The Decline of Paradox

[Adam363]

I'm not 100% sure when it happened - but it seems obvious to me, that a massive shift occurred in the quality and depth of games put out by Paradox.

The games are less immersive, less deep and layered, and thus less enjoyable.

The sequels/expansions to all of the games I put have put at least a thousand hours (CK/Stellaris/HOI/EU) are now mostly untouched or completely uninstalled.

Perhaps the crowing failure in my opinion is CKIII. Its not just that the game lacks content or QOL features - the core mechanics and features are fundamentally bland and appears to have been dumbed down to try and appeal to a new audience. I don't even think you can call CKIII a grand strategy game because its lacks any need for strategy. The only strategy actually involved in the game is cheesing the succession mechanics to retain a reasonable state of power during successions.

Stellaris Nemesis doesn't really add much to the game and doesn't address the core issues with the AI being really bad at economy management and the lack of alternative playstyles. To me, Nemesis was a shameless cash grab. It adds very little to player's experience, just more gimmicks (espionage) to a game already full of gimmicks to distract the player from how boring the game has become.

HOI -La Resistance / Battle for the Bosporus; again seems like cash grabs. Very little content and more gimmicks. the espionage system is just kinda bland and well another gimmick used to distract the player from how bad the AI is. Will Italy ever get a revised tree?

Imperator Rome - massive failure at launch. They had to have know how bad the game was, and put it out anyway. Then it took tons of backlash for them to own up to it and fix it. Then, i'm guessing once the steam reviews hit a certain positivity ratio- they decided to stop supporting it.

EU Leviathan - massive failure, complete disaster of a release. At least Paradox owns up to this one, but its still just another indicator.

Rather than change course and improve the quality of their games, Paradox has resorted to calling the community toxic.

The pattern seems clear to me, and I can honestly say Paradox has lost all of the goodwill I once had for them.

 

[AppoX]

I agree in some regards, PDX is clearly on a 'downward' trend but I disagree on many things you said. I don't think CK3 is 'simplified'/dumbed down compared to CK2. Compared to release version of CK2, CK3 is decades ahead and way more complex. It also has far more QOL features and everything than base CK2, I'm sure after a few years of updates it will be better than CK2 in QOL and everything else.

The recent DLC have been 'meh' but I don't think they were all 'really bad' - even Leviathan is actually decent IF you ignore the bugs, which I believe most will be fixed soon enough anyway. Though I haven't actually played it, the features behind it sound good to me.

Imperator Rome despite being a failure at launch - was still miles ahead of its prequel in every way, its just that people expected something more than a modern EU: Rome. 2.0 made the game actually good but it was too late unfortunately. I don't think the I:R on-release mana system was a dumbing down of the game like a lot of the fanbase thinks - it was an easy abstraction and a way to give the player a lot more meaningful noticeable choice, in terms of game design it was probably easier to make a mana system rather than having everything be dynamic and gradual.

I don't think that the games became 'less deep and layered', I think its just that the fanbase expects more from new paradox games. People expect CK3 to have as much content as CK2 after almost decade of development but that's just unrealistic.

Although I do actually miss the old Paradox expansion system sometimes - where each expansion was very meaningful and noticeable, nowadays even the $20 'expansions' feel like minor DLCs. The one thing I really hate is the pricing of the DLC, I just can't justify purchasing a $20 DLC which is barely noticeable, so I just buy them on sale a year or two after their release. Though the old system had the huge disadvantage of requiring you to actually buy all the DLC to enjoy the latest version of the game, so that too wasn't exactly ideal.

 

[TheCheeseMaster]

I'm not 100% sure when it happened

Paradox went public in March 2016. ^^

 

[Call Me Vandal]

People have been talking about how "things are worse these days" since time began. Perhaps Paradox is actually getting worse, but I think it's mostly that people want something to get mad about.

 

[Tullaris]

The problem isn't Paradox. The problem is you.

You have spent 1000s of hours with Paradox games. No game lasts forever. You have played and mastered every mechanism they have thrown at you.

There is nothing they can conjure up anymore that intrigues you.

Its like a marriage gone stale.

My advice is just to stop playing Paradox games for a while and come back in a year or two.

This whole "decline of Paradox" is complete bullshit. CK3 was a massive succes. CK3 wasn't made for you but for new players. They loved it and it was a massive critical and commercial succes. And looking back as a true veteran sinds the mid 2000s, it was their best release since the company was founded. What features in CK3 were "dumbed down?"

The IPO in march 2016 is another bullshit reason. Only 15% of shares were sold to the public. The majority of shares are still in the same ownership as pre-IPO, namely Fred Wester (The executive charman) and Spiltan.

I mean what is the point of this entire topic. A topic like this has been made every year announcing the decline of Paradox.

 

[Adam363]

The problem isn't Paradox. The problem is you.

You have spent 1000s of hours with Paradox games. No game lasts forever. You have played and mastered every mechanism they have thrown at you.

There is nothing they can conjure up anymore that intrigues you.

Its like a marriage gone stale.

My advice is just to stop playing Paradox games for a while and come back in a year or two.

This whole "decline of Paradox" is complete bullshit. CK3 was a massive succes. CK3 wasn't made for you but for new players. They loved it and it was a massive critical and commercial succes. And looking back as a true veteran sinds the mid 2000s, it was their best release since the company was founded. What features in CK3 were "dumbed down?"

The IPO in march 2016 is another bullshit reason. Only 15% of shares were sold to the public. The majority of shares are still in the same ownership as pre-IPO, namely Fred Wester (The executive charman) and Spiltan.

I mean what is the point of this entire topic. A topic like this has been made every year announcing the decline of Paradox.

Sorry you feel this triggered by my opinion, on a forum.....

CK3 has been dumbed down immensely - guaranteed claims, characters that always live until their 60s to prop up the perk system, a lame stress system that is easily mitigated, non-unique succession laws , buildings that you can't do anything with for centuries because of the tech system. I could go on and on. Please critically think about it

CKIII was a commercial success because of CKII. Go on over to the CKIII forums - its plain to see the growing dissatisfaction with the game.

 

[Tullaris]

Sorry you feel this triggered by my opinion, on a forum.....

CK3 has been dumbed down immensely - guaranteed claims, characters that always live until their 60s to prop up the perk system, a lame stress system that is easily mitigated, non-unique succession laws , buildings that you can't do anything with for centuries because of the tech system. I could go on and on. Please critically think about it

CKIII was a commercial success because of CKII. Go on over to the CKIII forums - its plain to see the growing dissatisfaction with the game.

Did you play CK2 at release? You talk about a massive shift in quality and depth of releases but CK3 has a lot more quality and depth than CK2 at release, which was quite shallow.

Now CK2 has seen almost 10 years of continous development and expansions. Endless feedback loops and interative improvements. You need to try things see if they work and then improve upon them.

 

[Furleppe]

Please critically think about it

At least give credit where it's due. While it's certainly valid opinion to feel that the game is "bland" and some mechanics are "dumbed down" it's just not true for all of them. Hooks and secret system is miles more "complex" compared to old favour system. We didn't have individual feudal contracts in CK2, life focuses are certainly not dumbed down compared to CK2's WoL. Stress system, while easily mitigated and needs balancing, it's certainly not "dumbed down" because CK2 didn't even have such a mechanic in the first place.

So while I agree that game feels very bland in certain areas, I don't think mechanics are fundamentally bad, they just need more content and balancing.

For the other things, yes, PDX had some string of bad/meh releases lately. Hope they can turn it around with PDXcon announcements tommorow.

 

[Nyrael]

People have been talking about how "things are worse these days" since time began. Perhaps Paradox is actually getting worse, but I think it's mostly that people want something to get mad about.

People forget just how bad things actually used to be. PDS games have always been buggy messes, and half of these old expansions (pre-CK2) that people praise were actually paid patches (it got even worse when you consider the fact that if you didn't have the latest expansion, then you couldn't get newest patches either). Their speed at fixing bugs? For several years and for all their games, after every update many people had to go into game files and delete a certain folder because otherwise the updated game won't work.
And let's not even talk about their first years as publishers.
The only thing better was that there were fewer players and average age was much higher, so criticisms were also less whiny and more constructive. And in that atmosphere, people weren't feeling like getting angry as they do now.

Rose-tinted nostalgia googles is a term that exists for a reason. The past wasn't nearly as rosy and pretty as some like to paint it as. If PDS acted now like they did before... well, the shitstorm would reach epic proportions.

 

[Kazanov]

I'm not 100% sure when it happened - but it seems obvious to me, that a massive shift occurred in the quality and depth of games put out by Paradox.

The games are less immersive, less deep and layered, and thus less enjoyable.

The sequels/expansions to all of the games I put have put at least a thousand hours (CK/Stellaris/HOI/EU) are now mostly untouched or completely uninstalled.

Perhaps the crowing failure in my opinion is CKIII. Its not just that the game lacks content or QOL features - the core mechanics and features are fundamentally bland and appears to have been dumbed down to try and appeal to a new audience. I don't even think you can call CKIII a grand strategy game because its lacks any need for strategy. The only strategy actually involved in the game is cheesing the succession mechanics to retain a reasonable state of power during successions.

Stellaris Nemesis doesn't really add much to the game and doesn't address the core issues with the AI being really bad at economy management and the lack of alternative playstyles. To me, Nemesis was a shameless cash grab. It adds very little to player's experience, just more gimmicks (espionage) to a game already full of gimmicks to distract the player from how boring the game has become.

HOI -La Resistance / Battle for the Bosporus; again seems like cash grabs. Very little content and more gimmicks. the espionage system is just kinda bland and well another gimmick used to distract the player from how bad the AI is. Will Italy ever get a revised tree?

Imperator Rome - massive failure at launch. They had to have know how bad the game was, and put it out anyway. Then it took tons of backlash for them to own up to it and fix it. Then, i'm guessing once the steam reviews hit a certain positivity ratio- they decided to stop supporting it.

EU Leviathan - massive failure, complete disaster of a release. At least Paradox owns up to this one, but its still just another indicator.

Rather than change course and improve the quality of their games, Paradox has resorted to calling the community toxic.

The pattern seems clear to me, and I can honestly say Paradox has lost all of the goodwill I once had for them.

Paradox is not in a decline, they are bigger than ever and their games have far less bugs than in the old age of the "pure" GSG....Leviathan is the exception, not the norm.

CK3 is doing good and will get a DLC announced tomorrow and of course that it appeals to a new audience, Gaming companies should and must get profit from their games and its only logic that Paradox will cater for the more casual players in their search for money, money is important in the capitalist world and without it there would be no expansion, no new job openings, no new games. The cash must flow. The launch of CK3 was almost perfect in comparison with every other launch in the history of the company.

HOI4 is in a good place right now, yes, maybe the team needs to put their priorities were they should: in improving the game instead of releasing more DLC that add more focus trees , but HOI4 is still a good game.

Stellaris is nice but i stopped playing after the release of Federations because i play diplomatic games and... having galaxy-wide alliances ruined everything for me. The game is still fun i guess.

Imperator was a bad choice made by the company, but it sold well. Stopping the development of the game for a year was a bad call but they should have never released a sequel for Europa Universalis: Rome in the first place.

Paradox still creates unique and engaging games, they are growing and selling more games than in the past and they have increased the number of workers they have x10, that its not a sign of decline.

I dont know if you played Paradox games in the old days, but the old games had a reputation for being buggy. Everything is better now with the exception of Europa Universalis IV.

Did you play CK2 at release? You talk about a massive shift in quality and depth of releases but CK3 has a lot more quality and depth than CK2 at release, which was quite shallow.

I like CK3, but comparing it to the CK2 release is a joke, when Paradox released Crusader Kings 2 they were a far smaller company with fewer resources and less experience. CK3 is amazing but lacks a lot of stuff....but that game also have the potential to be better than CK2 after two big DLC.

 

[Tullaris]

Its not a joke. The OP said PDX is in decline. For it to be in decline, releases have to get worse and worse. You agree with me that the releases are held up to a higher standard and that they are of higher quality. I conclude that PDX is not in decline and that the OP is wrong.

 

[Atomcreator]

You lot clearly don't remember the absolute mess that HOI3 was around 2009. I don't think they have ever 'peaked' to be in decline. Sometimes they have success, sometimes they mess up. PDX make complex games that simply can't appeal to everyone.

Whilst I don't like the more sandbox nature of HOI4 and found CK3 too basic, I enjoy stellaris, EU4 and prison architect still after all these years. I would suspect you've played them too much if you're bored of them.

 

[Lakigigar]

I think Paradox will disagree. Never have so many players been able to play their games. Also Survival Mars and Cities Skylines while not directly developed by PI were publised by them, and they were huge successes too.

HoI... yes while you might have a point, seems like the popularity of the game will make you disagree. While the latter packs weren't impressive, it seems the next one is potentially going to be a must-have. After that, they'll run out of ideas and things and the DLC's after that will probably decline in quality again... (probably, not certainly). But development is probably at this point at the late mid stage (with probably around 4 DLC's at least: the Eastern Front one, the Italy focus rework, the Scandinavian focus trees and the Latin American focus trees). Some things could've done better, but overall they did a good job. I think HoI 4 at this point could be considered as success, esp. over the entire timeline.

Stellaris... while the latter DLC was perhaps not that impressive (haven't touched it)... it was a huge success, and perhaps even unexpected. But it's possible the game is starting to get at the end stage as well, and that Stellaris 2 is starting to get possible. I can't think of a game with an early game so fun as Stellaris, and the early game might take lots of hours...

EUIV... overall a huge success. Even Emperor was still a great DLC, but it's clear that Leviathan was one of the last DLC's (perhaps the last one). The game is at the end, they run out of ideas, perhaps are already thinking more about EUV. While Leviathan might be the worst DLC in EU4's timeline (objectively?), the game is seen as a huge success, and could be seen as the greatest grand strategy game ever made... Even if they decide to do EUV soon (which they'll at some point)... it will be hard to top it, perhaps even raising further questions of continuiuing decline... which i would disagree with.

CKIII is at the beginning of it's development cycle. Too early to draw conclusions, but overall the start of it could be considered a success again.

The only failure seems to be Imperator Rome which I haven't played yet... They might once restart development, but it seems they've relocated a lot of it's team to other strategy titles, like CKIII and/or Vicky2, but I think at one point they'll be able to relocate people to I:R again. It's just not going to get much content in the upcoming 1-2 years, and it's not sure if they ever will restart development.

So yes Rome could have been done better, but I don't know what the issues were. It's possible if they didn't decide to do Vicky3, I:R wouldn't have had it's development halted. And also if it was critically better received, they've probably would have found a different solution, but for the time being, this was probably the most convenient to them from a business perspective.

So yes, i think i'd disagree. But what we're seeing is that few alpha title games are in the late early/ early mid-stage development, since EUIV, HoI4 and Stellaris are getting aged, Victoria isn't released yet, and we haven't had the first major expansion pack from CKIII yet. And that's what we're seeing now.

The gap is I:R and that game indeed failed to meet expectations apparently.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Though a past enthusiast since picking up a copy of EU2 and then HOI1 I find myself increasingly reluctant to invest time in PDX games.

Stellaris despite offering a new galaxy every game, so many games feel the same . . . (2,100+ hrs)
Imperator just doesn't feel like the world of Rome, Carthage and the Hellenistic world I've studied for over 40 years . . . (14 hrs free play)
EU4 has many virtues, but while the game has grown with DLC some of the basic mechanics that could be improved have not been . . . (1,200+ hrs)
HOI4 offers perhaps too many options (alt history, ship design) while some of the basic mechanics could be improved. It is currently the best of the bunch (2,100+ hrs)

 

[maxk94]

With the pause of Imperator, I also had major doubts, but the announcement of Victoria 3 and the information about it make me optimistic.