The paradox model has a serious problem where games become fleshed out and more beloved after years of dlc, then when a sequel comes out, it goes back to the barebones state of the release that doesnt compete with its built up predecessor at all. Every paradox sequel is doomed to be a disappointment.
Indeed, this is the big hole Paradox have unwittingly dug for themselves with this business model of a game with a long lifecycle. Talk about unrealistic expectations from gamers all you want: but when I see the same title with a higher number behind it, I expect either an improvement on what came before or a follow up (like with films). This is what most people expect and this isn't some ridiculous entitled behaviour. What paradox does is in fact rebooting their existing games (with better design and technology than the previous installment). And although "Europa Universalis: Reboot" doesn't sound very inspiring, that's what it is. But even with a reboot there's the perfectly reasonable assumption that it contains at least the same amount of content as its predecessor. My advice to paradox would be to include at least 80% of EUIV's content and mechanics in EUV at launch and then use DLC's only to flesh out the remaining 20% and to expand on the scope.
Personally my biggest problem with Paradox has been their abandonment of Imperator. I don't like how games are released full of bugs and unfinished mechanics and features but I can accept it, with the expectation that games will get better after a year or two. Paradox completely broke my trust in them, not when they released the broken mess that was Imperator, but when they abandoned it after such a short period and when it was finally reaching a state where I actually found it enjoyable. Imperator Rome has soooo many nice mechanics and enjoyable content, but rather minor problems just ruins it for me. The optional autonomous armies are amazing but the entire food mechanic is terrible, high tier forts basically has your armies starving themselves. You can be right next to your capital with 5k food in store and yet your army can't resupply without abandoning the siege or manually splitting your army to send part of it back for food. You can't even split your army if they're loyal to the commander, they'd rather starve to death than move one province away for a month or two. But personally I find the absolute worst part of it to be how you can't get food in allied territory. Any ally worth having is going to have a decent amount of territory and your armies will be halfway starved to death before they even make it to the enemy. To be fair, the food issues only really start getting bad from the midgame and onwards, early game there'll be plenty of food because nations are smaller overall so you don't starve walking through allied territory and armies are smaller in general so they resupply faster.
They didn't end support until TWO YEARS after release. In what bizarro world can you call that a "short period"? Imagine any other company supporting an unprofitable game for two years. People are straight up unhinged when it comes to how much free work they expect Paradox to perform.
@@ploober5696 That's my point. People got so spoiled by Paradox that even two years of free updates are considered "abandoned after a short period". Many Paradox player don't play other games and start to think the PDX business model is somehow not insanely consumer friendly.
I'm gonna be realistic here. I'm not sure that Imperator was ever designed to be a main title. I went into Imperator with the idea of something like MotE or Sengoku, a title inbetween to generate some money and be able to test mechanics separate from a main title. Many elements of I:R have filtered through the cracks to the games after it.
The real curse is releasing half finished/ broken games and then charging you extra for each feature. First impressions count. Victoria 3 Doesn’t have spheres of influence? What?! that is a core feature.
@@Fonsecaj89 Well you don't have to pay for the DLC if you have Victoria 2, which is currently a better game than Victoria 3 with 2 mods installed. Doesn't even cost more than one Victoria 3 dlc if you buy from a third party site.
@@lolasdm6959 Victoria II is kinda ass without DLC. You can't even play mods without DLC so DLC is a must buy. From what I remember, you can't justify wars, it's hard to distinguish which troops belong to what nation, westernizing doesn't exist, no crises and Prussia's yellow.
@@ppp-vz1mi Yeah and right now I can buy the entire Vic 2 plus all dlc for less than the price of a single Vic 3 dlc. So why would I play Vic 3 if I am not so worried about graphics?
@@lolasdm6959 It's nice that DLC used to be cheaper. Victoria 3 is not Victoria II with just better graphics. It's a diffrent game with diffrent ambitions, goals and system. They do share things, but It's not enought to justify calling it the same game but with better graphics. It's not Victoria II "remastered" or "definitive edition". It's part of the same series... but It's not something revolutionary for sequels to differ from previous game. Victoria 3 had to create it's own identity for people to not call it Victoria II with better graphics... so many changes yet Paradox still failed at defining Vicky 3 identity :(
I've never played Vic2 and Vic3 was still a huge disappointment. The problem with that game is that there are no meaningful choices to be made, and war is simply a numbers game, the only choice you can make is to have the bigger numbers. You can't choose to have your army defend mountains and leave the plains alone, or do anything strategic in this grand strategy game. When it comes to building up your country, every single country is the same - again there are no choices there - except if you have an event or two specific to your nation. By removing control of armies they also downgraded the importance of geography, which, when you are staring at a map the entire time, ought to be important. And there is just so much tedious shit to do in that game. I remember in 1.0 when the entire game was just staring at the construction queue, and now that there is a private construction queue it feels like there is barely anything to do except stare at the map. The diplomacy is lacklustre due to the play system. While the play system has improved, it still isn't fun and is way too gamey. And of course because of it they completely removed the ability to attack by surprise or to break truces. Overall I still don't find Vic3 enjoyable even with all the updates, maybe once we get to 2.0 it will get fun lol.
Yes, Vic3 is just a bad game, it's not a matter of high expectations. I mean, it's poorly optimized, political system is a joke (just rush revolution to put intelligentsia and/or industrialists to power and start building thriving economy (staring on screen for 5 hours). Also modding community in this game is dead so probably even them won't fix this game.
@@HatKiddy to me vicky 3 just feels like I'm baby sitting the economy and nothing stimulates me in that game, warfare is null, why conquer when you can import and avoid fighting with the stupid war system and micro managing another state that will probably rebel 50 times. Having an intresting economic system is cool but killing the warfare, something that very easily retains a player, for the economy management means you must make it worth while, ignoring the fact that war is a major factor in these games. It just doens't feel like it deserves the name "Victoria 3".
@@masau8672 economic system isn't really that great to be honest, it lacks many things and there is almost no QoL features. I realized it after few games.
imo the best thing they could do is a beta / early access phase for EU5, so they can collect some feedback on what works and what doesn't. Otherwise they run the risk of having to redesign large parts of the game like with Imperator and Vic3
Remove Johan from working on new games. Invalid EU4 and dead IR are an indicator of this. His ideas will lead the PC to bankruptcy or the sale of the studio. The real world is on the verge of an intercontinental war - create a game about modernity. Amen. Inshallah.
I think they did a good job with early access to game Millenium (Millenia? I dont remember the spelling). Got players interested by actually trying it out and also caught a lot of bugs/QoL ideas of improvement
"Paradox actually maintains their games for years on end"- while showing a clip of Imperator. God, I love paradox games but that is crazy to me. Paradox has set the precedent for abandoning their games. The "curse" isn't people expecting too much, though that is true. It's the fear that even if I do enjoy the game, I won't know if paradox will fix the numerous launch issues before dropping the thing.
Imperator was the exception, not the standard. Many players and Paradox themselves know that players fear they may drop Victoria 3 or even future titles. That's exactly why I don't think they're going to abandon Victoria 3. One game already tarnished their reputation this much; I don't think they're going to make that mistake again. Not to mention, despite Victoria 3's issues, it still has way more players than Imperator ever had.
obviously this wasn't the case for Imperator, but even then, PDX actually stuck by that game for two years, probably doing so in a big financial loss. Obviously it's their fault the game wasn't ready for launch, but that's another matter. A lot of companies don't even bother to fix a broken product if it's not worth the investment. And as @brandonbeilbymcledo6546 suggests, Imperator is so far the exception that proves the rule.
PDX doesn't maintain title where they can't sell DLCs on it. PDX is clearly a bad company. They just want our money. Klei Entertainement continue to update their game years after launch without asking for a single dollar from you. Proving than PDX is greedy.
Think the problem is they made games catering to the fickle interests of content creators that like to hear buzz words but failing to actually make any gameplay loops before release. There is no excuse for what they put out day 1. And it's not that they can't match the content of current games because almost all of the launch day features always end up getting thrown out on 2.0 reinvention down the line. They never build a solid foundation for a growing game.
@@Sombre____ "Klei Entertainment continue to update their game years after launch without asking for a single dollar from you." The simple fact that they have 48 DLC listed on their Steam dev page says otherwise. Yes, it is far less than Paradox (averaging 4 DLC per game, vs 8 for Paradox, although this also includes Expansion subscriptions and music packs, which are little more than ingame soundtracks), but to say they don't ask for a single dollar is very disingenuous.
The expectation for Victoria 3 was to have a good game in the Victoria franchise. I don't think that is too high an expectation. Vic3 still fell short.
They fixed a lot of Vicky3 but the main problem is that it really shouldn’t be “Vicky3”, it’s just so far removed from what Victoria 2 was. I’d say the game is good now, not great, but good, I’m just not a fan because it doesn’t feel like a Victoria game. Hopefully they’ll pull it back into line and make it more of a successor to V2. I’ve been with Paradox since the launch of Stellaris and that game was complete trash at launch compared to the gem it currently is, so I know they CAN do it- it’s just a matter of if they will
@@Lord_LambertI disagree, the game is broken because of spaghetti code but the concept and core mechanics are appealing to me. I dropped HOI4 (stayed on EU4 though) because i dont like its warfare system based on cheese on numbers (space marines light flametank support on infantry goes brrr and CAS spam and boom world conquest its too easy). If it was named differently it wouldnt have received that much of a bad welcome. If it was released in the 1.5 version of it it would be considered a good game. We all know that bad PR is harder to remove than bad gameplay. They cleaned the gameplay but the bad PR stays, you are the proof since you are not willing to give it a second thought.
Yeah that’s my problem with a lot of this video it’s a bit too favorable to the Vic3 release. If a different company released that game in that state we would not think well of it, it would most likely be panned as Vic 3 largely was. The game was released in a poor state bug wise and feature wise, so much so that they had to fundamentally change quite a few systems to get it in the current state.
Perhaps, but EU5 seems to incorporate already available features in M&T3, which is an amazing mod. Estates. Levies. Pops. etc... M&T3 is basically a blueprint for EU5.
@Morskoy_Velican yeah, the lack of an economy isn't the best but the factory system is simple and easy to understand. Also that shouldn't put you off from buying the game it's really good, has one of the best war systems paradox has made, and it has lots of content without having to spend extra money.
@@Blossomy77 it has a lot of content after they made the first 3 dlc part of the game. before that, you couldnt even manage your subject countries. major allied powers didnt have content, like china. i love hoi4 and eu4 but the reality is that theyre shittily managed for paradox to make bank
As a person who plays paradox games almost exclusively for mega campaigns I'll wait 3 years when everyone shills EU5's "comeback" through dlc which will cost over 100 usd
These "accusations" as you so defensively put it are in fact true. Paradox themselves admitted to releasing unfinished games, KNOWINGLY, with Skylines 2.
I'll be honest, the problem with vic3 can be easaly summed up by this: It is wide as an ocean, but shallow like a lake. In vic2 pops are legitimetly meaningful. Treat them too harschly and they either die, revolt or leave the country. Also they removed coalitions. In vic3 it feels like you can gat away with anything. edit: I also forgot player agency.
Im not finished the video yet, but CK2 was an all time success as a Grand Strategy game. But CK3 is very worthy successor that made HUGE improvements to UI and gameplay. The major issue is that it's too easy. Way too easy.
The UI in CK3 is a huge step back. Even after all this time, it still isn't intuitive to me, meanwhile I can go back after not having played CK2 for a year or more and instantly pick the controls/UI back up. Gameplay is a mixed bag. The character related stuff is better, but war is substantially worse.
Honestly I miss the "simple" UI of CK2, especially for events where they feel like simple gameplay-moments and don't take up half of my screen with its 3D characters. I miss the drawn UI windows tbh
@@0110-q6n For UI/UX: The menu point and hold system was revolutionary. I thought everything except laws was quite clean and easy to navigate. Except Laws! Having to go through the specific title and change laws, sucks big time. War: I think both have positives. The Knights and men at Arms system is awesome IMO. I just don't like how units suddenly muster at a location. There should be an auto muster, and a chance/modifiers in place to have them intercepted, if enemies are within your lands. The unit's should actually have to travel to the muster point on the map. I agree that made CK2 better in a way because I had to plan out my demense/domain better.
Problem is that the PDX business model only works with either a new francise (stellaris) OR the first time you implement it with an existing franchise (CK2 and EUIV) CK2 and EUIV at launch were rouhgly on par with their predecessor content-wise. People are willing to pay for it, if only because of better looks and performance. And then the slow adding of new features for a price is ok. Yes it's expensive when you add it all up, but no more that buying FIFA every year fo 10 years straight (which is in essence a glorified database update). And because those features are new you can enjoy them while they come out.... But you can't pull that trick a second time........ CK3 and EU5 can NOT be on the level of CK1 and EU3 to start with: 1) people will sit on the fence until it is at least 80% of what it was before (no income for PDX) 2) But when it gets there, they see how much it wil cost them for the base game + DLC's JUST TO CONTINUE WHERE THEY LEFT OFF in terms of gameplay features. NO ONE is going to fork out €300 to play what is essentially, in terms of gameplay terms, a feature complete EUIV but with better graphics and maybe some redesigned mechanics. PDX needs to rethink their business model, because THAT had reached end of life....
I bought EU4 and a few DLCs. Then I left the game for a while and was only playing it occasionally, not enough to justify spending 100€+ on DLCs to have the full experience. Now the most reasonable thing, it seems, is to pay for base game and then download a pirated DLC'ed version. That's what I did with EU4, yes I both have a legitimate and pirate versions lol.
@@seanm241 Till now yes. But previously the game was new, the dlc were cheaper, they were less reliant on youtubers pushing sales. The thing is they are trying to recreate the same "innovation" by pushing the same dlc that should be a part of the base game for a new entry, say eu5. They can't recreate the money cow of 200 euros dlc or subscribe model because people will see that it's not worth it and will instead play an older title instead of new stuff.
@@seanm241 as somebody who first got into paradox games 10 years ago with eu4, their dlc policy is the main reason why i barely play any other paradox games. You just need to invest to much money/time to get into any other paradox games and with how broken most new dlcs are, i wonder if they even play test their stuff.
Vic2 vets do not think that vic3 is more feature-rich because they aren't looking at the number of features, but if the features they got used to and like using, are there. Sphereing is one example, another is foreign investment. Both of which are getting added in later in Vic3, than they got added in Vic2, with a much smaller budget and crew.
in the last tinto talk, johan, in the comment section, said that he and his team plan to release definitely-not-EU5 with as much flavor and content as EU4 right now
Thats what companies do, talk about and promise how great their product will be but on release it will be just another half done early access level garbo
That's such a bad thing to say since it's probably impossible to achieve unless they copy-paste stuff. It's a great thing to promise if you plan to hype it up then grab the money and leave
@@gandalf1675 They also had the time to make CK3, Vic 3, Hoi 4, and imperator into well seasoned games, instead of constant hollow shells. Those games plus EU IV as well as all titles paradox purchased has had for years now a total "mostly negative" for each DLC released. We all know with an infinite amount of time you can get a pretty good piece of literature out of a monkey, however all you can get out of a Paradox dev with infinite time is an even greater time spent manually back patching and disappointment. Paradox became Creative Assembly in all ways.
from the scraps of information the tinto talks gave us I'm optimistic, all the systems shown so far look like a straight up better version of what we have in eu4, sure some features might not make to game launch (like custom nations my beloved) and others might be discarded (my guess would be RNW), but at the same time they already started communicating with us before even game announcement, so I expect about 3-4 years before launch when they can shape the game with community feedback and, hopefully, have no UI problems or major bugs at launch. Also, even as a eu4 main with over thousands hours in this game I have to say... eu4 already is a dated game, sure it's fun and all but c'mon, just look at it. if you would prefer to ignore the positives and be pessimistic about it, then take a look at the wastelands shown in tinto talks 2, that one really needs some changing in some areas alright.
I think the main thing people will be disappointed about will be the depth of country-specific content; it took a decade to work all these things into EU4, so it's not really fair to expect EU5 to be as deep out the gate, but we probably will. Oh, and they can take my Random New World when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers! ;D
i get optimistic but then i slap myself and remember its paradox, but then i slap myself again and remember johan is on it, then i slap myself a third time and idk anymore
Expectation to get a full game at release are not wrong expectation. You need to unlearn what PDX teached you those past 20 years and stop accepting them selling you half-baked product made to be able to add DLCs on it.
That's kinda how all games operate I think. It's nothing new nor company specific. For an example I will list 2002 game called Heroes of Might and Magic IV. The game promised a lot but it ended up being rushed, unfinished and unbalanced. It also got 2 dlc's but they didn't target the core problems the game has. When project is ambiguous and expectations are high then the project tends to dissapoint when it's released.
@@ppp-vz1miYeah and HoMaM4 bombed so hard its studio went bankrupt, it wasnt normal to release clearly unready games. Bank then if a game was too buggy or unfinished, the reviews trashed it and gamers ignored it. HoMaM4 got a cult following over many years through pirate copies, and was eventually released by a new company that had taken over the franchise.
@@Rynewulf I've got two copies of this game on CD's. First one is from 2004 and second one is from 2010. Both have Ubisoft logo on it. It was my first game from this series and I love it despite it's flaws. :P
@@ppp-vz1mi Ubisoft was publisher, not develop. 4's development was famously fraught, including an expansion scrapped due to players hating it so much the devs were harassed and stalked in their private lives
Imagine being a fan of a series that always has sequels that are worse than the last one. Man, I wish I had a Pokémon pfp right now. Would perfect the joke. I can't be bothered to download one though.
Paradox should change the way they make their games. If they would launch them on a finished state, and the dlcs were fewer but richer in content (which could make them more expensive, as a benefit for the company), people would have less problems with them. But you can't launch a game 30% done and finish it with 40 dlcs in the span of a decade, like EU4.
@@hyperion3145 That's the reason I don't play EU4 much, or at all. I've had it for over a year now, and I still rarely play it because I can't be bothered to spend 100 dollars on DLCs I need to even be able to play a vassal or a tribal state. The only paradox game I've actually gotten good at is HOI4, and I have every single dlc for it.
I have tried getting people into EU4 that is the biggest problem, literally no one wants to enter at that price and for a map game at that. At least with Total War Warhammer they can look at the pretty models.
@@stirpsromana I mean yeah, but you can say that for any game ever. Not everyone is gonna pirate it and that shouldn’t be the solution to this problem.
The light of hope I have for EU5 is that Johan and others are very active on the forum asking the community what they want. Imperator was made in 6 months which is why it released in that state- it was Johan's passion project with a very tight deadline. Now EU5 development starte in 2020 which Johan confirmed himself and it's still being worked on, so by the time of its release it'll be the longest running project Paradox worked on so far, combined with the input from the community, shaping it up to be the best game PDX made to date, and radically different than EU4. From the start date being over a century earlier than EU4, no mana, pops system instead of development and estates, manpower, trade and so on being directly tied to the pop system, etc.
The paradox curse is not expectation its greed. Instead of updating the engine/visuals and adding new features, they instead try to sell u old features AGAIN
For CK3 at least all features that were in CK2 and its DLCs end up included in the free patch when added to the game. So it's not really true there at least.
Props on pronouncing Johan's name properly like the Swedes do. But yes, the problem is, they have some sort of internal rule where before next iteration of a flagship game starts development, it needs to get a "champion" designer. Which means a person needs to come up with a core design for the next game and there is like a break down in %s of how much of the old game gets ported and how much is replaced by new stuff. This is why they dont simply port the entire old game and build a new one on top, but they appear to drop beloved features and add brand new ones that often dont feel like they belong in that game. And youre right, this is compltely of their own doing. So what you end up with depends greatly on who the base design turns out to be and what their preferences are. Sadly.
@@AndysParadoxAh ok yeah makes sense haha. Most people (including myself) just call him like they would in German i guess; ive known him a for like a decade chatting with him before i realized its not Yohan but Yuan almost kek.
The majority of bad reviews I saw for Imperator were with regards to the game feeling shallow despite that fact that it released with comparatively more content than CK2 and EU4 at launch, which was wild to me. I loved Imperator because of all the potential I saw in it
@@technobloode9709 The same reviews I'm referencing were comparing Imperator's "lack of content" to the abundance of content Ck2 and Eu4 had after 6 years of dlc and development. I'd agree these comparisons shouldn't even be made. The game met most of my expectations at least, aside from the initial bugs
The price increase on DLC have not delivered on better content even if they want to cry it funds free patches. No matter if you change to have patience and understand the game evolves overtime to be better will never fix paying more now for less content. I think ck3 really shows the problem with current Paradox where they want $30 USD what is expansion level pricing to bring less than expansion level content. Then to make matters worse the time in between content is very large and they seem to be honestly really really missing the ball here with every single release of DLC with CK3. I think Royal Court might be the biggest letdown from PDX I've ever had with the development time put into it. I just stopped paying for the CK3 DLC, I am hopeful for Roads to Power to be an new leaf or what starts to allow for the game to live up to its potential. CK2 didn't launch in the way it is now, but overtime it was easier to accept the build up at least because the DLC didn't seem to miss the ball, and was once again reasonable price for what it was delivering.
I bought Victoria 3 a few weeks after its release. I knew about the issues with it, and while I like the game-I have over 700 hours in it-Victoria III has many problems. I primarily play the game in multiplayer, but Paradox doesn't seem to care about it. Almost every update breaks multiplayer, and some updates never fix it. For example, version 1.4 had multiplayer broken the entire time, and I can only hope that 1.6 fixes it, as it's currently broken. The war system has definitely been improved; you can actually see your armies, and they're a bit easier to control. However, it's still an awful system. The entire game, including warfare, is built on you doing something, then waiting. There's nothing in between, and that comprises most of the game-waiting. I hope and really want Victoria 3 to be a good game, but I feel like it's always going to be flawed. Now, for EU5, I think they're taking a much better approach. I don't think it's going to be like EU4, and I believe they're going to improve it and make it different where it counts. It doesn't have to come out with hundreds of mission trees or flavor. As long as the fundamentals are good, which is something I think Victoria 3 failed at, I think the game will be great.
Yeah, truly I think it will be a great game, I just hope we don't have another Imperator or honestly even CK3 on our hands where it takes 3-4 years for the game to finally assume its true shape in the form of "finally being worth it"
Eu4 basically had almost all the features of the DLC's up Until divine wind, sans lack of colonies which was wild to fight spain back then. It was the reason why I bought eu4. It was already a full experience, mostly.👀 So Most of the missions and decisions from previous games I do kinda expect,
This is probably true in many ways, but for the hardcore fans who usually sticks around for and buys the DLC, the difference was/no a certain extent now is clear
9:30 "paradox listened to the players and improved the warfare system" considering players said that BEFORE the launch and paradox did nothing... well, not a good argument mate
The only curse is paradox realising games that are just worse/unfinished. If the sequel only has like 2-3 new features, 20 features missing and is just worst product with better graphics overall then ye its a shity game. The expectations are not to high, they are far to low with every paradox game.
Yeah, it definitely needs to be a good balance between features lost vs gained. In my opinion, Victoria 3 actually succeeded here (despite its actual functional state), but CK3 was the one who failed on launch
@AndysParadox Victoria 3 at launch was a barely functional economy simulator. War, politics, and diplomacy were/are so barren it would have better if they didn't exist
Bro your argument is basically "it's okay that Paradox games are buggy and unplayable at launch, every Paradox game has been like that!" It has nothing to do with the games being "feature complete." After over a decade of releasing literal crap people are just finally done with this company's nonsense. The logical conclusion for anyone is to pay for the games years later when they're actually playable, or to buy games from other companies.
CK3 was a good restart worth from the start, though, IMO. It didn't restart that much from zero. Also when I changed from EU3 to EU4, I never looked back. Tbh I found Stellaris and Imperator Rome boring in ANY later stage. Ok when you said you only now regard CK3 as acceptable, we have apparently WAY different views and expectations.
CK3 was pretty decent at the start but still a bit lacking. The real fumble there was their bizarre early DLC decisions which didn't address these holes until a few years later.
The curse of Paradox is not the consumer's expectations it is that fact that they moved to a DLC model when they release unfisnihed games. EU1 and EU2 and the early HOI games were mostly decent, you had a few DLCs but it was not DLC heavy with features added in that the previous game already had a release nor did they do reworks of major game mechanics like with Stellaris and other recent games. Now they release beta versions and then 2-3 years after release you get a proper game.
My problem is not the cycle of creating relatively empty games, then fleshing them out over time using paid DLC's. With the depth and breadth these games have, there's no real other way to do that, except have it ten years in development and ask 350 euro on release. I think everyone understands that won't work. My problem is that their games are very rarely in a stable, bug free state. Every patch or DLC fixes old bugs and broken features, and introduces new ones. The games are most of the time pretty much unplayable without mods, and mods can't fix everything. I have been editing the game files a million times to compensate for bugs and stupid or unexpected behaviour. Being able to get achievements on modded playthroughs has been a major improvement, but it shows that they know their games are not playable without mods and they have just given up on bug free, well fleshed out releases. The most glaring example is EU4; after their release of patch 1.30, the game was so broken that it was not funny anymore, and I deceided to roll back to an older patch and just stay there. 1.31 came out and would (among a thousand other things) randomly destroy people's saves after hours of play, and I knew I was right. These things never should have passed quality control, but they did and were released somehow. Since then, I have never played EU4 on the latest patch, not by a long shot. Every now and then I visit reddit and ask if people can recommend a stable patch, then update to one that seems good, which is always a patch after it had several hotfixes and subpatches done to it. The current patch is never recommended. If they would fix this, their games would be much better. But the way it is, I just buy their games as an investment, and see what it looks like after a few years. I played some early Victoria 3, and although it felt promising, it also was buggy and broken and empty. It was unplayable without mods, especially AI ones, other nations just wouldn't develop and create meaningful competition and a market to sell to. Core concepts like starting wages or occupation during war were handled so poorly that I never felt like I was playing a finished game, and knew that in a few months or years many core concepts would have been changed and it just wasn't worth my time. Yeah I guess that's the big problem. Paradox games are complex, and take a lot of time to become good at. But if you know your effort will be in vain because systems you are trying to understand will be rewritten next patch, you just don't bother. And you can choose to learn all the systems anew every patch (my life's too short for that), play it casually (which I find boring with grand strategy), or just not play at all.
CK3 was in my opinion a good start for something but sadly they started to add content as dlcs as they do from a long time by now. Vicky 3 in my opinion was meant to come before the CK3 if you looking at the models and how ugly they are you can see which games have the more advanced tech. I did not checked the files itself when they were created but I strongly believe the Vicky 3 is unfinished and a lot of stuff will be added as hot fix, dlc or slightly larger expansion.
@@calebmoe9077 Yeah, but it still had the entire, larger map working perfectly with it own, different systems from day 1. Was it thin? Of course, but I feel like most people weren't super surprised or felt entitled to it being as complete as CK2
@@Dmitrisnikioff It at least solved some problems the original had. A lot of people forget that you couldn't always play Muslims and your leader could randomly convert to Islam, ending your game and also blocking a good chunk of the world from being playable. It's nice that you can play as the rest of the world but it sucks your people will threaten civil war against you if they are mildly annoyed.
in theory it sound lovely (I thought the same in regard to ck3 back in the day) but if you delve into the HOW - it's understandable, lets say you just upgrade graphics (and UI) as you said, that would result a memory leak or at the very least poor performance - so you upgrade your engine to accommodate the new graphics, but now some code is unreadable or poorly integrated with the new engine, so you rewrite the problematic section of code - but now the other parts of the code have problem communicating with this 'rewritten' piece of code, it's a game of cat and mouse in which you eventually find yourself working way harder on an existing product than just making a new one that's why you see game either getting a total remake including a change in the engine (like resident evil), or remastered having very little change (the AC2 remastered)
@@etgarmoyalthat and if I remember right EU5 is going to be on a newer and well more optimized engine than EU4’s. Thus leading to even more issues as the “foundation” of EU4’s code would be changed, leading to all sorts of issues, if the game would even run, if you just copy/paste
Honestly I do not know why anyone could possibly defend paradox after all these years given their track record. After all when you buy a game like any product you expect a certain standard to be met when it comes to the product, think of a bottle of dish liquid as a paradox game which has both the shiny label, says what it does but then when you go to use this product you end up finding out that you need to pay for the dish liquid inside the bottle to have extra cleaning power as well or otherwise you are left with basically slightly bubbly water that barely works, or another example take a banana but without the fruit inside and what you got is exactly what paradox does to the consumer not mentioning the amount of product you get with dlc instalments. At the end of the day however it isn't paradox that is the issue here but rather the customers who enable this level of behaviour and they very well know it and until people get their heads out of their arses and stop being mentally feeble is the day that pigs fly.
Funny is that you bring EU4 on the table. EU4 was fun at the very beginning and then they started to bring in mechanics that nobody asked for. But to create the need to buy these DLCs, PDX stole content from the base game and therefore the base game became less and less fun to play. And on top, the new content wasn't just half as good as the former base game, they almost deactivated most new functions. And the worst came true, after PDX went on stock market, because back then they started not only selling less content for more money, they also started to destroy the game. And while everybody hoped for Emperor DLC to be the final DLC to fix the mess they've created, they started going wild and went absurd. And what PDX was famous for ist Grand Strategy Games and not just "map games" as you call it. But the delivered content for 8 years now lack everything that a strategy game needs and on top they started to destroy the strategy part from they game as soon as they started with mission trees (what is the exact oposite of a strategy), just because it was and still is easy to sell. And on Top, you have to pay for the latest DLCs to get back the exact same mission trees you already paid for in the last DLCs, so they are selling the exact same content AGAIN!
Bro when a company spends 10 years on development of a game and charges shitload of money for it, while modders create the same (if not better) content in few month, there is usually issues with a company, not with our expectations
Tbh from what I see I have faith in Johan and the eu5, because it has been first being worked on 4 years ago in comparison to imperator Rome which was made from scratch to release in 6 months and I’m sure there wasn’t a lot of time for ck3 and Vicky 3, paradox likes to rush the game to release but Johan sees the aspect of a good launch and to minimise amount of DLCs, and UI has been constantly being worked on and will change before release , but maybe my hopes are too high and I love it’s literally a new game, new meta, and I love the Tinto talks as it allows the community to ask and support the team before launch
"Paradox maintains their games" March of the eagles 💀 Imperator Rome 💀 Star trek infinite 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 Also ck2 was basically dropped by the devs after ck3 came out
Well CK isn’t the best baseline imo. Some serious mistakes have been made regarding the DLC pipeline, they spent way too much time and money on the Courtroom expansion and it didn’t really meet expectations. They have been fighting an uphill battle ever since. The game had great potential at launch, but it’s largely fallen flat in my own opinion. I think Vicky is moving in the right direction and I’m excited for Eu5.
What has turned me off on Paradox is the fact they abandoned games like Imperator Rome and now Star Trek Infinite. What if they just abandon EU5 when it is half baked?
They won't, EU5 is too big of a game and people are hyped for it. They're doing in-depth and early previews and showcases on their forums and people are still psyched, I think they've learned a lot since Imperator.
The paradox curse is that they launch new games full of bugs and empty in content, they have a beta and launch it with a day one "royal version" with 2 future dlcs include, you don't know if those dlcs are going to be good. I love eu4 the complete eu4, is almost unplayable without dlcs the same with ck2, stellaris, hoi4, I don't know if is unplayable ck3 and vic3 because I don't have them but eventualy the will be
Wrongful expectation? If it isn't as good as the previous entry, don't bother releasing it. Specially paradox. They have a tendency to release just a half baked map with very basic mechanics just so they can actually start developing the game and charge you for each update.
The real problem is that the base paradox game is mostly just a skeleton that they build out from using 1,000,000,000 DLC. To there credit for the most part, the DLC tend to be worth it, but it comes at the cost of whatever game drops it has 1/3 of the content of the last game in the series until the first 37 DLCs have dropped.
"In Victoria 3s case, what we have here is a game that by any standard has overall amazing foundations" This is just a lie, Andy. This is so far beyond the pale of reasonable because no, by any reasonable standard, the foundations of the game are absolutely woeful. The reason the game is failing and will continue to fail is because of the foundations. Stop gaslighting people.
Vic 3 is neither more engaging nor is it more feature rich than Vic 2... WHats the new DLC for Vic3, Andy? Is it called Spheres of Influence? Vic2 has that already... and guess what... THE FUCKING DLC DOESNT EVEN GIVE SPHERES OF INFLUENCE ahahahahah God you are so completely delusional when it comes to that dogshit game.
Hi Lambert. I understand this video triggered you for some reason, but I don’t much like being called a liar, or that I lie. Victoria 3 is an amazing game, I feel sad for you that you cannot enjoy it, but even sadder that it seems you cannot hold a civil conversation about it. I feel like we’ve had a friendly tone in the past, so if you didn’t mean to say what you did, I’ll forgive you no sweat. In my opinion the reason Victoria 3 was “bad” on launch was not because of its foundations, but because of the depth of everything around it. To use one example, V3’s warfare is a great and novel idea, it just wasn’t ready yet. The way I see it, good foundation - bad execution, which now has turned into GOOD execution, albeit with some weird bugs or results at times, a few quirks that need to be ironed out. Victoria 3 is just so much better than Vicky 2 ever was, contains SO much more content, and I can’t wait for spheres of influence!
@@AndysParadox thing is Andy I'm just sick and tired of all the BS that Vic3 defenders have to resort to to justify their liking of a failing, absolutely atrocious game. Whether you believe the objective falsehoods you are talking about really is irrelevant here, you are unfortunately deluding yourself by praising the game. The game will fail. It is losing players, and the devs are clearly out of ideas. There will be no turnaround while the current development structure is in place. Vic3 needs digging up by the roots because contrary to what you say, the foundations of the game are rotten and unsalvageable.
“Objective falsehoods” lmao, now *this* is delusional speaking. Nothing objective about it. I loved the game from the start despite the flaws, and it’s better than ever. Super excited for Spheres of Influence!
This is a silly take. I have played Paradox games since EU2, CK1 and Vic1 and I played all games in those series. There is a reason I had thousands of hours in the older titles despite clunky ux and many more problems and only a few hundred hours in the newer ones despite many improvements to map, ui e ux. Paradox has made shitty decisions recently going for bloat, fan service through OP tag based content that does does not add to the general game strategy part and click button to immediate effects that make long term strategy meaningless. You could remove missions, estates, edicts and decisions from EU4 and I would not give a shit. I want meaningdul systems with no obvious meta or choices that are the same for all countries and situations. If all countries play the same in the core mechanics, the game is not strategy it is a puzzle game and how many times can you play the same puzzle before it gets boring? I would not care if EUV had 30% of the "features" if the remaining features were good and deep enough in the strategy and simulation that would result in emerging gameplay. Halo is the best shooter I ever played because despite me having my favourites weapons all of them are useful and satisfying and depending on enemy, terrain, etc I will naturally want to use them all through a campaign playthroguh and if I played again I would different weapons on the same moments. Current paradox games mostly suck because they are currently about having a single meta and making min-maxers happy by stacking bonuses that are just modifiers with no underlying connection to anything and all "flavor" is making some bonuses tag or religion or culture locked.
Your takes are pretty hot if you look at most paradox forms. Vic 3 is still worse that Vic 2 and Ck3 felt pretty good at launch. Just my take, but Vic 3 is a trainwreck of a game, just missing so much flavor and mechanics, even still. I expect a pretty bare bones game with EU5 but just hope it was more like Ck3 which was a fairly good release to most.
its dumb people expect to get the same amount of features from eu5 as they did with eu4 after 11 years of dlcs and patches. every new gameis the foundation to build the new game on, with community input.
We dont expect EU5 to be as good as EU4 on Launch, we expect the game to not be a damn unfinished game where they make us pay more for features so important it should be a core part of the game from the start. Dlc's are additionnal content, not necessary content to actually have fun. CK2 at first limited its scales so true enough it had less than CK3, but that limitation of the scale to one religion actually means that each dlc's were actually additionnal content over the years until we realised that the base game now felt kinda empty without them because they expanded the options everytime with more expansions. CK3 offers us a game that takes in alot of core feature of CK2 great! And its empty as hell because while they got the core mechanics they didnt even add that much content. Plus the fact that you are stuck in start dates unlike CK2 and EU4 even if most never used the mechanics is such a damn shame, like CK2 you could play as El Cid by simply going to the 1090's You could play as Alexios Komenos, get to the 4th crusade play as Baldwin, go in between and play any dynasty you wanted. Getting rid of this even if for understandable reason is already a hella downgrade in the freedom of what you want to play as. Some people says that Vicky II is truly outdated etc... when the whole reason Vicky II fans complains about Vicky III is that most plays modded Vicky II which brought the game to a new light stuff like HFM HPM etc... our expectation was based on those stuff, if Vicky III cant match on launch modded Vicky II, who was so old we all thought the series was forgotten entirely, then we do have the right to shite on it. HOI took YEARS to put logistics back into the game proper ffs when it was an essential mechanic of even HOI3 which wasnt all that great to begin with
Paradox's DLC pattern is pretty much just EA's DLC pattern for the Sims, but grand strategy. And I LIKE grand strategy, so I enjoy them... but let's not pretend like it's some kind of consumer friendly practice.
The major problem with Paradox they do not wish to make games fully work at the start but they copied EA, UBI and a lot other major studios that puts microtransaction or dlcs in their games. I like Hoi 4, Ck3, I liked the latest ones too and Eu 1-2-3-4, Stellaris but most of their games are built in the same foundations with flaws and place to add new stuffs into it. Recently bought Imperator and it is basically an abandoned game but at least you can learn to mod it. My major issues with Hoi4, Ck3 the constant small addons and fixes which fucks up the modding and almost in a month I need to redone my mods 3-4 times. I understand they need to get money to sustain themselves but if they just put some effort into making these series good at least or great then the game could sell itself. If they need dlcs to add stuff into the game what the modders can do also (no major system updates) then you know these games are unfinished and cash grabbers like what the Sims series became. Also these games are not massive multiplayer games but games with optional multiplayer so where the money goes? Why do they need to make those huge amount of money?. Simply they just need to fine tune these games, let the modders to do addons to the game and once they have enough mods what "let's say" can be added as an expansion for core mechanics then they could use as a standpoint. Cosmetic and other craps are not needed and if they rework one or two faction, nations or something else then they instant making a dlc pack for it. Those times ended when a developer / publisher asked one time money for games and that was enough to sustain themselves IF they made a good game. Now indies do this and until they do not get a major competitor with the similar genre they will make tons of addons to the games to just get your money for something what could have been in a game. I personally would feel shame if I make half baked things and just say this is the content, there you go. In my opinion the only curse on Paradox is they became cash grabbers instead of developers whom enjoying making games and wanting to make it better. Instead they do what I said above.
So you think paradox only pays their employees the one time after a game is released? And they don’t intentionally leave out content it’s simply that there is only so much work one can do in a certain amount of time
@@Hrolfgord They do because this is how people can make profit nowaday. If they cannot afford so much employees then they should not hire as much. Companies are overgrown because of these practices. Normally a developer calculates the expenses, revenues, how a game can sell and act in order to keep that number. Nowadays everything is about amass profit and certainly not the devs whom gets the bonuses but the white collars. Expansions are for major game changing content which is fine if they ask max the 1/3 of the price of the base game. Dlcs are de symptons of a worse system what we are living in. Ask Capcom too why they needed dlcs for a single player game which already costs 70€
What is the point of a sequel if it is not at least matching predeccessor? They are also relying on their built playerbase so they willl not do much marketing outside of already built community and of course those players expect something that is more worth their time thna previous title. I:R was mostly advertised towards EU4 and CK2 players so without bugs, it could have survived in its barebone state if they tried to get new playerbase.
the problem is, even if theres new games, it should atleast have 3/4 content of the original game (full of updates), not 2x of the content of the original game (when released)
When they release a new game it shoul include all the previous one's features at launch and then build uppon that. Dev time would be significatively longer but players would not be dissapointed
Personally, this is why I always wait at least a few years. Picking up CK3 today vs launch, especially on sale, You're definitely getting a much more complete experience.
EU5 will be barebones and only contain probably like 10% of all the DLCs from EU4. Then PDX will sell all the missing features from EU4 as DLC for EU5. People will complain but at the end of the day, people will still buy EU5 and its DLCs because there are no other strategy games like Paradox's.
I find it concerning that you’re blaming the consumer for having expectations that the sequel games will have a level of familiarity to the predecessor games with DLC’s. Your argument falls apart when you realize that every sequel game paradox has released in its modern history has been simplified on purpose to target a wider audience. These newcomers don’t have any history with paradox and yet we’re still able to determine that Victoria was a pile of garbage. We can try to say that Victoria three had a more traditional paradox fan based in other games like crusader, King three and hearts of iron four. But that still doesn’t negate the fact that a majority of the player base did not enjoy the game. My biggest concern is that EU five is taking so much from mods like meiou and taxes because the Dev team is utterly creatively bankrupt.
Victoria 3 killed my computer literally. Played it for 300 hours. Killed my hard drive and my battery. That game worked my computer more than any game I ever played
the difference (i hope) with EU5 is 1) its been in development for 4 or 5 years, 2) it seems to have been worked on by key modders in the community. these things should hopefully mean we're not having a rerun of vic 3, imperator etc.
I don't think expecting features from the previous game to be included in the new game is by any means an unrealistic expectation. Yes, a lot of these additions came later in the development of the previous game, but that does not justify leaving that content out in the game's sequel. Imagine if EU5 launches without the ability to swap the occupation of a province, a feature that came in the Art of War DLC.
The point is content for Dlcs. Many studios release half-baked games these days and also cut some features from their previous game with the thought in mind that they will add this or that feature in their DLCs, but people expect some of those features in the base game to begin with. But, when studios can't get extremely positive responses to their half-baked product, they throw all those DLC thoughts in the dustbin and waste their time and resources on releasing patches to make the game playable, while in some cases, they just completely abandon the game. But still, I would like to have this hope that supposed EU5 will not disappoint us, considering that Paradox treats EU4 as their golden child among all their games. (Fingers crossed)
I don't know why people get mad. I play pirate version of EU4 with the latest update and DLC and is amazing, then Epic Games gave an opportunity to have EU4 completely for free, so I "bought" it and I didn't see the small letters of the contract, I was getting almost the 1.0 EU4... It was a horrible experience. If players could ever play the old "better" versions of the game they would immediately stop playing (I stopped playing that Epic Games EU4 before 1500 since there's not so much to do and I ain't spending almost a day on a chair viewing a map).
This problem is like Sims Syndrome, the Sims series are always selling the same expansions/dlcs with each new game. There is a pets expansion for the all 4 of the Sims games, for example(not sure about 1🤔)
I understand the idea of starter all over again with DLC. Something the Sims have been doing for decades now... The problem with Victoria 3 is that it's literally boring... oddly just boring. It's like a glorified Cookie Clicker... wtf
8 seconds in and just wrong. Paradox's only curse is their incompetence. We've never been asking for grandiose simulations. Nobody expects Eu5 to be MEIOU & TAXES 3.0. Paradox has just been delivering wildly unfinished games priced in the AA-AAA range and acting as if they were still a small indie studio in 2010. Deliver quality products. No need for them to be perfect or complete, that's fine, but have your core features done. The fact that they've all tried to compare "CK3 on release vs CK2 on release" and same with Vic3 shows just how either incompetent or completely out of touch PDXs executive has been. Johan however has made his intents clear. Will his game hold up to it ? Who knows, we'll have to wait and see. But if the game is anything as his messages suggest, then we'll be looking at a very solid foundation. (unlike some other game recently released I won't mention a second time).
Im personally happy whith pdx whith how they market the system and build games up over time, the problem is every purchase is made in the good faith that pdx will build upon the groundwork and move forwards with it 1.Reputation is key 2.imperitor is a recent blemish on that Reputation 3.sequals take more effort to compete whith there predecessors Pdx needs to 1. Make clear what work it wants to do whith these titles 2.make promises on requirements like purchases required before getting peoples hopes up 3.maintain its good community response
My real expectation for any new paradox game is atleast have as many functioning systems as the previous title in the series and also atleast all the major powers in each playable region are fleshed out like for example the fact that in Ck3 republics and hordes still lack content when they are major elements of the setting is absurd but in like Vic 3 or hoi4 I get like minor nations not getting flavor for a few years
The way I see it, EU5 should not lack any features EU4 has unless its a better replacement feature. Rather, it should be a significant upgrade on the prior game. Paradox can put a lot more into their next title, and STILL add dlc content because they can ALWAYS come up with more dlc content.
Makes me glad that my first paradox’s games were HOI4, EU4, and CK3. I’m not comparing these games to HOI3 or CK2. I just get to enjoy them. Even if EU5 is barebones at first, if it’s basically Vic 3 in EU4 time period but with micro warfare that would be cool.
I disagree that expectations are undeserved or false. EUIV is 10+ years old. if EUV in 2025 only barely matches or exceeds what 10 year old EUIV delivers it is by all metrics an utter failure and not just because fans are entitled. This is why I hate fanboys who are constantly forgiving shit releases.
Totally agree with this sentiment You can't just release a new game and then have it lack all of the mechanics that made the previous game great in the long term. Its their disgusting dlc policy, the thing is they charge you alot of money just for a few mechanical changes
The real curse of the paradox is the fact, that they don't have any real competition to worry about. So they don't have to make an effort.
Creative assembly suffers from this curse as well.. They are getting so hungry with dlc as well..
Their competition is their older but superior games though. Just gotta play the older titles
Wait until age of history 3 comes out
@@Tafrara-idirnah..age of history 3 Is Simple grand Strategy.paradoxs games Are Complex
NBA 2K syndrome
The paradox model has a serious problem where games become fleshed out and more beloved after years of dlc, then when a sequel comes out, it goes back to the barebones state of the release that doesnt compete with its built up predecessor at all. Every paradox sequel is doomed to be a disappointment.
It's the fucking Sims model. Every fucking game you have to pay 30$ to get a dog. God I hate these executives.
yes, this is an issue, one I hope they'll take very seriously for EU5
Exactly, it seems they learn nothing at all from previous games, and reinvent the wheel for every new game or sequel.
Indeed, this is the big hole Paradox have unwittingly dug for themselves with this business model of a game with a long lifecycle. Talk about unrealistic expectations from gamers all you want: but when I see the same title with a higher number behind it, I expect either an improvement on what came before or a follow up (like with films). This is what most people expect and this isn't some ridiculous entitled behaviour.
What paradox does is in fact rebooting their existing games (with better design and technology than the previous installment). And although "Europa Universalis: Reboot" doesn't sound very inspiring, that's what it is. But even with a reboot there's the perfectly reasonable assumption that it contains at least the same amount of content as its predecessor. My advice to paradox would be to include at least 80% of EUIV's content and mechanics in EUV at launch and then use DLC's only to flesh out the remaining 20% and to expand on the scope.
Imperator had a lot of innovative new concepts I think that will be imported to EU5 in particular the pops.
Personally my biggest problem with Paradox has been their abandonment of Imperator. I don't like how games are released full of bugs and unfinished mechanics and features but I can accept it, with the expectation that games will get better after a year or two.
Paradox completely broke my trust in them, not when they released the broken mess that was Imperator, but when they abandoned it after such a short period and when it was finally reaching a state where I actually found it enjoyable.
Imperator Rome has soooo many nice mechanics and enjoyable content, but rather minor problems just ruins it for me. The optional autonomous armies are amazing but the entire food mechanic is terrible, high tier forts basically has your armies starving themselves. You can be right next to your capital with 5k food in store and yet your army can't resupply without abandoning the siege or manually splitting your army to send part of it back for food.
You can't even split your army if they're loyal to the commander, they'd rather starve to death than move one province away for a month or two.
But personally I find the absolute worst part of it to be how you can't get food in allied territory. Any ally worth having is going to have a decent amount of territory and your armies will be halfway starved to death before they even make it to the enemy.
To be fair, the food issues only really start getting bad from the midgame and onwards, early game there'll be plenty of food because nations are smaller overall so you don't starve walking through allied territory and armies are smaller in general so they resupply faster.
They didn't end support until TWO YEARS after release. In what bizarro world can you call that a "short period"? Imagine any other company supporting an unprofitable game for two years. People are straight up unhinged when it comes to how much free work they expect Paradox to perform.
@@Saufs0ldatTwo years is short by paradox standards
@@ploober5696 That's my point. People got so spoiled by Paradox that even two years of free updates are considered "abandoned after a short period".
Many Paradox player don't play other games and start to think the PDX business model is somehow not insanely consumer friendly.
I'm gonna be realistic here. I'm not sure that Imperator was ever designed to be a main title. I went into Imperator with the idea of something like MotE or Sengoku, a title inbetween to generate some money and be able to test mechanics separate from a main title. Many elements of I:R have filtered through the cracks to the games after it.
@@Saufs0ldat that was not free work. they charged for atleast two DLC during that time
The real curse is releasing half finished/ broken games and then charging you extra for each feature. First impressions count. Victoria 3 Doesn’t have spheres of influence? What?! that is a core feature.
You have to pay for the new dlc…
@@Fonsecaj89 Well you don't have to pay for the DLC if you have Victoria 2, which is currently a better game than Victoria 3 with 2 mods installed. Doesn't even cost more than one Victoria 3 dlc if you buy from a third party site.
@@lolasdm6959 Victoria II is kinda ass without DLC. You can't even play mods without DLC so DLC is a must buy.
From what I remember, you can't justify wars, it's hard to distinguish which troops belong to what nation, westernizing doesn't exist, no crises and Prussia's yellow.
@@ppp-vz1mi Yeah and right now I can buy the entire Vic 2 plus all dlc for less than the price of a single Vic 3 dlc. So why would I play Vic 3 if I am not so worried about graphics?
@@lolasdm6959 It's nice that DLC used to be cheaper.
Victoria 3 is not Victoria II with just better graphics. It's a diffrent game with diffrent ambitions, goals and system. They do share things, but It's not enought to justify calling it the same game but with better graphics. It's not Victoria II "remastered" or "definitive edition". It's part of the same series... but It's not something revolutionary for sequels to differ from previous game. Victoria 3 had to create it's own identity for people to not call it Victoria II with better graphics... so many changes yet Paradox still failed at defining Vicky 3 identity :(
I've never played Vic2 and Vic3 was still a huge disappointment. The problem with that game is that there are no meaningful choices to be made, and war is simply a numbers game, the only choice you can make is to have the bigger numbers. You can't choose to have your army defend mountains and leave the plains alone, or do anything strategic in this grand strategy game. When it comes to building up your country, every single country is the same - again there are no choices there - except if you have an event or two specific to your nation. By removing control of armies they also downgraded the importance of geography, which, when you are staring at a map the entire time, ought to be important. And there is just so much tedious shit to do in that game. I remember in 1.0 when the entire game was just staring at the construction queue, and now that there is a private construction queue it feels like there is barely anything to do except stare at the map. The diplomacy is lacklustre due to the play system. While the play system has improved, it still isn't fun and is way too gamey. And of course because of it they completely removed the ability to attack by surprise or to break truces. Overall I still don't find Vic3 enjoyable even with all the updates, maybe once we get to 2.0 it will get fun lol.
Oh and I forgot to mention encirclements
Yes, Vic3 is just a bad game, it's not a matter of high expectations. I mean, it's poorly optimized, political system is a joke (just rush revolution to put intelligentsia and/or industrialists to power and start building thriving economy (staring on screen for 5 hours). Also modding community in this game is dead so probably even them won't fix this game.
And I just saw the price of new DLC! It's so EXPENSIVE, imagine wasting money on Vic3 📉📉
@@HatKiddy to me vicky 3 just feels like I'm baby sitting the economy and nothing stimulates me in that game, warfare is null, why conquer when you can import and avoid fighting with the stupid war system and micro managing another state that will probably rebel 50 times.
Having an intresting economic system is cool but killing the warfare, something that very easily retains a player, for the economy management means you must make it worth while, ignoring the fact that war is a major factor in these games.
It just doens't feel like it deserves the name "Victoria 3".
@@masau8672 economic system isn't really that great to be honest, it lacks many things and there is almost no QoL features. I realized it after few games.
imo the best thing they could do is a beta / early access phase for EU5, so they can collect some feedback on what works and what doesn't. Otherwise they run the risk of having to redesign large parts of the game like with Imperator and Vic3
Remove Johan from working on new games. Invalid EU4 and dead IR are an indicator of this. His ideas will lead the PC to bankruptcy or the sale of the studio. The real world is on the verge of an intercontinental war - create a game about modernity. Amen. Inshallah.
I think they did a good job with early access to game Millenium (Millenia? I dont remember the spelling). Got players interested by actually trying it out and also caught a lot of bugs/QoL ideas of improvement
Unfortunately they have been burned before too with early access with the Victoria 3 leak.
"Paradox actually maintains their games for years on end"- while showing a clip of Imperator. God, I love paradox games but that is crazy to me. Paradox has set the precedent for abandoning their games. The "curse" isn't people expecting too much, though that is true. It's the fear that even if I do enjoy the game, I won't know if paradox will fix the numerous launch issues before dropping the thing.
Imperator was the exception, not the standard. Many players and Paradox themselves know that players fear they may drop Victoria 3 or even future titles. That's exactly why I don't think they're going to abandon Victoria 3. One game already tarnished their reputation this much; I don't think they're going to make that mistake again. Not to mention, despite Victoria 3's issues, it still has way more players than Imperator ever had.
obviously this wasn't the case for Imperator, but even then, PDX actually stuck by that game for two years, probably doing so in a big financial loss. Obviously it's their fault the game wasn't ready for launch, but that's another matter. A lot of companies don't even bother to fix a broken product if it's not worth the investment. And as @brandonbeilbymcledo6546 suggests, Imperator is so far the exception that proves the rule.
PDX doesn't maintain title where they can't sell DLCs on it. PDX is clearly a bad company. They just want our money. Klei Entertainement continue to update their game years after launch without asking for a single dollar from you. Proving than PDX is greedy.
Think the problem is they made games catering to the fickle interests of content creators that like to hear buzz words but failing to actually make any gameplay loops before release. There is no excuse for what they put out day 1. And it's not that they can't match the content of current games because almost all of the launch day features always end up getting thrown out on 2.0 reinvention down the line. They never build a solid foundation for a growing game.
@@Sombre____ "Klei Entertainment continue to update their game years after launch without asking for a single dollar from you."
The simple fact that they have 48 DLC listed on their Steam dev page says otherwise. Yes, it is far less than Paradox (averaging 4 DLC per game, vs 8 for Paradox, although this also includes Expansion subscriptions and music packs, which are little more than ingame soundtracks), but to say they don't ask for a single dollar is very disingenuous.
The expectation for Victoria 3 was to have a good game in the Victoria franchise. I don't think that is too high an expectation. Vic3 still fell short.
They fixed a lot of Vicky3 but the main problem is that it really shouldn’t be “Vicky3”, it’s just so far removed from what Victoria 2 was. I’d say the game is good now, not great, but good, I’m just not a fan because it doesn’t feel like a Victoria game.
Hopefully they’ll pull it back into line and make it more of a successor to V2. I’ve been with Paradox since the launch of Stellaris and that game was complete trash at launch compared to the gem it currently is, so I know they CAN do it- it’s just a matter of if they will
@@willhuman641 could be named anything they like, it would still be a fundamentally bad game.
@@Lord_LambertI disagree, the game is broken because of spaghetti code but the concept and core mechanics are appealing to me.
I dropped HOI4 (stayed on EU4 though) because i dont like its warfare system based on cheese on numbers (space marines light flametank support on infantry goes brrr and CAS spam and boom world conquest its too easy).
If it was named differently it wouldnt have received that much of a bad welcome. If it was released in the 1.5 version of it it would be considered a good game.
We all know that bad PR is harder to remove than bad gameplay. They cleaned the gameplay but the bad PR stays, you are the proof since you are not willing to give it a second thought.
@@simoncolin5939 Have you considered playing the game without cheesing it in singleplayer, or in multiplayer with rules?
Yeah that’s my problem with a lot of this video it’s a bit too favorable to the Vic3 release. If a different company released that game in that state we would not think well of it, it would most likely be panned as Vic 3 largely was. The game was released in a poor state bug wise and feature wise, so much so that they had to fundamentally change quite a few systems to get it in the current state.
Perhaps, but EU5 seems to incorporate already available features in M&T3, which is an amazing mod. Estates. Levies. Pops. etc... M&T3 is basically a blueprint for EU5.
Yeah M&T was basically EU5 before EU5 was even announced lol
These games even have different genres. How stupid are you?
Took them 3 years to put logistics back in Hoi... yeah they are not getting my money again
Bro, I promised myself not to buy this game when I saw the barter exchange of factories instead of the economy.
@Morskoy_Velican yeah, the lack of an economy isn't the best but the factory system is simple and easy to understand. Also that shouldn't put you off from buying the game it's really good, has one of the best war systems paradox has made, and it has lots of content without having to spend extra money.
@@Blossomy77 not even the best in it's series lol
@@Blossomy77 it has a lot of content after they made the first 3 dlc part of the game. before that, you couldnt even manage your subject countries. major allied powers didnt have content, like china. i love hoi4 and eu4 but the reality is that theyre shittily managed for paradox to make bank
yeah still no naval battles and trade in ck3 🤣🤣
As a person who plays paradox games almost exclusively for mega campaigns I'll wait 3 years when everyone shills EU5's "comeback" through dlc which will cost over 100 usd
These "accusations" as you so defensively put it are in fact true. Paradox themselves admitted to releasing unfinished games, KNOWINGLY, with Skylines 2.
They are not the devs of city skylines
They are just a publisher
@@Bleilock1 and publishers have no quality management or can exert pressure onto the developer ? like cmon stop it
@@felixmustermann790 bro have you seen the quality of their own games?
Yea i doubt they be checking what their other devs are doing
@@Bleilock1 Publishers who pushed CO to release CS2 because of falling shareholder profits.
@@antorseax9492 this is also true but not something im getting into
I think both are resposible
This video is a pro-Vic 3 psyop disguised as an EU5 video and I’m offended
I'll be honest, the problem with vic3 can be easaly summed up by this:
It is wide as an ocean, but shallow like a lake.
In vic2 pops are legitimetly meaningful. Treat them too harschly and they either die, revolt or leave the country.
Also they removed coalitions.
In vic3 it feels like you can gat away with anything.
edit:
I also forgot player agency.
One that was improved is that atleast playing a non European country is fun
@@themageofspace5516 Its not when playing the game in general isnt fun. Also who cares about playing shitholes like Sokoto.
@@ShiftySheriff2 I do, have you played Ethiopia it's fun.
@@themageofspace5516 it sucks ass
Im not finished the video yet, but CK2 was an all time success as a Grand Strategy game. But CK3 is very worthy successor that made HUGE improvements to UI and gameplay. The major issue is that it's too easy. Way too easy.
The UI in CK3 is a huge step back. Even after all this time, it still isn't intuitive to me, meanwhile I can go back after not having played CK2 for a year or more and instantly pick the controls/UI back up. Gameplay is a mixed bag. The character related stuff is better, but war is substantially worse.
Honestly I miss the "simple" UI of CK2, especially for events where they feel like simple gameplay-moments and don't take up half of my screen with its 3D characters. I miss the drawn UI windows tbh
@@0110-q6n
For UI/UX: The menu point and hold system was revolutionary. I thought everything except laws was quite clean and easy to navigate. Except Laws! Having to go through the specific title and change laws, sucks big time.
War: I think both have positives. The Knights and men at Arms system is awesome IMO. I just don't like how units suddenly muster at a location. There should be an auto muster, and a chance/modifiers in place to have them intercepted, if enemies are within your lands. The unit's should actually have to travel to the muster point on the map. I agree that made CK2 better in a way because I had to plan out my demense/domain better.
@@AndysParadox I do feel this way about CK2 portraits. I much prefer the stillness of the portrait. It's more timeless 🙏
There's so much content that still isn't in CK3. CK2 is a far superior game still.
Problem is that the PDX business model only works with either a new francise (stellaris) OR the first time you implement it with an existing franchise (CK2 and EUIV) CK2 and EUIV at launch were rouhgly on par with their predecessor content-wise. People are willing to pay for it, if only because of better looks and performance. And then the slow adding of new features for a price is ok. Yes it's expensive when you add it all up, but no more that buying FIFA every year fo 10 years straight (which is in essence a glorified database update). And because those features are new you can enjoy them while they come out....
But you can't pull that trick a second time........ CK3 and EU5 can NOT be on the level of CK1 and EU3 to start with:
1) people will sit on the fence until it is at least 80% of what it was before (no income for PDX)
2) But when it gets there, they see how much it wil cost them for the base game + DLC's JUST TO CONTINUE WHERE THEY LEFT OFF in terms of gameplay features. NO ONE is going to fork out €300 to play what is essentially, in terms of gameplay terms, a feature complete EUIV but with better graphics and maybe some redesigned mechanics.
PDX needs to rethink their business model, because THAT had reached end of life....
I bought EU4 and a few DLCs. Then I left the game for a while and was only playing it occasionally, not enough to justify spending 100€+ on DLCs to have the full experience. Now the most reasonable thing, it seems, is to pay for base game and then download a pirated DLC'ed version. That's what I did with EU4, yes I both have a legitimate and pirate versions lol.
Oh no. I'm so sad that Paradox is having issues. It's almost as if their DLC policy is biting them in the backside.
I mean, they've grown substantially as a company since eu4's release so... not really
@@seanm241 Till now yes. But previously the game was new, the dlc were cheaper, they were less reliant on youtubers pushing sales.
The thing is they are trying to recreate the same "innovation" by pushing the same dlc that should be a part of the base game for a new entry, say eu5.
They can't recreate the money cow of 200 euros dlc or subscribe model because people will see that it's not worth it and will instead play an older title instead of new stuff.
@@seanm241 as somebody who first got into paradox games 10 years ago with eu4, their dlc policy is the main reason why i barely play any other paradox games. You just need to invest to much money/time to get into any other paradox games and with how broken most new dlcs are, i wonder if they even play test their stuff.
Vic2 vets do not think that vic3 is more feature-rich because they aren't looking at the number of features, but if the features they got used to and like using, are there. Sphereing is one example, another is foreign investment. Both of which are getting added in later in Vic3, than they got added in Vic2, with a much smaller budget and crew.
in the last tinto talk, johan, in the comment section, said that he and his team plan to release definitely-not-EU5 with as much flavor and content as EU4 right now
Thats what companies do, talk about and promise how great their product will be but on release it will be just another half done early access level garbo
That's such a bad thing to say since it's probably impossible to achieve unless they copy-paste stuff. It's a great thing to promise if you plan to hype it up then grab the money and leave
@@krullet3560 the game is in production since 2020, they had the time to create the flavor for this game since the start
@@gandalf1675 They also had the time to make CK3, Vic 3, Hoi 4, and imperator into well seasoned games, instead of constant hollow shells. Those games plus EU IV as well as all titles paradox purchased has had for years now a total "mostly negative" for each DLC released. We all know with an infinite amount of time you can get a pretty good piece of literature out of a monkey, however all you can get out of a Paradox dev with infinite time is an even greater time spent manually back patching and disappointment. Paradox became Creative Assembly in all ways.
@@gandalf1675 This gives me a lot of hope. I assumed it was a 2year project maximum so 2 extra years is big
from the scraps of information the tinto talks gave us I'm optimistic, all the systems shown so far look like a straight up better version of what we have in eu4, sure some features might not make to game launch (like custom nations my beloved) and others might be discarded (my guess would be RNW), but at the same time they already started communicating with us before even game announcement, so I expect about 3-4 years before launch when they can shape the game with community feedback and, hopefully, have no UI problems or major bugs at launch. Also, even as a eu4 main with over thousands hours in this game I have to say... eu4 already is a dated game, sure it's fun and all but c'mon, just look at it.
if you would prefer to ignore the positives and be pessimistic about it, then take a look at the wastelands shown in tinto talks 2, that one really needs some changing in some areas alright.
I think the main thing people will be disappointed about will be the depth of country-specific content; it took a decade to work all these things into EU4, so it's not really fair to expect EU5 to be as deep out the gate, but we probably will. Oh, and they can take my Random New World when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers! ;D
i get optimistic but then i slap myself and remember its paradox, but then i slap myself again and remember johan is on it, then i slap myself a third time and idk anymore
You're clueless, Victoria 2 only had 2 expansions, completely different to ck2 and the others.
so what? V2 was full of content from the start, it was times when release meant a game not a basic interface to be filled after 20th flc
TBH victoria 2 is almost unplayable without the dlcs
Expectation to get a full game at release are not wrong expectation. You need to unlearn what PDX teached you those past 20 years and stop accepting them selling you half-baked product made to be able to add DLCs on it.
That's kinda how all games operate I think. It's nothing new nor company specific. For an example I will list 2002 game called Heroes of Might and Magic IV. The game promised a lot but it ended up being rushed, unfinished and unbalanced. It also got 2 dlc's but they didn't target the core problems the game has.
When project is ambiguous and expectations are high then the project tends to dissapoint when it's released.
Simple facts and let's stick to it
@@ppp-vz1miYeah and HoMaM4 bombed so hard its studio went bankrupt, it wasnt normal to release clearly unready games.
Bank then if a game was too buggy or unfinished, the reviews trashed it and gamers ignored it. HoMaM4 got a cult following over many years through pirate copies, and was eventually released by a new company that had taken over the franchise.
@@Rynewulf I've got two copies of this game on CD's. First one is from 2004 and second one is from 2010. Both have Ubisoft logo on it.
It was my first game from this series and I love it despite it's flaws. :P
@@ppp-vz1mi Ubisoft was publisher, not develop.
4's development was famously fraught, including an expansion scrapped due to players hating it so much the devs were harassed and stalked in their private lives
Imagine being a fan of a series that always has sequels that are worse than the last one.
Man, I wish I had a Pokémon pfp right now. Would perfect the joke. I can't be bothered to download one though.
LOL at that ending
Paradox should change the way they make their games. If they would launch them on a finished state, and the dlcs were fewer but richer in content (which could make them more expensive, as a benefit for the company), people would have less problems with them. But you can't launch a game 30% done and finish it with 40 dlcs in the span of a decade, like EU4.
Even with EU4, imagine telling someone that the game is good... You just need 5 or 6 $20 DLCs for some extra features and even more for flavor.
@@hyperion3145 That's the reason I don't play EU4 much, or at all. I've had it for over a year now, and I still rarely play it because I can't be bothered to spend 100 dollars on DLCs I need to even be able to play a vassal or a tribal state. The only paradox game I've actually gotten good at is HOI4, and I have every single dlc for it.
I have tried getting people into EU4 that is the biggest problem, literally no one wants to enter at that price and for a map game at that. At least with Total War Warhammer they can look at the pretty models.
@@lscreagle7022 You can still play it fully if you pirate it... it's not a big deal. I have the game on Steam though, but without most of the dlcs.
@@stirpsromana I mean yeah, but you can say that for any game ever. Not everyone is gonna pirate it and that shouldn’t be the solution to this problem.
The light of hope I have for EU5 is that Johan and others are very active on the forum asking the community what they want. Imperator was made in 6 months which is why it released in that state- it was Johan's passion project with a very tight deadline. Now EU5 development starte in 2020 which Johan confirmed himself and it's still being worked on, so by the time of its release it'll be the longest running project Paradox worked on so far, combined with the input from the community, shaping it up to be the best game PDX made to date, and radically different than EU4.
From the start date being over a century earlier than EU4, no mana, pops system instead of development and estates, manpower, trade and so on being directly tied to the pop system, etc.
Johan's redemption arc
The paradox curse is not expectation its greed. Instead of updating the engine/visuals and adding new features, they instead try to sell u old features AGAIN
For CK3 at least all features that were in CK2 and its DLCs end up included in the free patch when added to the game. So it's not really true there at least.
i cant think of a single time when they added a feature from an old game back into a new game as dlc, they certainly havent with victoria 3 or ck3
no competetion= no motive
@@blitcut9712Me when I spread misinformation on the internet.
"Are Paradox so out of touch? No... it's the players who are wrong"
Props on pronouncing Johan's name properly like the Swedes do.
But yes, the problem is, they have some sort of internal rule where before next iteration of a flagship game starts development, it needs to get a "champion" designer. Which means a person needs to come up with a core design for the next game and there is like a break down in %s of how much of the old game gets ported and how much is replaced by new stuff. This is why they dont simply port the entire old game and build a new one on top, but they appear to drop beloved features and add brand new ones that often dont feel like they belong in that game. And youre right, this is compltely of their own doing. So what you end up with depends greatly on who the base design turns out to be and what their preferences are. Sadly.
Thanks, man! As a Norwegian, pronouncing Johan comes natural ;)
@@AndysParadoxAh ok yeah makes sense haha. Most people (including myself) just call him like they would in German i guess; ive known him a for like a decade chatting with him before i realized its not Yohan but Yuan almost kek.
The majority of bad reviews I saw for Imperator were with regards to the game feeling shallow despite that fact that it released with comparatively more content than CK2 and EU4 at launch, which was wild to me. I loved Imperator because of all the potential I saw in it
Same I liked imperator
More content than ck2 no way! Pretty sure I've made games with more launch content that Tetris but noone gives a fuck.
It is astonishing how many of you try to justify bad games by pointing out the launch of games released decades ago
@@michaelgoldsmith9359 Lmao I am so sorry for you
@@technobloode9709 The same reviews I'm referencing were comparing Imperator's "lack of content" to the abundance of content Ck2 and Eu4 had after 6 years of dlc and development. I'd agree these comparisons shouldn't even be made. The game met most of my expectations at least, aside from the initial bugs
The price increase on DLC have not delivered on better content even if they want to cry it funds free patches. No matter if you change to have patience and understand the game evolves overtime to be better will never fix paying more now for less content. I think ck3 really shows the problem with current Paradox where they want $30 USD what is expansion level pricing to bring less than expansion level content. Then to make matters worse the time in between content is very large and they seem to be honestly really really missing the ball here with every single release of DLC with CK3. I think Royal Court might be the biggest letdown from PDX I've ever had with the development time put into it. I just stopped paying for the CK3 DLC, I am hopeful for Roads to Power to be an new leaf or what starts to allow for the game to live up to its potential.
CK2 didn't launch in the way it is now, but overtime it was easier to accept the build up at least because the DLC didn't seem to miss the ball, and was once again reasonable price for what it was delivering.
I bought Victoria 3 a few weeks after its release. I knew about the issues with it, and while I like the game-I have over 700 hours in it-Victoria III has many problems. I primarily play the game in multiplayer, but Paradox doesn't seem to care about it. Almost every update breaks multiplayer, and some updates never fix it. For example, version 1.4 had multiplayer broken the entire time, and I can only hope that 1.6 fixes it, as it's currently broken.
The war system has definitely been improved; you can actually see your armies, and they're a bit easier to control. However, it's still an awful system. The entire game, including warfare, is built on you doing something, then waiting. There's nothing in between, and that comprises most of the game-waiting. I hope and really want Victoria 3 to be a good game, but I feel like it's always going to be flawed.
Now, for EU5, I think they're taking a much better approach. I don't think it's going to be like EU4, and I believe they're going to improve it and make it different where it counts. It doesn't have to come out with hundreds of mission trees or flavor. As long as the fundamentals are good, which is something I think Victoria 3 failed at, I think the game will be great.
Yeah, truly I think it will be a great game, I just hope we don't have another Imperator or honestly even CK3 on our hands where it takes 3-4 years for the game to finally assume its true shape in the form of "finally being worth it"
I've had the opposite experience, MP gets more stable as the game updates. If we do find issues, we find ignoring the De-Sync notification is fine.
It was a "wrongful expectation" to assume Star Trek Infinite would be supported for at least a year, was it?
Eu4 basically had almost all the features of the DLC's up Until divine wind, sans lack of colonies which was wild to fight spain back then.
It was the reason why I bought eu4. It was already a full experience, mostly.👀
So Most of the missions and decisions from previous games I do kinda expect,
As someone who never had the dlcs for ck2 I must say that basegame ck3 is FAR better than basegame ck2.
This is probably true in many ways, but for the hardcore fans who usually sticks around for and buys the DLC, the difference was/no a certain extent now is clear
it's actually a fair point - which causes me to question whether paradoxes attitude towards DLC's should be different.
I like that IR soundtrack was the background music here, because it absolutely slaps.
One of the best soundtracks ever produced by Paradox.
Honestly, NOT calling it EU5 might do more for expectations that anything else.
9:30 "paradox listened to the players and improved the warfare system" considering players said that BEFORE the launch and paradox did nothing... well, not a good argument mate
It wasn't that they didn't want to, it was literally too late for them to do so (short of delaying the game)
The only curse is paradox realising games that are just worse/unfinished. If the sequel only has like 2-3 new features, 20 features missing and is just worst product with better graphics overall then ye its a shity game. The expectations are not to high, they are far to low with every paradox game.
Yeah, it definitely needs to be a good balance between features lost vs gained. In my opinion, Victoria 3 actually succeeded here (despite its actual functional state), but CK3 was the one who failed on launch
@AndysParadox Victoria 3 at launch was a barely functional economy simulator. War, politics, and diplomacy were/are so barren it would have better if they didn't exist
Bro your argument is basically "it's okay that Paradox games are buggy and unplayable at launch, every Paradox game has been like that!"
It has nothing to do with the games being "feature complete." After over a decade of releasing literal crap people are just finally done with this company's nonsense. The logical conclusion for anyone is to pay for the games years later when they're actually playable, or to buy games from other companies.
CK3 was a good restart worth from the start, though, IMO. It didn't restart that much from zero. Also when I changed from EU3 to EU4, I never looked back.
Tbh I found Stellaris and Imperator Rome boring in ANY later stage. Ok when you said you only now regard CK3 as acceptable, we have apparently WAY different views and expectations.
CK3 was pretty decent at the start but still a bit lacking. The real fumble there was their bizarre early DLC decisions which didn't address these holes until a few years later.
What an absolute coal anti consumer take.
The curse of Paradox is not the consumer's expectations it is that fact that they moved to a DLC model when they release unfisnihed games. EU1 and EU2 and the early HOI games were mostly decent, you had a few DLCs but it was not DLC heavy with features added in that the previous game already had a release nor did they do reworks of major game mechanics like with Stellaris and other recent games. Now they release beta versions and then 2-3 years after release you get a proper game.
My problem is not the cycle of creating relatively empty games, then fleshing them out over time using paid DLC's. With the depth and breadth these games have, there's no real other way to do that, except have it ten years in development and ask 350 euro on release. I think everyone understands that won't work.
My problem is that their games are very rarely in a stable, bug free state. Every patch or DLC fixes old bugs and broken features, and introduces new ones. The games are most of the time pretty much unplayable without mods, and mods can't fix everything. I have been editing the game files a million times to compensate for bugs and stupid or unexpected behaviour. Being able to get achievements on modded playthroughs has been a major improvement, but it shows that they know their games are not playable without mods and they have just given up on bug free, well fleshed out releases. The most glaring example is EU4; after their release of patch 1.30, the game was so broken that it was not funny anymore, and I deceided to roll back to an older patch and just stay there. 1.31 came out and would (among a thousand other things) randomly destroy people's saves after hours of play, and I knew I was right. These things never should have passed quality control, but they did and were released somehow. Since then, I have never played EU4 on the latest patch, not by a long shot. Every now and then I visit reddit and ask if people can recommend a stable patch, then update to one that seems good, which is always a patch after it had several hotfixes and subpatches done to it. The current patch is never recommended.
If they would fix this, their games would be much better. But the way it is, I just buy their games as an investment, and see what it looks like after a few years. I played some early Victoria 3, and although it felt promising, it also was buggy and broken and empty. It was unplayable without mods, especially AI ones, other nations just wouldn't develop and create meaningful competition and a market to sell to. Core concepts like starting wages or occupation during war were handled so poorly that I never felt like I was playing a finished game, and knew that in a few months or years many core concepts would have been changed and it just wasn't worth my time.
Yeah I guess that's the big problem. Paradox games are complex, and take a lot of time to become good at. But if you know your effort will be in vain because systems you are trying to understand will be rewritten next patch, you just don't bother. And you can choose to learn all the systems anew every patch (my life's too short for that), play it casually (which I find boring with grand strategy), or just not play at all.
The only reason why im excited for EU5 is that there is a chance for another humble bundle for EU4
CK3 did not get criticized for being unfinished?? Vicky 3 literally was trash at launch and remains shit
As someone who plays vic3 I sadly agree with u
CK3 was in my opinion a good start for something but sadly they started to add content as dlcs as they do from a long time by now. Vicky 3 in my opinion was meant to come before the CK3 if you looking at the models and how ugly they are you can see which games have the more advanced tech. I did not checked the files itself when they were created but I strongly believe the Vicky 3 is unfinished and a lot of stuff will be added as hot fix, dlc or slightly larger expansion.
I still feel like CK3 feels more empty than CK2 did and especially on launch it felt like that.
@@calebmoe9077 Yeah, but it still had the entire, larger map working perfectly with it own, different systems from day 1.
Was it thin? Of course, but I feel like most people weren't super surprised or felt entitled to it being as complete as CK2
@@Dmitrisnikioff It at least solved some problems the original had. A lot of people forget that you couldn't always play Muslims and your leader could randomly convert to Islam, ending your game and also blocking a good chunk of the world from being playable. It's nice that you can play as the rest of the world but it sucks your people will threaten civil war against you if they are mildly annoyed.
why not just copy paste all eu4 content but with updated graphics and better UI?
in theory it sound lovely (I thought the same in regard to ck3 back in the day) but if you delve into the HOW - it's understandable, lets say you just upgrade graphics (and UI) as you said, that would result a memory leak or at the very least poor performance - so you upgrade your engine to accommodate the new graphics, but now some code is unreadable or poorly integrated with the new engine, so you rewrite the problematic section of code - but now the other parts of the code have problem communicating with this 'rewritten' piece of code, it's a game of cat and mouse in which you eventually find yourself working way harder on an existing product than just making a new one
that's why you see game either getting a total remake including a change in the engine (like resident evil), or remastered having very little change (the AC2 remastered)
@@etgarmoyalthat and if I remember right EU5 is going to be on a newer and well more optimized engine than EU4’s. Thus leading to even more issues as the “foundation” of EU4’s code would be changed, leading to all sorts of issues, if the game would even run, if you just copy/paste
Honestly I do not know why anyone could possibly defend paradox after all these years given their track record.
After all when you buy a game like any product you expect a certain standard to be met when it comes to the product, think of a bottle of dish liquid as a paradox game which has both the shiny label, says what it does but then when you go to use this product you end up finding out that you need to pay for the dish liquid inside the bottle to have extra cleaning power as well or otherwise you are left with basically slightly bubbly water that barely works, or another example take a banana but without the fruit inside and what you got is exactly what paradox does to the consumer not mentioning the amount of product you get with dlc instalments.
At the end of the day however it isn't paradox that is the issue here but rather the customers who enable this level of behaviour and they very well know it and until people get their heads out of their arses and stop being mentally feeble is the day that pigs fly.
If they literally just took all the old mechanics, and just introduced new systems to account for that, everyone love it.
Funny is that you bring EU4 on the table. EU4 was fun at the very beginning and then they started to bring in mechanics that nobody asked for. But to create the need to buy these DLCs, PDX stole content from the base game and therefore the base game became less and less fun to play. And on top, the new content wasn't just half as good as the former base game, they almost deactivated most new functions.
And the worst came true, after PDX went on stock market, because back then they started not only selling less content for more money, they also started to destroy the game. And while everybody hoped for Emperor DLC to be the final DLC to fix the mess they've created, they started going wild and went absurd.
And what PDX was famous for ist Grand Strategy Games and not just "map games" as you call it. But the delivered content for 8 years now lack everything that a strategy game needs and on top they started to destroy the strategy part from they game as soon as they started with mission trees (what is the exact oposite of a strategy), just because it was and still is easy to sell.
And on Top, you have to pay for the latest DLCs to get back the exact same mission trees you already paid for in the last DLCs, so they are selling the exact same content AGAIN!
Ah, making people pay $200 for a full game, but hiding it behind "new feature updates"
I think the true Paradox curse may just be greed
Vic 3 is not even comparable to CK3, it's actually insane how inferior it is to Victoria 2 in so many aspects it's not even funny.
paradox games should release with comparable features to the previous game in the series. the releases are totally embarrassing lately.
Why tf would you throw out all the mechanics and depths of a previous game? Like, how does that make any sense?
I expected support for Star Trek infinite but Paradox stabbed us in the back
Bro when a company spends 10 years on development of a game and charges shitload of money for it, while modders create the same (if not better) content in few month, there is usually issues with a company, not with our expectations
I’m a bit worried they’ll use a similar method to military mechanics as Vic3 and that’ll be a complete no go for me at the start
Tbh from what I see I have faith in Johan and the eu5, because it has been first being worked on 4 years ago in comparison to imperator Rome which was made from scratch to release in 6 months and I’m sure there wasn’t a lot of time for ck3 and Vicky 3, paradox likes to rush the game to release but Johan sees the aspect of a good launch and to minimise amount of DLCs, and UI has been constantly being worked on and will change before release , but maybe my hopes are too high and I love it’s literally a new game, new meta, and I love the Tinto talks as it allows the community to ask and support the team before launch
"Paradox maintains their games"
March of the eagles 💀
Imperator Rome 💀
Star trek infinite 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀 ☠️ 💀
Also ck2 was basically dropped by the devs after ck3 came out
i don't personally get why they expect all the features from their past game that took 10 years to make in a year of development
Well CK isn’t the best baseline imo. Some serious mistakes have been made regarding the DLC pipeline, they spent way too much time and money on the Courtroom expansion and it didn’t really meet expectations. They have been fighting an uphill battle ever since. The game had great potential at launch, but it’s largely fallen flat in my own opinion. I think Vicky is moving in the right direction and I’m excited for Eu5.
What has turned me off on Paradox is the fact they abandoned games like Imperator Rome and now Star Trek Infinite. What if they just abandon EU5 when it is half baked?
They won't, EU5 is too big of a game and people are hyped for it. They're doing in-depth and early previews and showcases on their forums and people are still psyched, I think they've learned a lot since Imperator.
His opinion was made instantly invalid when he even suggested that Victoria 3 was good in any way
The paradox curse is that they launch new games full of bugs and empty in content, they have a beta and launch it with a day one "royal version" with 2 future dlcs include, you don't know if those dlcs are going to be good. I love eu4 the complete eu4, is almost unplayable without dlcs the same with ck2, stellaris, hoi4, I don't know if is unplayable ck3 and vic3 because I don't have them but eventualy the will be
Wrongful expectation?
If it isn't as good as the previous entry, don't bother releasing it.
Specially paradox. They have a tendency to release just a half baked map with very basic mechanics just so they can actually start developing the game and charge you for each update.
The real problem is that the base paradox game is mostly just a skeleton that they build out from using 1,000,000,000 DLC. To there credit for the most part, the DLC tend to be worth it, but it comes at the cost of whatever game drops it has 1/3 of the content of the last game in the series until the first 37 DLCs have dropped.
Im not even going to look at Eu5 for the first 3 years of its release. Victoria 3 taught me well.
tbh, CK3 has 6x current players CK2 has and a few thousand more than EUIV (at this exact point in time)
It's not a curse, it's their own doing.
"In Victoria 3s case, what we have here is a game that by any standard has overall amazing foundations"
This is just a lie, Andy. This is so far beyond the pale of reasonable because no, by any reasonable standard, the foundations of the game are absolutely woeful. The reason the game is failing and will continue to fail is because of the foundations. Stop gaslighting people.
Vic 3 is neither more engaging nor is it more feature rich than Vic 2... WHats the new DLC for Vic3, Andy? Is it called Spheres of Influence? Vic2 has that already... and guess what... THE FUCKING DLC DOESNT EVEN GIVE SPHERES OF INFLUENCE ahahahahah
God you are so completely delusional when it comes to that dogshit game.
"there might be no paradox warfare system that I enjoy more now than Vicky 3s"
jesus fucking christ. You Wiz's alt account?
Hi Lambert. I understand this video triggered you for some reason, but I don’t much like being called a liar, or that I lie. Victoria 3 is an amazing game, I feel sad for you that you cannot enjoy it, but even sadder that it seems you cannot hold a civil conversation about it. I feel like we’ve had a friendly tone in the past, so if you didn’t mean to say what you did, I’ll forgive you no sweat.
In my opinion the reason Victoria 3 was “bad” on launch was not because of its foundations, but because of the depth of everything around it. To use one example, V3’s warfare is a great and novel idea, it just wasn’t ready yet. The way I see it, good foundation - bad execution, which now has turned into GOOD execution, albeit with some weird bugs or results at times, a few quirks that need to be ironed out.
Victoria 3 is just so much better than Vicky 2 ever was, contains SO much more content, and I can’t wait for spheres of influence!
@@AndysParadox thing is Andy I'm just sick and tired of all the BS that Vic3 defenders have to resort to to justify their liking of a failing, absolutely atrocious game. Whether you believe the objective falsehoods you are talking about really is irrelevant here, you are unfortunately deluding yourself by praising the game.
The game will fail. It is losing players, and the devs are clearly out of ideas. There will be no turnaround while the current development structure is in place. Vic3 needs digging up by the roots because contrary to what you say, the foundations of the game are rotten and unsalvageable.
“Objective falsehoods” lmao, now *this* is delusional speaking. Nothing objective about it. I loved the game from the start despite the flaws, and it’s better than ever. Super excited for Spheres of Influence!
This is a silly take. I have played Paradox games since EU2, CK1 and Vic1 and I played all games in those series. There is a reason I had thousands of hours in the older titles despite clunky ux and many more problems and only a few hundred hours in the newer ones despite many improvements to map, ui e ux.
Paradox has made shitty decisions recently going for bloat, fan service through OP tag based content that does does not add to the general game strategy part and click button to immediate effects that make long term strategy meaningless. You could remove missions, estates, edicts and decisions from EU4 and I would not give a shit. I want meaningdul systems with no obvious meta or choices that are the same for all countries and situations. If all countries play the same in the core mechanics, the game is not strategy it is a puzzle game and how many times can you play the same puzzle before it gets boring?
I would not care if EUV had 30% of the "features" if the remaining features were good and deep enough in the strategy and simulation that would result in emerging gameplay.
Halo is the best shooter I ever played because despite me having my favourites weapons all of them are useful and satisfying and depending on enemy, terrain, etc I will naturally want to use them all through a campaign playthroguh and if I played again I would different weapons on the same moments.
Current paradox games mostly suck because they are currently about having a single meta and making min-maxers happy by stacking bonuses that are just modifiers with no underlying connection to anything and all "flavor" is making some bonuses tag or religion or culture locked.
Your takes are pretty hot if you look at most paradox forms. Vic 3 is still worse that Vic 2 and Ck3 felt pretty good at launch. Just my take, but Vic 3 is a trainwreck of a game, just missing so much flavor and mechanics, even still. I expect a pretty bare bones game with EU5 but just hope it was more like Ck3 which was a fairly good release to most.
its dumb people expect to get the same amount of features from eu5 as they did with eu4 after 11 years of dlcs and patches. every new gameis the foundation to build the new game on, with community input.
We dont expect EU5 to be as good as EU4 on Launch, we expect the game to not be a damn unfinished game where they make us pay more for features so important it should be a core part of the game from the start.
Dlc's are additionnal content, not necessary content to actually have fun.
CK2 at first limited its scales so true enough it had less than CK3, but that limitation of the scale to one religion actually means that each dlc's were actually additionnal content over the years until we realised that the base game now felt kinda empty without them because they expanded the options everytime with more expansions.
CK3 offers us a game that takes in alot of core feature of CK2 great! And its empty as hell because while they got the core mechanics they didnt even add that much content.
Plus the fact that you are stuck in start dates unlike CK2 and EU4 even if most never used the mechanics is such a damn shame, like CK2 you could play as El Cid by simply going to the 1090's
You could play as Alexios Komenos, get to the 4th crusade play as Baldwin, go in between and play any dynasty you wanted. Getting rid of this even if for understandable reason is already a hella downgrade in the freedom of what you want to play as.
Some people says that Vicky II is truly outdated etc... when the whole reason Vicky II fans complains about Vicky III is that most plays modded Vicky II which brought the game to a new light stuff like HFM HPM etc... our expectation was based on those stuff, if Vicky III cant match on launch modded Vicky II, who was so old we all thought the series was forgotten entirely, then we do have the right to shite on it.
HOI took YEARS to put logistics back into the game proper ffs when it was an essential mechanic of even HOI3 which wasnt all that great to begin with
Paradox's DLC pattern is pretty much just EA's DLC pattern for the Sims, but grand strategy.
And I LIKE grand strategy, so I enjoy them... but let's not pretend like it's some kind of consumer friendly practice.
I'm just waiting for the Grey Eminence. EU V if comes out, it will take at least 3 years of new dlcs to become enjoyable without mods.
The major problem with Paradox they do not wish to make games fully work at the start but they copied EA, UBI and a lot other major studios that puts microtransaction or dlcs in their games. I like Hoi 4, Ck3, I liked the latest ones too and Eu 1-2-3-4, Stellaris but most of their games are built in the same foundations with flaws and place to add new stuffs into it. Recently bought Imperator and it is basically an abandoned game but at least you can learn to mod it. My major issues with Hoi4, Ck3 the constant small addons and fixes which fucks up the modding and almost in a month I need to redone my mods 3-4 times. I understand they need to get money to sustain themselves but if they just put some effort into making these series good at least or great then the game could sell itself. If they need dlcs to add stuff into the game what the modders can do also (no major system updates) then you know these games are unfinished and cash grabbers like what the Sims series became.
Also these games are not massive multiplayer games but games with optional multiplayer so where the money goes? Why do they need to make those huge amount of money?. Simply they just need to fine tune these games, let the modders to do addons to the game and once they have enough mods what "let's say" can be added as an expansion for core mechanics then they could use as a standpoint. Cosmetic and other craps are not needed and if they rework one or two faction, nations or something else then they instant making a dlc pack for it. Those times ended when a developer / publisher asked one time money for games and that was enough to sustain themselves IF they made a good game. Now indies do this and until they do not get a major competitor with the similar genre they will make tons of addons to the games to just get your money for something what could have been in a game. I personally would feel shame if I make half baked things and just say this is the content, there you go.
In my opinion the only curse on Paradox is they became cash grabbers instead of developers whom enjoying making games and wanting to make it better. Instead they do what I said above.
So you think paradox only pays their employees the one time after a game is released? And they don’t intentionally leave out content it’s simply that there is only so much work one can do in a certain amount of time
@@Hrolfgord They do because this is how people can make profit nowaday. If they cannot afford so much employees then they should not hire as much. Companies are overgrown because of these practices. Normally a developer calculates the expenses, revenues, how a game can sell and act in order to keep that number. Nowadays everything is about amass profit and certainly not the devs whom gets the bonuses but the white collars.
Expansions are for major game changing content which is fine if they ask max the 1/3 of the price of the base game. Dlcs are de symptons of a worse system what we are living in. Ask Capcom too why they needed dlcs for a single player game which already costs 70€
What is the point of a sequel if it is not at least matching predeccessor? They are also relying on their built playerbase so they willl not do much marketing outside of already built community and of course those players expect something that is more worth their time thna previous title.
I:R was mostly advertised towards EU4 and CK2 players so without bugs, it could have survived in its barebone state if they tried to get new playerbase.
the problem is, even if theres new games, it should atleast have 3/4 content of the original game (full of updates), not 2x of the content of the original game (when released)
EU4's launch menu when starting or exiting a campaign usually minimizes and expands its a lovable feature that i hope is fixed in EU5 lol
When they release a new game it shoul include all the previous one's features at launch and then build uppon that. Dev time would be significatively longer but players would not be dissapointed
Personally, this is why I always wait at least a few years. Picking up CK3 today vs launch, especially on sale, You're definitely getting a much more complete experience.
EU5 will be barebones and only contain probably like 10% of all the DLCs from EU4. Then PDX will sell all the missing features from EU4 as DLC for EU5. People will complain but at the end of the day, people will still buy EU5 and its DLCs because there are no other strategy games like Paradox's.
I find it concerning that you’re blaming the consumer for having expectations that the sequel games will have a level of familiarity to the predecessor games with DLC’s. Your argument falls apart when you realize that every sequel game paradox has released in its modern history has been simplified on purpose to target a wider audience. These newcomers don’t have any history with paradox and yet we’re still able to determine that Victoria was a pile of garbage. We can try to say that Victoria three had a more traditional paradox fan based in other games like crusader, King three and hearts of iron four. But that still doesn’t negate the fact that a majority of the player base did not enjoy the game. My biggest concern is that EU five is taking so much from mods like meiou and taxes because the Dev team is utterly creatively bankrupt.
Victoria 3 killed my computer literally. Played it for 300 hours. Killed my hard drive and my battery. That game worked my computer more than any game I ever played
Every paradox game is unfinished. How do you think they make money? selling DLCs
Exactly, this is their policy.
Hey, are you interested in discussing the optimization challenges your channel is facing?
the difference (i hope) with EU5 is 1) its been in development for 4 or 5 years, 2) it seems to have been worked on by key modders in the community. these things should hopefully mean we're not having a rerun of vic 3, imperator etc.
I don't think expecting features from the previous game to be included in the new game is by any means an unrealistic expectation. Yes, a lot of these additions came later in the development of the previous game, but that does not justify leaving that content out in the game's sequel. Imagine if EU5 launches without the ability to swap the occupation of a province, a feature that came in the Art of War DLC.
The point is content for Dlcs. Many studios release half-baked games these days and also cut some features from their previous game with the thought in mind that they will add this or that feature in their DLCs, but people expect some of those features in the base game to begin with.
But, when studios can't get extremely positive responses to their half-baked product, they throw all those DLC thoughts in the dustbin and waste their time and resources on releasing patches to make the game playable, while in some cases, they just completely abandon the game.
But still, I would like to have this hope that supposed EU5 will not disappoint us, considering that Paradox treats EU4 as their golden child among all their games. (Fingers crossed)
I don't know why people get mad. I play pirate version of EU4 with the latest update and DLC and is amazing, then Epic Games gave an opportunity to have EU4 completely for free, so I "bought" it and I didn't see the small letters of the contract, I was getting almost the 1.0 EU4... It was a horrible experience.
If players could ever play the old "better" versions of the game they would immediately stop playing (I stopped playing that Epic Games EU4 before 1500 since there's not so much to do and I ain't spending almost a day on a chair viewing a map).
This problem is like Sims Syndrome, the Sims series are always selling the same expansions/dlcs with each new game. There is a pets expansion for the all 4 of the Sims games, for example(not sure about 1🤔)
But ck3 and vic3 are successes, in their last quarterly report they listed both of them as big earners
I understand the idea of starter all over again with DLC. Something the Sims have been doing for decades now... The problem with Victoria 3 is that it's literally boring... oddly just boring. It's like a glorified Cookie Clicker... wtf
8 seconds in and just wrong. Paradox's only curse is their incompetence. We've never been asking for grandiose simulations. Nobody expects Eu5 to be MEIOU & TAXES 3.0.
Paradox has just been delivering wildly unfinished games priced in the AA-AAA range and acting as if they were still a small indie studio in 2010. Deliver quality products. No need for them to be perfect or complete, that's fine, but have your core features done. The fact that they've all tried to compare "CK3 on release vs CK2 on release" and same with Vic3 shows just how either incompetent or completely out of touch PDXs executive has been.
Johan however has made his intents clear. Will his game hold up to it ? Who knows, we'll have to wait and see. But if the game is anything as his messages suggest, then we'll be looking at a very solid foundation. (unlike some other game recently released I won't mention a second time).
the problem is that they make the game on purpose and then sell us dlcs to fix up these problems.
Im personally happy whith pdx whith how they market the system and build games up over time, the problem is every purchase is made in the good faith that pdx will build upon the groundwork and move forwards with it
1.Reputation is key
2.imperitor is a recent blemish on that Reputation
3.sequals take more effort to compete whith there predecessors
Pdx needs to
1. Make clear what work it wants to do whith these titles
2.make promises on requirements like purchases required before getting peoples hopes up
3.maintain its good community response
Bro, this is just disingenuous.
Imperator was straight up a scam, ck3 was bare bones but it has been improved a lot.
My real expectation for any new paradox game is atleast have as many functioning systems as the previous title in the series and also atleast all the major powers in each playable region are fleshed out like for example the fact that in Ck3 republics and hordes still lack content when they are major elements of the setting is absurd but in like Vic 3 or hoi4 I get like minor nations not getting flavor for a few years
The way I see it, EU5 should not lack any features EU4 has unless its a better replacement feature. Rather, it should be a significant upgrade on the prior game. Paradox can put a lot more into their next title, and STILL add dlc content because they can ALWAYS come up with more dlc content.
Makes me glad that my first paradox’s games were HOI4, EU4, and CK3. I’m not comparing these games to HOI3 or CK2. I just get to enjoy them. Even if EU5 is barebones at first, if it’s basically Vic 3 in EU4 time period but with micro warfare that would be cool.
I disagree that expectations are undeserved or false. EUIV is 10+ years old. if EUV in 2025 only barely matches or exceeds what 10 year old EUIV delivers it is by all metrics an utter failure and not just because fans are entitled. This is why I hate fanboys who are constantly forgiving shit releases.
Totally agree with this sentiment
You can't just release a new game and then have it lack all of the mechanics that made the previous game great in the long term.
Its their disgusting dlc policy, the thing is they charge you alot of money just for a few mechanical changes