DLCs aren’t a bad thing, the problem is a game company releasing a game WITH one or two DLC’s at the same time the game comes out. A DLC adds content that was not available at release, but should not make it an extra greedy money grabbing scheme.
Dude it’s Paradox. They’re the 3rd most dlc-greedy company after EA and Train Sim. Wait until the dlc goes to at least 50% off or just skip it. They’ll keep doing it if it keeps being profitable. Don’t just pay full price ever, especially brand new. Have a little self restraint.
IDK, I like Paradox’s DLC policy. It sure beats paying full price every year or two for a simple refresh. Their games fit really well into a continually developed model, and they need something to fund continued development.
Paradox has long maintained a DLC policy based around their permanent improvement and development of their games. I don’t get what is greedy about genuinely expanding their games with content that wouldn’t have been in the base game and charging money for it. Some of the DLC may indeed be on the more expensive side, but calling their entire policy greedy is simplistic and just trying to bunch them in with companies trying to rip you off. Sure, there’s been cases where some of Paradox DLC has been egregious, but frankly, the standard case is that they clearly added onto the game that otherwise wouldn’t have been there at all.
To propose one of the titles where this works best is Stellaris. I genuinely mean it, take a look at that games post release development and tell me that Paradox is being genuinely greedy. Just because something is long term profitable doesn’t make them necessarily immoral.
Yeah we knew this already. It wouldn’t even make sense in any case since a lot of the core mechanics are different now.
Like all the industry DLC stuff wouldn’t make sense with the new economy system. And all of the content creator packs wouldn’t make sense with the different art style and zoning systems.
Only dumbasses and entitled people would expect a brand new game to have total feature and asset parity to a game that had 10 years of updates, DLC and freaking mods.
I honestly feel confident CS2 will become a much more complete and better city builder than CS1. And from everything I’ve seen (haven’t played it yet), it’s already better in many ways. Like MIXED ZONING. That’s so major I barely care for anything else tbh.
EDIT: Softened my statements because I didn’t like them on reread.
This COULD become the Sims equation problem all over again. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt until I’ve tried it.
The Sims 3 with all expansions is simply a much better game overall than Sims 4 base game. And since there’s no “sequel story”, you basically just have a “lower quality rerelease”
I can’t find accurate purchase/play figures, but Sims 4 pivoting to F2P last year supports my thoughts on that. In terms of quality, a HD graphics DLC would have been a better value and made them more money.
Except not, because having fewer players give them more money seems to be the new model. More power to em. I really wish “Life By You” wasn’t the only Sims alternative coming out. Paradox is definitely much better than EA, but they’re not perfect either.
There’s also Paralives in the works too! I hope they all succeed so they can make EA start sweating before they release a very obviously worse Sims 5. 🙏
Opinion: Well some mods and features probably got included in base game so it wouldn’t make sense to just redo them if they are already there as QoL features.
And the whole specific-house-as-a-feature thing is done by Sims since all eternetiy.
Well obviously. It’s a new game and adapting the DLC would be costly. Is CS going to face this ridiculous critique that people apply to The Sims all the time too?
The game is reported to be fun and it comes with a whole bunch of CS1’s most popular utility more built in. I think I can forgive it for not having content parity with every DLC ever released for the first one at launch.
Yeah, I’ll probably pick it up once the performance issues have been ironed out. They promised as good or better performance vs C:S, and until they deliver, I’ll be waiting. Even better if it takes until their first sale.
Or, and hear me out, re-writing and re-working all the features built over a decade to work in this new game would take so much time and effort that CS2 would either never launch, or not be worth CO’s expense if the game sold at a standard price?
Sure, I might have made it sound worse that I intended. I mean… I am not implying is a copy paste thing it requires work specially if the game had important changes, some of which might not be visible to the user.
As one of my favorite baduk streamers puts it, “the mistake was earlier”.
Using dozens of DLCs to get B2B-grade revenue out of a game sounds like a great business strategy, but as Paradox is EOLing all those games that people have spent hundreds on, I think there is this reaction of “why should I prepare to spend hundreds again?”
I genuinely believe this is a “short term revenue” thing, and will ultimately cost them against a subscription-from-day-1 model. I mean, I doubt I’m the only person who can’t bring themselves to even LOOK at Crusader Kings 3. I never touched Sims 4 until it was free. And if EU5 comes out? I’ll act the same. Paradox already has more of my money than Blizzard, so more power to them, but how many people like me aren’t going to consider buying sequels? It’s not about the money, it’s about the investment of money. If I were in $500 from subscription fees, I’d feel less harmed than $300 in DLCs for a now-out-of-print game. We humans are a complicated psychology
For me, I’ll try em when they’re free or when they go full patient-gamer. Which is a shame because Paradox makes excellent games. They just keep making people like me want to wait to pull the trigger.
So when considering whether to pull the trigger on CK3 or spend more time in your beloved CK2, where does your head go?
It’s not a bad thing that you think CK2 was worth every penny. I think my espresso machine was worth every penny. But I don’t buy lattes or make drip coffee because I have it and it cost me more than I thought I’d ever spend.
Fair enough. I think my arguments still stands less the obvious anecdotes. I decided to explain my thoughts a bit deeper in another thread if anyone’s interested.
IDK, I have most of the DLC for EU4, all of the DLC for CK2, and about half of the DLC for C:S, and I’m excited for C:S2, I own CK3, and I really hope they make EU5 soon.
Yeah, I’ve paid Paradox hundreds over the years, but I’ve gotten thousands of hours of entertainment from them, so my cost per hour is way lower with their games than with other games I play. My top four games in terms of playtime are all Paradox published, and I’ve paid <$1/hr for each game. That’s amazing value imo.
That’s fair. I don’t have numbers to back this, but I do know a little about psychology related to sunken cost. We’re drawn to embrace and support what we’ve invested in. Actually I’ve got some numbers that “sorta” back it depending on how you look at them.
CK2 sold 2M copies in about 2.5 years. CK3 sold the same number of copies in 1.5 years. Why is that an argument that CK2’s DLC is hurting CK3 sales? Two reasons. First, because Paradox is a MUCH bigger company now than it was in 2014 (thanks in part to Cities Skylines, topically speaking), and CK3 would/should be riding on the coattails of CK2 and isn’t. Second, because those 2M sales for CK2 includes an added 7M DLC sales, and DLCs arguably reduce sales a bit simply by existing (I know I was in the boat of “holding off a while” because of the DLC).
IDK, I think that form of argument is a bit like reading tea leaves, up to interpretation and easy to align with preconceived notions.
What we need to make a strong argument is a comparison with similar games where one set follows a release model and the other follows a DLC model. Then look at initial sales vs lifetime sales, development budgets, how much discounts impact sales, etc.
That said, a game like CK or EU targets a niche audience, so they want to get more value from the initial game development, so DLC makes sense. The dev cost vs initial sales probably isn’t very favorable vs mass appeal games, so they use DLC to recoup that cost as a form of customer retention. So drawing direct comparisons will be difficult.
IDK, I think that form of argument is a bit like reading tea leaves, up to interpretation and easy to align with preconceived notions.
I’m utilizing established psychological and business concepts and applying them to the gaming industry only to recognize that the outcome is a number I would have predicted. But, I never mind a good cup of tea either, I just use those leaves to guess the stock market (kidding, obviously). The stock market, ironically, seems to agree with me on this. CK3 released 9/2020 in the middle of COVID. Paradox stock went up $10 per share coming up on release date, held for a few months, and then broke falling to pre-CK3 levels fairly quickly. Compare to other gaming companies. Blizzard/Activision grew 20% in the same timeline with no coinciding game releases at all.
Obviously, you have to take any stock change with a grain of salt, as news and random events can affect stock prices. But product expectations (both internal and external) drive stock. Of course, one could just say “maybe CK3 underperformed against expectations, but it’s not related” but if I have to pick between the model that predicted reality and a model that has to say “maybe”, I pick the former.
What we need to make a strong argument is a comparison with similar games where one set follows a release model and the other follows a DLC model. Then look at initial sales vs lifetime sales, development budgets, how much discounts impact sales, etc.
Are you suggesting that games are somehow “different” from other market segments in this way, despite prima facie being affected by exactly that?
That said, a game like CK or EU targets a niche audience, so they want to get more value from the initial game development, so DLC makes sense
I don’t disagree. Any niche product with a highish budget needs to consider creative monetization strategies. If you can’t sell the product for enough to make a profit, then you can’t really justify developing it. That doesn’t mean the strategy paradox used for CK2 wasn’t going to affect sales for CK3. I don’t know what I’d do if I were a decisionmaker at Paradox because it’s not an easy problem. I’m not saying they didn’t do the best they could, only that I am fairly convinced CK2’s model influences the sales of CK3.
I’m using established psychological and business concepts
I meant looking at one data point and extrapolating a pattern and causation. All your data point shows is that CK3 sold more than CK2 over a shorter time span, but maybe not as much more as one might expect. There are a lot of other valid ways one might interpret that data.
CK2’s model includes the sales of CK3
Well sure, any sequel is impacted by the game it’s succeeding. That’s true for pretty much any product.
The question is, did CK2’s model hurt CK3’s sales long term? Paradox’s DLC model is a long term strategy, so initial sales are a bit less interesting than longer term sales than in other games, but they’re still indicative of interest and how successful future DLC releases are likely to be.
To get that answer, we need to compare Paradox’s model vs similar games that use a different model. That’s the same way you’d do it in stock market analysis if you’re trying to identify why a stock movement happened.
I’d much rather pay one time purchases than a subscription, because then it feels like I’m just renting instead of buying.
And an “EOL” game isn’t necessarily bad because now modders can mod the game without worrying about updates breaking things, unless the game goes truly “EOL” by removing aspects of the game or worse, the game itself.
I’d much rather pay one time purchases than a subscription, because then it feels like I’m just renting instead of buying.
I agree completely in most cases. It’s these mega-DLC games that flip the script. I can only use personal experience as precedent, but for me I just can’t bring myself to play a game I haven’t invested a lot of money in over a very similar game I have.
And an “EOL” game isn’t necessarily bad because now modders can mod the game without worrying about updates breaking things
Yeah, but this sorta reiterates my point. Modders embracing the older game makes it hard to sell a newer game. I mean, I have a feeling Minecraft2 would not be nearly as easy a sell as Minecraft is.
“If you’re on the fence about the sequel, though, I’ve gotta say that it’s really the performance updates you’re going to want to watch for, because woof does this game run badly.”
Not like this seems to be status quo in game dev for >1 guy game studios right now (sadly).
Just don’t buy/pre order or refund after testing and we are all join the patient gamer community.
Haven’t bought a modern current-year release since >2 years.
Yep, there’s no reason that users should have to PAY for the privilege of being “beta” testers. I learned this the hard way in the early days of the Civ 6 release. 😔
CS1 was notoriously known to be tied to single core CPU performance
I hope at least that got better, this really hit laptop gamer even if they had beefy GPUs in the laptop
Yup, C:S and Paradox first party games are really CPU heavy, so your GPU really doesn’t matter that much unless it’s an absolute potato. My laptop ran C:S okay with just a mid-tier AMD APU (3500U IIRC).
Considering the original that came out 10 years ago still eats up my overclocked octocore entirely unmodded and with several DLC disabled, I’m equal parts not surprised and highly concerned. They’ll get it down eventually, but this is one of the issues that Unity always seems to have with most performance heavy simulation games, regardless of whatever tech they throw at the situation (Burst compiled multithread tasks, DOTS ECS, C#/MSIL to native, etc). The engine is just too bloated and has way too many packages by default for this type of resource intensive game.
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