Not to mentioning releasing the same game twice, 10 years apart…
Looking at you, Cities: Skylines.
Photonic_sorcerer if PDX released a major overhaul DLC to make all these huge changes to the underlying systems of the OG game (which would be even more tedious, expensive, and buggy) for $40:
“ZOMG Ten years before they fix this game?! AND they want me to PAY FOR IT?! Fuck PDX and their DLC addiction!”
It needed to happen at some point. Cities: Skylines had quite a few engine limitations and the core gameplay was too simple, it wasn’t enough to keep piling on new features. A sequel gave them the opportunity to start from scratch and rework fundamental systems (like the roads) without having to ensure old cities still worked.
PDX is one of the few companies I’ll (barely) forgive for this behavior.
Their degree of experience and institutional knowledge on making systems that function well for strategy games is frankly unmatched, they’re like 10ish years ahead of the rest of the genre, usually.
Employing those people for that length of time to build up the experience necessary to deliver consistency like this probably means you need a very reliable, predictable income stream, something you can count on like clockwork. That’ll give you the freedom to let some random dude iterate the same thing for 10 years, making it gradually better and better.
Given how much room for improvement the grand strategy genre still has, and how difficult it seems to be to perfect compared to something like a shooter, I understand why this might be necessary to give any kind of high chance of continuing success.
So, I barely forgive them for this bs, more than I forgive others that do it. WoW pioneered this pattern, I think, and it did work for them.
Been making the same game for ten years.
“Complete” editions of the games sell for hundreds of dollars when not on a practically mandatory steam sale.
Developed an entire game based on naval combat in space, with a good ship designer and interesting events.
Still can’t make the naval units in HOI4 anything other than “click here to stop enemy from getting resources from water” and showing navy battles as an actual battleship board in a pop up.
People will pay hundreds of dollars for this.
Paradox developed themselves right into a niche, and then they charge a premium to the few people who enjoy staring at a map with gifs on it. They have barely innovated on the idea for 20 years. 20 years ago, we had the greatest grand strategy game ever released: Rome: Total War. Paradox has not even come close to touching the greatness of that game.
Paradox releases a complete game, then continues to develop content for said game.
If you don’t want it, don’t buy it - but don’t say it’s incomplete just because they built something new for it 5 years later.
Well it is partially true in the newer games there are cases where the “main” game barely functions without the first two or three dlcs so they made the game intentionally bad.
Shit I’ll take expansions over battle passes and what passes for “seasonal content” these days.
DLCs/Expansions are one time upfront payment you bought it you own it and upload it. Unlike IAPs pure cosmetics and even ruins the game. And reboots are worst
