high price. No non-PDX GSG is nearly as expansive, and they offer similar levels of replay value. Not to mention that, for all their slow place, every update releases in an utterly unplayable state (a disgusting and reprehensible practice) and needs a month or two (!!!) to iron out really, really, really egregious bugs. That's just not up to par.

It's the year of our Lord 2025, and EU5, the emerging nation-state game, in which Europe outside of the HRE almost exclusively has Primogeniture, has implemented a better and truer to history inheritance system than CK3. The Tripartite Struggle is still resolved by confederate partition. Are you kidding me?

So many, so terrible abstractions. How the de-jure system interacts with inheritance makes no sense whatsoever and skews incentives in the weirdest and worst ways. But it's too much to elaborate on. It's easier to find a good system than one you wouldn't change in some, major way. Economy, warfare, inheritance, politics, religion, culture...

 

[Benismann]

For the "budget" of 2 major DLCs per year they're doing fine. I like them. I would also like some passes on the game balance or at least the mechanics that clearly work against the developer intention (countering) or are way too ignorable for what they are (royal court amenities cost nothing and are one of the only THREE expenses you get). But with only 2 big DLCs per year I can understand that there's not much time for that.

But why are there only 2 major DLCs per year? I swear other games had faster pace....

 

[Prosodium]

Broadly speaking, I do think these forums complain too much.

I agree. And when I came to check on this forum, I was surprised at how many people are so negative about the game. While most issues are quite valid to bring forth, I still am happy with how the game has gone so far and I believe it is getting better all the time.

What I would say to the devs is to at least acknowledge the most common criticisms or explain why some things cannot be done, or how much we are expected to wait for certain issues to be tackled, in order to appease most of the crowd who is constantly at the game's throat.

 

[Benismann]

What I would say to the devs is to at least acknowledge the most common criticisms or explain why some things cannot be done, or how much we are expected to wait for certain issues to be tackled, in order to appease most of the crowd who is constantly at the game's throat.

The problem is that the devs do acknowledge them. And then proceed to do absolutely nothing about it. We're lucky if we get vassal stances (that ended up not mattering) or conqueror.

 

[Foreign Alien]

I just wish they would fix bugs that have been in the game for years.

 

[CannaeCogitate]

I just wish they would fix bugs that have been in the game for years.

I feel like they *do* fix bugs with every free patch that comes with DLC (there's still more to go of course) and we should be expecting a free update pretty soon here, they promised it would be expansive and touch upon quite a few things, which is neato.

 

[MyLordFellington]

In my extreme opinion, Road to Power and Tours and Tournaments are the only impactful dlcs so far. However, we are still missing CK2 features like Conclave which people seethed about for some reason in CK2. Are they going to sell nomads again when we already had them in CK2?

 

[MyLordFellington]

I agree. And when I came to check on this forum, I was surprised at how many people are so negative about the game. While most issues are quite valid to bring forth, I still am happy with how the game has gone so far and I believe it is getting better all the time.

What I would say to the devs is to at least acknowledge the most common criticisms or explain why some things cannot be done, or how much we are expected to wait for certain issues to be tackled, in order to appease most of the crowd who is constantly at the game's throat.

Mate, if you been playing since 2020 like me, it's kinda tiresome the core issues haven't been addressed in a meaningful capacity. It's a tragedy, because there are many ways they could fix or redesign certain mechanics - but they choose not to. Instead they keep developing more disconnected gameplay systems, while the core gameplay just rots.

 

[Voidian]

RtP went in the correct direction, but it's the first one to do so.

Other than that these were the worst DLCs I've ever seen in a paradox game in terms of quantity of content, quality of content, and pacing of content.

 

[Dayvit78]

It's not how I thought when they announced it. They said that DLCs should not lock off content like EUIV because it creates a mess of who has what DLC and it's impossible to balance with all different configurations.

I really don't like that each DLC has new mana. They need to expand on the core concepts that are already in place. Legitimacy is no different in implementation than prestige. So why both? Does it add any more fun to the game? Does it create any new challenges or decisions? No.

Then you say they learn from their mistakes comparing Iberian with Iranian. Well, did they ever do anything to fix Iberian when they feel that Iranian is more successful? No, it's one and move on. Never touching the old ones again. So again, they need to build on their previous concepts rather than just making a ton of new stuff that's also broken.

They haven't fixed a ton of old events and decisions. For example, there's a Form Portugal decision that is completely out of date because it doesn't take into account the new features they added. It just assumes you form Portugal with French help.

 

[IngvarBS]

RtP went in the correct direction, but it's the first one to do so.

Other than that these were the worst DLCs I've ever seen in a paradox game in terms of quantity of content, quality of content, and pacing of content.

The only dlc that was really bad was legends of the dead. That was the worst dlc since Conclave.

Roads to Power and Tours and tournaments were good.

The viking, iberia and persia ones were average.

Royal Court should have been part of the main game.

The minor dlc should also always add new lifestyles (like wandering nobles). Nobody cares about events. We want more gameplay mechanics. Elder Kings mod added a lifestyle for reaver/raiders, one of the perks allows you to raid. That is an example of a lifestyle that would enhance the game.

I think the main problem was covid. We lost a year. We should have been in chapter 5 (getting republics) this year.
That made the fans really impatient.
That is why i think they should focus on high impact dlc for next few years.

Things like nomads, republics/trade, papacy/hre, china, theocracy (if possible), india, new start dates.
Features that everyone wants now or wanted in ck2 times.

 

[GhostDanny]

A lot of DLC's often disturb the balance of the existing game and DLC's.
People complain about it and the devs just nerf the biggest offending aspects into the ground instead of doing a proper balance pass.

 

[Benismann]

I really don't like that each DLC has new mana. They need to expand on the core concepts that are already in place. Legitimacy is no different in implementation than prestige. So why both? Does it add any more fun to the game? Does it create any new challenges or decisions? No.

I agree with everything else, but legitimacy is very much not just prestige. Altho, as always, the implementation is weird. I think it should passively tick down all the time, especially higher ones, without it it's just a bar that you fill up doing stuff and then it just stays full unless you do something nasty.

 

[Voidian]

I really don't like that each DLC has new mana. They need to expand on the core concepts that are already in place. Legitimacy is no different in implementation than prestige. So why both? Does it add any more fun to the game? Does it create any new challenges or decisions? No.

But that's not mana at all, mana is what you use to make magic happen, it was one of the main complaints about the release version of Imperator, where you could gather your different mana points and start casting your government spells instead of implementing change slowly using actual mechanics. Other than making the game even easier I don't see anything wrong with the system of legitimacy itself.

The only dlc that was really bad was legends of the dead. That was the worst dlc since Conclave.

Roads to Power and Tours and tournaments were good.

The viking, iberia and persia ones were average.

Royal Court should have been part of the main game.

The minor dlc should also always add new lifestyles (like wandering nobles). Nobody cares about events. We want more gameplay mechanics. Elder Kings mod added a lifestyle for reaver/raiders, one of the perks allows you to raid. That is an example of a lifestyle that would enhance the game.

I think the main problem was covid. We lost a year. We should have been in chapter 5 (getting republics) this year.
That made the fans really impatient.
That is why i think they should focus on high impact dlc for next few years.

Things like nomads, republics/trade, papacy/hre, china, theocracy (if possible), india, new start dates.
Features that everyone wants now or wanted in ck2 times.

As you said, all of the "event DLCs" were a cruel joke for a game struggling like this.

Viking Iberia and Persia were terrible, all the struggles did more harm than good and people constantly asked for mods to disable them without having to disable the new units and legacies, viking didn't have that, but it didn't have much of anything else either, it was a (very) poor man's "The Old Gods" DLC that didn't really do what it was supposed to do, vikings are still using a feudal placeholder system like every other tribal in the game.

We've spent half a decade without any government system, CK3 was pretty much as barebones as release CK2, but CK2 changed that within it's few years while CK3 took until the persian DLC to finally try and make the 2nd government system, so we wouldn't all be playing as christian feudal and it's placeholders using funky foreign names, RtP finally added 2 other "government" types, so we just went from 2 to 4 (or 3 and a half if you really don't count landless as a full mode for gameplay). And that's great, 5 years too late kind of great, but it's great.

As for T&T, it was an entire "big" DLC dedicated to..... Side content, I mean, it wasn't bad, it was the okay one and it really stood out as everything else was terrible but by itself it's a very light DLC that barely made any difference, at all, to the gameplay. It also added some of the worst event spam we've seen so between giant popups covering your entire vision every 3 days and repeating travel events asking if you want to duel the same RNG created dude for no reason or eat the damn poisoned berries 500 times within every ruler's lifetime. And this was never addressed.

 

[Videogames]

As for T&T, it was an entire "big" DLC dedicated to..... Side content, I mean, it wasn't bad, it was the okay one and it really stood out as everything else was terrible but by itself it's a very light DLC that barely made any difference, at all, to the gameplay. It also added some of the worst event spam we've seen so between giant popups covering your entire vision every 3 days and repeating travel events asking if you want to duel the same RNG created dude for no reason or eat the damn poisoned berries 500 times within every ruler's lifetime. And this was never addressed.

This is true. Spammy repetitive events make long tours so exhausting. I do them because they're useful, but if I've done one tour in a gameplay session and it comes off cooldown, I'm likely to just save and walk away to come back another time when I'm less worn down by all the events.

 

[Benismann]

As for T&T, it was an entire "big" DLC dedicated to..... Side content

Idk, i dont think feasts or hunts are "side content", traveling and the activities system both were implemented into hunts feasts pilgrimages, which i wouldn't call "side content"

 

[Koronus]

But that's not mana at all, mana is what you use to make magic happen, it was one of the main complaints about the release version of Imperator, where you could gather your different mana points and start casting your government spells instead of implementing change slowly using actual mechanics. Other than making the game even easier I don't see anything wrong with the system of legitimacy itself.



As you said, all of the "event DLCs" were a cruel joke for a game struggling like this.

Viking Iberia and Persia were terrible, all the struggles did more harm than good and people constantly asked for mods to disable them without having to disable the new units and legacies, viking didn't have that, but it didn't have much of anything else either, it was a (very) poor man's "The Old Gods" DLC that didn't really do what it was supposed to do, vikings are still using a feudal placeholder system like every other tribal in the game.

We've spent half a decade without any government system, CK3 was pretty much as barebones as release CK2, but CK2 changed that within it's few years while CK3 took until the persian DLC to finally try and make the 2nd government system, so we wouldn't all be playing as christian feudal and it's placeholders using funky foreign names, RtP finally added 2 other "government" types, so we just went from 2 to 4 (or 3 and a half if you really don't count landless as a full mode for gameplay). And that's great, 5 years too late kind of great, but it's great.

As for T&T, it was an entire "big" DLC dedicated to..... Side content, I mean, it wasn't bad, it was the okay one and it really stood out as everything else was terrible but by itself it's a very light DLC that barely made any difference, at all, to the gameplay. It also added some of the worst event spam we've seen so between giant popups covering your entire vision every 3 days and repeating travel events asking if you want to duel the same RNG created dude for no reason or eat the damn poisoned berries 500 times within every ruler's lifetime. And this was never addressed.

While I agree with you, that T&T where a big DLC focused about side content, I disagree with that CK3 came as barebones as CK2. Someone made the fact check and many of the CK2 improvements where base game of CK3.
Also while I agree that the first two chapters where just lacking content for the Price, it is at excuseable given how CK3 being released mid in Covid Pandemic had the worst possible Release Date for a Live Service Game and you can see it from the Release Dates.