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 BaconCatBug wrote:
To be fair, Train Simulator beat Paradox to it and make Paradox look like the most benevolent of philosopher kings.

I mean, simulated work is, imo, not really a game anymore.

It should also be noted that Paradox has two sides to it. On the one you've got the side that sees a popular game and is willing to expand the content to that game rather than release a sequel - Crusader Kings 2 and Stellaris come to mind. The core base games in both are solid fun working games with complete features.

On the other hand they've situations like the hearts of Iron game (I think) which had clearly stripped content compared to the previous game.

Personally I see Paradox "more" of the former than the latter in general; which isn't a bad thing honestly. Esp as they are willing to work with things like Humble Bundle on the games that steadily build up a huge backlog of dlc.




Worse is situations like, say, Galactic Civilizations 3 where the core game clearly had missing features which were only expanded upon with DLC. It's a fine line between the two but in general you can see when things are cut content and when the game is simply having its core features expanded. Crusader Kings 2 didn't "need" all the new countries and regions that were added to make the core game work; the core game worked great without them and was engaging and fun for many. The expanded content was just using that popularity to fund more development - more content for the gamer and, yes of course, more profit for the developer.






Train Sim sort of gets away with it too because its aiming for a very differnet market approach. They aren't aiming for you needing to own ALL THE THINGS; instead its more of a simulation engine where they are then buying licences and creating accurate real world train maps from the ground up (honestly when you consider the detail they aim for there likely are a lot of man hours wrapped up in that). They are also mostly aiming at the generation of pepole who want to drive trains and own a Hornby Railway set and lack the money/time/space/opportunity to do either

Personally I see Paradox "more" of the former than the latter in general; which isn't a bad thing honestly. Esp as they are willing to work with things like Humble Bundle on the games that steadily build up a huge backlog of dlc.

Erm, there was also the really unfinished and lazy rome one.
it's not just HOI IV

And Stellaris. Three and a half years on and they're finally getting around to diplomacy... in a dlc.

After functionally starting over on the base game because it was just that crap.

Paradox games happily launch with stripped content and then try to sell it back later. It isn't rare or unique to select titles, or even their own titles. They happily encourage it with the small studios they back then buy out.

Stellaris was hardly broken at launch - in fact a lot of people argued that the change from fully open to hyperlanes at the start was a huge issue that made the game "worse" (even though it actually made defensive play possible since now you couldn't just sneak around and snipe out worlds and then run away - so personally I found it improved things greatly - esp in the early game).

Again its a fine line and Stellaris has had diplomacy in it for ages - it was just your standard RTS level of diplomacy rather than an in depth crusader kings 2 experience.

The Federations DLC will launch with content available to people who don't own the DLC. For example, as part of it they're separating our certain civics as Origins-- Prosperous Unification, Galactic Doorstep, and Lost Colony will be the Origins available to everyone at the launch of the DLC. Others will be available to people who own other DLCs-- the familiar Mechanist and Syncretic Evolution will be available for Utopia alongside a unique hive mind one called Tree of Life, while Apocalypse will give the also-familiar Life-Seeded and Post-Apocalyptic origins, and Lithoids and Synthetic Dawn allow for Calamitous Birth and Resource Consolidation, respectively (all of this subject to change). Most of the new Origins are Federations DLC only but not all of them. And the actual federation changes are available to non-owners of the DLC, the DLC will provide more variety and utility in terms of federations and how they function.

So while yeah, Paradox loves to give us tons of DLC (and probably makes more money on the DLC than the actual game by the end of each game's life cycle, something I criticize them about also), they don't JUST release DLC. It's going to be a content patch for non-DLC buyers, too.

I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.

Creative Assembly are guilty of that with the Total War series. If you don't buy the DLC right away, you can find yourself fighting Tomb Kings or Pirate Coast or various Regiments of Renown, but you can't use them.

BattleTech, which is a Paradox game, does the same thing I believe. Hell, Mechwarrior 4 had a bunch of 'Mechs in the game that you couldn't use but could fight unless you bought the specific "expansions" for them. That was before the days of DLC.

That's sort of crap is really annoying.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.

Creative Assembly are guilty of that with the Total War series. If you don't buy the DLC right away, you can find yourself fighting Tomb Kings or Pirate Coast or various Regiments of Renown, but you can't use them.

I'm generally fine with it in Total War since if I wanted to play that faction I'd just buy it and while I don't want to play as Beastmen or Wood Elves, I still like to fight them and don't want to have to pay to do so.

But then again, I'm pretty lenient with Creative Assembly. Maybe I'd be annoyed if another developer did it.

I am more fine with DLC races in Warhammer due to not beeing copy pastes.

I am distinctly against the DLC spam in games like rome 2.
How many greek types faction were just locked, and how many of them were hoplites.....

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.

Creative Assembly are guilty of that with the Total War series. If you don't buy the DLC right away, you can find yourself fighting Tomb Kings or Pirate Coast or various Regiments of Renown, but you can't use them.

BattleTech, which is a Paradox game, does the same thing I believe. Hell, Mechwarrior 4 had a bunch of 'Mechs in the game that you couldn't use but could fight unless you bought the specific "expansions" for them. That was before the days of DLC.

That's sort of crap is really annoying.

Actually I'm ok with it. Totally fine. See by doing it that way the game and its campaign structure runs with one instance of the game. Furthermore if you go to multiplayer for any of those games you'd be fighting those same forces. If you wanted it totally split a game like Warhammer TW with the number of DLC factions it has would become unmanageable. The multiplayer would be fragmented into dozens of different combinations of DLC ownership and the same for the campaign. CA would either have to leave huge areas of the map blank (so you'd randomly have nothing in a region) or have countless variations of the map. It would eventually become a total and utter mess.

In the end its far better that you can choose to play as whatever factions you want and buy the DLC if you want to play as them, whilst not being locked out of multiplayer or fighting against them in the campaigns.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.

Sure, that's annoying. But not entirely applicable to Paradox-- the only way you'll see the new Paradox DLC content in-game outside of the nation creation program is if it's multiplayer, in which case, only if the host has the DLC... in which case you can use the DLC content, too, as the host determines what DLC content gets used.

 Melissia wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.

Sure, that's annoying. But not entirely applicable to Paradox-- the only way you'll see the new Paradox DLC content in-game outside of the nation creation program is if it's multiplayer, in which case, only if the host has the DLC... in which case you can use the DLC content, too, as the host determines what DLC content gets used.

Yeah except no, HOI IV and some political events when the balkans got reworked created massive issues for me when i tested without the Death or dishonor DLC .-.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.

Sure, that's annoying. But not entirely applicable to Paradox-- the only way you'll see the new Paradox DLC content in-game outside of the nation creation program is if it's multiplayer, in which case, only if the host has the DLC... in which case you can use the DLC content, too, as the host determines what DLC content gets used.

Yeah except no, HOI IV and some political events when the balkans got reworked created massive issues for me when i tested without the Death or dishonor DLC .-.

Fair enough. I admit to already having entirely disliked HoI4 from the start, so I suppose I didn't notice that.

Can we talk about DRM's`?
What's the peoples thoughts on that?

Not Online!!! wrote:
Can we talk about DRM's`?
What's the peoples thoughts on that?

Do absolutely nothing to stop piracy and invariably only hinder paying customers.

Eh DRM has mostly toned down over the years, helped a lot by GOG being a financial success story. Plus many developers are happy with services like Steam or Origin being the "DRM" and most gamers are happy with that in terms of just having to log in once very few months if they need to validate.

We still get some oddballs and some issues here and there, but by and large it seems to have settled. There's more issue with old DRM systems. I believe SecureRom is a mess because a lot of old games used it, but the service shut down for windows ages ago (or windows didn't renew the contract). However being old titles most are either on GOG now or people are hoping they will appear on GOG at some point.

From what I recall of piracy with computer games much like DVDs and movies the first month and weeks rae the most critical for most game sales (for games that go the traditional pathway - early access is a totally different system). So the DRM technically only has to work for those early days - of course some gets cracked pretty fast.


That said I suspect it won't be a major issue for PC gamers until such time as we see one of the major "not GOG" companies shut down. If we saw Origin or Uplay or heck Steam close their doors and shut down that would be when the DRM monster would raise its head - potentially - again. Of course that all depends how those firms shut down - if its a sudden "we had loads of problems, didn't tell anyone and now we are in administration and shut down everything yesterday without warning" then its going to be a nightmare. If its a controlled shutdown giving people time to download games and for a "runs offline forever patch" to be released then it might go much smoother.

It's something that hasn't really happened in the market yet; the only stores we've lost tend to be smalltime stores which tend to be selling cheaper more "throw away" games in general. Meanwhile many that sell bigger titles tend to just sell codes for other stores (eg steam codes).

The reason SecureRom no longer works is because it relies on a particular driver embedded within Windows. This driver was found to be a security risk at the tail end of the Win 7 era and was removed from Win 8 and Win 10.

So hoardes of XP era games no longer work on Win 8/10.

BTW.

Bethesda screwed up again.
With a patch, for F76. ....

this time armor loses durability if you reload your gun?!?


In other news.
WoWS made major hijinks via suggestive marketing in the case of their new warship, not really a WoWS player but the first iteration of their marketing suggested that their Event vehicle would be easy to obtain, however if one takes a look at the forums in regards to that, it buns brighter then dakka dakka on a bad day.

Which brings me to the next point, EVENT specific cosmetics and vehicles / items/ Champions and the FOMO / whale hunting going on with that. In a way the Sunk cost fallacy is getting a lot more use since the mobile market strategies have invaded the free gaming market.

Is this that new ship that you have to "build" over the Christmas period? I had a look at that and yeah it seems that you can build it, but you've got to either pay or play a tonne to actually get enough points to unlock it.

I'm not surprised the forums are up in arms, sometimes making the marketing sound too good just backfires.

 Overread wrote:
Is this that new ship that you have to "build" over the Christmas period? I had a look at that and yeah it seems that you can build it, but you've got to either pay or play a tonne to actually get enough points to unlock it.

I'm not surprised the forums are up in arms, sometimes making the marketing sound too good just backfires.

The tasks are nigh impossible according to the unicorns even, especially because they don't synergize.

I've not even looked at half of them esp as I think they require level V ships to achieve/unlock.


But yeah its your standard "grinding is possible but near impossible" mmo tactic that encourages you to pay; only the ship costs something like 70 odd Euros to unlock - one ship skin for what is the equivalent cost of a fully DLC updated AAA title game or two regular games or three or four indie high end games. Ergo a huge amount for what is basically very little content.

I do wonder if bot-farming accounts might be twisting gameplay data to the point where if there's enough bots running all day every day it gives developers an inflated sense of the population actually playing the game and the game play time; but at the same time you'd think they'd apply logic to any harvested data. Just seems greedy like a lot of other packs and similar tricks.

Yeah, the USS Puerto Rico grind is demented, especially considering the ship is pretty meh performance-wise. You'd have to spend more time playing Warships than you do anything else EVERY DAY UNTIL JAN 13TH to get it for free. It's a blatant cash grab trying to exploit the sunk cost fallacy to make people pay for the remaining progress when the event ends by taunting them with an incomplete ship.

in other news, F76 has devolved even more into a dumpster fire, what with the hack going around beeing extremely simple....

Bugthesda. Bugthesda never changes.

Not Online!!! wrote:
in other news, F76 has devolved even more into a dumpster fire, what with the hack going around being extremely simple....

Bugthesda. Bugthesda never changes.

I feel it is worth pointing out that FO76 is designed by the Bethesda "C team" in Austin, and not the main studio in Maryland. The Austin studio is some acquired group that hadn't had any experience working with their code before. Smart Idea, I know, I know.

The fact that F76 garbage is still making news somehow shows the stockholm syndrome that so many gamers have towards certain gaming companies, at this point how are there still people playing this game? Even Anthem seems functionally dead at this point, so I'm surprised FO76 is still going, much less STILL having these issues this late into release. Live service poopoo. Meanwhile quality single player games like Sekiro, and Jedi Fallen Order keep trucking along, making good press and money without all the predatory microtransactions. It's a pity that our system rewards short-term greed for companies.

 Grimskul wrote:
The fact that F76 garbage is still making news somehow shows the stockholm syndrome that so many gamers have towards certain gaming companies, at this point how are there still people playing this game? Even Anthem seems functionally dead at this point, so I'm surprised FO76 is still going, much less STILL having these issues this late into release. Live service poopoo. Meanwhile quality single player games like Sekiro, and Jedi Fallen Order keep trucking along, making good press and money without all the predatory microtransactions. It's a pity that our system rewards short-term greed for companies.

Honestly i think it's more the case that most have left and only the hard core remains aswell as the media coverage.

Bethesda has overnight ( well over a year) ruined it's reputation as one of the few remaining AAA studios and publishers left after the desasterous 18.
Bethesda managed to upset the whales left.
It allready got coverage and is under hightened scrutiy.
Bethesda keeps fething up, on basic things that would need to be automatically reevaluated when you in essence port a game from single to multiplayer, hence the relative ease at which the inventory hack worked supposedly.