Mostly negative Steam reviews - does Paradox care?

[Kubusta]

I've been wondering lately if Paradox actually cares about what their customers say about their games on Steam - the major sales area for Paradox and a must have platform for Paradox's game.

It is true that HOI IV reviews are lately negative, although the overall score hasn't changed yet much. (even though I remember it having 95%+ of Positive reviews)

What is more alarming though is the latest and the only DLC for HOI IV - TfW - which has overall score of 46%pos.rev. and recent score - MOSTLY NEGATIVE - only 30% of positive reviews in last month.
Isn't this enough to change the DLC policy of HOI IV?
Isn't this a proof that people are unhappy with the development of HOI IV?
I ask, politely, why doesn't Paradox reply or answer to negative reviews or negative topics here on their forums.

It is clear that the last DLC - TfW was a big disappointment, because the majority of things added were mechanics that are already working in previous games of Paradox and still their use and importance in HOI game is insignificant.

Is there any reaction to this all?
I would really love to know what does Paradox think about this all, because if I am a businessman and I see that my product has been rated with mostly negative reviews and that only 30% of my recent customers are happy with my product - hell I would really think twice about how to improve my product so I won't lose my customers...

 

[Oriflamme]

I've noticed that most of the people who complain have hundreds of hours logged and end up buying the DLC anyway. That's probably the biggest reason why things haven't changed.

 

[rcbricker33]

I am not trying to disagree with you, but your post is inaccurate. The number was shocking enough that I went and looked. Here is what I saw .

on the HOI IV page
http://store.steampowered.com/app/394360/

on the ToV page
http://store.steampowered.com/app/530760


HOI IV overall rating is 81% positive
ToV overall rating is 45%

your 30% statement is the recent reviews and only for ToV expansion.

Like I said not trying to detract from your post and 45% is nothing for PDx to be happy about as potential Steam customers might use the reviews on Steam to help make their decision to buy or not. I just like accurate numbers.

 

[RforRush]

Of course not, steam rewiews are not enough to change DLC policy, current policy is one of the things that made Paradox a lot of money and thus greatly increased PDX games popularity. People may be unhappy with this, but currently I see no sign of decreased sales or something, so it looks like most people are satisfied with status quo.

 

[Kubusta]

I am not trying to disagree with you, but your post is inaccurate. The number was shocking enough that I went and looked. Here is what I saw .

on the HOI IV page
http://store.steampowered.com/app/394360/

on the ToV page
http://store.steampowered.com/app/530760


HOI IV overall rating is 81% positive
ToV overall rating is 45%

your 30% statement is the recent reviews and only for ToV expansion.

Like I said not trying to detract from your post and 45% is nothing for PDx to be happy about as potential Steam customers might use the reviews on Steam to help make their decision to buy or not. I just like accurate numbers.

thanks for your reply but I said exactly what you told me

"What is more alarming though is the latest and the only DLC for HOI IV - TfW - which has overall score of 46%pos.rev. and recent score - MOSTLY NEGATIVE - only 30% of positive reviews in last month. "

And yeh, the base game is still in positive numbers, but the rise of negative reviews there is significant.

 

[mattpilot]

I'm one of those guys waiting for TfV to drop to 5 bucks before i buy it.

I see no value in it to pay more.

 

[Teije]

Assuming Paradox pays attention to steam reviews at all, it all depends on the overall sales of TfV, whether that met their expectations, and perhaps the reasons given for negative reviews. If it's mostly value as in people think it's too much money for the content included, then they could either - reduce price on next DLC, add more content and keep pricing level, or make no changes since lots of people bought it anyways.

 

[Niko92]

From what I see, most of the negative reviews for TfV are based on two things; the focus trees, and expected value.

The complaints on the focus tress seems to be focused on how Paradox is ripping off/copying modders, and how people have to pay for something that can be acquired for free. However, it has been trumped quite a few times by multiple forumers that you can't find the national focus tree mods that are updated along with patches and that offer the same amount of content and are balanced. So that thing goes out the window right away.

Second is the value. You get five focus trees and a couple of new game features. Let's say you play every commonwealth country once. That's about 50 to 100 hours of gameplay (kind of depending on your play style of course). That's pretty good amount of content for 15€. It has also been stated that the value is pretty accurate for the amount of manhours put into making the content. Obviously, if you don't enjoy playing the commonwealth countries, you might not see the value. At that point, just don't buy the DLC, you still get your free stuff.

Also, you have to remember that these are Steam reviews. Here's a couple of golden examples:
"Been half a year and still tons of mediocore glitches which makes this game unplayable" - by Mr. Doesn't-play-buggy-games, after playing the game for 240 hours.

"...the mods are pretty good... I conquered the soviet union, took about 50% of the states, then, the next day it all went to the United states, my homeland country, Russia, all of it, tons of units dead, and I lost it all for absoloutly no reason...Buggy AF" - by Mr. Plays-with-mods, who then gives a negative review because the game was broken by mods.

"Terrible! I paid $40 for this game and cannot even play it. The game freezes up and the main menu." - by Mr. I-dont-understand-computers, because obviously you can't google for a solution

Some people do have valid complaints in their reviews (like the AI), but a big part of the reviews are just horseshit made by people who can't be bothered spend 2 seconds trying to find a solution to their problem. And then there's the people complaining about the DLC policy, because obviously everything was so much better when we got one expansion in a year and had to buy it because the support for the base game was dropped.

Seriously, don't read Steam reviews. They are mostly written by logically challenged people (goes for all games).

 

[Sanny]

In the past some developers such as Podcat have said they don't look at Steam Reviews. Which in all honesty it's not their job to do. The people higher up the chain like the Paradox Board of Directors are meant to be looking at all processed and aggregated data relating to the products and sales. It should be up to management to tell the developers to create add more value to their games in a way that is cost-effective. After all content with quality sells.

My own personal opinion:
January has seemed like the developers want to focus on modding aspects and improve the way modders manipulate Hearts of Iron IV. And on many occasions the Devs mentioned that the modding community is a core part of HoI IV. With the slow work on patches and updates, and lack of communication with the community. This translated to me that the team are already starting to jump ship and leave it wide open for the modders. Which alarmed me. Having paid for the Field Marshall edition, I am expecting a further two expansions before something like this would happen (if at all). But if future expansions are anything like TfV in terms of content then I don't see a very bright future here.

 

[Broletariat90]

I've stopped trusting steam reviews completely. Though I do have issues with this game, its getting better. Most steam reviews are just negative. And most of the time those are the first reviews you even see. I usually look elsewhere for reviews.

 

[socalfox87]

Isn't this enough to change the DLC policy of HOI IV?

No. I personally believe that the negative views of Paradox's DLC policies is largely a minority one. That is, we typically only hear from people who complain about and we don't really hear about people who are in favor of it. If the DLC policies weren't working, there would already be a change; however, considering how many DLCs EUIV and CKII have had, this model will be continued.

I do agree with you that TfV has been met with a large amount of criticism (which I somewhat agree with) compared to other DLCs that have been released. I think that this may led to a change for HOIV: that the next DLC for the game will be pretty substantial compared to what TfV added.

Let's compare with Stellaris, which should have a similar development cycle as both games were released within a month of each other. Leviathans was the first DLC released, which included some aliens, tweaked Fallen Empires, a story pack, and fixed some bugs. TfV added new national focus trees, an expanded puppet system, blitz command (which should not have been a paid feature IMO), and fixed some bugs. My view is that these are on a similar level in terms of content provided.

Now, look at the next expansion for Stellaris, Utopia: tradition and perks system, a major tweak to the way factions work, megastructures, species rights, and a bunch of other features and bug fixtures. My guess (just a guess) is that the next HOIV DLC will be a pretty major expansion and my guess is that they've been working on it for a while but haven't moved to the stage where they can start revealing features yet.

 

[fabius]

My own personal opinion:
January has seemed like the developers want to focus on modding aspects and improve the way modders manipulate Hearts of Iron IV. And on many occasions the Devs mentioned that the modding community is a core part of HoI IV. With the slow work on patches and updates, and lack of communication with the community. This translated to me that the team are already starting to jump ship and leave it wide open for the modders. Which alarmed me. Having paid for the Field Marshall edition, I am expecting a further two expansions before something like this would happen (if at all). But if future expansions are anything like TfV in terms of content then I don't see a very bright future here.

I highly doubt that the devs are "jumping ship to leave it open to modders".
Look at the daily player numbers. Hoi4 is usually around 2000 more than Stellaris.
Nearly 107,000,000 (oops that should be 107,000 ) subscribe to Millennium Dawn Mod. Other mods, Kaiser Reich, BICE, and others, WW1 have huge following too. Mod support, it seems, is what many are voting for with their subscribes.

....
Now, look at the next expansion for Stellaris, Utopia: tradition and perks system, a major tweak to the way factions work, megastructures, species rights, and a bunch of other features and bug fixtures. My guess (just a guess) is that the next HOIV DLC will be a pretty major expansion and my guess is that they've been working on it for a while but haven't moved to the stage where they can start revealing features yet.

A dev, I think podcat, said this in a DD already. They said that the dlc was smaller than anticipated. But they want to focus on getting the base right, and two bigger DLC to follow. Also third dlc now included in the pre-order pack to compensate/ meet their own idea of value.

 

[Moltke]

thanks for your reply but I said exactly what you told me

"What is more alarming though is the latest and the only DLC for HOI IV - TfW - which has overall score of 46%pos.rev. and recent score - MOSTLY NEGATIVE - only 30% of positive reviews in last month. "

And yeh, the base game is still in positive numbers, but the rise of negative reviews there is significant.

Part of it is pricing obviously, but also look at how niche the expansion is. Anecdotally I've literally never played any of the commonwealth countries and I've owned all four iterations of Hearts of Iron. I'm not a good representative of the customer base though because I've never bought a single Paradox expansion since before CKII was released... (not saying I won't- they just have no appeal).

 

[Svampen]

I don't think they care all that much about steam reviews tbh.. The thing that matters are the amount of users and their logged hours. That info is used to estimate cost/revenue analyses for upcoming DLCs and releases. Reviews not so much.

Their DLC policy is great that way.. It's pretty easy to estimate and offers some sort of stability in an otherwise uncertain market.

 

[albso437]

Jumping the ship? IF I've understood Podcat correct, the team is in large focusing on cracking bugs and improve the base game.
I personally found the two latest DD boring, but I am not sure if a DD stating that this week we solved 3 really hard bugs would be fun reading.

 

[Poh]

One major thing that people seem to forget again and again about the PDS DLC policy is that you basically get a quarter or half the DLC for free in the patch (have no clue about precise split) and the other half is features that are unlocked by actually aquiring said DLC. All those free patches wont arrive if there werent DLC.
So sure the content in the DLC might not be worth the amount you pay but CKII or EUIV would have had 3 bugfix patches if it had been the old sysem then "done" and onwards to an expansion. Which you ofcourse were forced to buy to get the next 3 patches.

Regarding the review of the DLC on steam. The devs have access to a lot more information than we do. And i would assume that while they do listen to what people say, they also filter it heavily in regards to what is simple BS or Whine and what is genuine constructive criticism and then ofcourse they know how well stuff sells, and thats gonna matter a whole lot too. We have no clue about those numbers.

 

[Hopit]

I highly doubt that the devs are "jumping ship to leave it open to modders".
Look at the daily player numbers. Hoi4 is usually around 2000 more than Stellaris.
Nearly 107,000,000 subscribe to Millennium Dawn Mod. Other mods, Kaiser Reich, BICE, and others, WW1 have huge following too. Mod support, it seems, is what many are voting for with their subscribes.



A dev, I think podcat, said this in a DD already. They said that the dlc was smaller than anticipated. But they want to focus on getting the base right, and two bigger DLC to follow. Also third dlc now included in the pre-order pack to compensate/ meet their own idea of value.

You've got quite the big number there, are you sure it's correct?

 

[Union Jack]

To be honest, I stopped really reading Steam Reviews (and Reviews in general) a while ago. Almost any game with DLC seems to be plagued by complaints that it has DLC (regardless of quality or value.)

Basically I'd rather make up my own mind about something, than subscribe to somebody else's view. Sure, it means sometimes I'm disappointed and maybe I buy something I don't like. But I've also found games which the Steam reviews say are terrible, and had a lot of fun, so it balances out. (Same with books, films, TV series. I know my views and tastes often differ from many of the most vocal reviewers/posters.)

All the Best,

Union Jack.

 

[Black_Shade]

Ever since they changed the DLC model from large expansions ala HoI3/Victoria 2 to the micro expansion model of CK2/EU4, the DLC has been several overpriced, because they stripped out the content but kept the pricing the same and released it 2-3x as often. I completely stopped playing EU4/CK2 because of it, as I refused to pay $15-20 for mediocre to straight up garbage DLC that they have been putting out with very few major additions to the games. And unfortunately in the case of EU4, they ended up putting so many things behind paywalls the game became an unbalanced unplayable disaster without the DLC features.

If I hadn't bought the field marshal edition ( a mistake, TBH), I wouldn't buy TfV. It's worth $3-5 at best. It adds focus trees that aren't really any higher quality than what you can find in modpacks, and very few real features to the game other than the dependency interaction system, which doesn't add a whole lot to the game. It's depressing, really. Paradox used to be the best gaming company out there. But we're never going back to the old model now that it's a publicly traded company. Today's Paradox is all about the bottom line, the fact that the quality and value of the product they are making has markedly declined is of little consequence.

 

[fabius]

You've got quite the big number there, are you sure it's correct?

Oh no, somebody has strat bombed the M' Dawn and now it's only One Hundred and Six Thousand, Nine Hundred and Fifty Seven. Still a lot left though !