Paradox Studio Thread

[Mr.Miyagi]

Paradox has released the newest DLC for Victoria 3, Dawn of Wonder, to (shock!) mixed reviews. What does the $5 expansion pass filler consist of?

• A day & night cycle.
• More pop clothes.
• A paper map option and junk on your desk when you zoom out.
• Four landmarks.

Yes, $5 for a day and night cycle, a feature that's a free, base inclusion on their other titles, like Hearts of Iron, or added for free in updates, like in Cities: Skylines.

It's a good thing for Paradox that their games are so niche, otherwise they would easily be flogged online for this kind of nonsense alongside companies like EA or 2K. The final expansion pass DLC, Spheres of Influence, is set to come out in March '24, and features actual gameplay additions. But considering how nobody's playing (30-day average for Vic3 is a quarter of CK3/EU4, and almost 1/10th of HoI4), does anybody really care?

 

[East_Clintwood]

Paradox has released the newest DLC for Victoria 3, Dawn of Wonder, to (shock!) mixed reviews.

I will never understand why people buy obviously bad shit like this just to leave a review of how bad it is, instead of just not giving the company money. Reminds me of the numerous mongs who gave CA 20 quid for Shadows of Change so they can kvetch about how it isn't worth 20 quid. Like no shit we all knew that, you could have just not given them another sale which would likely be more effective than a review they'll just ignore.

Yes, $5 for a day and night cycle, a feature that's a free, base inclusion on their other titles, like Hearts of Iron, or added for free in updates, like in Cities: Skylines.

Does the day/night cycle even do anything or is it purely cosmetic? In HoI 4 it at least affects some combat and what not.

The final expansion pass DLC, Spheres of Influence, is set to come out in March '24. But considering how nobody's playing (30-day average for Vic3 is a quarter of CK3/EU4, and almost 1/10th of HoI4), does anybody really care?

I'm very curious to see what happens after that, namely whether they'll quietly drop it, or if they'll double down into trying to make it work. On the one hand the idea of a Victorian era game obviously had decent appeal (hence the endless years of "when Viccy 3" shitposting", and they were definitely positioning it to be the next big endless DLC factory like EUIV. On the other they've, as you noted, basically murdered the fanbase, and the underlying systems are so fundamentaly they'd all essentially need to rewrite the entire fucking game to fix it to maybe get some players back , and I'm just not convinced they can/will put that effort in.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

I will never understand why people buy obviously bad shit like this just to leave a review of how bad it is, instead of just not giving the company money. Reminds me of the numerous mongs who gave CA 20 quid for Shadows of Change so they can kvetch about how it isn't worth 20 quid. Like no shit we all knew that, you could have just not given them another sale which would likely be more effective than a review they'll just ignore.

Some of the reviews (maybe most?) seem to be from players who bought the Grand Edition, which comes with the expansion pass, rather than getting the DLC separately. Granted, the pass does tell you what you're getting into, and it's like $30 more than the base, so it's still on the consoomers for buying that back in October.

Does the day/night cycle even do anything or is it purely cosmetic? In HoI 4 it at least affects some combat and what not.

As far as I can tell, it's purely cosmetic. It's customizable, probably similar to the one in Civilization 6, where you can set how quickly it changes or make it a permanent night if you want.

I'm very curious to see what happens after that, namely whether they'll quietly drop it, or if they'll double down into trying to make it work.

It's really hard to say. Paradox feels like it's in a very strange place, nowadays. They release these big, new entries in their most popular franchises, like CK3, only for the DLC to come out very slowly and pretty piecemeal. They've got whole teams dedicated to maintaining stuff like EU4 and Stellaris, but at the same time, throwing out new shit like a Stellaris 4x game, or the Star Trek game. And then there's things like the eternally troublesome VtM: Bloodlines 2. It's like they're stuck between being a developer and being a publisher, and can't pull off both at the same time.

My personal bet is that they sunset the game next year a couple months after the last DLC, basically saying "the game's finished, on to the next adventure!" ala Imperator: Rome. I don't expect any public "We recognize we fucked up and made a game that alienated core franchise fans and failed to attract new customers," though. The EU4 retrospective had a little bit of apology when reflecting on how bad Leviathan was, but still mostly brushed it off with a "and then we got better and Tinto pulled through in the end!". Doing something similar with Vic3 would involve admitting that the entire game's systems were wrong from the design stage.

 

[Midwit]

Granted, the pass does tell you what you're getting into, and it's like $30 more than the base, so it's still on the consoomers for buying that back in October.

I think they assumed that the minor DLC would actually have some kind of in-game content like flavour events or the ability to build a bunch of unique buildings from the era, something that would actually have some level of tangible gameplay impact. They should've just had the art team working on the military units because for a >£40 game it should at least include unique artwork for the military forces of the era's major players.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

They should've just had the art team working on the military units because for a >£40 game it should at least include unique artwork for the military forces of the era's major players.

That's another reason their changes to the warfare system are so funny. All their games, including Vic2, had sprite/model packs so your little army men looked the part as you moved them around. But now everything's just "a frontline" where the only character is whatever generals you have angrily glaring at the opposing general, so it somehow feels less personal, even though the commander is given traits and depth. If they stuck with their old system, putting in a bunch of uniforms and weapons would be an easy sell.

Speaking of military matters, they are working on a big series of military improvements in the open beta, including some new visuals/vfx. A lot of it does seem like an improvement (and there is a lot changed), but it still makes you wonder: why have such a big departure from the standard Clausewitz formula, if it necessitates such a drastic overhaul of the system post-release?

 

[JJLiautaud]

Now let's jump into the juicy stuff! For these features we are looking to improve the military gameplay in three broad areas: Agency, Depth, and Visuals.

You know what grants a ton of agency and depth? Using player controlled tokens on a map to represent military units.

 

[Scale Smerch]

I'm very curious to see what happens after that, namely whether they'll quietly drop it, or if they'll double down into trying to make it work. On the one hand the idea of a Victorian era game obviously had decent appeal (hence the endless years of "when Viccy 3" shitposting", and they were definitely positioning it to be the next big endless DLC factory like EUIV. On the other they've, as you noted, basically murdered the fanbase, and the underlying systems are so fundamentaly they'd all essentially need to rewrite the entire fucking game to fix it to maybe get some players back , and I'm just not convinced they can/will put that effort in.

Fully expecting it'll be dropped within 12-18 months. You don't miraculously recover numbers player numbers like that anymore, especially for niche games and when paired with a public company needing to juice quarterly financial reports; investors will be looking for a return that more dev time in Stellaris or HOI4 can give compared to Victoria 3. Paradox is effectively coasting these days and hoping a competitor doesn't come up and steal their thunder.

It's really hard to say. Paradox feels like it's in a very strange place, nowadays. They release these big, new entries in their most popular franchises, like CK3, only for the DLC to come out very slowly and pretty piecemeal. They've got whole teams dedicated to maintaining stuff like EU4 and Stellaris, but at the same time, throwing out new shit like a Stellaris 4x game, or the Star Trek game. And then there's things like the eternally troublesome VtM: Bloodlines 2. It's like they're stuck between being a developer and being a publisher, and can't pull off both at the same time.

To be fair a lot of these games aren't Paradox the developer but Paradox the publisher. Stuff like Stellaris 4x and Star Trek are being done by third parties with Paradox simply raking in licensing fees. Doesn't take away the fact these games are shit, but so far Paradox hasn't pulled a stupid in trying to get its in-house studio to develop them. Yet.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

While the thread's alive, I thought I'd post something I've seen on the Steam update posts/discussion board that I thought was funny.

The new beta patch for Stellaris includes a civic for empires called "Selective Kinship." It makes it so that your empire likes empires with the same species class (avians like other bird people, for example), and your citizens are happier when sharing a planet with that same species class and while oppressing other species types. Your type gets full citizenship, but other types cannot.

A user called BarrenSands fucking hates this civic, viewing it as the worst thing in the game. Why? Well, because it doesn't have a big negative modifier on your empire, it means that Paradox is supporting racism and apartheid! Call the legal team, get in touch with an ethics and safety team, delete this from the game NOW!


Now, at first glance, I'd assume he's trolling. As others in the thread point out, this is a game where you can click one button to make your empire start genociding an entire species by turning them into food or working them to death in labor camps. But he's just so dedicated to this that I have to wonder. His previous sperging in the announcement for the beta patch was so bad that he (supposedly) got a temporary ban.


He's done similar whining, like multiple threads in BG3's forum about alphabet people not being respected enough, and how not having a polyamorous relationship with the froglady ruins his run. If it's a troll, bravo, this is some quality guaranteed replies. If not, well, I'll be interested to see if one lunatic manages to convince the Stellaris team to drop a civic from the game, echoing the old drama with the "racist mods" getting removed from the workshop.

 

[JJLiautaud]

A user called BarrenSands fucking hates this civic, viewing it as the worst thing in the game. Why? Well, because it doesn't have a big negative modifier on your empire, it means that Paradox is supporting racism and apartheid! Call the legal team, get in touch with an ethics and safety team, delete this from the game NOW

Thats fucking insane. Id argue stellaris should have inanate bonuses for species type interactions in the first place a lot easier to have relations with a people when the various bits of infratructure already work with the basic bauplan of the species in question.

 

[Ewan McGregor]

I dropped out of these games after the Leviathan debacle in EUIV where, in the name of equity, they buffed up all sort of almost neolithic cultures such as pacific islanders and native americans to the point that they would surpass fucking England, France or Spain.

After that, it's been a bunch of lame attempts at cleaning house while releasing mostly cosmetic DLCs with extremely narrow improvements if not outright annoying reworkings of the mechanics. The remake of Vicky, I hate it for how utterly dumbed down it is and how deeply retarded its mechanics are, and Stellaris I find bland and boring. I haven't played CK3 and I don't have that much interest.

I will be buying Cities Skylines II, though.

 

[Blackstar]

Vic 3 is fucking hopeless, they literally built the game upon communist ideology and the end game goal is to build a commie utopia, they even removed capitalism from a game meant to be a 19th century economic simulator, and then had to add it back. The game is still really shit after a year and from what I've heard from people who tried modding it, moddability has regressed from CK3, even the shit mobile game UI is hardcoded and cannot be changed. The 3d characters are all fucked up, producing shit such as nationalistic children with a negative age dressed in uniform. The reason for this is because the 3d engine was a predecessor to the one in CK3. It baffles me that they proceeded to use this one instead of adapting the clearly better version.

Thankfully, there is good news for Viccy fans, the 2 Open Source projects are progressing nicely.

Project Alice has a playable demo out now https://github.com/schombert/Project-Alice/releases/download/v0.0.4-demo/2023-8-24-DEMO.zip

Meanwhile OpenVic is progressing slower but it will be much more thorough when it's done, the devs are currently working on a dataloader and have released dev diaries as well as a roadmap last month.



On the CK3 front things also don't seem good, there's rumors that the dev team has been reduced to a skeleton crew, which is pretty believable considering the development pace. It turned 3 years old recently, yet the amount of updates pales in comparison to Ck2, or EU4. In 3 years, Victoria 2 had finished its development and it is still actively modded. The only advantage I see that it has over CK2 is the increased moddability, but in my opinion that doesn't overcome the fact that the base game is very barebones, they didn't bother including all the content and flavor that was added to CK2 over the years, since that would mean releasing a full game.

With the way things are going, I don't even want an EU5

 

[East_Clintwood]

Some of the reviews (maybe most?) seem to be from players who bought the Grand Edition, which comes with the expansion pass, rather than getting the DLC separately. Granted, the pass does tell you what you're getting into, and it's like $30 more than the base, so it's still on the consoomers for buying that back in October.

Forgot about the sucker's edition with baked in cuck tax DLC. Makes more sense now.

My personal bet is that they sunset the game next year a couple months after the last DLC, basically saying "the game's finished, on to the next adventure!" ala Imperator: Rome. I don't expect any public "We recognize we fucked up and made a game that alienated core franchise fans and failed to attract new customers," though.

Yeah I'm like 70-30 between them sunsetting the game, or continuing to milk it's corpse with some, even more than usual, low effort DLC.

Also has anyone seen the upcoming HoI4 DLC, Arms Against Tyranny? It's fucking peak paradox
1)Central mechanic that will likely never be used more than once or twice (arms market in this case). Check
2)Bullshit overpowered focus creep? Check
3)2 but worse because it involves Sweden, and Sweden always has to be super speshul in paradox games? Check.

Seriously look at this shit. Sweden, a country that wasn't involved in the fucking war has a military focus branch that looks like this:


Meanwhile Germany, arguably the most important fucking nation in the world for a WW2 game:


Hell, Sweden's focus tree absolutely fucking mogs all of the older majors, and is on par with the newer ones like Italy and the Soviets.

Also as another hilarious example of Sweden Numbah One! BS, I present the concept of Joint Focus trees. I'll quote directly from the Dev diary:

Let me start with a hypothetical scenario:

You and your friends decide to play a co-op campaign of Hearts of Iron. You get your healthy snacks and drinks, jump into a voice chat and load the game, hoping to play as Monarchist Poland. There’s one problem though, one of your friends wants to play as monarchist Lithuania, and hopes to annex Poland and the other Baltic nations. If this has happened to you, then you’ll love the Joint Focus Tree. Actually I’m sure you’ll love it even if it hasn’t.

As nations that start the game disadvantaged against the big majors, a lot of minors rely on absorbing the countries around them to be able to compete. This happens with the Baltics, China, South America and importantly for us, the Nordic countries. We’re hoping the Joint Focus Tree will solve this by giving you and your friends the opportunity to collaborate with your neighbors and make your faction be more powerful than the sum of its parts, so you can take the fight to the Majors and win, TOGETHER!

So it's MP shit, which has zero appeal to me personally, but it seems like a not horrible addition. However despite pointing out in the hypotheticals that there are several potential historical use cases it's actually limited to the Scandanavian countries. So not only does Sweden get an enormous focus tree of it's own, it can also access a fucking shared focus tree for even more free shit, because of course it fucking can.

Now I can, maybe, see the argument for only doing the nordic one in this release, since it's a nordic themed pack, however in the dev replies to the comments it seems like they might not even bother adding this to other countries, despite already doing most of the hardwork in creating the underlying system:

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Europa Universalis 4 celebrated its 10th anniversary last week, with Johan reflecting on its trials and tribulations here. They also released a free music pack in celebration, featuring remastered versions of the main themes used in popular mods, such as Dawn of an Empire from Anbennar. For all my gripes about Paradox and their games, I do genuinely enjoy EU4 and view it as a great game, with my only wish being that it had less stumbling and nickel and dime-ing. Maybe EU5 will be on the horizon soon (but considering Victoria 3, maybe it's better left unmade.)

EU4 is my favorite Paradox game and the one I sunk the most autistic amount of time into. In my opinion the ideal EU5 would be something like taking the current game and reworking it from the ground up so all sorts of DLC mechanics and advances are instead built into the core of the game as to allow for a better experience. Things like having Development and Government Reforms be built into the game, better coding for all events and updates to the mechanics. Simply rebuilding the game so all the systems that are currently being run from the side into the core of the game are part of it integrally.

I dropped out of these games after the Leviathan debacle in EUIV where, in the name of equity, they buffed up all sort of almost neolithic cultures such as pacific islanders and native americans to the point that they would surpass fucking England, France or Spain.

That has been mostly fixed now. Natives are still annoying as hell in North America but you can clean house pretty easy now.

Also has anyone seen the upcoming HoI4 DLC, Arms Against Tyranny? It's fucking peak paradox

I barely play HoI4 nowadays and it seems that is for good. This refusal to expand new systems to the entire game and instead keeping them in place for only the nations originally released is the biggest issue on HoI4 DLCs and absolutely unforgivable. EU4 had issues like this with some mechanics but that was YEARS ago and they have thoroughly fixed the issue there, the HoI4 team has no excuse to not have learned this lesson.

It should have been trivial to expand the "shared focuses" system to also mean a update on the focus trees of Axis, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Comintern and Allies so they would have similar bonuses and helps. Something as simple as a "default faction tree" for each of the 4 ideologies on minors as well. It's something they could have a intern make in a week, and which modders will get made in likely just as short a time. But the fact they aren't doing so speaks of not only laziness but also of a disinterest towards the game itself.

 

[Radola Gajda]

Lol day-night cycle dlc . That thing got annoying really fast in hoi4.And with V3 shorter days it is going to be even better.

 

[hawkisnight]

Vic 3 is fucking hopeless, they literally built the game upon communist ideology and the end game goal is to build a commie utopia, they even removed capitalism from a game meant to be a 19th century economic simulator, and then had to add it back. The game is still really shit after a year and from what I've heard from people who tried modding it, moddability has regressed from CK3, even the shit mobile game UI is hardcoded and cannot be changed. The 3d characters are all fucked up, producing shit such as nationalistic children with a negative age dressed in uniform. The reason for this is because the 3d engine was a predecessor to the one in CK3. It baffles me that they proceeded to use this one instead of adapting the clearly better version.

Thankfully, there is good news for Viccy fans, the 2 Open Source projects are progressing nicely.

Project Alice has a playable demo out now https://github.com/schombert/Project-Alice/releases/download/v0.0.4-demo/2023-8-24-DEMO.zip

Meanwhile OpenVic is progressing slower but it will be much more thorough when it's done, the devs are currently working on a dataloader and have released dev diaries as well as a roadmap last month.

Project Alice is looking good. Damn that speed. Your brain can't keep up at speed 5.
I've been playing some vic2 recently and it's really fun... at least until you get to the late game and you have thousand stacks to manage. I usually give up after fighting a huge war, looking at my army, seeing I have to reorg it again and reposition for next war. Too much of a hassle and you basically "won" at that point.

On the CK3 front things also don't seem good, there's rumors that the dev team has been reduced to a skeleton crew, which is pretty believable considering the development pace. It turned 3 years old recently, yet the amount of updates pales in comparison to Ck2, or EU4. In 3 years, Victoria 2 had finished its development and it is still actively modded. The only advantage I see that it has over CK2 is the increased moddability, but in my opinion that doesn't overcome the fact that the base game is very barebones, they didn't bother including all the content and flavor that was added to CK2 over the years, since that would mean releasing a full game.

With the way things are going, I don't even want an EU5

If CK3 - a well received and liked game is in such dire straits what does it say about Vic3 future. Uh oh.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Lol day-night cycle dlc . That thing got annoying really fast in hoi4.And with V3 shorter days it is going to be even better.

Whats really funny about the day night cycle dlc is that they got the sun rising from the wrong fucking direction srsly:

Classic fucking Paradox, charging 5 bucks for feature that doesn't work, that wasn't really needed anyways.
And today's scritpture reading is from the book Paradox Chapter 1 verse 2:
Then Wiz said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And Wiz saw that the light was good enough.
Except that it is no longer good enough.

 

[Commander Shepard]

Also has anyone seen the upcoming HoI4 DLC, Arms Against Tyranny? It's fucking peak paradox
1)Central mechanic that will likely never be used more than once or twice (arms market in this case). Check
2)Bullshit overpowered focus creep? Check
3)2 but worse because it involves Sweden, and Sweden always has to be super speshul in paradox games? Check.

They also pissed off much of the fan base a few dev diaries back when the dev creating the monarchist focus trees admitted how much he fucking loathed monarchist paths while also gleeing about yet another Trotsky focus tree.

 

[Chickenpolar]

They also pissed off much of the fan base a few dev diaries back when the dev creating the monarchist focus trees admitted how much he fucking loathed monarchist paths while also gleeing about yet another Trotsky focus tree.

Were those the Soviet dev diaries in No Steps Back? I want to check that one out.

Victoria 3 exciting but them making it anonline socialist's idea of how an economy works meant I passed on it.

Crusader Kings 3 is just boring. They spent too much time on 3d models of shit like the throne room instead of actual gameplay.

 

[Ouro Boros]

Random question considering the current topic but.....you guys disappointed that White Wolf is gone or are fine witht hem being gone?
Also maybe give me a summary about that happened.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

Random question considering the current topic but.....you guys disappointed that White Wolf is gone or are fine witht hem being gone?
Also maybe give me a summary about that happened.

The World of Darkness stuff? You might want to check the general thread for info. I never really followed their stuff too closely (outside of VtM: Bloodlines and the one time I got invited to a LARP), but the consensus seems to be pretty grim when it comes to the new Werewolf stuff coming out under Paradox. I think they got folded after a 5e Vampire book wrote that the gays getting murdered in Chechnya was secretly a vampire media cover-up.