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VostokProgram posted:I haven't played a whole lot of the hoi4 version of kaiserreich but from what I have played I definitely think the paradox-designed alternate history trees are a lot better. The kaiserreich Germany tree has a lot of unnecessary poo poo iirc, whereas the paradox oppose Hitler tree makes every focus seem pretty relevant. So I definitely appreciate the focus tree DLCs and will probably continue buying each one.
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Oct 4, 2018 00:37
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I mean, the reason why I even got into Paradox was their CK2 bundle that had everything up to Old Gods for like, 20 bux or something. Since then I've gotten every DLC for that game and now EUIV so the strategy works, certainly
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Oct 4, 2018 00:44
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VostokProgram posted:By the way, what was the alchemy thing in Vicky 2? Can artisans really just change resources out to anything else? I'm not sure of the details but I think it's based around the fact that artisans just get the "input resources" needed for crafting included in their daily needs, rather than being a separate thing, and their output is based on the total percentage of daily needs that are being met. So they can still end up producing goods even if none of the resources they would actually use to make it are available - so long as they're still fulfilling the other "generic" daily needs like clothes and booze.
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Oct 4, 2018 01:07
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There's sales, but even at its cheapest, EU4 + all the recommended DLCs costs upwards of 60 bucks, maybe 80 or even a hundred. That's a hell of a price. Broadly, Paradox's current model of making a big full-price product and then putting out DLCs for years after the fact fits current industry trends. More and more games have $60 dollar releases with a laundry list of DLCs after the fact. I don't know how amounts of content per dollar or time in development compare to how they used to, and I don't like having to pick and choose how much game I get, but that's what the industry has decided to supply and apparently the consumer side of the equation has decided to accept it, by and large.
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Oct 4, 2018 01:15
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Oh cool is it time to talk about how "bloated" EU4 is and how it's "a mess" for the 800th time while not giving any specifics or details?
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Oct 4, 2018 02:04
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Senor Dog posted:Oh cool is it time to talk about how "bloated" EU4 is and how it's "a mess" for the 800th time while not giving any specifics or details? okay it's difficult to tell what DLC affects what. the move to make every DLC at least somewhat desirable to all players means that often key features for universal strategies are buried in DLC packs that are completely unrelated. this also leads to obvious feature creep; for example, innovativeness is chaff. players with DLC are playing an entirely different game from those without, complicating any ability to talk about the game. vassal feeding, shifting occupation, seeding institutions, favors, trade companies, and golden eras are all gated by DLC. this is aggravated by the difficulty of figuring out which DLC. some of EU4's oldest, most tedious micro-heavy systems have quality of life improvements gated behind DLC. ships and diplomats are the worst offenders. this also complicates teaching people the game, as above. many of the DLC systems are largely redundant. for example, there's at least four different systems where lower powers in your government want a share of influence (estates, the merchant republic/china thing, parliaments, autonomy, crises) and their interactions are haphazard to nonexistent. innovativeness is not meaningfully distinct from being ahead of time on tech, or the effects of tech themselves for that matter. this is a larger problem going back to vanilla - eg combat ability, discipline, and morale are all the same stat representing the same thing with negligible differences. EU4 is really bad at naming mechanics and stats in a way that is semi-obvious from context. off the top of my head: discipline, bribes (a term from the parliament system only!), states (which has two different meanings depending on context), army tradition, army professionalism, corruption, monarch power (not limited to monarchs, of course), reformed christianity. the constant addition of new mechanics and stats and bars aggravates this. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 02:47
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I didn't play EU4 at all between Mandate of Heaven and Dharma and this thread really gave me a distorted view of it. I don't think deep integration of every new mechanic with every old one is feasible or even desirable. Innovativeness doesn't need to have complex interactions to be interesting. It's a trade-off of spending more points on early tech in exchange for a global power discount and that's all it needs to be. Same with army professionalism--it's kind of limited, but it's supposed to be.
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Oct 4, 2018 02:54
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the point is that there's no reason for those to exist at all except as chaff to pad out DLC feature lists.
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Oct 4, 2018 02:55
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I don't see how features being too inconsequential makes the game bloated.
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Oct 4, 2018 02:57
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Magissima posted:I don't see how features being too inconsequential makes the game bloated. it makes it difficult to tell consequential numbers from inconsequential ones, difficult to tell which DLC has what effect on the game, and difficult for players on either side of the DLC ravine to discuss EU4 strategies with each other.
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Oct 4, 2018 02:59
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Magissima posted:I don't see how feature bloat makes the game bloated.
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Oct 4, 2018 03:00
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Magissima posted:I don't see how features being too inconsequential makes the game bloated. Don’t try and fight it just let them whine
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Oct 4, 2018 03:03
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CharlestheHammer posted:Don’t try and fight it just let them whine really meeting effort with effort here
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Oct 4, 2018 03:12
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Cease to Hope posted:really meeting effort with effort here It seems like the correct tact yeah.
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Oct 4, 2018 03:19
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Cease to Hope posted:really meeting effort with effort here Don't try and fight it just let them whine.
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Oct 4, 2018 03:23
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Yeah, you're all right, let's strip these new sources of bloat out, gently caress development and autonomy, those are just more numbers to be confused by. Give me the classic non-bloat stats I know and love, prestige and naval tradition. Institutions? No thank you, it's much simpler and more streamlined to be locked into a tech group. Meaningful, if not earth-shattering, trade-offs?! How dare you, Jake Hey does anyone else want magistrates back??
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Oct 4, 2018 03:32
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Gobblecoque posted:Don't try and fight it just let them whine. See this guy gets it. This argument literally has no way to win as feature bloat itself is a nebulous term. So features someone doesn’t care for are going to be defined that way and you just aren’t gonna convince them to like them. It will go around in a big circle accomplishing nothing.
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Oct 4, 2018 03:32
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Magissima posted:I don't see how features being too inconsequential makes the game bloated. lmao are you kidding with this post
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Oct 4, 2018 03:51
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In my experience a lot of new players are brought in by buying the base game to play with a friend who can host, and if they end up really liking it they add on more expansions as their budget allows. Seems pretty sustainable, but yeah I'd definitely like to see older expansions start to be included in the base price.
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Oct 4, 2018 06:08
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Magissima posted:Yeah, you're all right, let's strip these new sources of bloat out, gently caress development and autonomy, those are just more numbers to be confused by. Give me the classic non-bloat stats I know and love, prestige and naval tradition. Institutions? No thank you, it's much simpler and more streamlined to be locked into a tech group. Aren't autonomy and institutions free patch features? Speaking of DLC problems I have a friend who stopped playing because they don't have much money and a gameplay feature important to them (declaring provinces to be of special interest to prevent allies from occupying land you want) was locked behind DLC and that frustrated them. I haven't told them about the diplo automation.
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Oct 4, 2018 06:47
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SlothfulCobra posted:There's sales, but even at its cheapest, EU4 + all the recommended DLCs costs upwards of 60 bucks, maybe 80 or even a hundred. That's a hell of a price. It's never been a huge issue for me, because I've followed and bought all the current Paradox games from their launch, so it's never really been more than $10 or $20 at a time, which I think is fine, but I can see the problem for something getting into one of the games. You don't necessarily need all of the DLC for all the games, but then you have the issue of needing to do research and find out which DLCs are thought to be kind of mandatory and which aren't. Honestly I kind of think a subscription model would be appropriate for Paradox games where you pay a regular fee (say quarterly) for access to one of their games and all its content, with some purely cosmetic stuff possibly remaining DLC. Would give Paradox the continued revenue stream to keep supporting their games, would remove the issue of having to factor in what is and isn't DLC when working on patches and updates (EU4 recently circumvented that by making one previous DLC feature, eastates, into a free feature so they could update and support it) and it would mean a much lower price of entry for new players looking to try out one of the games.
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Oct 4, 2018 06:59
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Gamerofthegame posted:I'm on the bleh train simply looking at the steam storefront page for it. the complete eu4 experience is 200 bux. I agree with this. If base EUV recombines the various DLC improvements in an organic way, and ditches what doesn't work or is too difficult to integrate, it could be the best strategy game ever made. As for EUIV, it's still a good game at its core but it just feels like an impenetrable mess to me at this point.
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Oct 4, 2018 07:16
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Keeping up post-launch support costs money, and given the choice between the Paradox DLC model and no improvements I'll take the DLC model they have.Randarkman posted:Honestly I kind of think a subscription model would be appropriate for Paradox games where you pay a regular fee (say quarterly) for access to one of their games and all its content, with some purely cosmetic stuff possibly remaining DLC. Would give Paradox the continued revenue stream to keep supporting their games, would remove the issue of having to factor in what is and isn't DLC when working on patches and updates (EU4 recently circumvented that by making one previous DLC feature, eastates, into a free feature so they could update and support it) and it would mean a much lower price of entry for new players looking to try out one of the games. I don't think this would work in their favor because a lot of people are leery of the concept of "renting" games, and just wants to own the game instead of having them be a monthly drain on finances. This is doubly true for people who aren't all that well off financially, for them keeping an eye out for sales to grab the stuff they want is better than having to worry whether they will be able to afford playing the game a few months down the line.
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Oct 4, 2018 08:07
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Phlegmish posted:I agree with this. If base EUV recombines the various DLC improvements in an organic way, and ditches what doesn't work or is too difficult to integrate, it could be the best strategy game ever made. As for EUIV, it's still a good game at its core but it just feels like an impenetrable mess to me at this point. A couple years back, Arumba did a video series where he taught the game to someone who was very familiar with Civ. I think they unpaused something like 45-50 minutes into explaining the game, and it was another 30 minutes before they ended the first year.
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Oct 4, 2018 08:12
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AG3 posted:Keeping up post-launch support costs money, and given the choice between the Paradox DLC model and no improvements I'll take the DLC model they have. CK2 doesn't have the problems EU4 does, though.
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Oct 4, 2018 08:16
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RabidWeasel posted:It does seem weird that there's absolutely no reduction in buy-in for new players at all, I have to assume that they have some very persuasive data suggesting that they're not losing sales. Steam sales, and the fact that DLC prices go down over time. Right now Conquest of Paradise is a base of £10 and you'd easily find it on a sale for £5. Meanwhile Dharma is £15.
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Oct 4, 2018 08:18
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Magissima posted:I don't see how features being too inconsequential makes the game bloated. I'm trying to get back into EU IV after several years and it's kind of frustrating. I started off just playing vanilla (plus conquest of paradise which I bought when it launched because I love the idea, if not the execution, of a random new world), and I was doing okay until I found out that my capital could only support three buildings for some reason and I had wasted one of them with a fort. So apparently I have to invest in development to get more building slots. And apparently the only way to do that in vanilla is with incredibly rare random events. So first question- does that strike anyone else as kind of bullshit? Second question was "how do I fix this?" and so I started looking up what DLC I should probably get. Naturally I went on Steam to check and holy poo poo what a mess. Apparently you can get a DLC and it's "content pack" separately or in a bundle, meaning there are three listings for each DLC, and the importance of each DLC is entirely opaque. I suppose I should be guessing based on the price? So I look it up elsewhere and there are such an enormous mixed bag of features. I think I want Common Sense because I really just want to build another building in my capital, but I should also get Art of War apparently, but looking up the features it doesn't actually look like anything I care about unless I'm (quite plausibly) failing to understand some of the implications. Meanwhile there are some incredible quality of life improvements hidden away in weird little regional DLC, and they sound amazing but no one recommends them and I don't know why. Are those features more useless than they sound? So long story short I didn't buy anything and stopped playing EU IV.
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Oct 4, 2018 08:41
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https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Downloadable_content
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Oct 4, 2018 08:47
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I have played this game a lot and I have no idea what discipline does apart from a vague sense that it makes units better. Or whether if you have a general with fire pips before you have any units with fire pips, whether the generals fire pips actually do anything. Or whether a bonus to tax or a bonus to production is better for my revenues. Or what states are for. Like I can play the game but I can't tell all these very similar looking percentages and terms apart and they all seem to mush together anyway. I wouldn't say EU4 is impenetrable because I can still play it without knowing all the specifics of that spreadsheet maths, but it's kind of annoying and unintuitive sometimes.
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Oct 4, 2018 08:55
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I've read that. It's not as helpful as you seem to think.
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Oct 4, 2018 08:56
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Red Bones posted:I have played this game a lot and I have no idea what discipline does apart from a vague sense that it makes units better. Or whether if you have a general with fire pips before you have any units with fire pips, whether the generals fire pips actually do anything. Or whether a bonus to tax or a bonus to production is better for my revenues. Or what states are for. Like I can play the game but I can't tell all these very similar looking percentages and terms apart and they all seem to mush together anyway. for what it's worth: discipline increases both damage done and reduces damage taken. 1% discipline is approximately as valuable as 2% morale. fire pips are useful before the invention of guns, although less so than later in the game when you can stack enough fire pips to meaningfully overcome defense. tax is better early, or if most of your income comes from territory. production is better later in the game, or if most of your income comes from trade, or if you have particularly valuable trade goods (especially gold).
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Oct 4, 2018 09:06
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General pips and unit pips both do the same thing, i.e. they modify your die roll for the phase. States lower minimum autonomy to 50% for territorial cores, 0% for full cores (or 25% if you give the province to an estate). Cease to Hope, I’m not sure what you mean by production bonuses being better if most of your income is from trade—are you confusing production and goods produced modifiers?
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Oct 4, 2018 09:41
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Eiba posted:I've read that. You want to know which DLC lets you buy development. Go to that page, CTRL-F, type development, first result in the list of DLCs is "Common Sense". It's fair enough to dislike that you can't buy development without buying the DLC that added that feature, but that's exactly what DLCs are for - adding desirable features to the game. If DLCs didn't add anything anyone wanted to use, nobody would buy them and they wouldn't get made.
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Oct 4, 2018 11:21
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Staltran posted:Cease to Hope, I’m not sure what you mean by production bonuses being better if most of your income is from trade—are you confusing production and goods produced modifiers? increasing production increases goods produced, so you're getting both the base value of the production and increasing the value of the trade flow you control
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Oct 4, 2018 12:14
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They made a sequel to Rome rather than a sequel to Vicky. You’ll never get what you want. Edit: someone in a quarterly meeting laid out how Rome 2 would be more financially viable than Vicky 3(?). RestRoomLiterature- fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 12:31
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I mean Rome is all the imperialism of Vicky but with a smaller map and no gunboats, so I really don't see the appeal.
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Oct 4, 2018 13:14
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A policy where DLC older than 12 months gets integrated and made free would probably make it easier to balance the game and integrate features into other systems. No clue how much money Paradox would lose tough. Getting rid of some things like Army Professionalism, Innovativeness etc wouldn't hurt the game either, you could have the Army Professionalism features unlocked by Army / Navy tradition instead. Some of the mechanics introduced with DLC are really questionable. It's still the best strategy game out there.
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Oct 4, 2018 16:53
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Tahirovic posted:A policy where DLC older than 12 months gets integrated and made free would probably make it easier to balance the game and integrate features into other systems. No clue how much money Paradox would lose tough. Probably quite a lot. I mean, there's a huge group of people that refuse to buy any games on release because they know it'll go on sale in 6-12 months. What do you think that group would do if it were literally free if you waited? I know I'd probably never buy another DLC again.
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Oct 4, 2018 17:01
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Seems more likely that every 6-12 months you'd want to release a DLC that ties everything from the last production cycle together in a more cohesive whole. Makes that one DLC a must-buy that would probably drive sales, as well as helping patch a hole in the current model.
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Oct 4, 2018 17:11
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Frustratingly, it seems like Paradox actually got rid of a really good CK2 bundle recently that contained most of the major DLC for a hefty discount. It was up for months and now it's gone (the love bundle or whatever). These kinds of decisions are baffling to me. It's like they actively want to make their games harder to get into. "Hey guys, these deals we're giving out are too good. Let's raise the price of our games for everyone." - literally what some genius at Paradox's business division thought. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Oct 4, 2018 |
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Oct 4, 2018 17:56
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