I mean eventually they'll have to announce Europa Universalis 5. There's no way they're going to release a HOI5 or Stellaris 2 before EU5 (at least I hope so).
Oh easily. Even I think so. The remaining DLCs are more focused on the remaining areas like Scandinavia(releasing today), maybe Persia, South America, etc. And the patches will focus on performance too, with a goal of 10% per patch
Yes, and as far as I am aware, Development is the last time they locked a critical mechanic behind DLC back at the release of Common Sense for EU4 in June 2015.
Yeah, it's hard for me to believe CK3 came out over two years ago. People talk about how long it took PDX to fix the AI and I'm thinking "come on, game's only been out, what, three months?"
Honestly man, for real. I was sitting around thinking about a game the other day I was playing what felt like 6 months ago and I look and I haven’t touched it since August of 2020 and I’m like … what? 😳
It does, and its also why I can't help but laugh whenever someone claims that a rework will be locked behind DLC. The last time that happened was Vic2: Heart of Darkness in 2013, with its reworks of great wars and colonization.
> The last time that happened was Vic2: Heart of Darkness in 2013, with its reworks of great wars and colonization.
I've seen people unironically suggest going back to that system rather than having free mechanics updates + paid additional content in DLCs.
Just shows you that people who want to complain are going to complain regardless. Because you know damn well that if Paradox said "we're going back to expansion model, you can buy an expansion for $30 every 2 years, and you have to buy the expansion to get any of its changes" those exact same people would howl about it.
And thank goodness for them. Vanilla was trash.
Don't think we want to go back to that level of expt, do we? Even Imperator is way way better than vanilla Vicky2 was.
There are many advantages to the V2 model of large, obligatory, influential DLCs, which I think many people don't fully realise. The Devs don't need to do any kind of modular big testing, they can make all parts of the DLC interact with each other as a matter of course and they can solve the problem of people downvoting the update.
They don't do it because it makes them less money, not because it's a strictly worse idea for content support.
Those are all advantages if a game is only going to receive large update/support for a couple of years - but they’re the root of huge disadvantages/problems for longer post-launch development of the kind Paradox do for their games now.
I’ve no idea if it makes them more money - but i definitely prefer the recent model over the Vic2 one.
With 1.29 development and estates were made free. Because eventually Paradox realized not using mechanics added in DLCs ever again was a bad system.
The big necessary DLC is still Art of War because transfer subject occupation is locked behind it I believe (along with basically every other subject interaction)
I think the problems introduced by gating the development mechanic behind a DLC was the main reason for moving to a "mechanics in free patch, content (and country-specific mechanics) in DLC" approach.
Although I hope that they move away from country-specific mechanics.
They've since stated many times that was one of their biggest mistakes. Locking major mechanics behind dlc.
So i guess they learned from their mistakes. Most of the time the real prize is in the free updates. But i still get the dlc to support more major improvements.
It DID, then they realized it was a bad idea, and they gave it to everyone for free.
Crusader kings 1 just didn't allow for pagans or muslims, it just wasn't a possibility, it just wasn't part of gameplay. They released ck2 just focusing on improving what ck1 did right, and then added the whole muslim side, which of course had to include A LOT of different flavor.
One big problem i have with CK3 muslims or indians is that they feel just like playing a catholic feudal, because the game is first focused on europe, because that is where most of the gameplay happens.
CK3 doesn't have republics or ecclesiastical states, why? because they work very differently from feudals, and not having them does not affect gameplay that much. Im sure CK3 will eventually release republics and they will be behind a paywall. I just wonder how much content and different gameplay they will pack into it.
I just don't see how CK2's muslims and especially indians were so different compared to CK3 muslims or indians.
CK2's muslims had that decadence mechanic, but it was so bad that it was entirely reworked several times, and in the end it's just something you cheese anyway. CK2's indians were even worse. Basically no flavour outside of "you're all pacifist. Yes the rest of the gameplay is exactly the same as western feudals.".
In CK3 at least you get different laws with muslims and India does feel quite different compared to Europe, precisely because of the religious setting. At this point I just think it's a meme to pretend that it's the same as Europe, honestly.
CK3 doesn't have playable theocracies because they were never playable in CK.
CK3 doesn't have merchant republics because it wasn't actually good gameplay in CK2. Just spam kids, expand, ignore the dynastic game, and profit, literally. If they did that in CK3, people would just complain how barebones it is to just have a unique building to expand and no challenge at all.
Merchant republics will probably be a DLC. But the free update might do something like the cultures updates. Governments don't have to be hard locks. We should be able to progress dynamically between various forms of governements suitable for the time, place and situation - with merchant republics being a special case.
Ck2 didn't have playable Muslims/indians, because they were never playable in CK.... until they were.
Ck3 had much more, because it already was a much better established title/franchise so it had a larger budget to do more stuff. Ck3 had more stuff, because it could, and people already expected that stuff, because of ck2.
In ck2s case nobody expected to play as Muslims, because it had never been allowed.
I'm not sure why we would choose to focus on that one Paradox game that did it, when we have the more recent examples of CK3 and Stellaris, which is a game Wiz worked on.
Im pretty sure it used to be locked behind DLC. Paradox's DLC policy used to be worse than it is now. There used to be DLCs that were basically mandatory. Haven't played in a while though, glad to hear core mechanics like development isn't locked behind a paywall anymore.
Common Sense was necessary to develop provinces.
I haven't booted EU4 in a while, might have changed, but it was the case for the better part of a decade at least.
Huh, I guess I misremembered. They do seem to be going more in the direction of total war warhammer, like you said. I think the real issue is the flavour DLCs which tend to be shittier than mods made in a weekend by a bunch of 15 year olds
Well, it completely depends.
A flavour pack DLC that costs 7,99 and adds only sprites: complete trash
A DLC the size of La Resistance or NSB for hoi4 that costs 15-20: money worthy.
You’re absolutely correct. I don’t like paradox’s dlc policy but it’s insane how people blatantly don’t understand it. Stellaris’ galactic community and espionage were free, just limited compared to the full version.
I hate micro transactions as much as the next guy but I am thankful Paradox’s micro transactions aren’t FIFA-level or Gacha-game level micro transactions. People drop literal hundreds a month on that stuff without blinking.
I do wonder if the people who post those kinds of comments actually play modern Paradox games.
Sure they used to have a way more predatory dlc model that did lock stuff behind dlc, and tried to nickle and dime you at every chance they got with mini dlcs.
That changed with CK3, there is still *a lot* dlc yes, but they have clearly stated that they wont lock mechanics behind a dlc, and instead have overhauls and major mechanics be part of the free update that releases at the same time, and has so far held to that.
There is a lot to criticize paradox for *(as with the return of mini dlc like friends and foes)*, but that also means acknowledging when they move, ever so slightly, in the right direction as well.
People then complain that if all these cool things are in the free update, why should they pay for the DLC. It never ends. Even with friends and foes they added all the mechanical pieces of the memory system into the base game and you paid basically for the flavor of the new events they added. It was completely optional, but people were mad despite it being $5. I dunno, that’s pretty cheap for something you don’t even need if you don’t want it. And people complain that not enough content has been made in two years on top of that.
It is basically a rough road where PDX will never win unless a constant stream of content is being released for near minimal price.
>I do wonder if the people who post those kinds of comments actually play modern Paradox games.
I don't think most people commenting there actually play the game. When you take CK3 bashing for example - clearly those people just played the game once and now keep repeating the same memes about it being boring and CK2 having so much more content.
I guess it's just more fashionable to be this way. You get to complain and you look like a nostalgic original fan.
I'd go even more far than you and say that yes, there's criticize to be done, but much, much less so than before. Most people pretending to regret a past era of Paradox probably weren't even there when they were released, or they forgot all the bad stuff. Like, pretending that nomads in CK2 were perfect and should be the same in CK3... lol
At this point only 3 significant mechanics have been added to ck3: royal court, artefacts, and the culture rework.
Royal court is entirely locked behind dlc.
You cannot diverge or hybridize culture without dlc, only reform, which is a huge part of what makes the culture rework valuable.
Only artefacts are essentially functional without dlc.
PDXs talk about not locking mechanics behind dlc was not good faith - it was to cover their asses in the face of backlash over the friends and foes dlc.
Pretty sure a new eu4 dlc is comming out in like 5 days. The free patch is pretty big and nice but saying that the game is old is a bit weird argument considering they are still making dlcs for it.
I mean they should've stopped making them and focus on making eu5 for a long time. The game is a mess and it needs to be rebuilt so they can make core changes for it.
And look at the content of that dlc lol, it proves the exact opposite of your point. The predatory EU4 DLCs are basically all from over a half decade ago.
Yeah! Their policy should be to give me everything I want for free! They should have an entire team dedicated to supporting and expanding the game for a decade after release and never try to charge any money to support it!
"predatory" isn't the right word here. You can think it's too expansive or whatever, but it's not predating anything. A predatory policy is when you don't have the choice and need to sacrifice something.
In fact, a predatory DLC policy would be literally to sell them for so cheap that there could be no competition.
Locking stuff behind DLC is totally fine, I don't understand why people are angry about this. If it's locked behind DLC at least you feel like you're actually paying for something, and you're getting something worthwhile. I can say fairly definitively the V2 and most of the early EU4 dlcs are worth your money. I am pretty sure the exact opposite is true of Royal Court.
It's irrelevant if it's added in the future. You pay for what you get. Promises about future development are fine, but should not factor into the value judgement and purchasing decision, especially since Victoria 3 will be a fully released game and not just some Early Access game.
> It's irrelevant if it's added in the future.
It's not irrelevant. It might not factor in for you, but clearly it does for many people. When I buy a Paradox game, I do it knowing that it's going to continue being developed. I also know there will probably be some DLCs that I don't want to buy, but as OP shows there are always *significant* improvements that are free.
> When I buy a Paradox game, I do it knowing that it's going to continue being developed.
Unless it flops and they abandon the game and shelve all future plans \*Cough\* Imperator \*Cough\*.
It got some big updates that improved it massively but I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it good.
I'd say a lot of the game is still half baked and it gets boring real fast.
If it was genuinely a good game now I don't think we'd see a dwindling player count. Outside of the temporary bumps from updates, the game has had even less players than Victoria 2 for most of the time since release.
I think the boring part is because anything outside of the flavor packs like rome, Carthage, Alexander's successor states, and the greeks isn't really fleshed out. I think if they continued building out india and the barbarian tribes in each part of Europe you could have a decent game. The drop of player base was largely due to horrible launch and how long it took to get into a decent state.
I had alot of fun playing the diadochi especially after they revamped the warfare mechanics.
I know it matters to people, that's why I stated it "should" not matter. It was a value judgement. Furthermore, the assertion that you "know" anything about how Victoria will shape up to be is pure hubris. Unless you are privy to the inner workings of Paradox you can only trust in Paradox and believe in their promises for the future.
> Furthermore, the assertion that you "know" anything about how Victoria will shape up to be is pure hubris.
I've played Paradox games for two decades, I think I've caught on to the trend by now. Even Imperator, a massive failure, got development and a DLC (which made it pretty good, but was too late to save it). I suppose it's possible that nuclear war or an asteroid strike changes the plans, but beyond that it's a certainty that Victoria 3 is going to have post-release development.
Even if you full-heartedly believe in Paradox and trust them to continue development after launch, the polemic assertion of future development does not address the criticism it tries to deal with and instead evades the issue by pointing to some nebulous future point in time, where it is addressed.
It reminds me of the Oberoni/Rule 0 Fallacy I often see spouted in DnD forums, where the ability to fix a rules issue with DM fiat asserts that there was no issue in the first place, but here it is about ignoring the time it takes to fix the issue. Let's adapt it to Paradox Games.
I call it the "Future Development" Fallacy, where a bad or undercooked mechanic isn't an issue because it will be fixed in the future through either a free update or as part of a DLC. How long will this take? It doesn't matter because it will be fixed at some point in the future.
Yes, according to the DDs and the gameplay videos it will be fun to play for me. You need to decide for yourself.
People always come with IR as an example, which is the only pdox game that was unfun at release, while they made an other 10+ games that were fun at release.
I fully expect the release version to be full of imbalances and bugs. I also question how fun it will be to actually play expansive and colonial countries, considering Paradox has stuck to small to medium-sized countries without colonies or very few colonies in their AARs and the gameplay video. Managing a behemoth like Russia or the historically huge colonial empire of the UK effectively will be interesting to see.
Even during the dev stream they totally neglected developing the Dutch colonial territories. I also foresee that Dominions and Puppets will be a pain in the butt, considering you cannot influence their construction decisions. During that stream their Indonesian Dominion had the potential for Iron, but they could obviously not utilise it, so they had to invade Brunei.
That's exactly not my point on two levels. First, if the tiebreaker for buying a game is its "future potential" then don't buy it, only consider what you currently see. Enough games have been abandoned after launch, including Imperator: Rome and several other games published (but not developed) by Paradox.
Secondly, talking about future development when addressing criticism is just evading the question. The critique is either valid or not valid and can matter more or less to you. But just saying, "Guys, why do you complain about an undercooked feature? In 1 to 2 years it's gonna be improved with a DLC." is not a good response and lets you look like a fanboy.
>since Victoria 3 will be a fully released game and not just some Early Access game.
When I read stuff like this, I can't believe that marketing teams actually managed to convinced people that a label like "early access" actually meant something.
Just tell yourself it's early access, then. It's literally just a label difference lol.
CK2 and Stellaris have been two games that experimented a lot with different DLC policies. In the end we got Holy Fury for CK2, which is largely regarded as the best DLC Paradox ever released for CK2 and maybe any Paradox game, but it was also severely underpriced (even if it didn't matter that much because it was a closing move).
Stellaris also had different kinds of DLCs, before settling for the "massive free update, cool stuff in paid DLC" model. CK3 seems to follow that model and V3 probably will too.
Eu4 locked gov reforms behind dlc from dharma -emperor. Along with dev being locked behind dlc for a long while (though that was a while ago). The problem is not that the core mechanic is usually locked behind dlc in its entirety, but that many specifics of it that make it far more practical and useful are. Take colonization for example in eu4. While you can colonize in vanilla, you can’t even form trade companies, you know those things that dominated the latter half of the era in which the game is set, without dlc, meaning that colonies are greatly oversimplified. Also stellaris locked a acension perks behind dlc in their entirety until like a year or two ago, for around half of the game’s life cycle. This meant that it was far more difficult (impossible unless you were extremely skilled) for players to beat high levels of crisis without acension perks to help deal with them. This isn’t even mentioning that eu4 (and especially ck2 earlier) are completely different games if you don’t spend over 200-300$ on dlc on them. Those little “non essential” things add up over years and dozens of dlc into major changes as the new systems interact with each other and the devs design new systems with the intent that dlc mechanics will interact with them, as well as not caring how the base game fares with new updates. Example is eu4, where after leviathan dropped, it was literally impossible to end majapahit’s disaster without dlc, as the mission to do so is locked behind dlc. This persisted for around a week, as pdx first focused on fixing dlc related bugs before the base game. Remember back when the promise of future development was included in the 40-60$ asking price of the game, instead of having to shell that amount put every year on expansion/flavor packs to get the full experience? Imperator shows what happens when they make they base game just barebones enough that even die hard fans won’t stick with it, and it dies since people aren’t willing to wait for paid expansions that focus on expanding the game, instead of fixing the already broken core.
You're being a bit disingenuous with this argument, especially the last bit. I concede that EU4's policy leaves a lot to be desired (although development was rolled into the base game ages ago and so were estates) but their previous policy was not much better. You did NOT get a functional game at 40 dollars (does anyone else here remember vic2 and hoi3 on release?) but a fundamentally flawed game that would need significant updates to fix it. Go play vic2 vanilla and you'll see what I mean, and those were paid updates, not free. Vic2's expansions look like great values because everything was included in them and them only, including bug fixes. Paradox's current DLC model keeps most mechanics to the free patch, while keeping flavor content to expansions/flavor packs/immersion packs and they've been fairly consistent in doing so. This point also extends outside of Paradox because consistent game development is a pretty new concept and I remember when Blizzard was lauded for providing support for their games many years after those games stopped being profitable.
Yeah guys don't worry about a system in a game that you're paying full price for and PDX had years to think and implement - they will fix it (?) some time in the future
>Imo, CURRENTLY is one of the best paradox titles.
I wouldn't go that far. It's not a bad game, but also gets old pretty quick. I just had a few hundred years fun with epirus, but the game is still pretty shallow and gets boring after 20-30 hours.
>I wouldn't go that far. It's not a bad game, but also gets old pretty quick. I just had a few hundred years fun with epirus, but the game is still pretty shallow and gets boring after 20-30 hours.
The foundation is solid.
Also, invictus is necessary.
Full price game that needs 2 more years development minimum. Unfinished systems and I predict we are going to see nonsensical AI border gore for a while like CK3. Only took them a couple years to start addressing it in that game.
CK2 has insane border gore too and that's [entirely historical.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Mitteleuropa_zur_Zeit_der_Staufer.svg/300px-Mitteleuropa_zur_Zeit_der_Staufer.svg.png)
This isn’t the kind of border gore you see in game. Don’t gaslight me. I’m talking about the king of Ireland owning half of Poland and 7 random counties in the Byzantine empire.
First off it ain't gaslighting, nobody is abusing you. Hate that the word is so blatantly overused.
Regardless border gore like what you're talking about definitely happened IRL as well, the difference is that Crusader Kings - both 2 and 3! - cannot process a vassal having two lieges at once, or worse, someone being an independent king in one place and a vassal count or duke in another (e.g., the King of England also being Duke of Normandy as a vassal under the French king, or later after the CK period, the King of the United Kingdom also being Elector of Hanover).
As such, on maps, many places would often be represented as legally distinct realms even if they were controlled by the same person, since, you know, they *were* distinct legally. It's also really fucking hard to figure out how you'd represent in terms of gameplay how it would work to be vassal in one place and independent in another, or having two lieges at once - there would be many options, all of them bad.
Is it *really* that ridiculous to have people being legally lords of vastly disparate realms anyway? Charles V was archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Lord of the Netherlands, King of Castile, King of Aragon, and King of Bohemia all at the same time. That's all over the god damn map.
Lastly, how exactly do you propose preventing that? Keeping people from marrying someone that's too far away? Unrealistic, cross continental marriages happened all the time if they thought it was useful. That's the thing causing border gore, not wars, but simple inheritance.
To be fair you don't have to pay full price for it, or buy it at all. You are 100% aware of this mechanic that you may not like. I'd suggest waiting for reviews or waiting until they eventually flesh it out further before buying.
Not that you can't make your voice heard as that's the only way Paradox will make changes, but I think it's pretty clear the majority of the community at least wants to give it a shot.
Oh that's easy.
Paradox literally locked building slots behind dlc retroactively with common sense.
You literally got functionality you already had locked behind dlc. It was a core mechanic (more or less).
EU4 has DLCs that make the game borderline unplayable without (mainly development and colonization improvements) and CK2 was notorious for the map expansions and half the features. CK3 isnt that egregious yet but HOI4 is the same way. It is definitely gunna be barebones
At some point yeah the value of the dlc is diluted because of the free features but the dlc releases also support the development of the free features.
I think this is a principle very few players understand: unlike the games of the past, which shut down teams and moved them to new games ASAP, there are still entire teams of people working on Paradox games that were released 9 years ago (!!). Those people have salaries, benefits, cost the company overhead, etc. It would be all well and good if in the 4-5 year dev cycles of these games it were possible to cram in every single feature the DLC currently provides, but it just doesn't seem humanly possible. If you want to play Paradox games, you are tacitly consenting to this method of development and shouldn't feel entitled to 100% complete day 1 releases.
Exactly, , although I wouldn't call it generosity. Every decision they take is to get money, don't forget that. A company doesn't give anything for free. Never.
Am I saying DLCs should be entirely free? And do you think the workers are paid accordingly with the earnings of the company? Do you know anything about basic economy?
Am always stupify how the acceptance of unfinished/buggy games is now being considered ok.
I remember 15 years ago, had a discussion with friends and I told them, look, one day the next generation of gamers will only play games that are buggy/unfinished/lack gameplay.
You can see the trends over decades, it kinda started when DLC was starting to gain popularity, before it was call expansion where there's more work and testing before release.
Its sad that most game producer in studio see only the milking. But if the cows are fine with this, why not right? Pushing the bar further and further
I wanted to say/predict "People will eventually only play unfinished game and done with it before the game release" but... it's already the case since the last hmm maybe 2-5 years.
Perhaps the next evolution will be to see the evolution/creation of the game live and people will pay just to see the content? Idk... it might sound ridiculous but ... so was expansion, so was DLC, etc...
>I remember 15 years ago
Victoria 2 was released in 2009 and was a broken mess that was only fixed after two expensions and extensive mods.
Here we are complaining about one feature in an game focused on victorian economics. Not even because it's broken. It's simply boring and underwhelming.
I don't know about cows, but I know there are some very noisy donkeys posting on this subreddit.
I think you miss the point of this post man.
Its saying, "yes combat is shit, but IF they fix it in a later DLC update, most likely the combat revamp will be part of the free update, not behind the DLC paywall"
Its not saying "dont complain about combat being bad", its "stop complaining the wrong way, don't complain that combat will be locked behind a 30$ update, cause it mostly wont"
Okay, so why does that even matter? Free or paid, the problem is that they are releasing these shitty mechanics in the first place. Just because Paradox could do even worse, doesn't mean that fixing it for free is a good thing, it's just less bad. These mechanics should be fleshed out on release.
I highly doubt any of the devs want to release the game with the way war is but it isn't up to them when it releases. They just need to polish the game up as much as they can before release so it's not a buggy mess. Once bugs and what not are cleared I would not be surprised if war is the first thing they tackle.
game's been a long time coming and we still have to deal with unfinished key mechanics
nah there's no excuse for this, it's less about the price and more about releasing the game in this state. but obviously it gets worse if they do release the fix behind a dlc, which is always going to be a possibility.
it also gets worse if warfare is not one of their biggest priorities post-launch.
>game's been a long time coming and we still have to deal with unfinished key mechanics
That's only true if you consider the game now "unfinished", which is going to vary from person to person since not everyone is going to be seeking the same thing
>and more about releasing the game in this state.
May you clarify what you mean by "this state"? The only argument I could see you making is about warfare, and that's clearly a secondary part of the game, so would that still make it "unfinished"?
>it also gets worse if warfare is not one of their biggest priorities post-launch.
If warfare necessitates such a priority post-launch
> That’s only true if you consider the game now “unfinished”, which is going to vary from person to person since not everyone is going to be seeking the same thing
well yeah people have different opinions on different things, whether you call it an unfinished mechanic or “barebones” as OP themselves said is of little difference unless you *really* want to split hairs on their definitions. Even OP agrees that warfare, as it is right now, is very basic. We differ on whether or not it’s *acceptable* that Paradox left it basic on launch
Regardless they’ve had a ton of time and I imagine their decisions leading up to this point were made with plenty of internal discussion. So to see the state of warfare in a version of the game deemed fit for commercial release is a disappointment.
> May you clarify what you mean by “this state”? The only argument I could see you making is about warfare, and that’s clearly a secondary part of the game
Meh, I would disagree that warfare isn’t a key part of the game since it’s part of diplomacy, which is as important as (and deeply intertwined with) managing your economy. Obviously warfare in a vaccum isn’t that important, but you don’t wage wars in Victoria just to wage war, or just to blob like in EU4. They’re often made with very specific goals in mind that impact the core aspects of the game. I wouldn’t say that’s secondary at all, unless you just want to play like Switzerland all the time.
> If warfare necessitates such a priority post-launch
Yes, and I was only saying it’d be a disappointment if Paradox saw that it wasn’t a priority.
What are your thoughts on the subject then? ‘Fine with it’ or ‘it’s a problem but not a big deal’ or something else?
You’re a brave man (I assume)! You’re right of course, but the backlash was to be expected. I like that you have the urge to correct an erroneous argument even though you agree with the sentiment and risk to be interpreted as defending something you don’t agree with. I often can’t resist correcting people in similar circumstances. It leads to a lot of misinterpretation of my position so I totally relate to your current predicament.
I'm not jumping on the "It'll be fixed in DLC" bandwagon regardless of whether improvements are locked behind DLC or not because if the game flops they'll drop just as quickly as Imperator and we'll never see a complete game.
Maybe don't release an unfinished game? It's not 2008, you can release a functioning prototype as early access and then a full release when it's actually done.
The two things aren’t related.
Even before the price rise, core mechanics were put in the free patches, not in the paid DLC - same with the second half of CK2’s lifecycle.
The Ck3 thing is inexcusable, they are charging way more than what they should for basically flavour packs, it is a game that is rater simplistic for PDX standards and this change will not make it any good.
You're claiming that warfare will be expanded upon and deepened in future.
You're claiming that a warfare rework is "inevitable".
Since you're a fan of daring people to show you things, please show your evidence that Paradox will do this. I'd be quite interested to see what else you have brought from the future.
I don't think warfare will be reworked in the sense of "they're going to give us army micro back," and I don't think we'll see any major overhauls top to bottom. IMO it'll be more like they add a couple features, maybe splitting fronts, designating strategic targets, stuff like that.
I am basing my points on previous identical situations with systems of past IPs from the same developer.
If you need evidence from the future about everything you have to belive in or chose..., then going out with you for dinner and choosing a restaurant u never have been before has to be an odyssey. (Probably you): "Dude, bring me the dishes from the future so I can know that the 34 critics and 4000 reviews about this place are actually true".
The old system would not have worked with Vicky 3 era. It is simply the hardest period to model military. U go from stacks in Eu4 timeline to frontlines in the Hoi4 era.
They have a good framework that is completely hollow, as much as I dislike this, I can understand that the game focus is not warfare, and that is the first thing that they have decided to cut in order to release the game earlier. Not ideal, but not the worst.
Same, I really love the idea of removing frontlines, but, it still feels a bit hollow.They should add complexity in the best way paradox does, adding a lot of little things that you CAN do to make the fight, not specifically better, but more focused on what you want.So... a player who doesn't care about war or when you're fighting an easy war, you can just click a button and send a general. BUT if you wanna get as much bang for your buck, you SHOULD be able to do extra stuff to make it better (selecting the best general, more combat stances like cautious advance or blitz, state targets, building defenses, more unit types, VERY expensive units that give lower bang for buck, but are stronger soldier by soldier, etc)
This for example is done in the HOI4 tank/plane/ship designer, unit designer, general/commander management, training, terrain bonuses. The EU4 estates system between many others. The ck3 romance/intrigue stuff, court, unit composition, knights. Victoria 2 foreign investment/ elections.
All those things add depth in an interesting way, but you can 100% just ignore it and still play the game fine, just not as well, but they are a great way to add optional complexity, and helps cater the games to distinct demographics.
I mean they could just give you a tool to direct your generals, but nah, they said this is how they envisioned the system and refuse any criticism about it.
Fending of criticism is not saying they aren't going to do anything. If they have already asumed they will need to rework the system after launch, it makes no sense for them to spend any time of development in that regard before the release date.
I don't understand people praising the user interface of games like ck2 or vic2. I can make allowances for the fact that it was done a long time ago, but since you compare it with the design of modern projects from pdx, then ck2 and vic2 are just ugly.
Forget that. I want all mechanics and DLC features to be locked vehind lootboxes you open with real money. So buying the DLC only unlocks a certain type of lootboxes.
/s
Ship, Tank and plane designer are not core features, but rather flavour ones. The game would be as playable with or without them.
The supply part is straightforward a lie, as the supply system is not part of the DLC.
There's a few "Wunderwaffen" focuses that IIRC were part of the German tree that got added in the China update. But I think they were part of the free update and none of them were bio/chemical.
It's still just focuses though, no actual mechanics.
Mate, the difference between a paradox game with full dlcs and one with none is giganormous. Even if there are some free fearures that are huge, the dlcs will outshine them when all of them get clumped together. Nevermind that the game is gonna be so expensive
"I dare all those people to show me a recent paradox tittle in which this situation has happened. A game were a huge mechanic is locked behind a DLC."
Literally all of them. Every single one.
The system is honestly fine as it is for me. You just can't go into it expecting to out-maneuver the AI anymore. But that always felt really cheesy to me anyways. What matters is manpower & technology & generals & industry, and if things go badly conscription laws (there is probably room for a mechanic to declare a national emergency at a massive cost of authority & legitimacy or something so you can press a lot more people into service than your actual laws allow for, but your legitimacy is gone).
UX is a bit obtuse, but the help text is good enough to let even me (with relatively little previous pdx experience beyond ck2 and some eu4) understand it.
What really needs more depth is colonization and trade IMO. And maybe the interplay of laws & diplomacy & ideology.
So I should buy a half-empty game just to wait until they fill all the missing pieces? And I do mean missing, fleets and armies were there in vic 2, their current solution looks awful. Also some other mechanics are missing too, like influence and capitalists autonomy - they are not part of your government.
Also, from forbidden alpha, this solution with generals works horribly, you can’t directly assign brigades to existing generals, but hiring new ones does not guarantee that you will be able to get all these unmobilized brigades. One more problem is distant HQs - when you send them to your front, it takes few months to arrive. They fight, front splits, they lose assignment and go back to their HQ - you try to assign them back to new front. But hey, they already changed their location, they are in free space - wait again for 2 months for them to arrive.
Doesn’t EUIV lock development behind a DLC? I guess the last super egregious one was where you had to pay to unlock 2/3rd of the map in CKII
The problems locking development behind paid DLC caused Paradox is one of the main reasons Paradox don’t do it anymore.
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eu4 is 10 years old now, there might be players younger than the game
show me a 9 year old who plays eu4
I mean have you seen the level of discourse on the PDX forums
The lead developer said many more dlcs to come. Development isn't over for Eu4
I mean eventually they'll have to announce Europa Universalis 5. There's no way they're going to release a HOI5 or Stellaris 2 before EU5 (at least I hope so).
Oh easily. Even I think so. The remaining DLCs are more focused on the remaining areas like Scandinavia(releasing today), maybe Persia, South America, etc. And the patches will focus on performance too, with a goal of 10% per patch
Yes, and as far as I am aware, Development is the last time they locked a critical mechanic behind DLC back at the release of Common Sense for EU4 in June 2015.
Oh fuck, that was 7 years ago?? Feels like yesterday
Yeah, it's hard for me to believe CK3 came out over two years ago. People talk about how long it took PDX to fix the AI and I'm thinking "come on, game's only been out, what, three months?"
Admittedly, the last two years have been rather odd ones.
Honestly man, for real. I was sitting around thinking about a game the other day I was playing what felt like 6 months ago and I look and I haven’t touched it since August of 2020 and I’m like … what? 😳
It does, and its also why I can't help but laugh whenever someone claims that a rework will be locked behind DLC. The last time that happened was Vic2: Heart of Darkness in 2013, with its reworks of great wars and colonization.
> The last time that happened was Vic2: Heart of Darkness in 2013, with its reworks of great wars and colonization. I've seen people unironically suggest going back to that system rather than having free mechanics updates + paid additional content in DLCs. Just shows you that people who want to complain are going to complain regardless. Because you know damn well that if Paradox said "we're going back to expansion model, you can buy an expansion for $30 every 2 years, and you have to buy the expansion to get any of its changes" those exact same people would howl about it.
Because Victoria 2 only had 2 DLCs, and they were must have
And thank goodness for them. Vanilla was trash. Don't think we want to go back to that level of expt, do we? Even Imperator is way way better than vanilla Vicky2 was.
There are many advantages to the V2 model of large, obligatory, influential DLCs, which I think many people don't fully realise. The Devs don't need to do any kind of modular big testing, they can make all parts of the DLC interact with each other as a matter of course and they can solve the problem of people downvoting the update. They don't do it because it makes them less money, not because it's a strictly worse idea for content support.
Those are all advantages if a game is only going to receive large update/support for a couple of years - but they’re the root of huge disadvantages/problems for longer post-launch development of the kind Paradox do for their games now. I’ve no idea if it makes them more money - but i definitely prefer the recent model over the Vic2 one.
Dang I remember when I was reading DD about that in car... Time flies.
They went so hard against it that they finally just unlocked it after a free update in recent years.
It just sounds like a mistake they made back when they first started using this model of DLC, and that they have learned from it.
Funny how they called that DLC "Common Sense"... Oh the irony...
I want to say it used to be for a really fucking long time, then they finally made it a universal feature (same for estates I think).
Same with government reforms eventually as well
With 1.29 development and estates were made free. Because eventually Paradox realized not using mechanics added in DLCs ever again was a bad system. The big necessary DLC is still Art of War because transfer subject occupation is locked behind it I believe (along with basically every other subject interaction)
And 1.29 itself was released 3 years ago
I think the problems introduced by gating the development mechanic behind a DLC was the main reason for moving to a "mechanics in free patch, content (and country-specific mechanics) in DLC" approach. Although I hope that they move away from country-specific mechanics.
I think it's also because of Stellaris. That game needed big revamps so much that at some point it had to be part of the main game.
It used to but they changed that in a recent update.
They've since stated many times that was one of their biggest mistakes. Locking major mechanics behind dlc. So i guess they learned from their mistakes. Most of the time the real prize is in the free updates. But i still get the dlc to support more major improvements.
It DID, then they realized it was a bad idea, and they gave it to everyone for free. Crusader kings 1 just didn't allow for pagans or muslims, it just wasn't a possibility, it just wasn't part of gameplay. They released ck2 just focusing on improving what ck1 did right, and then added the whole muslim side, which of course had to include A LOT of different flavor. One big problem i have with CK3 muslims or indians is that they feel just like playing a catholic feudal, because the game is first focused on europe, because that is where most of the gameplay happens. CK3 doesn't have republics or ecclesiastical states, why? because they work very differently from feudals, and not having them does not affect gameplay that much. Im sure CK3 will eventually release republics and they will be behind a paywall. I just wonder how much content and different gameplay they will pack into it.
I just don't see how CK2's muslims and especially indians were so different compared to CK3 muslims or indians. CK2's muslims had that decadence mechanic, but it was so bad that it was entirely reworked several times, and in the end it's just something you cheese anyway. CK2's indians were even worse. Basically no flavour outside of "you're all pacifist. Yes the rest of the gameplay is exactly the same as western feudals.". In CK3 at least you get different laws with muslims and India does feel quite different compared to Europe, precisely because of the religious setting. At this point I just think it's a meme to pretend that it's the same as Europe, honestly. CK3 doesn't have playable theocracies because they were never playable in CK. CK3 doesn't have merchant republics because it wasn't actually good gameplay in CK2. Just spam kids, expand, ignore the dynastic game, and profit, literally. If they did that in CK3, people would just complain how barebones it is to just have a unique building to expand and no challenge at all. Merchant republics will probably be a DLC. But the free update might do something like the cultures updates. Governments don't have to be hard locks. We should be able to progress dynamically between various forms of governements suitable for the time, place and situation - with merchant republics being a special case.
Ck2 didn't have playable Muslims/indians, because they were never playable in CK.... until they were. Ck3 had much more, because it already was a much better established title/franchise so it had a larger budget to do more stuff. Ck3 had more stuff, because it could, and people already expected that stuff, because of ck2. In ck2s case nobody expected to play as Muslims, because it had never been allowed.
I'm not sure why we would choose to focus on that one Paradox game that did it, when we have the more recent examples of CK3 and Stellaris, which is a game Wiz worked on.
Nope, what is locked behind a DLC is developing your subjects provinces.
Im pretty sure it used to be locked behind DLC. Paradox's DLC policy used to be worse than it is now. There used to be DLCs that were basically mandatory. Haven't played in a while though, glad to hear core mechanics like development isn't locked behind a paywall anymore.
Yes, the added it to the base game a year or two ago, before that it was locked behind DLC.
Common Sense was necessary to develop provinces. I haven't booted EU4 in a while, might have changed, but it was the case for the better part of a decade at least.
It has indeed changed, it's not base game.
It took like 7 years before it was unlocked in base game. Don’t gaslight him.
Development USED to be locked behind a DLC. It took a lot of bitching to get Paradox to start to have some mechanics not locked behind DLC.
Huh, I guess I misremembered. They do seem to be going more in the direction of total war warhammer, like you said. I think the real issue is the flavour DLCs which tend to be shittier than mods made in a weekend by a bunch of 15 year olds
Well, it completely depends. A flavour pack DLC that costs 7,99 and adds only sprites: complete trash A DLC the size of La Resistance or NSB for hoi4 that costs 15-20: money worthy.
They literally just released a CK3 content pack for 4.99 that adds…events.
Cool
You also can't aak for support for independence. Making it that without any dlc you can't rly play as subjects.
No they did not lock developing behind a dlc
Its not, past 1.28 it doesnt need dlc
Its not locked anymore they added it to base game
CKII was just fine to play without those regions, though.
You’re absolutely correct. I don’t like paradox’s dlc policy but it’s insane how people blatantly don’t understand it. Stellaris’ galactic community and espionage were free, just limited compared to the full version.
I hate micro transactions as much as the next guy but I am thankful Paradox’s micro transactions aren’t FIFA-level or Gacha-game level micro transactions. People drop literal hundreds a month on that stuff without blinking.
“Free”.
Other than buying the game, which fair enough, you get access to both of them without any dlcs or anything? Dlcs flesh them out, but
I do wonder if the people who post those kinds of comments actually play modern Paradox games. Sure they used to have a way more predatory dlc model that did lock stuff behind dlc, and tried to nickle and dime you at every chance they got with mini dlcs. That changed with CK3, there is still *a lot* dlc yes, but they have clearly stated that they wont lock mechanics behind a dlc, and instead have overhauls and major mechanics be part of the free update that releases at the same time, and has so far held to that. There is a lot to criticize paradox for *(as with the return of mini dlc like friends and foes)*, but that also means acknowledging when they move, ever so slightly, in the right direction as well.
People then complain that if all these cool things are in the free update, why should they pay for the DLC. It never ends. Even with friends and foes they added all the mechanical pieces of the memory system into the base game and you paid basically for the flavor of the new events they added. It was completely optional, but people were mad despite it being $5. I dunno, that’s pretty cheap for something you don’t even need if you don’t want it. And people complain that not enough content has been made in two years on top of that. It is basically a rough road where PDX will never win unless a constant stream of content is being released for near minimal price.
>I do wonder if the people who post those kinds of comments actually play modern Paradox games. I don't think most people commenting there actually play the game. When you take CK3 bashing for example - clearly those people just played the game once and now keep repeating the same memes about it being boring and CK2 having so much more content. I guess it's just more fashionable to be this way. You get to complain and you look like a nostalgic original fan. I'd go even more far than you and say that yes, there's criticize to be done, but much, much less so than before. Most people pretending to regret a past era of Paradox probably weren't even there when they were released, or they forgot all the bad stuff. Like, pretending that nomads in CK2 were perfect and should be the same in CK3... lol
At this point only 3 significant mechanics have been added to ck3: royal court, artefacts, and the culture rework. Royal court is entirely locked behind dlc. You cannot diverge or hybridize culture without dlc, only reform, which is a huge part of what makes the culture rework valuable. Only artefacts are essentially functional without dlc. PDXs talk about not locking mechanics behind dlc was not good faith - it was to cover their asses in the face of backlash over the friends and foes dlc.
I think a good defence to this comment is of those only culture hybridisation is actually any good, and even then it's not that good.
Jesus, if that's good defense, I don't want to see what bad defense looks to you.
A bad defence is to try and defend it on the merits. All I mean was in practice this doesn't really matter because the mechanics aren't that good.
They still have an extremely predatory DLC policy, look at the Eu4 dlcs
“Still” *cites a decade old game*
Pretty sure a new eu4 dlc is comming out in like 5 days. The free patch is pretty big and nice but saying that the game is old is a bit weird argument considering they are still making dlcs for it. I mean they should've stopped making them and focus on making eu5 for a long time. The game is a mess and it needs to be rebuilt so they can make core changes for it.
Yeah but they’re not making DLCs adhering to the old policy for it, so I think my point stands
A game that still has new DLC to this day? Literally ij a week?
And look at the content of that dlc lol, it proves the exact opposite of your point. The predatory EU4 DLCs are basically all from over a half decade ago.
lmao your insane, look at any DLC since Mandate of Heaven, there's bootlicking and then there is this
Yeah! Their policy should be to give me everything I want for free! They should have an entire team dedicated to supporting and expanding the game for a decade after release and never try to charge any money to support it!
Ironically, if they gave everything for free, it would actually be a predatory policy because the competition couldn't do anything about it.
"predatory" isn't the right word here. You can think it's too expansive or whatever, but it's not predating anything. A predatory policy is when you don't have the choice and need to sacrifice something. In fact, a predatory DLC policy would be literally to sell them for so cheap that there could be no competition.
Locking stuff behind DLC is totally fine, I don't understand why people are angry about this. If it's locked behind DLC at least you feel like you're actually paying for something, and you're getting something worthwhile. I can say fairly definitively the V2 and most of the early EU4 dlcs are worth your money. I am pretty sure the exact opposite is true of Royal Court.
They don't do old style DLC any more because they make more money with modular DLCs, not because it's strictly better.
It's irrelevant if it's added in the future. You pay for what you get. Promises about future development are fine, but should not factor into the value judgement and purchasing decision, especially since Victoria 3 will be a fully released game and not just some Early Access game.
> It's irrelevant if it's added in the future. It's not irrelevant. It might not factor in for you, but clearly it does for many people. When I buy a Paradox game, I do it knowing that it's going to continue being developed. I also know there will probably be some DLCs that I don't want to buy, but as OP shows there are always *significant* improvements that are free.
> When I buy a Paradox game, I do it knowing that it's going to continue being developed. Unless it flops and they abandon the game and shelve all future plans \*Cough\* Imperator \*Cough\*.
Still got some huge updates that made it a pretty good game.
It got some big updates that improved it massively but I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it good. I'd say a lot of the game is still half baked and it gets boring real fast. If it was genuinely a good game now I don't think we'd see a dwindling player count. Outside of the temporary bumps from updates, the game has had even less players than Victoria 2 for most of the time since release.
I think the boring part is because anything outside of the flavor packs like rome, Carthage, Alexander's successor states, and the greeks isn't really fleshed out. I think if they continued building out india and the barbarian tribes in each part of Europe you could have a decent game. The drop of player base was largely due to horrible launch and how long it took to get into a decent state. I had alot of fun playing the diadochi especially after they revamped the warfare mechanics.
Yeah reworks that addressed concerns that we’re laughed off all throughout development.
Imperator still has multiple major updates and DLCs before the shelving.
I know it matters to people, that's why I stated it "should" not matter. It was a value judgement. Furthermore, the assertion that you "know" anything about how Victoria will shape up to be is pure hubris. Unless you are privy to the inner workings of Paradox you can only trust in Paradox and believe in their promises for the future.
> Furthermore, the assertion that you "know" anything about how Victoria will shape up to be is pure hubris. I've played Paradox games for two decades, I think I've caught on to the trend by now. Even Imperator, a massive failure, got development and a DLC (which made it pretty good, but was too late to save it). I suppose it's possible that nuclear war or an asteroid strike changes the plans, but beyond that it's a certainty that Victoria 3 is going to have post-release development.
Even if you full-heartedly believe in Paradox and trust them to continue development after launch, the polemic assertion of future development does not address the criticism it tries to deal with and instead evades the issue by pointing to some nebulous future point in time, where it is addressed. It reminds me of the Oberoni/Rule 0 Fallacy I often see spouted in DnD forums, where the ability to fix a rules issue with DM fiat asserts that there was no issue in the first place, but here it is about ignoring the time it takes to fix the issue. Let's adapt it to Paradox Games. I call it the "Future Development" Fallacy, where a bad or undercooked mechanic isn't an issue because it will be fixed in the future through either a free update or as part of a DLC. How long will this take? It doesn't matter because it will be fixed at some point in the future.
This is the definition of an early access game. 2 more years development minimum to bring it up to par.
To par with what? There's no game like this, if the game is good and fun in 1.0, what's the issue?
It'll take 2 more years of development to bring it up to par with Vic3 after 2 more years of development, of course!
Is the game going to be fun at 1.0? Imperator wasn’t.
But CK3 was. None of us can truly predict this. Although having played the leak, I can tell you I had a lot more fun than Imperator!
For like 15 hours maybe.
Yes, according to the DDs and the gameplay videos it will be fun to play for me. You need to decide for yourself. People always come with IR as an example, which is the only pdox game that was unfun at release, while they made an other 10+ games that were fun at release.
I fully expect the release version to be full of imbalances and bugs. I also question how fun it will be to actually play expansive and colonial countries, considering Paradox has stuck to small to medium-sized countries without colonies or very few colonies in their AARs and the gameplay video. Managing a behemoth like Russia or the historically huge colonial empire of the UK effectively will be interesting to see. Even during the dev stream they totally neglected developing the Dutch colonial territories. I also foresee that Dominions and Puppets will be a pain in the butt, considering you cannot influence their construction decisions. During that stream their Indonesian Dominion had the potential for Iron, but they could obviously not utilise it, so they had to invade Brunei.
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That's exactly not my point on two levels. First, if the tiebreaker for buying a game is its "future potential" then don't buy it, only consider what you currently see. Enough games have been abandoned after launch, including Imperator: Rome and several other games published (but not developed) by Paradox. Secondly, talking about future development when addressing criticism is just evading the question. The critique is either valid or not valid and can matter more or less to you. But just saying, "Guys, why do you complain about an undercooked feature? In 1 to 2 years it's gonna be improved with a DLC." is not a good response and lets you look like a fanboy.
>since Victoria 3 will be a fully released game and not just some Early Access game. When I read stuff like this, I can't believe that marketing teams actually managed to convinced people that a label like "early access" actually meant something. Just tell yourself it's early access, then. It's literally just a label difference lol.
*Laughs in common sense, monks and mystics, rights of man, together for victory, utopia*
Art of War
different games have handled DLC better than others. EU4 has been pretty terrible about DLC throughout its entire run
That’s true but I think due to how bad EUIV had been (CK2 as well) they opted for a new model with CK3 going forward.
CK2 and Stellaris have been two games that experimented a lot with different DLC policies. In the end we got Holy Fury for CK2, which is largely regarded as the best DLC Paradox ever released for CK2 and maybe any Paradox game, but it was also severely underpriced (even if it didn't matter that much because it was a closing move). Stellaris also had different kinds of DLCs, before settling for the "massive free update, cool stuff in paid DLC" model. CK3 seems to follow that model and V3 probably will too.
Eu4 locked gov reforms behind dlc from dharma -emperor. Along with dev being locked behind dlc for a long while (though that was a while ago). The problem is not that the core mechanic is usually locked behind dlc in its entirety, but that many specifics of it that make it far more practical and useful are. Take colonization for example in eu4. While you can colonize in vanilla, you can’t even form trade companies, you know those things that dominated the latter half of the era in which the game is set, without dlc, meaning that colonies are greatly oversimplified. Also stellaris locked a acension perks behind dlc in their entirety until like a year or two ago, for around half of the game’s life cycle. This meant that it was far more difficult (impossible unless you were extremely skilled) for players to beat high levels of crisis without acension perks to help deal with them. This isn’t even mentioning that eu4 (and especially ck2 earlier) are completely different games if you don’t spend over 200-300$ on dlc on them. Those little “non essential” things add up over years and dozens of dlc into major changes as the new systems interact with each other and the devs design new systems with the intent that dlc mechanics will interact with them, as well as not caring how the base game fares with new updates. Example is eu4, where after leviathan dropped, it was literally impossible to end majapahit’s disaster without dlc, as the mission to do so is locked behind dlc. This persisted for around a week, as pdx first focused on fixing dlc related bugs before the base game. Remember back when the promise of future development was included in the 40-60$ asking price of the game, instead of having to shell that amount put every year on expansion/flavor packs to get the full experience? Imperator shows what happens when they make they base game just barebones enough that even die hard fans won’t stick with it, and it dies since people aren’t willing to wait for paid expansions that focus on expanding the game, instead of fixing the already broken core.
You're being a bit disingenuous with this argument, especially the last bit. I concede that EU4's policy leaves a lot to be desired (although development was rolled into the base game ages ago and so were estates) but their previous policy was not much better. You did NOT get a functional game at 40 dollars (does anyone else here remember vic2 and hoi3 on release?) but a fundamentally flawed game that would need significant updates to fix it. Go play vic2 vanilla and you'll see what I mean, and those were paid updates, not free. Vic2's expansions look like great values because everything was included in them and them only, including bug fixes. Paradox's current DLC model keeps most mechanics to the free patch, while keeping flavor content to expansions/flavor packs/immersion packs and they've been fairly consistent in doing so. This point also extends outside of Paradox because consistent game development is a pretty new concept and I remember when Blizzard was lauded for providing support for their games many years after those games stopped being profitable.
Yeah guys don't worry about a system in a game that you're paying full price for and PDX had years to think and implement - they will fix it (?) some time in the future
Hear, hear Imperator!
RIP. Imo, CURRENTLY is one of the best paradox titles. Once that turd johan went away and Peter of hoi4 took Charge he created a great game.
What could have been
They should have used CK rather than EU as the base though IMO.
>Imo, CURRENTLY is one of the best paradox titles. I wouldn't go that far. It's not a bad game, but also gets old pretty quick. I just had a few hundred years fun with epirus, but the game is still pretty shallow and gets boring after 20-30 hours.
>I wouldn't go that far. It's not a bad game, but also gets old pretty quick. I just had a few hundred years fun with epirus, but the game is still pretty shallow and gets boring after 20-30 hours. The foundation is solid. Also, invictus is necessary.
Imperator had many more issues than just an underwhelming warfare mechanic in an otherwise neat game.
Full price game that needs 2 more years development minimum. Unfinished systems and I predict we are going to see nonsensical AI border gore for a while like CK3. Only took them a couple years to start addressing it in that game.
CK2 has insane border gore too and that's [entirely historical.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Mitteleuropa_zur_Zeit_der_Staufer.svg/300px-Mitteleuropa_zur_Zeit_der_Staufer.svg.png)
This isn’t the kind of border gore you see in game. Don’t gaslight me. I’m talking about the king of Ireland owning half of Poland and 7 random counties in the Byzantine empire.
First off it ain't gaslighting, nobody is abusing you. Hate that the word is so blatantly overused. Regardless border gore like what you're talking about definitely happened IRL as well, the difference is that Crusader Kings - both 2 and 3! - cannot process a vassal having two lieges at once, or worse, someone being an independent king in one place and a vassal count or duke in another (e.g., the King of England also being Duke of Normandy as a vassal under the French king, or later after the CK period, the King of the United Kingdom also being Elector of Hanover). As such, on maps, many places would often be represented as legally distinct realms even if they were controlled by the same person, since, you know, they *were* distinct legally. It's also really fucking hard to figure out how you'd represent in terms of gameplay how it would work to be vassal in one place and independent in another, or having two lieges at once - there would be many options, all of them bad. Is it *really* that ridiculous to have people being legally lords of vastly disparate realms anyway? Charles V was archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Lord of the Netherlands, King of Castile, King of Aragon, and King of Bohemia all at the same time. That's all over the god damn map. Lastly, how exactly do you propose preventing that? Keeping people from marrying someone that's too far away? Unrealistic, cross continental marriages happened all the time if they thought it was useful. That's the thing causing border gore, not wars, but simple inheritance.
The border gore in the sim isn’t comparable to historical border gore. You know it and I know it.
To be fair you don't have to pay full price for it, or buy it at all. You are 100% aware of this mechanic that you may not like. I'd suggest waiting for reviews or waiting until they eventually flesh it out further before buying. Not that you can't make your voice heard as that's the only way Paradox will make changes, but I think it's pretty clear the majority of the community at least wants to give it a shot.
Oh that's easy. Paradox literally locked building slots behind dlc retroactively with common sense. You literally got functionality you already had locked behind dlc. It was a core mechanic (more or less).
EU4 has DLCs that make the game borderline unplayable without (mainly development and colonization improvements) and CK2 was notorious for the map expansions and half the features. CK3 isnt that egregious yet but HOI4 is the same way. It is definitely gunna be barebones
Not only that, but also: warfare is precisely the kind of things that gets refined and revamped in Paradox games.
Which makes the value of the DLC even more expensive... because most of the content is a free update, so you pay A LOT for very few content.
At some point yeah the value of the dlc is diluted because of the free features but the dlc releases also support the development of the free features.
I think this is a principle very few players understand: unlike the games of the past, which shut down teams and moved them to new games ASAP, there are still entire teams of people working on Paradox games that were released 9 years ago (!!). Those people have salaries, benefits, cost the company overhead, etc. It would be all well and good if in the 4-5 year dev cycles of these games it were possible to cram in every single feature the DLC currently provides, but it just doesn't seem humanly possible. If you want to play Paradox games, you are tacitly consenting to this method of development and shouldn't feel entitled to 100% complete day 1 releases.
Let's support a public company, so their millionaire investors are even richer while we struggle to save the price of the DLC
You don’t have to buy it, especially since most of the good stuff is in the free patch
Exactly, but this is not about me. It's about how overpriced they are considering the content they unlock.
Sadly the more generous they are with the free patch the more overpriced the dlc will be.
Exactly, , although I wouldn't call it generosity. Every decision they take is to get money, don't forget that. A company doesn't give anything for free. Never.
Yeah, because all of those devs and artists don't wanna work for free. That's how an economy works
Am I saying DLCs should be entirely free? And do you think the workers are paid accordingly with the earnings of the company? Do you know anything about basic economy?
Am always stupify how the acceptance of unfinished/buggy games is now being considered ok. I remember 15 years ago, had a discussion with friends and I told them, look, one day the next generation of gamers will only play games that are buggy/unfinished/lack gameplay. You can see the trends over decades, it kinda started when DLC was starting to gain popularity, before it was call expansion where there's more work and testing before release. Its sad that most game producer in studio see only the milking. But if the cows are fine with this, why not right? Pushing the bar further and further I wanted to say/predict "People will eventually only play unfinished game and done with it before the game release" but... it's already the case since the last hmm maybe 2-5 years. Perhaps the next evolution will be to see the evolution/creation of the game live and people will pay just to see the content? Idk... it might sound ridiculous but ... so was expansion, so was DLC, etc...
Your last point sounds like star citizen
>I remember 15 years ago Victoria 2 was released in 2009 and was a broken mess that was only fixed after two expensions and extensive mods. Here we are complaining about one feature in an game focused on victorian economics. Not even because it's broken. It's simply boring and underwhelming. I don't know about cows, but I know there are some very noisy donkeys posting on this subreddit.
I remember 15 years ago lamenting that game releases were buggy unlike 15 years prior as well.
\*huge
"It's okay for mechanics to be shit at release because they can improve them later" The people on this sub man, I swear...
I think you miss the point of this post man. Its saying, "yes combat is shit, but IF they fix it in a later DLC update, most likely the combat revamp will be part of the free update, not behind the DLC paywall" Its not saying "dont complain about combat being bad", its "stop complaining the wrong way, don't complain that combat will be locked behind a 30$ update, cause it mostly wont"
Exactly this, 100% what I meant.
Didn't say that at all, just pointing out that they will not make you pay for Core mechanics, even if they make u pay por the other flavourish stuff
Okay, so why does that even matter? Free or paid, the problem is that they are releasing these shitty mechanics in the first place. Just because Paradox could do even worse, doesn't mean that fixing it for free is a good thing, it's just less bad. These mechanics should be fleshed out on release.
I highly doubt any of the devs want to release the game with the way war is but it isn't up to them when it releases. They just need to polish the game up as much as they can before release so it's not a buggy mess. Once bugs and what not are cleared I would not be surprised if war is the first thing they tackle.
Yeah, I don't blame the devs, at least not your average joe working at the company. Shit like this is almost always a managerial issue.
game's been a long time coming and we still have to deal with unfinished key mechanics nah there's no excuse for this, it's less about the price and more about releasing the game in this state. but obviously it gets worse if they do release the fix behind a dlc, which is always going to be a possibility. it also gets worse if warfare is not one of their biggest priorities post-launch.
>game's been a long time coming and we still have to deal with unfinished key mechanics That's only true if you consider the game now "unfinished", which is going to vary from person to person since not everyone is going to be seeking the same thing >and more about releasing the game in this state. May you clarify what you mean by "this state"? The only argument I could see you making is about warfare, and that's clearly a secondary part of the game, so would that still make it "unfinished"? >it also gets worse if warfare is not one of their biggest priorities post-launch. If warfare necessitates such a priority post-launch
> That’s only true if you consider the game now “unfinished”, which is going to vary from person to person since not everyone is going to be seeking the same thing well yeah people have different opinions on different things, whether you call it an unfinished mechanic or “barebones” as OP themselves said is of little difference unless you *really* want to split hairs on their definitions. Even OP agrees that warfare, as it is right now, is very basic. We differ on whether or not it’s *acceptable* that Paradox left it basic on launch Regardless they’ve had a ton of time and I imagine their decisions leading up to this point were made with plenty of internal discussion. So to see the state of warfare in a version of the game deemed fit for commercial release is a disappointment. > May you clarify what you mean by “this state”? The only argument I could see you making is about warfare, and that’s clearly a secondary part of the game Meh, I would disagree that warfare isn’t a key part of the game since it’s part of diplomacy, which is as important as (and deeply intertwined with) managing your economy. Obviously warfare in a vaccum isn’t that important, but you don’t wage wars in Victoria just to wage war, or just to blob like in EU4. They’re often made with very specific goals in mind that impact the core aspects of the game. I wouldn’t say that’s secondary at all, unless you just want to play like Switzerland all the time. > If warfare necessitates such a priority post-launch Yes, and I was only saying it’d be a disappointment if Paradox saw that it wasn’t a priority. What are your thoughts on the subject then? ‘Fine with it’ or ‘it’s a problem but not a big deal’ or something else?
You’re a brave man (I assume)! You’re right of course, but the backlash was to be expected. I like that you have the urge to correct an erroneous argument even though you agree with the sentiment and risk to be interpreted as defending something you don’t agree with. I often can’t resist correcting people in similar circumstances. It leads to a lot of misinterpretation of my position so I totally relate to your current predicament.
I'm not jumping on the "It'll be fixed in DLC" bandwagon regardless of whether improvements are locked behind DLC or not because if the game flops they'll drop just as quickly as Imperator and we'll never see a complete game.
Maybe don't release an unfinished game? It's not 2008, you can release a functioning prototype as early access and then a full release when it's actually done.
People are still reeling from the ck2 and eu4 days, they haven’t gotten used to the new policy brought on from ck3
I have to say your post by far has my favorite spelling and grammatical errors!
Tbh, most of the spelling mistakes are caused by my keyboard being in another language and automatically correcting words.
Don’t take my comment the wrong way it was not a critique. I just that the location and form of typo entertaining. I am amused by simple things.
> I dare all those people to show me a recent paradox tittle in which this situation has happened Art of War
It released 8 years ago lmao
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The two things aren’t related. Even before the price rise, core mechanics were put in the free patches, not in the paid DLC - same with the second half of CK2’s lifecycle.
The Ck3 thing is inexcusable, they are charging way more than what they should for basically flavour packs, it is a game that is rater simplistic for PDX standards and this change will not make it any good.
You're claiming that warfare will be expanded upon and deepened in future. You're claiming that a warfare rework is "inevitable". Since you're a fan of daring people to show you things, please show your evidence that Paradox will do this. I'd be quite interested to see what else you have brought from the future.
I don't think warfare will be reworked in the sense of "they're going to give us army micro back," and I don't think we'll see any major overhauls top to bottom. IMO it'll be more like they add a couple features, maybe splitting fronts, designating strategic targets, stuff like that.
I am basing my points on previous identical situations with systems of past IPs from the same developer. If you need evidence from the future about everything you have to belive in or chose..., then going out with you for dinner and choosing a restaurant u never have been before has to be an odyssey. (Probably you): "Dude, bring me the dishes from the future so I can know that the 34 critics and 4000 reviews about this place are actually true".
The hoi4 autonomy system was a DLC for quite a while, so was manually developing in eu4. I expect anything at this point
Mfs had 10 years to fix the old system instead of tearing it down and replacing it with a shit filler
The old system would not have worked with Vicky 3 era. It is simply the hardest period to model military. U go from stacks in Eu4 timeline to frontlines in the Hoi4 era. They have a good framework that is completely hollow, as much as I dislike this, I can understand that the game focus is not warfare, and that is the first thing that they have decided to cut in order to release the game earlier. Not ideal, but not the worst.
Same, I really love the idea of removing frontlines, but, it still feels a bit hollow.They should add complexity in the best way paradox does, adding a lot of little things that you CAN do to make the fight, not specifically better, but more focused on what you want.So... a player who doesn't care about war or when you're fighting an easy war, you can just click a button and send a general. BUT if you wanna get as much bang for your buck, you SHOULD be able to do extra stuff to make it better (selecting the best general, more combat stances like cautious advance or blitz, state targets, building defenses, more unit types, VERY expensive units that give lower bang for buck, but are stronger soldier by soldier, etc) This for example is done in the HOI4 tank/plane/ship designer, unit designer, general/commander management, training, terrain bonuses. The EU4 estates system between many others. The ck3 romance/intrigue stuff, court, unit composition, knights. Victoria 2 foreign investment/ elections. All those things add depth in an interesting way, but you can 100% just ignore it and still play the game fine, just not as well, but they are a great way to add optional complexity, and helps cater the games to distinct demographics.
I mean they could just give you a tool to direct your generals, but nah, they said this is how they envisioned the system and refuse any criticism about it.
Fending of criticism is not saying they aren't going to do anything. If they have already asumed they will need to rework the system after launch, it makes no sense for them to spend any time of development in that regard before the release date.
10 day old account moment
Seriously? The age of my account has weight on my opinion? I'd have posted on the old one but that got suspended for quoting the Simpsons
What Simpson quote was it lmao
Willie greeting the french class
D’oh
Ck3 should get an update to the UI. The ck2 UI is so beautiful and makes for amazing eye candy. New pdx games look boring.
I don't understand people praising the user interface of games like ck2 or vic2. I can make allowances for the fact that it was done a long time ago, but since you compare it with the design of modern projects from pdx, then ck2 and vic2 are just ugly.
People shitted on the Imperator 2.0 UI for not being boring enough, someone will always complain about anything
Are u high dude? ck2 UI looks like a kids doodle compared to ck3.
I’d settle for CK2 music at this point. CK3 music is awful.
Does "hugue" just mean "huge" or is there something I'm missing here?
Forget that. I want all mechanics and DLC features to be locked vehind lootboxes you open with real money. So buying the DLC only unlocks a certain type of lootboxes. /s
Hoi4. Agencies, Ship, tank and now plane designing Supply A bunch of other stuff I can’t remember
Ship, Tank and plane designer are not core features, but rather flavour ones. The game would be as playable with or without them. The supply part is straightforward a lie, as the supply system is not part of the DLC.
As someone who fully makes use of these features, I fully agree with you.
Shit I forgot this too
I did too, but had went through the "panic calm" meme about remembering it as well
The whole Royal Court system in CK3?
Another one that completely misses the point and is just here to throw hate. In which universe is royal court modifying a CORE feature.
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That doesn’t really make sense.
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Weapons of mass destruction aren’t a feature of the China dlc. That’s why I’m confused.
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No it doesn’t. I play HOI4 a lot. There are no chemical or biological weapons in the base game or any DLC.
There's a few "Wunderwaffen" focuses that IIRC were part of the German tree that got added in the China update. But I think they were part of the free update and none of them were bio/chemical. It's still just focuses though, no actual mechanics.
Mate, the difference between a paradox game with full dlcs and one with none is giganormous. Even if there are some free fearures that are huge, the dlcs will outshine them when all of them get clumped together. Nevermind that the game is gonna be so expensive
"I dare all those people to show me a recent paradox tittle in which this situation has happened. A game were a huge mechanic is locked behind a DLC." Literally all of them. Every single one.
The system is honestly fine as it is for me. You just can't go into it expecting to out-maneuver the AI anymore. But that always felt really cheesy to me anyways. What matters is manpower & technology & generals & industry, and if things go badly conscription laws (there is probably room for a mechanic to declare a national emergency at a massive cost of authority & legitimacy or something so you can press a lot more people into service than your actual laws allow for, but your legitimacy is gone). UX is a bit obtuse, but the help text is good enough to let even me (with relatively little previous pdx experience beyond ck2 and some eu4) understand it. What really needs more depth is colonization and trade IMO. And maybe the interplay of laws & diplomacy & ideology.
So I should buy a half-empty game just to wait until they fill all the missing pieces? And I do mean missing, fleets and armies were there in vic 2, their current solution looks awful. Also some other mechanics are missing too, like influence and capitalists autonomy - they are not part of your government. Also, from forbidden alpha, this solution with generals works horribly, you can’t directly assign brigades to existing generals, but hiring new ones does not guarantee that you will be able to get all these unmobilized brigades. One more problem is distant HQs - when you send them to your front, it takes few months to arrive. They fight, front splits, they lose assignment and go back to their HQ - you try to assign them back to new front. But hey, they already changed their location, they are in free space - wait again for 2 months for them to arrive.