Why developing I:R 2 when you can come back to I:R

[Gurkhal]

TLDR: Put the game on sale and spend a little money on advertising to see if you can actually sustain a player count of 10k for few months instead of spending all that time and money making a new game. If it doesn't work, you've lost nothing.

Instead of making a new I:R2, I'd love to see Paradox try and relaunch I:R with an ad campaign on Steam. Seems like putting the game on sale and paying to have it on the front page of Steam (maybe along with a small DLC or patch) could go a long way in building a player count.

I bought the game at launch, and it was a half-baked piece of garbage even worse than EU4 was at launch. I recently picked the game back up, and it's lightyears ahead of where it was. I can only imagine where it would be if they had simply stuck with it, like with EU4.

The problem is I had no idea they'd improved it so much. I just happened to see the anniversary beta patch and give it a go.

Instead of investing all that time and $$$ in a new game, why not take the quick option? Spend a little cash now and see if you can get the daily player count to even 10k plus for a month or two with an ad campaign and revive this thing.

This would be nice, if it was possible. Still I don't think that even the streamer "Revive Imperator" came close to these numbers.

 

[GodBox]

You're correct the streamer revive only broke 1k. However, that's a pretty underground movement. I had no idea it was going on, and those streamers are all around 200k subscribers. But I just threw out 10k as a nice round number. On further inspection it seems unrealistic.

If you look at sales and free weekends on Steam even after the game had essentially died in 2019, they produced much bigger results though. The problem was the game was still terrible. I think now that it has some value, and a decent amount of replay ability...why not do a free weekend / sale? Showcase all the work that the modders have done. To me it seems like Best Case: You generate some new players, interest, and maybe even a little money. Worst Case: A game which was making you no money, keeps making you no money.

I also know nothing about marketing or how all that works, but a fan can dream.

 

[IsaacCAT]

There have been free weekends and the game is heavily discounted now and then.

However, the playerbase never picked up to PDX minimums and during COVID when there were staff shortages it was decided to divert resources to other games. As snowcrystal has explained in this thread.

Even if the playerbase is on par with other GSG from other companies, I don’t see PDX commiting a full team to the game but support for modders effort as they have done now with patch 2.0.5 and forward.

The game was one of the last developed following the old PDS fashion with a short developing cycle compared to current games.

Is this approach better and will it avoid a future game not reaching critical mass? Maybe. What is clear from the last financial reports from PDX is that any project that does not reach certain standards it may not see daylight.

For this reason we probably will see less games released in the future.

The root cause isn’t in PDX though. The GSG genre hasn’t been growing for the last three years (1). It does not make sense to launch many games if the audience does not increase.

Go and convert your friends and family to love GSG. Maybe we can get it to be fashionable in 20 years like WARHAMMER, from rags to riches.

(1)
Thread 'I:R comparative performance with other GSG'
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/i-r-comparative-performance-with-other-gsg.1540335/

 

[ray243]

If we do get a sequel, I would want it to be more focused on a character-driven gameplay like Crusader Kings. Part of the fun of playing in the ancient world is you get to play not just as Rome, but as Julius Caesar, instead of Macedon you get to play as Alexander the great. Or you play as Pompey against Caesar, the generals of Alexander instead of just him.

You want the fun messy dynastic politics of the ancient world, the jockeying for influence in the senate, the big to become a rebel against the existing rulers.

 

[heliostellar]

IMO, the game did not need to be cancelled. The biggest issue, and something the studio seemed to fail to appreciate about the blowback, is how bad the character system is. We need something much more similar to CK2.

The total overhaul mods like Invictus and Terra Indomita are EXCELLENT, however, they can only do so much with such a half-baked character system.

You can see how terrible it is in the bloodlines. About half of the bloodlines manage to completely disappear by the time you start to experience turnover with your first generation of game characters.

In reality, important people actually did stick around. General Hannibal who was a Barca escaped to the Seleucid court after the fall of Carthage where he served as a general again. After the fall of the Seleucids, he then escaped again to Armenia... so this whole thing about the entire nobility of nations being completely annihilated in war is very anachronistic. I'm sure the "everything that's hard is fun" crowd has no issue with this, but the rest of us without a masochist streak find it extremely annoying and immersion-breaking.

 

[ray243]

IMO, the game did not need to be cancelled. The biggest issue, and something the studio seemed to fail to appreciate about the blowback, is how bad the character system is. We need something much more similar to CK2.

The total overhaul mods like Invictus and Terra Indomita are EXCELLENT, however, they can only do so much with such a half-baked character system.

You can see how terrible it is in the bloodlines. About half of the bloodlines manage to completely disappear by the time you start to experience turnover with your first generation of game characters.

In reality, important people actually did stick around. General Hannibal who was a Barca escaped to the Seleucid court after the fall of Carthage where he served as a general again. After the fall of the Seleucids, he then escaped again to Armenia... so this whole thing about the entire nobility of nations being completely annihilated in war is very anachronistic. I'm sure the "everything that's hard is fun" crowd has no issue with this, but the rest of us without a masochist streak find it extremely annoying and immersion-breaking.

All the more the game should give us playable characters as the main focus like CK3, but just with more state/non-feudal mechanics.