Becoming increasingly disappointed with Paradox as of late

[Ixal]

I have been a long fan of Paradox, both because of the type of games they make and their patch policy with long term support (and I am fully aware that this is in part because of necessity and not pure goodwill).

But over the last half year I became more and more disappointed with how Paradox handles things over multiple product lines.

In EU4 I have the impression that the quality of the DLC is continously going down. Not the bugs, the code quality has always been questionable but I was happily willing to overlook most of it 8f the content is right, but the features itself.
I know it is always a balance between free and paid features but as of late I get the impression that features only get implemented to sell them. I am not so naive as to believe that making money isn't the primary reason for Paradox to make games at all, but previously the features introduced by expansions always in my opinion aimed to make the game better. But as of late the features introduced seem only tp be there to have new numbers, buttons and bars to sell without them really adding something to the game.

In Stellaris I was quite supportive of the large changes introduced in the last patch even though I dearly miss some of the removed features. But I did and still have the impression that in the long run it will be better for the game.
Then the War Exhaustion change happened where after 4 days of feedback a feature introduced by the patch got completely neutered. That makes me question how well thought out the design process at Paradox really is and how dedicated they are to make their games better instead of making a quick buck.
I tested the open beta and I have no idea how anyone could have thought the introduced penalties for 100% War Exhaustion come anywhere close to the forced peace. The penalties are hardly noticeable, both on paper and in game, which results in the feature essentially being rolled back.

That brings me to my main concern. I have the feeling that Paradox has shifted its focus too much to wargamers and abandoned the grand strategy approach. Whenever something in EU4 gets mentioned that would make world conquest harder you have a small group of players loudly argue against it despite EU4 having become more and more easy over time.
What happens now in Stellaris with Paradox caving in after not even a weak to appease the small group of players by removing a big feature confirms this in my opinion.
In my opinion this is not a good direction for Paradox to go. Their games sell because they are unique instead of just another wargame. But the more Paradox caters to a minority of wargamers the less unique their games become. And while for now the majority of players still stand silent more and more people become disgruntled with the sole focus on fast conquest and lack of any other gameplay as various EU4 thread like the ones about the immersion pack strategy or 1600 burnout show.

 

[Damiani]

I agree with you, but I don't think that Paradox is appeasing a 'small group of players' with this approach. Games centered around war clearly sell well, and Paradox is capitalizing on this. I stopped playing EU4 a while ago because to me it seemed to be too much about blobbing and war rather than more substantial, domestic development. Keep in mind, I have over 1000 hrs in EU4 so I'm not saying it's not a great game, I just bored of it over time because it didn't feel like I was doing anything new.

With Stellaris I think you're being a bit unfair, while war is a key aspect of the game, they've clearly done a good job at fleshing out other aspects of the game with ascension perks and factions and all that stuff. Sure, they have a long way to go, but I think there's a lot of promise for the game. I think we'll be able to better assess the situation after PDXCon and their new game is unveiled -- if it seems to be going down the EU4 path I'll definitely be disappointed, but if I'm honest I'll still buy the game.

 

[Rhaegar1]

Each his opinion but right now for me it seems a strange moment to feel disappointed by them. Both stellaris and hoi4 are receiving huge updates improving the game on an enormous amount of fronts. To be honest I feel PDS really is on a roll lately.

That being said there have also been enough lackluster updates in the past but with this rate I wouldn't even be surprised if PDS would actually contemplate major design changes in the future also for eu4 like a trade overhaul or stuff like that.

 

[Eh up me duck]

I have never gotten on with EU 4. It has some cool mechanics and stuff, it's just not very fun.

I think the crux of it is the combat system. Watching the AI split its army into microstacks, which it can easily recombine, whilst I keep my stack together when sieging, is frustrating. Maybe I just need to "git good" but it annoys me that I can lose a war despite thoroughly beating my opponent in battles and outnumbering him greatly. This was less of an issue in EU 3 because assaulting forts was a viable option, so if the AI managed to capture most of your provinces whilst your army was busy, it was fairly trivial conquering them back. Not so now, assaulting forts essentially no longer exists unless you're absolutely huge.

Also manpower. Whut. 10 years to recover fully, really? Forcing the player to use mercs is not strategic depth, it's a pointless and arbitrary way of giving the illusion of strategic complexity.

Also, navy. Seems pointless having navies in this game, even as the UK. The AI can and will find a way around it. Why waste the money on ships when you could be spending it on mercs to defeat the enemy troops that are landed?

This is why I still stick to EU3. I enjoy HOI 4 though.

 

[Brynjar]

In EU4 I have the impression that the quality of the DLC is continously going down. Not the bugs, the code quality has always been questionable but I was happily willing to overlook most of it 8f the content is right, but the features itself.
I know it is always a balance between free and paid features but as of late I get the impression that features only get implemented to sell them. I am not so naive as to believe that making money isn't the primary reason for Paradox to make games at all, but previously the features introduced by expansions always in my opinion aimed to make the game better. But as of late the features introduced seem only tp be there to have new numbers, buttons and bars to sell without them really adding something to the game.

If everyone found the new features added to a game in its fifth year as interesting and required as those added early in the game's life time, I think the devs would have done a terrible job early on.

I also disagree that the early EU4 dlcs are as great as you make them seem. Art of war contains a feature which should be in the base game: AI handing over control of occupied provinces they don't want. A feature I can see no other reason to have in the dlc other than making it a 'mandatory' dlc. Cradle of Civilization has generally been well recieved, although the accompanying free patch contained changes which should never have been implemented. Mare Nostrum on the other hand, although released 'only' 2 years ago wasn't well released.

Conquest of Paradise, Res Publica and El Dorado all have very situational use.

I'm more worried about Paradox releasing obviously broken content which should have been discovered and stopped before release, such as the AI changes in EU4 1.23 and 1.24. Judging by the latest dev diary, the 1.25 AI will still be worse than it was in 1.22.

As for their handling of the stellaris complaints I agree. First saying they will look into tweaking the numbers, but keep the mechanics as they are confident it's the right direction for the game, just to change their mind a few days later, is worrying.

That brings me to my main concern. I have the feeling that Paradox has shifted its focus too much to wargamers and abandoned the grand strategy approach. Whenever something in EU4 gets mentioned that would make world conquest harder you have a small group of players loudly argue against it despite EU4 having become more and more easy over time.
What happens now in Stellaris with Paradox caving in after not even a weak to appease the small group of players by removing a big feature confirms this in my opinion.
In my opinion this is not a good direction for Paradox to go. Their games sell because they are unique instead of just another wargame. But the more Paradox caters to a minority of wargamers the less unique their games become. And while for now the majority of players still stand silent more and more people become disgruntled with the sole focus on fast conquest and lack of any other gameplay as various EU4 thread like the ones about the immersion pack strategy or 1600 burnout show.

What makes you think this is a 'small group of players'? Paradox have games with less focus on war than EU4, I don't see why EU4 shouldn't be allowed to be focused on war. EU4 have sold much more, and is played by many more than their games with less focus on war (CK2, Victoria 2).

 

[General WVPM]

Is there any reliable data on the Paradox players?
I see an awful lot of people on the forums call others 'vocal minorities', while claiming they represent the vast silent majority.
I'd really like someone to back up claims like '[...Paradox caving in after not even a week to appease] the small group of players [...]', '[...Paradox caters to] a minority of wargamers' and '[...for now] the majority of players still stand silent'.

I've seen many such posts and I can imagine they are based on anecdotal evidence, but I might have overlooked some sort of mass survey result thread.

 

[grandad1982]

Is there any reliable data on the Paradox players?
I see an awful lot of people on the forums call others 'vocal minorities', while claiming they represent the vast silent majority.
I'd really like someone to back up claims like '[...Paradox caving in after not even a week to appease] the small group of players [...]', '[...Paradox caters to] a minority of wargamers' and '[...for now] the majority of players still stand silent'.

I've seen many such posts and I can imagine they are based on anecdotal evidence, but I might have overlooked some sort of mass survey result thread.

You've missed nothing. It's just people tend to always see themselves as being in the right so place themselves in a position they think backs their opinion.

Most data released by pdx (so pinch of salt etc) shows increasing player counts and play time (the last bunch I saw was hoi 4 related) and with each dlc this tends to increase overall.

Personally i thunk they are generally doing a good job though I am concerned that Stellaris post 2.0 seems to be having a major wobble.

We'll see what WoT brings in terms of release quality....

 

[Brynjar]

Is there any reliable data on the Paradox players?
I see an awful lot of people on the forums call others 'vocal minorities', while claiming they represent the vast silent majority.
I'd really like someone to back up claims like '[...Paradox caving in after not even a week to appease] the small group of players [...]', '[...Paradox caters to] a minority of wargamers' and '[...for now] the majority of players still stand silent'.

I've seen many such posts and I can imagine they are based on anecdotal evidence, but I might have overlooked some sort of mass survey result thread.

Calling the stellaris complaints a vocal minority can be backed up with data from steam, although noone knows what the majority thinks. After the release of Apocalypse there has been 676 negative steam reviews, far from all of them using the status quo as reason (FTL, bugs, dlc price/policy are among the other reasons). The biggest thread on these forums adressing the forced status quo also had a few hundred replies (I'm not bothering to see how many unique posters actually disliked the status quo). At the moment steam claims over 40000 people are playing stellaris, more than twice the normal peak hour players before Apocalypse.

As for his EU4 statistics, they are most likely made up to support his view.

 

[creativitypersonified]

As for his EU4 statistics, they are most likely made up to support his view.

They are probably made up but the numbers do support his view.
From steam we got that 0.8% of players have done a world conquest.
Not all players play with iron man on though. The most highly achieved achievement from steam has been done by 24% of players. I'm going to treat this as 25% for convenience and quadruple the number to 3.2%.
Of course not every player that enjoys blobbing has done a wc.
I'm going to use the aggressive expander achievement to determine how many people have gotten at least very large. Steam say it's 7.6%. Minus the number of players who have achieved a wc (0.8%) they are 6.8%. Quadrupling to account for non ironman players we get 27.2%. Adding it up we have 30.4% of the player base that have performed large scale conquest. I'm going to remove the very conservative estimate of 0.4% of players since a portion of these players may not enjoy conquest but have done them solely to get the corresponding achievements.
We are left with 30% of the player base that enjoys large scale conquest. The method I have used to get to this number relies on a lot of estimates and is thus going to not be very accurate so let's say that the answer was at most 10% away from the true number. We are left with a rough estimate of 20-40% of the players base with the real answer most likely somewhere among the lower parts of that range since non ironman players are probably less likely to enjoy large scale conquest. That is clearly less than 50% of the player base thus a minority albeit not by any means a negligible minority.

 

[Brynjar]

There is a huge difference between enjoying the war part of EU4 (or even blobbing) and doing world conquest. I had about 1500 hours playtime before doing a WC. Now I have done a grand total of 2, and I doubt I'll ever do any more.

Achievements says nothing about how people prefer to play the game. Nothing. Median playtime is 35.4 hours. That means half the players probably haven't finished more than 1-2 campaigns. What are all these players who isn't enjoying the 'wargame' doing? Surely not colonizing, as the general colonizing achievements (the five colonies and at every continent) are less frequent than Agressive expander, and blobbers will generally get those as well. Playing a diplomatic game? As many people have become emperor of the HRE as those getting agressive expander. 2.3% have Electable! Building trade empires? 13.3% have accumulated over 3000 ducats. I think it's fair to assume that the players getting agressive expander has also gotten this.

Please, enlighten us. What are you guys doing while playing the game? Playing with mods? Good, paradox is putting in a lot of effort to support modding! It's not like people who prefers the game with mods have been abandoned recently.

 

[thekaje]

I've noticed I've been less and less interested in Paradox games over time, and I think you've nailed it: too much of a focus on war! I always enjoyed the non-war aspects of games like CK2 and Victoria, but the overemphasis on military in EU4 and Stellaris really bore me.

Of course, I didn't buy HoI 4 and bought HoI 3 a couple years ago with few hours played, but that's to be expected...

 

[swm]

EU4's focus on warfare, I feel, is okay even if it's not ideal. We're too late in the game's lifespan to introduce the kind of large scale changes it would take to do internal politics right, and unfortunately a lot of suggestions I've seen on that forum for internal politics just boil down to "After X development the player should get spammed with -stab and reb events until they collapse because no one should grow that big." That's... not a recipe for a fun game. EU4's already gone too far down the wargame road to reasonably turn back now.

Stellaris, on the other hand, I find myself wishing had more to it. The internal development is anemic, and frankly boils down to waiting for a bunch of buckets to fill so I can press a button that will make my future, bigger buckets, fill faster. Compare Vicky... or even CKII.

 

[creativitypersonified]

There is a huge difference between enjoying the war part of EU4 (or even blobbing) and doing world conquest. I had about 1500 hours playtime before doing a WC. Now I have done a grand total of 2, and I doubt I'll ever do any more.

That is why I also used the aggressive expander achievement. I'd say it's the best suit for what we are looking for.

Achievements says nothing about how people prefer to play the game. Nothing.

Considering achievements are correct indicators of what people have done in their playtime it seems kinda strange to me that you can dismiss them like that. They aren't the most accurate I agree but it's the best one can reasonably get. The only way to really get something more accurate would be paradox recording everyone's games. Still having a 20% range means the inaccuracies of the testing method are accounted for.

What are all these players who isn't enjoying the 'wargame' doing? Surely not colonizing, as the general colonizing achievements (the five colonies and at every continent) are less frequent than Agressive expander, and blobbers will generally get those as well. Playing a diplomatic game? As many people have become emperor of the HRE as those getting agressive expander. 2.3% have Electable! Building trade empires? 13.3% have accumulated over 3000 ducats. I think it's fair to assume that the players getting agressive expander has also gotten this.

Please, enlighten us. What are you guys doing while playing the game? Playing with mods? Good, paradox is putting in a lot of effort to support modding! It's not like people who prefers the game with mods have been abandoned recently.

Im not sure where you are going with this here. The whole point of your post, my post and some previous posts was to determine if the players that enjoy large scale conquest are the minority or the majority. Finding out what the rest of the player base enjoys doing is both irrelevant and quite a bit harder. I also don't get why you become agitated towards the end. There's is surely a lot of people playing with mods and I don't think I've heard someone or at least a significant amount of people complain about lack of support for the modding community. If they did they'd be wrong of course.

 

[Brynjar]

Considering achievements are correct indicators of what people have done in their playtime it seems kinda strange to me that you can dismiss them like that. They aren't the most accurate I agree but it's the best one can reasonably get. The only way to really get something more accurate would be paradox recording everyone's games. Still having a 20% range means the inaccuracies of the testing method are accounted for.

Making up inaccuracy values doesn't account for anything. You are using achievement that takes less than 10 minutes to reach your number... (you actually used one which only requires you to progress 1 day, but a few others aren't far behind)

The only thing achievements says something about, is what the people who have started an ironman game have done. Judging from teh median play time, most of the people included in the achievement statistics haven't really played the game, which makes it pointless trying to draw any conclusion from it.

Less than 20% of the owners of the game is playing over a two week period. The daily amount of players have increased over the game's life time. If the majority didn't want a war game, you would think the amount of players (not owners, but people who actually play the game) would fall over time. The war focused DLC Cradle of Civilization caused an all time high in daily players. Although these stats aren't saying much, they say infitiely more than achievements, about whether or not people like the direction the game is taking. Achievements, again, says nothing.

Finding out what the rest of the player base enjoys doing is both irrelevant and quite a bit harder.

How is it irrelevant to know what people are doing? Which direction should the game take if it should change. It would be pointless to change the focus to something even fewer people enjoy. We regularly see people complaining that blobbing is the only thing to do in the game, but according to you most people aren't doing this. You obviously don't know what they are doing, but at least you can answer for yourself, what are you doing while playing the game? Surely you aren't torturing yourself by warring? Or are you just waiting for the game to take a completely new direction in its fifth year so that you can finally play the game?

There are mods which reduces the focus on war a lot, which is why it's relevant. Those who doesn't like the direction the game is steered by the developers, have the freedom to play with mods, or even old versions.

 

[grandad1982]

EU4 was always going to be war focused though. Johan even described it as Risk on steroids during the development phase. The main difference between EU4 and Stellaris (which makes EU4 a good game and Stellaris a largely boring game) is that in EU4 you have to pay more attention to the diplomacy, trade and you also have a better variety of expansion options available.

HoI 4 is a war game so of course its war focused but actually compared to HoI 3 they have actually increased the importance of the non fighting part, industry, even if it is ultimately to support war.

Sooner or later there will be a new Victoria and I would be surprised if its main focus was just warfare. To complain that games that have focus on warfare by design and were always intended to be that way seems unfair especially when pdx produce games that are focused on other aspects of game play and are even mention by people in this thread!

One of the other common complaints I see is that people have played a game for 1000+ hours and feel bored by it. Is this really a surprise? If you can get that much interest out of a game then its done exceptionally well and to find your engagement waning is no surprise at all!