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I divide the cost of my house by the number of hours I've spent in it and directly compare that number to the cost/duration of a movie ticket to determine if I've gotten a good deal or not.
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Apr 14, 2019 01:01
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starting 2 think that games as a commodity might have some downsides that show in their development....
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Apr 14, 2019 01:01
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Sampatrick posted:I'm a big fan of Paradox; however, it's pretty funny for people to say that it's a good thing that Paradox releases features that are buggy and later on fixes them/expands them with DLC. This isn't a positive for Paradox, it's the bare minimum. I don't think this is what most people are saying when they say things like this. For whatever reason there's a number of goons who have decided that Paradox's DLC methodologies are the great satan and typically when they pop up to (100% of the time) to sound like crazy people there's usually a very reasonable pushback of "Well actually..." and also some " It's not ideal but it's better than [...] " which I'm hardly going to hold against anybody. Paradox games get supported with meaningful releases for longer than pretty much anyone else except maybe the Endless games or various ultra-indies. A game in development has to get put out with a developer-desired feature set at some point in development. You can't just build and build and build your game forever unless you're not really running a business because you're already silly rich or you're a soon-to-be failed Kickstarter project. At that point most of your studio has to move on to making your next game, unless you're stupid and plan to have a business with one release and some dlc forever. Presumably the reason Paradox's flagship studio all sticks to the one engine is to share some interoperability between projects but also to cut down on necessary back learning. I feel fairly confident in saying that no studio has ever done remotely the amount of parallel and high quality support and development for so many 'old' titles. It's similarly stupid to look at Paradox DLC as things stripped from the basic release or intentionally cripplec for many of the same reasons. One could make a pretty strong argument that Stellaris shouldn't have been released for another year and I can't personally speak to HoI4 because those have never been my thing but it might have also used some more time. 2/4 on grossly complex game releases that have since been fixed up, especially from a company with Paradox's record for release quality in the pre-CK2 is extremely laudable. Cough slurp Groogy that'll be one Imperator please. But I honestly do feel that way and it really is just as simple as don't buy a new Paradox game for a month to see if it's an EU4/CK2 or a Stellaris/HoI4. Orv fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 01:13
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I'm not really talking about the DLC model fwiw I'm mostly talking about how you shouldn't get lauded for doing the bare minimum of ensuring that the game you release is functional and not a buggy piece of trash. Paradox fixing it later on isn't a good thing - it shouldn't have needed fixing in the first place. Also, Paradox doesn't deliberately strip out parts of a game before release, but the release product usually has a ton of systems with relatively little depth to them with a pretty clear plan of fleshing out those systems later on. In my opinion that's kinda exploitative but it's not like the most exploitative thing in gaming so it's not like a huge deal or w/e.
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Apr 14, 2019 01:23
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The only way to get a bug free game is to stop developing it.
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Apr 14, 2019 01:47
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It's true but at the same time I kinda got used to the fact that most complex strategy games are going to be bugged and grossly unbalanced at launch. It happens to other kinds of games as well, but it is specially true in this genre. And that's why I usually will wait for a at least a year before trying these games But with paradox, I know they will take serious effort to fix and improve their games after launch, and for a very long time. Even completely overhauling parts of the games, like they did with stellaris, and mostly for free (you don't have to buy any DLCs to have the new tileless planet system, for ex) And yeah, that's a lot more than we can say about most major game publishers. See firaxis with civ 6
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Apr 14, 2019 01:52
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Sampatrick posted:I'm not really talking about the DLC model fwiw I'm mostly talking about how you shouldn't get lauded for doing the bare minimum of ensuring that the game you release is functional and not a buggy piece of trash. Paradox fixing it later on isn't a good thing - it shouldn't have needed fixing in the first place. I don't think anyone is lauding them for buggy releases or framing it as a good thing at all, the stance is just that it's not damning either since they as a rule have been fixed up after the fact. Comparing video games to building a loving house beggars belief, just wait you morons, who cares if you don't wanna play the game until two years later, it's not like Paradox games are at the cutting edge of graphics and will immediately obsolesce or anything. And what's the alternative to systems with little depth then? It's covering half the entire world, of course it's gonna be shallow in lots of places. The alternative is CK2-style "you don't get to play here until you get the DLC" which is like, objectively worse from a consumer standpoint even if it masks the shallowness more.
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Apr 14, 2019 02:03
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Baronjutter posted:casting shadows on the solar system they sold me I didn't play Stellaris either but this seems a little harsh to me.
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Apr 14, 2019 02:45
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Overall I don't much like way most games are relying more and more on DLC, and I especially don't like how some of these games end up being like a hundred bucks for the whole package. Although Paradox games have some interesting excuses. Their games are a massive scale that offer so many things to different players that it's hard to really create an entire compete package out the gate. It's also worth noting that their DLC model is changing over time, and they've been doing some free updates as well, so at the very least if things are bad now they might get better later.
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Apr 14, 2019 03:13
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bethesda games are known for releasing as buggy borderline unplayable junk that requires years of mods to fix, but for some reason people don't complain as much about, like, skyrim not that you're not allowed to criticize paradox but it always seems weird to me how much paradox fans seem to hate the games they pour hundreds or thousands of hours into
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Apr 14, 2019 03:15
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aardvaard posted:bethesda games are known for releasing as buggy borderline unplayable junk that requires years of mods to fix, but for some reason people don't complain as much about, like, skyrim people complain about it a lot, just not in this thread, thats about paradox games. for proof of bethesda games failing hard to widespread public admonishment due to their poor bugchecking see fallout 76
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Apr 14, 2019 03:20
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Agean90 posted:people complain about it a lot, just not in this thread, thats about paradox games. for proof of bethesda games failing hard to widespread public admonishment due to their poor bugchecking see fallout 76 That's not REGULAR bethesda bugginess though, that's a whole level beyond.
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Apr 14, 2019 03:29
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Agean90 posted:people complain about it a lot, just not in this thread, thats about paradox games. for proof of bethesda games failing hard to widespread public admonishment due to their poor bugchecking see fallout 76 but oblivion, skyrim, fallout 3, fallout nv, fallout 4? fallout nv is one of my favorite games but god does that game have bugs. game breaking ones.
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Apr 14, 2019 03:31
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Paradox, especially EU4 dlc can be incomprehensible if you don’t continually follow the game and just end up on a steam store page looking at 200 bucks worth of game. EU is definitely the biggest offender. It’s become a stack of janky systems that don’t interact much with either each other or the base game and often are only tangentially tied to the nominal theme of the dlc.
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Apr 14, 2019 03:35
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This is because EU4 is ultimately a very shallow game
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Apr 14, 2019 03:41
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It really isn't though. Yeah there are a whole lot of systems on top of it that make it look way more complex than it actually is, but the diplomacy / nation building part of the game that's all built on is incredibly deep.
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Apr 14, 2019 03:45
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I feel like I got my money's worth from EU4 and its DLC. I didn't buy a couple of them at release (or at all like the latest one), but I do like that they're still improving the game. That house analogy post was so stupid, even for this thread. SlothfulCobra posted:Overall I don't much like way most games are relying more and more on DLC, and I especially don't like how some of these games end up being like a hundred bucks for the whole package. EU4 at release felt like a normal, full sequel to me. You could have bought that, played it for a couple hundred hours and been done. if you disagree, you prob shouldn't have bought it in the first place IMO. feller fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 03:49
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aardvaard posted:but oblivion, skyrim, fallout 3, fallout nv, fallout 4? yeah fallout new vegas got a lot of flak on release for bugs, its the reason it got a bunch of lower scores despite being the best.
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Apr 14, 2019 03:50
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Using the existence of other game's bugs as an excuse to try and validate the ones paradox regularly has nowadays is a quick race right to the bottom of acceptable quality. Which is unsurprisingly what has happened. Same thing has happened with content and the belief that everything can/should be added post-release - for a modest fee, of course. PI is no longer a small company and should be held to the fire for their faults.
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Apr 14, 2019 03:56
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It's not for a fee though. Literally like half the poo poo is added for free whether you pay or not. I think there's a valid criticism in that sometimes the devs don't give enough thought to how things'll work for people that don't have the DLC, but they give plenty of post-release support all the same.
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Apr 14, 2019 04:01
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Agean90 posted:yeah fallout new vegas got a lot of flak on release for bugs, its the reason it got a bunch of lower scores despite being the best. I still don't get why F:NV is so popular, the Vegas desert is an objectively less fun environment to explore than the capital wasteland, despite FO3 being a complete piece of poo poo at release.
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Apr 14, 2019 04:07
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I love PDX games but I would still agree that all the main series games come with endless flavour and mechanics DLCs entirely to disguise the ultimately shallow gameplay and terrible AI
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Apr 14, 2019 04:08
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PittTheElder posted:I still don't get why F:NV is so popular, the Vegas desert is an objectively less fun environment to explore than the capital wasteland, despite FO3 being a complete piece of poo poo at release. It was the smartest and most interesting western rpg ever made on release, for one.
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Apr 14, 2019 04:19
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Rynoto posted:Using the existence of other game's bugs as an excuse to try and validate the ones paradox regularly has nowadays is a quick race right to the bottom of acceptable quality. Are you saying the game should be bugfree? That is impossible for anything more complex than like solitaire, at least until we automate programming
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Apr 14, 2019 04:21
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PittTheElder posted:objectively less fun that's not a thing
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Apr 14, 2019 04:23
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Mantis42 posted:It was the smartest and most interesting western rpg ever made on release, for one. Well maybe, though I think the relative improvement over FO3 is all that huge. Meanwhile as a post-apoc shooter, setting it in the middle of the desert was a huge step back.
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Apr 14, 2019 04:31
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Post-post-apoc western was good actually.
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Apr 14, 2019 04:33
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PittTheElder posted:I still don't get why F:NV is so popular, the Vegas desert is an objectively less fun environment to explore than the capital wasteland, despite FO3 being a complete piece of poo poo at release. The overall setting and the execution of it's plot is better than 3 or 4 to the point where it stands out accordingly and send. The less said about the gameplay and technical merits of the engine its on the better.
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Apr 14, 2019 04:41
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PittTheElder posted:I still don't get why F:NV is so popular, the Vegas desert is an objectively less fun environment to explore than the capital wasteland, despite FO3 being a complete piece of poo poo at release. Well, it's a basis of a good HOI4 mod?
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Apr 14, 2019 04:43
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Rynoto posted:Using the existence of other game's bugs as an excuse to try and validate the ones paradox regularly has nowadays is a quick race right to the bottom of acceptable quality. Pretty much my opinion. Yes I could cut multi million dollar, publicly traded companies slack then argue why, bit then I'd be doing for free the job their marketing and PR folks get paid to do and  gently caress that.
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Apr 14, 2019 04:43
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To be honest I don’t think paradox games are terribly buggy? They have some but that’s unavoidable
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Apr 14, 2019 04:49
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Otoh I don’t think it’s fair to link the dev team for an individual game to the company as a whole. They have bosses, and budgets and deadlines are set for them just like anyone else.
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Apr 14, 2019 04:54
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CharlestheHammer posted:To be honest I don’t think paradox games are terribly buggy? They have some but that’s unavoidable I don't think the AI is that bad, either. Depending on the game.
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Apr 14, 2019 05:16
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modern paradox games tend to ship with some poor design decisions included, but not a lot of show-stopping bugs. the dlc cycle lets them exist as a company within capitalism while providing ongoing support for fixing those design decisions. this is much better than the practices of comparable competitors, and the industry in general, where poor design decisions from launch remain for the lifetime of the game
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Apr 14, 2019 06:21
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Paradox, especially EU4 dlc can be incomprehensible if you don’t continually follow the game and just end up on a steam store page looking at 200 bucks worth of game. EU is definitely the biggest offender. It’s become a stack of janky systems that don’t interact much with either each other or the base game and often are only tangentially tied to the nominal theme of the dlc. Strong disagree, this feels like an opinion from a year ago that hasn't been updated and is just being repeated. Development got moved into the base functionality, estates are less annoying, things tie together pretty well. Innovativeness despite the dumb name makes the tech choices more interesting in terms of when to spend monarch points. The idea groups combo together with the gameplay much better after the rebalance. Estates are tolerable since they don't have minimums and interact with the other mechanics. States and Territories caps make expansion more interesting instead of a straight land grab for the first time in a while. Absolutism is great, the ages and their bonuses are great, the way age bonuses drive towards things is real cool, the mission system is a lot better than it was. Even Government reforms are fun and combo well with the rest of the mechanics. The patches since DDRJake has come on board have really pulled together the design and EU4, in my opinion, is in the best shape it's ever been in. It's a lot of fun to play. If only it had decent army automation I would have 0 complaints, as it is now the endgame still turns into a slog of rebels and ever larger wars with ever more micro and massive stacks with horrific attrition as you engage 80+ stacks and have to micro the armies to siege and then reassemble to fight in the lategame, everything else feels really solid all game long. Ham Sandwiches fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 06:27
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CharlestheHammer posted:To be honest I don’t think paradox games are terribly buggy? They have some but that’s unavoidable Paradox does have some awful QA, though. Stellaris and HoI iin particular have issues about this, with CK2 and EU4 in general being generic enough to skate by. Namely, things that are attached to a DLC do not tend to get updated with a new DLC/patch as necessary. In Stellaris, the newest big change tripped up gesalt empires because not everything was properly compensated for (though this was swiftly fixed, but not the point) and in HoI as a rule of thumb all countries with focus trees in Together for Victory break every new big DLC. For instance, when Waking the Tiger came out Germany could go not-Hitler, but a bunch of Commonwealth tries required Hitler to be Hitlering to actually progress whatsoever, like South Africa's Commonwealth branch. Man the Guns in particular is a huge mess for them, as pretty much all of their naval focus trees still point to the old designs for ships across the board, including giving you those old, now extremely overpowered ships if it gives you a free boat/design. This too was fixed by now, mostly, but still. Maybe calling QA bad is an overstatement, as it's relatively rare they're trash happy. But the actual testing environment and double checking their work is weirdly awful.
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Apr 14, 2019 06:38
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Stellaris sucked balls for like two years straight with dumbshit mechanics and just broken AI. I was gonna give it another try when the new pop/tile system debuted, but right away people were talking about how some poo poo that I can't remember was completely busted and I should wait for the first post 2.0 patch instead. I just forgot it about instead because jesus christ. That's just bad business and there are no two ways to slice it. I liked Crusader Kings 2 though.
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Apr 14, 2019 06:49
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To everyone saying that paradox is bad and how dare they release unfinished games and fix them later Do you realize that the vast majority of developers release games, maybe patch out the biggest game breaking bugs and call it a day 2-3 months later? Leaving whatever other bugs and jankiness are left there forever? We are not talking about FPS #35567, sports game 2019, racing game or indie platform game stealing concepts from old titles, these grand strategy games are some of the most complex games around with a ton of moving parts and most of it player facing (so ton of opportunities for players to gently caress it up even more, compared to say the physics simulation of a flying game which while complex, is out of the "reach" of players mostly) If you wanna compare them to other games, try Civilization or the Elder Scrolls (series existing for decades, very famous, complex and big budget) and then come tell me paradox has bad AI or lovely support with a straight face... 
TorakFade fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 07:53
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The "let's get a bunch of really bad Youtubers to play our game" Imperator stream had the Seleucids collapse in such an epic fashion that they had two civil wars at the same time somehow (this is a bug)
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Apr 14, 2019 09:20
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RabidWeasel posted:The "let's get a bunch of really bad Youtubers to play our game" Imperator stream had the Seleucids collapse in such an epic fashion that they had two civil wars at the same time somehow It shouldn't be a bug, having several rebellions against tyrants, that can't put out the first one quick, should be the norm.
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Apr 14, 2019 09:31
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