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ruzen

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Nov 19, 2013
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Allright allright...

After seen that "We need to bring back expansions... INSTANTLY" post and the responses that gets. I decided to write this, not with rage as that post (which was really unreadable) but keeping the passion. And trying to cover most of the controversy topics and adding my criticism too.

THE BUISNESS MODEL OF PARADOX
-----------------------------
*Low employement number.
*Very small teams with working different games at the same sime.
*After release making teams even smaller and continue patching, expanding and supporting the game.
*Releaseing some rare big expansions & mostly minor. Making lots of cosmetic & music DLCs.
*Patching continues with merging some DLC elements.

Ok this should summerise a bid but lets continue talking about the DLC buisness and what that raged person was menting when talking about "pay to win"

There are not much controversy topics for EU4 DLC thing but one of them is the addition of "make objective" feature in Art of War. Maybe harmless thing or a good looking thing for start but It makes you shape the AI more the way you want to be. Is it a powerfull thing? Yes, very much. Can you survive without It? Not If you small and depent other AI. And lets face It the AI in EU4 is not good when It comes to military. Keep going strange places or charging impossible battles. And that feature is behind (what some people could say) the paywall.

The paywall is not players like first but the grand strategy community is very thight "fan" community and ignore the fact that there are some paywall DLCs around this game. The community is lashes any form of criticism with much zeal and fury that makes the game not develop very well, because the Dev are thinking: "O yea we doing good then"

People getting use to buggy release makes Devs use to release buggy games aswell. A game which depending on heavy patches or day1 DLCs (which EU4 had that) is become so easy to release these days because Devs had their mind set, that they continue to "support" the game. But be that in mind that support could be expansive to you aswell. Just If you boguht the game and the other expansions with some cosmetics aswell. Try to calculate this and figure out how much money you spent on a still ongoing patch depending game.

Another topic that people are crying out load is the developement feature (or some could say: paywall) is merged with patch, now brings the biggest struggle to the non dlc buyers; and that is; you cant build more buildings If you dont spent some points on developement. How do you spent some point on developement you ask? You guessed It right! By buyying the (strangely) The Common Sense.

With that paywalls standing lets talk about how these grand strategy titles getting bigger and bigger with each expansion. Yea Its getting feature after feature but the team number stays the same? Is Paradox still a small company? Paradox is forgetting how It become much bigger that Its first games, yet still acts like as If they are indie Developers. Staying small makes the releases more buggy DLC and before you waiting to game operate well there is another DLC is on the way and you allways have those small windows to play the game at enjoyable level.

Paradox has Its own Con for crying out load. Still the Q&A small. Even Q&A cought something the number of programmer or scripter number is low aswell. Not to mention AI skill level stays the same and Its not a big consern for a feature making factory.

But Paradox is not Evil Company. At least Devs are lurnking at the forums and talks back. They try to listen by ignore some points completely (such as low number of employee) and sometimes brags about It, strangely.

People play singleplayer for only achievements because the AI is such bad easly manipulated It becomes borring to play alone. Therefor much of the changes is focusing around multiplayer aspect of the game. But that doesnt mean Devs trying to optimise the sync drops or lags. They just keep bringing new feature after feature.

Today, Officially Paradox is developing 2 games and bringing patches to 2 games at the same time but the numbers stays the same no mather how they profited It. They must be thinking "Its a phase when we release those games we can split the teams again" but Its been years now. Teams stay same and cant catch up to the number of AI, bugs or optimization.

Never the less Its a buisness model. A buisness model that made the Paradox a successful developer today. They continue "supporting" the past games with small teams and bring the resource for deeloping new games. But dont forget what we have talked about the new games are buggy aand you can even check today for HOI4 forum members they admiting very calmy that "we expect buggy release but they gona "patch" that eventually so no problem here" When will that patched out? Look at the CK2, check out the EU4. Ongoing, never ending patching...

It is time to grow Paradox. It is time to become an Adult even If you dont want to. You cant fight the nature. Look how your beard has grown.
 
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in regards to your statement about people expecting HOI4 to be buggy, i expect it to be the least buggy game paradox has ever launched. they've already gone through quite a period of "growing up" in a sense. when you go back, their games were extremely buggy on launch and much less polished. but from CK2 to EU4 and now with HOI4 they've shown a lot more polish, a lot better products on release.

you also say that they are continuing "supporting" as if they aren't supporting them. i've been enjoying the EU4 updates a lot, while they are also making HOI4 my most anticipated game in quite a few years. i don't think they are doing a poor job of supporting EU4 while developing the sequel to hearts of iron at all. I can't comment on CK2 because i don't really play it anymore, i played it a lot around the time of old gods expansion.

I don't speak for everyone, but paradox to me has built up a lot of trust. i trust them absolutely to deliver great expansions and games. i will be pre-ordering HOI4 the moment its available, i will be continuing to buy every piece of DLC available for EU4 because i support them. If i was given a reason not to trust them i wouldn't anymore, but i think they've done an extremely good job. at least that is my perspective on it, it definitely wont be shared by everyone.
 
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In my opinion Paradox has one of the most social expansion policies I know of.
Many Developers announce DLCs prior to the release and continue to milk it out.
Let me take Battlefield 3 for example: BF3 has 9 maps in its vanilla game and 20(!) maps you have to buy as DLC.
And it's not only maps but also modes and weapons that come with these maps. Meaning that you literally only have a 1/3 of the multiplayer game when you buy it vanilla.
With Paradox this would be impossible, as you can see in the 1.8 and 1.13 updates everyone received an extremly improved map and features while some of them can be bought to expand these free expansions. Also, the fact players (without common sense) can easily join a game of players (with common sense) and receive no penalty because during this game the players without still have access to all DLC features that the host has but they don't.
 
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The EU4 team has grown significantly in the last year thanks to the strong sales. We're currently 1 lead, 4 programmers, 1 scripter & 4 QA + Johan as a design and programming resource.
 
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I'm sorry @ruzen, but I can't agree with your post, neither the broad thrust nor the vast majority of the detail. I've played a lot of games from a lot of developers over a long time (my first PC strategy game was the text-sprite based 'Empire', back in the 1980s) and the only thing I'd currently fault them on is not QAing/testing their expansions as much as they perhaps should. I cannot think of another developer who is currently performing better overall, either in quality of initial release, quality of content, quality of support or quality of communication with their audience (we currently are getting weekly DD's for both EU4 and HoI, we get updates for CK2 fairly regularly, and I'd be surprised if we don't hear more from the Stellaris team in the not-too-distant future, no pun intended). On some specific points:

People play singleplayer for only achievements because the AI is such bad easly manipulated It becomes borring to play alone. Therefor much of the changes is focusing around multiplayer aspect of the game. But that doesnt mean Devs trying to optimise the sync drops or lags. They just keep bringing new feature after feature.

This is patently not true. Almost any game can be exploited (and particularly AI in strategy games) - the trick to enjoying a single player strategy game is not to take advantage of the exploits.

But dont forget what we have talked about the new games are buggy aand you can even check today for HOI4 forum members they admiting very calmy that "we expect buggy release but they gona "patch" that eventually so no problem here" When will that patched out? Look at the CK2, check out the EU4. Ongoing, never ending patching...

Two things here. The people on the HoI forums that are expecting a buggy release are those HoI fans that don't play other PDS titles, who are still scarred by HoI3s release. HoI3's release was terrible, but PDS' approach has changed a heap since. Also, they often don't say it particularly calmly ;). The other thing is that the ongoing patching is because of the ongoing support in terms of new content. I'd take new content and ongoing support over the alternative every day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
 
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This is patently not true. Almost any game can be exploited (and particularly AI in strategy games) - the trick to enjoying a single player strategy game is not to take advantage of the exploits.


Two things here. The people on the HoI forums that are expecting a buggy release are those HoI fans that don't play other PDS titles, who are still scarred by HoI3s release. HoI3's release was terrible, but PDS' approach has changed a heap since. Also, they often don't say it particularly calmly ;). The other thing is that the ongoing patching is because of the ongoing support in terms of new content. I'd take new content and ongoing support over the alternative every day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

I dont think you get the idea from It. Look at the last changes the forts... Its only made for multiplayer. Because you should know that AI is not the master of fort mechanics. Things like that shows this game is focused on multipalyer but even that is not stabe at this point. Also "the trick is not to take advantage of exploits?" what is that meaning? Should I fake myself enjoying the game singleplayer? Wasnt all that "significantly grown" teams efford to be making better rules for the game?

Also again the general idea of this post is to point the so called vannilla releases are not release. When people buy the game they say "Its gona patched eventually" also when Devs releasing the game "Its gona sell anyway, we patch it eventually" And this kind of act is not not support Its called early access today. Whats the difference beatween Paradox Titles with years of patching, another random early access who patching years to come?
 
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Also again the general idea of this post is to point the so called vannilla releases are not release. When people buy the game they say "Its gona patched eventually" also when Devs releasing the game "Its gona sell anyway, we patch it eventually" And this kind of act is not not support Its called early access today. Whats the difference beatween Paradox Titles with years of patching, another random early access who patching years to come?

If you'd been making this complaint ten years ago, I wouldn't have disagreed with you. There was a time that, although I'd buy Paradox games at launch, I wouldn't actually play them for a few months because I knew they weren't finished. This isn't the case now though - I was there on day one for EU4, and it was the most stable day one release of a PC game I've played that I can recall. It was so stable, it compared favourably with recent console releases. Sure, there were a few things that benefited from patching, but the game at launch was rock-solid and in good nick. I wasn't there at launch for CK2, but I've heard similar.
 
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Whats the difference beatween Paradox Titles with years of patching, another random early access who patching years to come?

Paradox sells you a working car, and improves it over the years. Early-Access sells you (more often than not) 4 wheels, and makes a car out of it over the years.
 
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Paradox sells you a working car, and improves it over the years. Early-Access sells you (more often than not) 4 wheels, and makes a car out of it over the years.
...not It EU4 case because It was a mess at launch. And some could say It only got a "car" level with Art of War (patches). Also, what about Prison Architect case? It was a decent game and still having new features years and still early accsess. Still I cant see the difference.
 
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The EU4 team has grown significantly in the last year thanks to the strong sales. We're currently 1 lead, 4 programmers, 1 scripter & 4 QA + Johan as a design and programming resource.
You make Johan sound like an AI giving you "resources".
 
People play singleplayer for only achievements because the AI is such bad easly manipulated It becomes borring to play alone.
Is there research to suggest this is true?
 
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I dont think you get the idea from It. Look at the last changes the forts... Its only made for multiplayer. Because you should know that AI is not the master of fort mechanics. Things like that shows this game is focused on multipalyer but even that is not stabe at this point.
The only thing it shows is that PDX failed to make AI use forts properly. You have no basis to say that PDX focuses on multiplayer.
 
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...not It EU4 case because It was a mess at launch. And some could say It only got a "car" level with Art of War (patches). Also, what about Prison Architect case? It was a decent game and still having new features years and still early accsess. Still I cant see the difference.

Well, Prison Architect is a (very) good example of Early Access done right and the devs have constantly improved the game during its time in the program. However there are games that have done really badly in Early Access and in some cases the devs have pretty much taken the money then abandoned the game. Look at Godus, Towns, or DayZ.
 
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People saying Paradox sells early access games clearly never played an early access game.

There are examples from the past, I personally find HoI3 without expansions absolutely terrifying, its just 1000x times better with all the expansions. But thankfully they changed their DLC Policy since then.

So tell me: Do you prefer a more or less bugged game where you need major expansions to get anything, or rather some more DLCs but continous support? Permanent improvement has nothing to do with "early access", its more that you should be very happy about it.

And don't worry, I don't see another 6 DLCs for EU4 coming. But please don't tell us that you miss the free updates when its time.
 
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I gotta disagree with pretty much everything you've said.

The expansion model that they sued to use made sure that when an expansion came out anyone who didn't buy it was locked out of patches and any new free content. With the new DLC model anyone that wants to ignore DLC's can and will still get patches and additional content as long as the game is being worked on. I have only bought a few small DLC's and one larger expansion for EU4, yet I don't really feel that I'm "locked behind a pay wall", except in the case of colonial nations. I used to be able to play EVERY country on the map, now I can't.

I remember how it was when a Victoria 2 expansion came out, anyone who didn't buy it got no new patches, that was HELL! Of course they stopped working on Vic 2 before they solved one or two gaping problems but that is beside the point.

I've been super happy with the development of their DLC system, it allows people to keep the game up to date for the initial price of the game, not requiring them to pay for a DLC; THAT would be locking them behind a pay wall.

That people play single player for achievements only is also COMPLETE GARBAGE!!!!!! I have only ever played single player and I couldn't give an ass rats about achievements. I mod their games too much anyways.
 
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