Maybe it is time to change the policy on released games?

[Kanzhuu]

This I emphatically disagee with. We ABSOLUTELY do not want to be ANYWHERE NEAR the AAA gaming space, given what a toxic pile of mess that is that gets worse with every passing piece of news. If people come in with those sort of expectations? Then, quite frankly, I would rather them be disabused of them, no matter how miffed that makes them.

Those sort of expectations have been trained into people by companies that are, at the moment, using flagrantly using psychological manipiulation techniques (and are requiring govermental-level intervention), cheerfully driving their devs into stress-based work overload breakdowns, are bad for the entire gaming industry. Flaws-and-all, Paradox is one of the few big-ish developers that is head and shoulders above the pack and we need to keep them there.

The AAA gaming space is not something PDX needs to, nor should consider, ever approach in the current clime.

Okay buddy, slow down. You are right. Current AAA are just a pile of garbage, an unmitigated desaster burning on so many fronts that I just wanna scream at the monitor and I do not even buy or play AAA games. I am as angry as you are, if not more so. What I meant by saying AAA is the level of high end quality we used expect from AAA games, games like Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 and so on. EA and its inbred kin have made AAA synonymous with deceit, lying, fraud, gambling, preying on children and so much more, so that AAA is basically a deadly insult. I laugh at the gaming community that is so stupid that they STILL preorder AAA games that we all know will never be finished by release date or any date thereafter and STILL they pay BILLIONS in micro transactions, so I do not blame EA for abusing their customers - It is not like they could just walk away or something. But this is getting off track. (But if I were EA and my customers enjoyed the abuse as much as they seem to do, I would ramp it up as hard as I could as well, just to see how much more money I could get from them. I have little respect for the AAA gaming community, as you can tell.)

What I meant by saying AAA is that PDX titles have reached a level of quality of their own, the crown of gaming is no longer worn by EA, ActivisionBlizzard and so on. They produce garbage (that somehow still sells, but oh well, free people in a free society), The crown of good game development has shifted to smaller, mostly European studios. Think Larian Games with their Divinity series. Think CD Project Red, and yes, also PDX. THEY have become the new AAA, except that we need a new name for it, because AAA is forever sullied by greed and forcing gambling addiction onto children. I did not wish to debate the semantics of AAA with you guys, all I wanted to say is that if you reach a certain level of quality and your games reach a certain size, requiring larger teams and more ressources, it is okay to raise prices a bit. Yeah, higher prices suck, but looking at the time I spent playing Stellaris I honestly would be willing to chip in another 10$ afterwards as a tip. I think I paid 40€ for it. Considering the scope of the game that is quite a fair price. Make it 50€ and I am still fine. I know that raising prices sucks for those of us who do not have the necessary cash but then just wait for sales.

Edit:
Just to make it clear: I am not advocating for what currently counts as AAA, as today's AAA is pure garbage, no actually it is worse than garbage. Current AAA is criminal.

 

[Kanzhuu]

You know, respectfully disagreeing lets me know that somebody somewhere somehow disagrees with what I have written, but I would much rather appreciate that you write a reply explaining why you disagree and on what points specifically. This way we can have a constructive discourse. I will be honest with you guys: I try to put some thought into what I write and anytime someone goes "nah, i dont like this" it is a bit frustrating, because yes, maybe you have a point, or maybe I did not express myself clearly enough (not a native speaker) so, if you disagree, by all means, do so, but could you please explain why? I feel this would help us all a lot in coming to better conclusions faster.

 

[Lupis Volk]

Funny, my read on the situation is they want that years extra development time but DON'T want to pay more for it, in fact some are yammering that the current price is too high...

Yeah gamer's sure love wanting their cake and eating it too. It's why i find the Paradox paradox to be stupid, why hate a dev that supports their games for 5+ years?

Because CK2 (technically with it's dlcs) costs $350 while Imperator $40?

It's not like Imperator came out after all those CK2 DLC's were out.....wait it was. So what's the excuse going to be now?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Just to make it clear: I am not advocating for what currently counts as AAA, as today's AAA is pure garbage, no actually it is worse than garbage. Current AAA is criminal.

Pdox certainly isn't as bad as AAA, but the path it is walking follows that pattern. Remember, for years EU 4 advertised that "cross platform MP" was a feature, and for nearly the entire existence of the game this has been false. I don't know about Swedish laws, but in many countries that actually would be criminal (it would meet the standards of both false and deceptive advertising, since it was a known issue but the site continued to advertise otherwise for years after it was reported/known).

EA devs are on record openly lying about how their player stats work (falsifiable and falsified independently and shown on video by multiple players) while doing things like selling "electronic cards" whose value is heavily contingent on the quality of the statistics on said player cards. They also remove features in newer versions of their titles compared to older versions, but at least that isn't unambiguous fraud.

Activision/Bungie throttling player XP in secret was pathetic too, actually the list here could go quite long if we talk about AAA.

That said, more than just a handful of times we have seen Pdox patch the ability to do something out of the game, only to see it return in future patches as a reworked DLC mechanic (sometimes, but not always, stronger than its original variant). So I'm not personally going to hand them any crowns, and given a track record of such practices I'm not convinced we need a separate distinction from AAA just yet.

I worry that by the time they hit the kind of income of AAA developers, AAA-style practices will be in force. Remember, once upon a time even EA wasn't hot garbage. If you go back into the 1990's they actually made some good games and *didn't* do anything exceptional in attempt to fleece consumers. That really was a thing. It was before quite a few players of modern games were born, but still.

Neither the release state of Imperator nor the patch/DLC history of HOI 4 and EU 4 give me any confidence that Pdox will consistently take a better path in the future (I have not played Stellaris, so can't comment on that one).

 

[GundamMerc]

Pdox certainly isn't as bad as AAA, but the path it is walking follows that pattern. Remember, for years EU 4 advertised that "cross platform MP" was a feature, and for nearly the entire existence of the game this has been false. I don't know about Swedish laws, but in many countries that actually would be criminal (it would meet the standards of both false and deceptive advertising, since it was a known issue but the site continued to advertise otherwise for years after it was reported/known).

EA devs are on record openly lying about how their player stats work (falsifiable and falsified independently and shown on video by multiple players) while doing things like selling "electronic cards" whose value is heavily contingent on the quality of the statistics on said player cards. They also remove features in newer versions of their titles compared to older versions, but at least that isn't unambiguous fraud.

Activision/Bungie throttling player XP in secret was pathetic too, actually the list here could go quite long if we talk about AAA.

That said, more than just a handful of times we have seen Pdox patch the ability to do something out of the game, only to see it return in future patches as a reworked DLC mechanic (sometimes, but not always, stronger than its original variant). So I'm not personally going to hand them any crowns, and given a track record of such practices I'm not convinced we need a separate distinction from AAA just yet.

I worry that by the time they hit the kind of income of AAA developers, AAA-style practices will be in force. Remember, once upon a time even EA wasn't hot garbage. If you go back into the 1990's they actually made some good games and *didn't* do anything exceptional in attempt to fleece consumers. That really was a thing. It was before quite a few players of modern games were born, but still.

Neither the release state of Imperator nor the patch/DLC history of HOI 4 and EU 4 give me any confidence that Pdox will consistently take a better path in the future (I have not played Stellaris, so can't comment on that one).

You realize that Mac/Linux/PC are considered different platforms, right? No lies there.

When you're going to make claims, how about actually providing the evidence rather than claiming it exists "somewhere"?

Lordy lordy, what a bunch of spoiled children we have here in the forums.

 

[Kanzhuu]

Neither the release state of Imperator nor the patch/DLC history of HOI 4 and EU 4 give me any confidence that Pdox will consistently take a better path in the future (I have not played Stellaris, so can't comment on that one).

I think that whether you are right or nor, the inly chance to acvert thsi desaster is an active community. EA is still in business, meaning that their playerbase may be vocally complaining, but they are again and again paying for micro transactions and pre-ordering games that I we all know will never deliver on their promises. The day a game is announced, heck, the YEAR before an EA game is announced, you know what kind of nonsense will come with it and yet the players opay up every time like the pay-piggies that they are, completely without dignity. I have developed a searing contempt for these kind of people. It is as if they WANTED to be abused, and you know, free markets are driven by supply and demand and apparently there is demand for the option of paying real world money for red dots. If you ACTUALLY manage to sell digital in-game red dots to people for real world money, then you would be stupid not to do so. It is the gamers that pay for this nonsense that bear the responsibility, because if I could sell red dots to people, i would do so without hesitation. Their idiocy is not my problem. And you may claim otherwise, but you know, let the idea sink in for a while... Leaving out the issue of selling to kids, would you really say no to this as an executive? Of course not. So even without gambling boxes and all the other garbage they pull off, the fault lies with gamers without dignity and discipline. Something must be seriously wrong in your brain, if you pay for a red dot, and I mean it the way I say it. There need to be studies done on why people's decision process is so faulty. But leaving these hyperactive kids, that have made Monster Beverages one of the hottest stocks on the market over the last few years, behind, and turning back to more complex games and their studios, I am very optimistic that PDX will be eaten alive by their community if they went down the triplle-shAAAte-path.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You realize that Mac/Linux/PC are considered different platforms, right? No lies there.

When you're going to make claims, how about actually providing the evidence rather than claiming it exists "somewhere"?

Linux + Windows play has not worked in EU 4 since patch 1.5. It will de-sync before you can advance even one month every time I've tried it.

Tech support acknowledged that cross-platform didn't work years ago (prior to new forum format) and it hasn't been so much as mentioned in a single patch note since. At least the advertising page that made the claim doesn't seem to exist anymore. But that page existed for years and it literally advertised a feature in EU 4 that did not work...and Paradox was well aware that this feature did not work. That strictly fits false + deceptive advertising from a legal perspective in the US. Again, I don't know what laws apply in Sweden.

This was a case of unambiguous false advertising. It's not a matter of opinion. The game listed supported platforms and said it could do it, and it couldn't.

I think that whether you are right or nor, the inly chance to acvert thsi desaster is an active community. EA is still in business, meaning that their playerbase may be vocally complaining, but they are again and again paying for micro transactions and pre-ordering games that I we all know will never deliver on their promises. The day a game is announced, heck, the YEAR before an EA game is announced, you know what kind of nonsense will come with it and yet the players opay up every time like the pay-piggies that they are, completely without dignity.

So it goes. I call certain game genres "doormat markets" for this reason. I personally stopped buying EA stuff, which is sad because a good friend still plays Madden and I used to have fun with it (in fact I was routinely a top 1000 player for several years in a row). But eventually the game's quality degraded enough and EA made fraudulent false claims about how the mechanics work and that was too much for me. It's been years since then. I very much wish they lose their monopoly license on that stuff. Actually in their case I wish them a fraud lawsuit and possibly an unfavorable ruling regarding their stuff as gambling on top of it, but at minimum the fraud hit.

If you ACTUALLY manage to sell digital in-game red dots to people for real world money, then you would be stupid not to do so. It is the gamers that pay for this nonsense that bear the responsibility, because if I could sell red dots to people, i would do so without hesitation.

There's enough blame to go around. Market setting low bar standards is definitely the fault of the market. Companies lying about their product and committing fraud has to be the responsibility of the companies.

There need to be studies done on why people's decision process is so faulty.

There actually are, though in other fields than gaming. This comes up in discussions about AI singularity for example, because people attempting to program general AIs need to actually define these kinds of decision making processes. "Make the AI consider/optimize human preferences or well-being" then requires you to define a model for human utility.

People doing that kind of work notice human incoherence easily. I don't work in that field but I enjoy reading about it. I don't enjoy human incoherence itself though, especially because it is extremely common in debates on game forums and often gets ignored even when pointed out.

I am very optimistic that PDX will be eaten alive by their community if they went down the triplle-shAAAte-path.

Where does that confidence come from, considering what has happened in other communities as the dominant competitors in those game genres hit AAA?

Again, I remind you that EA really did demonstrate good standards + make decent games once upon a time. Two decades ago Blizzard was nearly flawless as a beacon of game programming greatness, setting multiple standards that few could compete against. Now they're asking people if they have phones. If we're going to talk rationality, then I'd like to hear your explanation as a rationalist as to why we should expect Pdox (or any company) to be particularly different if going AAA.

 

[Duuk]

Again, I remind you that EA really did demonstrate good standards + make decent games once upon a time. Two decades ago Blizzard was nearly flawless as a beacon of game programming greatness, setting multiple standards that few could compete against. Now they're asking people if they have phones. If we're going to talk rationality, then I'd like to hear your explanation as a rationalist as to why we should expect Pdox (or any company) to be particularly different if going AAA.

That really is a rational point. Every company that gets to the top got there by being the absoulte best for a period of time, and people forget that. Comcast didn't climb to the top of the telecom field by being known for being terrible, they climbed to the top of the hill by being better than MCA-Worldcom and literally hundreds of regional competitors. There was a time Comcast was a regional competitor.

EA, at a time, _was the gold standard_ for quality publishing. Blizzard for many of us in our minds is _still_ the gold standard even if our brains tell is that it obviously is not. We use terms like "Blizzard Quality" and "Blizzard's policy of When It's Done" even though they abandoned releasing quality content long ago for grind-driven cash grabs a decade ago.

In all of history, very few people or companies get to the top on a fluke. When the younger generation starts railing at them about how terrible they are, the older generation naturally resents the younger generation for it, because we remember the way things were, so we give these companies more leeway.

I don't think Paradox is there yet, but you point isn't completely out of context. Blizzard's fall has hit me particularly hard lately (this was the first WoW expansion I didn't resub for).

 

[alexti]

Again, I remind you that EA really did demonstrate good standards + make decent games once upon a time. Two decades ago Blizzard was nearly flawless as a beacon of game programming greatness, setting multiple standards that few could compete against. Now they're asking people if they have phones. If we're going to talk rationality, then I'd like to hear your explanation as a rationalist as to why we should expect Pdox (or any company) to be particularly different if going AAA.

I don't think applying this analogy works. At some point in the past, computers became common and potential market for computer games has expanded from the academia and high tech into a much wider mass market. Some companies (EA, Blizzard) have recognized that there was a large new demand on the market for certain "red dots" products (I don't know what that refers to, but one of the previous posters used it as an example of EA product), so they have started to serve that market. Now this market is captured by EA and others, so if Paradox wanted to go there, they would have to compete against already established large companies. So there is a business incentive for Paradox to continue serving their market (where they are kind of dominant) and perhaps expand into some new markets rather than to go against EA in their market.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't think applying this analogy works. At some point in the past, computers became common and potential market for computer games has expanded from the academia and high tech into a much wider mass market. Some companies (EA, Blizzard) have recognized that there was a large new demand on the market for certain "red dots" products (I don't know what that refers to, but one of the previous posters used it as an example of EA product), so they have started to serve that market. Now this market is captured by EA and others, so if Paradox wanted to go there, they would have to compete against already established large companies. So there is a business incentive for Paradox to continue serving their market (where they are kind of dominant) and perhaps expand into some new markets rather than to go against EA in their market.

This is bypassing the issue - if they don't go AAA then we don't anticipate AAA practices because a company can't as easily get away with those when smaller.

If they do go AAA, we have already-observable trends that make it strange to anticipate that they would behave significantly different from their predecessors. Maybe the precise means of going after "red dots" would look different, but would the practices toward/general treatment of consumers?

 

[alexti]

This is bypassing the issue - if they don't go AAA then we don't anticipate AAA practices because a company can't as easily get away with those when smaller.

If they do go AAA, we have already-observable trends that make it strange to anticipate that they would behave significantly different from their predecessors. Maybe the precise means of going after "red dots" would look different, but would the practices toward/general treatment of consumers?

That depends on how you define AAA. I am saying that with traditional definition of AAA (high budgets) the other practices don't necessarily follow. Another consideration is whether current AAA company really treat their customers poorly. I don't really know what exactly they do because they don't make products I have interest in and if I became their client I would be unhappy. But does the same apply to people who like their products? Regardless of rationality of liking "red dots", if people like them and AAA companies provide high quality "red dots", what's wrong with it?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That depends on how you define AAA. I am saying that with traditional definition of AAA (high budgets) the other practices don't necessarily follow. Another consideration is whether current AAA company really treat their customers poorly.

Last I checked in EA was still encouraging kids to spend real money on in-game player cards while lying about what player attributes (a significant part of the value attributed to said cards) do. I hold that committing fraud against one's consumers should be considered "treating them poorly", to put it mildly. The assertion that EA lied is proven too BTW.

I suppose this doesn't always happen with AAA though. Call of Duty didn't do anything quite that egregious to my knowledge. Their game quality is...well...some people like them still I guess. But they're not obviously criminals so that's a big plus over EA.

But with Paradox going bigger budget is concerning, because we've ALREADY had one case of objective false + deceptive advertising, and patch history indicates no urgency regarding whether the games explicitly lie to the player (putting it this way is charitable, they've ignored reported UI bugs for > 3 years while making all kinds of changes that would reasonably be lower priority...in multiple game titles). It's hard to trust project management that systemically ignores issues like that, regardless of the reason it's ignored. I see no reason to expect this issue to disappear with a larger budget rather than be magnified.

Regardless of rationality of liking "red dots", if people like them and AAA companies provide high quality "red dots", what's wrong with it?

If it were just getting more money from dedicated players, it wouldn't be as big of an issue. Riot does a mostly respectable job of this with League of Legends for example. Even if you don't like Fortnite at all, from a business practice standpoint they've been reasonable over the admittedly short time I played it.

Main issue with AAA is that their budget seems to push their incentives to behave dishonestly. Stuff like XP-throttling non-"premium" players, hiding that they're doing that, and lying about it comes to mind in addition to EA's fraud, and you can find more examples if you feel like searching.

 

[alexti]

Last I checked in EA was still encouraging kids to spend real money on in-game player cards while lying about what player attributes (a significant part of the value attributed to said cards) do. I hold that committing fraud against one's consumers should be considered "treating them poorly", to put it mildly. The assertion that EA lied is proven too BTW.

I suppose this doesn't always happen with AAA though. Call of Duty didn't do anything quite that egregious to my knowledge. Their game quality is...well...some people like them still I guess. But they're not obviously criminals so that's a big plus over EA.

But with Paradox going bigger budget is concerning, because we've ALREADY had one case of objective false + deceptive advertising, and patch history indicates no urgency regarding whether the games explicitly lie to the player (putting it this way is charitable, they've ignored reported UI bugs for > 3 years while making all kinds of changes that would reasonably be lower priority...in multiple game titles). It's hard to trust project management that systemically ignores issues like that, regardless of the reason it's ignored. I see no reason to expect this issue to disappear with a larger budget rather than be magnified.



If it were just getting more money from dedicated players, it wouldn't be as big of an issue. Riot does a mostly respectable job of this with League of Legends for example. Even if you don't like Fortnite at all, from a business practice standpoint they've been reasonable over the admittedly short time I played it.

Main issue with AAA is that their budget seems to push their incentives to behave dishonestly. Stuff like XP-throttling non-"premium" players, hiding that they're doing that, and lying about it comes to mind in addition to EA's fraud, and you can find more examples if you feel like searching.

What you wrote seems to show that the problem is really specific to EA rather than to AAA studios in general. I don't think the Paradox issues have any similarity. They seem to be more due to them trying to make much complex games and sell them at the industry-standard prices which leads to quality issues and then they have problems fixing everything so, naturally, whatever is easier to fix is getting fixed. In principle, having bigger budget would have helped to solve those issues, but to have bigger budget would require having larger revenues.

 

[petertel123]

Option A: complete piece of crap sold for the normal full price of a pc game
Option B: normal functioning game sold for way more than other games

How about neither?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What you wrote seems to show that the problem is really specific to EA rather than to AAA studios in general.

Bungie/Epic have done similar (note that the Destiny2 xp throttling and lying about it was Bungie, not EA).

There are others but I'm not nearly as familiar with their games, whereas with Madden I was a strong player for years with nuanced understanding of both hidden and non-hidden mechanics. Unlike the other titles I can directly recall features that were removed in newer iterations, fraudulent claims, and bugs that break or centralize the game. I experienced these directly, watched the tests disproving the claims about what attributes do, etc. In other series I'd be operating off hearsay so it's much harder for me to emphasize them.

I don't think the Paradox issues have any similarity. They seem to be more due to them trying to make much complex games and sell them at the industry-standard prices which leads to quality issues and then they have problems fixing everything so, naturally, whatever is easier to fix is getting fixed. In principle, having bigger budget would have helped to solve those issues, but to have bigger budget would require having larger revenues.

Evidence doesn't support this. First of all, Pdox games cost way more than industry-standard factoring DLC. You may consider that reasonable or not, but it's the reality of the setup.

Second, it is not convincing that Pdox will resolve its "issues" with more money. Pdox has demonstrated consistent systemic project management failures and a gross incapability of setting priorities when it comes to fixing things in their games. Patch after patch in multiple titles, Pdox has repeatedly shown us that it is more concerned with esoteric player exploits on nations that are picked a fraction of a percentage of the time (per their own data!). These are prioritized over well-documented issues that are easier to fix and can impact any nation in the game w/o exception.

A good example of this was nerfing Inti's ability to raise autonomy, which was a) unjustified considering Inti is terrible b) introduced a bug that was rapidly documented and never fixed c) complete nonsense to prioritize over the pre-war screen lying to the player for 3+ years.

This, in addition to the fact that Pdox has made no special effort to deliver on the promise of a feature they advertised, makes me doubt strongly any rationale that a higher budget will make us see better behavior. AAA level budgets come with costs where games need to sell immense quantities to not be considered failures...and we're supposed to expect good practices from a company that has already patched things out of the game and sold superior versions back as DLC options half a dozen times?

 

[alexti]

Evidence doesn't support this. First of all, Pdox games cost way more than industry-standard factoring DLC. You may consider that reasonable or not, but it's the reality of the setup.

But we need to consider that even PDX base games (or to more accurately match the industry-standard prices, base game plus 1 expansion) are significantly more complex than the average game.

Second, it is not convincing that Pdox will resolve its "issues" with more money. Pdox has demonstrated consistent systemic project management failures and a gross incapability of setting priorities when it comes to fixing things in their games. Patch after patch in multiple titles, Pdox has repeatedly shown us that it is more concerned with esoteric player exploits on nations that are picked a fraction of a percentage of the time (per their own data!). These are prioritized over well-documented issues that are easier to fix and can impact any nation in the game w/o exception.

A good example of this was nerfing Inti's ability to raise autonomy, which was a) unjustified considering Inti is terrible b) introduced a bug that was rapidly documented and never fixed c) complete nonsense to prioritize over the pre-war screen lying to the player for 3+ years.

Throwing money at the problem won't necessarily solve it, but PDX titles could certainly benefit from larger QA. Your examples seem to be specific to EU4, I don't think I've seen the same pattern in any other of their games (including even EU4 predecessor EU3). There might be many reasons why it's happening this way in EU4. If PDX is anything like typical software company the choice of what bugs to fix isn't part of any master plan and doesn't go very far up the chain of command. Often it's something like developer's familiarity with certain parts of the code, or fixing one bugs in one place in the code and at the same time fixing few others in the same place. Or there could be some pieces of the code everyone is afraid of touching.

This, in addition to the fact that Pdox has made no special effort to deliver on the promise of a feature they advertised, makes me doubt strongly any rationale that a higher budget will make us see better behavior. AAA level budgets come with costs where games need to sell immense quantities to not be considered failures...and we're supposed to expect good practices from a company that has already patched things out of the game and sold superior versions back as DLC options half a dozen times?

Looking at the currently available facts I don't see a pattern. They are just as likely to expand and improve the game and give it out for free. Given the huge rework in Stellaris 2.x any normal company would sell it as a new game while PDX released it as a free update. They seem to plan to do the same with Imperator.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

But we need to consider that even PDX base games (or to more accurately match the industry-standard prices, base game plus 1 expansion) are significantly more complex than the average game.

I'm not sure complexity : price ratios is a rabbit hole we want to explore. I'm not sure we even can in a coherent fashion. What aspects of design drive price values? If you look at this game to game it's more reasonable to conclude that this isn't a significant factor, even if you believe it should be.

Throwing money at the problem won't necessarily solve it, but PDX titles could certainly benefit from larger QA.

They are shorter in programmers to fix issues with the game than they are in QA to identify them, but I'm not sure where that line is drawn between "programmers" and "QA". There's no shortage of documented problems to fix.

Your examples seem to be specific to EU4, I don't think I've seen the same pattern in any other of their games (including even EU4 predecessor EU3).

I'm scope limited to the games I know the best, because I don't want to assert things I don't know are true. That said, these examples *certainly* also extend to HOI 4 also and they are not subtle. I've played no stellaris, barely any vicky 2, and a good amount of CK2. CK2 is their only title I've played that mostly lacks the problems I describe.

Often it's something like developer's familiarity with certain parts of the code, or fixing one bugs in one place in the code and at the same time fixing few others in the same place. Or there could be some pieces of the code everyone is afraid of touching.

For some issues I could buy this. When they won't text-edit a tooltip for 3 years it's not a defense Pdox could reasonably use.

Looking at the currently available facts I don't see a pattern. They are just as likely to expand and improve the game and give it out for free. Given the huge rework in Stellaris 2.x any normal company would sell it as a new game while PDX released it as a free update. They seem to plan to do the same with Imperator.

Imperator release was bad enough to force alteration. I guess it does show that consumers will actually draw the line at some point.

 

[alexti]

I'm not sure complexity : price ratios is a rabbit hole we want to explore. I'm not sure we even can in a coherent fashion. What aspects of design drive price values? If you look at this game to game it's more reasonable to conclude that this isn't a significant factor, even if you believe it should be.

I am not saying that complexity increases the value of the product, sometimes it can be the opposite. My point is that complexity increases the cost to create the product and since the price is relatively inflexible, it leads to quality issues.

They are shorter in programmers to fix issues with the game than they are in QA to identify them, but I'm not sure where that line is drawn between "programmers" and "QA". There's no shortage of documented problems to fix.

Documented by the end users mostly I suspect they are short of both programmers and QA...

I'm scope limited to the games I know the best, because I don't want to assert things I don't know are true. That said, these examples *certainly* also extend to HOI 4 also and they are not subtle. I've played no stellaris, barely any vicky 2, and a good amount of CK2. CK2 is their only title I've played that mostly lacks the problems I describe.

I am not really familiar with HOI4, but I haven't seen those issues in CK2 and Stellaris and going back in time in Vic2 or EU3 either.

For some issues I could buy this. When they won't text-edit a tooltip for 3 years it's not a defense Pdox could reasonably use.

Maybe that requires a person with the knowledge of some specific language?

Imperator release was bad enough to force alteration. I guess it does show that consumers will actually draw the line at some point.

Many companies ignore the bad reception and simply abandon the games. I don't even think Imperator was a particularly bad release. It seems that it was overly simple which didn't go well with traditional PDX consumers and apparently they haven't managed to attract more casual crowd. EU4 at release was probably similar, but at that time PDX was much less mainstream and for the large number of new players it has attracted it was a completely new experience while the simplification complaints from the old guard was a rather small percentage. But now the large number of players who got used to PDX games in the past few years were expecting deeper gameplay from Imperator.

 

[Oliver Twopence]

How could Victoria 3 be released without ALL of the features of HOI4 and EU4? If it doesn't feature them, people will howl at the moon. Which means that Paradox is at a strange (heh) paradoxical point of game development where their previous titles dictate a level of features for all future titles, which means that each game designer almost has to start with a feature list from the previous title AND ALL CURRENT ACTIVE TITLES, put the whole thing on a white board, and start chopping until you reach "perfection", then decide how to build that game.

If done right, I think Victoria 3 might have a way to compensate for this.

First of all, just to get it out of the way: Victoria 2 had issues and was somewhat underdeveloped, so I think even a basic sequel is likely to be an impovement in terms of number of features.

But more importantly, I don't think it needs that many features if it manages to be an interesting simulation. With solid (working!) mechanics for economy and pops, I think the game could have a lot to offer, even if it ends up being somewhat bare in other regards. V2 manages to be quite enjoyable despite being somewhat lacking, even with a wonky economy.

Paradox seems to have the same issue. As players, we can see the issue clearly, but inside Paradox they seem blind to the fact that they DON'T have simple feature-sharing between different games that are all, theoretically, based on the same engine. Example: Not every game STILL has a "continue last save" option, and even among the ones that do it's not always in the same place. Some it's in the launcher, some inside the game post-launcher.

Paradox needs a "Best Game Practices" baseline where certain QoL features that have become staples of their games are introduced and become "Must-Haves" in every iteration of every game, and there should really be better communication between the teams so that, for example, if the Stellaris team gets slaughtered for something that happens during their release of an expansion, the other teams can learn from the mistake so the entire company can grow. If something goes exceptionally WELL AND GOOD then THAT should be shared ("Hey guys! We added a cool feature to Majesty 3 and the players built statues to us in Stockholm! Look out the window! You should add this in your next patch!").

I haven't played Imperator, but found this video criticising the UI particularily intriguing, and your post reminded me of it.

Having not played the game, I don't feel like I'm in a position to criticise the choices made in regards to the gameplay. And in any case: gameplay can be subjective. When it comes to the UI, however, I feel that there must more common ground when it comes to what is considered good design. Basicly I expect the UIs to build on each other, and not forgo what seems like fairly obvious features. I understand that this isn't always easy to do, and that hindsight is 20/20, but the video above kind of surprised me at the time.

 

[frolix42]

They are moving in the opposite direction, with a relatively small upfront price and long tail of DLC. PDS gave CK2 away for free in order to sell DLC. Doubling the initial price won't even mean a better game since PDS has a finite amount of resources, just less people buying the product and subsequent DLC.