Paradox Studio Thread

[BradeRunna]

Kind of late, but I'm obliged to give my controversial opinion on this: the constant bitching about DLC and their prices is immature and juvenile. As strategy game players who feel a sense of superiority over the mainstream games industry, let's act worthy of it. PDX is a company: they want to sell their products for the highest price possible. We are consumers: we want to buy their products for the lowest price possible. Through econ 101 a price is arrived at. This isn't to defend the multi-billion dollar corporation, it's just to say that you have agency. If $300 dollars of DLC is too expensive, just don't buy it the same way that you wouldn't buy a $50 Big Mac.

It is basic price discrimination: with time, through inflation and discounts the price of games and DLC always lowers over time. I am always embarrassed whenever someone posts about their DLC sticker shock, because they invariably are always looking at the full price without any discount at all. I haven't bought a full price game on Steam in half a decade; everything I've bought has always been on sale. If you are the sort of person who buys games full price when they come out, or god forbid full price years after they come out when their price regularly gets halved in the summer/winter sales, you are beyond help. You are consoomer cattle incapable of operating as a rational actor in the market.

And another thing: do the basic math. There is one thing common among all games with hundreds of dollars worth of DLC and expansions: they're being developed continuously. It's not some grand Swedish-Jewish conspiracy, they have to find a way to fund all those development hours. This rightfully should have no influence on whether you actually decide to buy what they produce or not, but it's just annoying that so many people don't understand the basics of game development and funding.

Whenever I see bitching about their DLC and monetization policies it gives me the same feeling as seeing niggers complaining about credit scores, insurance, the price of housing, and student loan debt. It's the dreaded e-word, but in this case it accurately describes this phenomenon: entitlement. I don't want this to be misconstrued at all, I want to be explicitly clear: I don't care if you pirate. Free media and information 100%, that one Pravin Lal Alpha Centauri quote, etc etc. Just understand that you are a nigger incapable of patience and of being a rational actor in the market. This isn't an argument that "if you pirate PDX will go bankrupt". It's about what it says about you. Getting things for free without working for them hurts the soul. Earn your leisure time and entertainment through honest work. If modern games are too expensive for you just read some fucking books.

The relationship of PDX to their rapecattle is akin to the one between luxury brands and their niggers: you want the product they offer but you won't/can't pay the price they demand. I don't know about the rest of you, but something being priced more than it's worth lowers its desirability for me. Yet PDX has such a vice grip on your balls that you twist and contort yourselves in all these gay little ways to justify your nigger behavior. You break the glass case or whatever and swipe what you want and justify it later by saying "they're just a bunch of price gouging corporations, man".

If any of you preorder EU5, buy EU5 on release day, or even buy it less than 18 months after release, you are Swedish FOMO rapecattle and you deserve everything that they serve you. There is literally no harm to waiting whatsoever. There is literally no harm to operating on a 5 or 7-year time lag. Plenty of great games, strategy games, came out in 2018 and they're all cheap as hell.

Own up to the fact that you wouldn't buy it at any price: if you were willing to buy the full game at $20, then you'd wait the 3-5 years it takes. But you want permission and approval from the crowd to pirate your videogames, and it's just pathetic.

How does boot taste?

 

[Computer God Autism]

How does boot taste?

"You must be fun at parties"-tier response.

 

[Stoneheart]

You have to go back.

Mana is great

 

[King Murchad Big Groypers]

How does boot taste?

I'm not the one who bought a Paradox game for full price. You do know that every three months there's a seasonal sale, right? It's on a schedule you can look up yourself.
This is the price history for CK3, all other modern PDX games have similar base price and discounts. I don't even understand how it's possible that you could have paid full price for it, unless it was an impulse buy.

 

[BradeRunna]

I'm not the one who bought a Paradox game for full price. You do know that every three months there's a seasonal sale, right? It's on a schedule you can look up yourself.
This is the price history for CK3, all other modern PDX games have similar base price and discounts. I don't even understand how it's possible that you could have paid full price for it, unless it was an impulse buy.
View attachment 7452697

No shit retard. It how I get all the DLC's During Steam sales. It still sucks to see $300-$400 worth of DLC for a $50 game. You corpo cock sucker.

 

[Rodeo Roadrunner]

Pro tip: you could jut buy the base game on steam to get access to the steam workshop for the game (easily at least without getting cracked steam) and then just torrent the game with all DLC and run that version. You get full access to all mods, all DLC, and up to date patches, without buying any DLC.

 

[Computer God Autism]

No shit retard. It how I get all the DLC's During Steam sales. It still sucks to see $300-$400 worth of DLC for a $50 game. You corpo cock sucker.

I don't object to the price of Paradox dlcs on the principle of a price or a ratio between it and the basegame.

I object to the price of Paradox dlcs because they are rarely worth their price for what they add.

 

[King Murchad Big Groypers]

No shit retard. It how I get all the DLC's During Steam sales. It still sucks to see $300-$400 worth of DLC for a $50 game. You corpo cock sucker.

Why? If you bought the DLC on sale, what's your issue? You didn't pay the full price, yet you're still angry about it? That it exists at all?

I could understand having a problem with the price even after the discount. CK2 Imperial Edition with every single expansion went for $120 in the last sale. When comparing that against what you could get for that amount elsewhere, it's a difficult choice. But why are you angry about the price that you didn't pay? The Steam sale price of a game is in some sense its actual price. The non-discounted full price is just you paying a premium to have it at release. Most of a game's copies are sold during Steam sales too.

$300-$400 worth of DLC for $50 games happens when the game is continually developed after release. HOI4 is 9 years old: its devs have been working on the game those whole 9 years. I don't want to be misunderstood: I am not saying "the devs have been working SO hard for 9 years and you HAVE to support the game's development by buying their DLC". That would be corpo cock sucking, but I'm not doing that, I'm just stating facts. All that consumers should do is decide if their DLC gets them good value for their money. The raw numerical price of a basegame + DLC is a neutral factor. It's just a number. The correct answer to the question of "Would you pay x amount for something" is always "It depends. Is it actually worth x amount?"

If $300-$400 of actual value is added, then sure, maybe I'll buy it. If the content's actual value isn't $300-$400, then I won't. It's often the case for me that games with years of post-launch DLC "support" are only worth it after severe discounts. I've held off from Battle Brothers, 40K Gladius, EU4, Battletech, and Graviteam Tactics for that reason. But objecting to just the numerical price alone is nonsensical.

 

[Slur Generator]

 

[Blackstar]

Early game to end game map evolution


No more unrealistic massive armies

 

[WarrenZHarding]

Vic3 released a dev diary today. I'm sure no one read it bc why the fuck would you, but the notable bit was that the author was a faggot that calls themselves "Doodlez" Just in case anyone had any hope for that game, this should clue you in.

 

[hawkisnight]

Early game to end game map evolution
View attachment 7460973View attachment 7460972

No more unrealistic massive armies
View attachment 7460981

Johan just continues to get me exited for their newest DLC factory.

Vic3 released a dev diary today. I'm sure no one read it bc why the fuck would you, but the notable bit was that the author was a faggot that calls themselves "Doodlez" Just in case anyone had any hope for that game, this should clue you in.

I skimmed through it and they introduce a revolutionary feature of blockading after almost 3 years. Whoa! Looking at steam charts I am honestly impressed that still that many people play it.

 

[Kane Lives]

Johan just continues to get me exited for their newest DLC factory.


I skimmed through it and they introduce a revolutionary feature of blockading after almost 3 years. Whoa! Looking at steam charts I am honestly impressed that still that many people play it.

I mean, we just had our very own homegrown Vicky 3 apologist in this very thread lol.

 

[LegoTugboat]

I think last time I posted in the thread, Stellaris was at hotfix 12. Well, good news, ladies and gentlemen!

Patch 4.0.15 came out, shortly followed by .16 (...that fixed issues caused by .15). .17 is currently in the works and should be released as a open beta soon.

Genuinely impressed, it has to be a bit over 1 hotfix every 2 days in a month.

 

[King Murchad Big Groypers]

Genuinely impressed, it has to be a bit over 1 hotfix every 2 days in a month.

They've averaged something like one fundamental game overhaul every two years. And yet the performance is STILL terrible. They should just abort it and make it into a cautionary tale at this point. The least complex Paradox game is the MOST laggy. Incomprehensible. I can begrudgingly accept why Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis might chug: there's thousands of countries and characters with their own AI all trying to calculate army movement, castration, diplomacy, etc.

1000-star galaxies are only playable on college supercomputers but their max AI empires caps at 30. To see lategame you have to gimp yourself by playing on the smallest size galaxies with the lowest habitable planets, and it still ends up chugging. It's a grand strategy game that's impossible to play at grand scale. If multi-threading can't save Stellaris then nothing will. It's over.

 

[WarrenZHarding]

They said the pops were a big reason for the lag, but they have been effectively removed now. So theyre out of excuses. They fucked something in the fundamentals of that game that makes it drag so bad. Genocide runs are probably so encouraged bc they unironically improve performance.

They've averaged something like one fundamental game overhaul every two years. And yet the performance is STILL terrible. They should just abort it and make it into a cautionary tale at this point. The least complex Paradox game is the MOST laggy. Incomprehensible. I can begrudgingly accept why Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis might chug: there's thousands of countries and characters with their own AI all trying to calculate army movement, castration, diplomacy, etc.

1000-star galaxies are only playable on college supercomputers but their max AI empires caps at 30. To see lategame you have to gimp yourself by playing on the smallest size galaxies with the lowest habitable planets, and it still ends up chugging. It's a grand strategy game that's impossible to play at grand scale. If multi-threading can't save Stellaris then nothing will. It's over.

 

[thefreshmaker]

I'm assuming it's actually nothing to do with pops and actually something similar to CK2's Byzantine castration calculation meme.

I'm using a Ryzen 7700x and notice no slow downs until mid/late game regardless of population. Playing with the throttled pop settings or with bonuses to pop growth, I see no difference.

 

[Polystyrene Glioblastoma]

4.0 Stellaris is alright, I just wish Gateman would hurry up on his Arcolologies and Exotic planet mods.

Gateman is a developer for Paradox and also made the Planetary Diversity mods (highly recommend) for Stellaris.

Well, he's a bit of an asshole unfortunately. He does not allow comments on his Steam page and runs his Discord server like a butch Navy dyke would run a McDonald's. Gateman is constantly shitting on genuinely good suggestions or getting mad if a short conversation happens that branches out into a new topic. "Blah blah blah let's move this to general" when the mini-conversation is already over. Troons are also very pervasive in Gateman's discord, but it is a Paradox Studios game after all.

I wish PDS would just absorb his mod and actually develop on it.

 

[Mound Dweller]

I wish PDS would just absorb his mod and actually develop on it.

Never gonna happen lol, at least not while the Magna Mundi/East vs West fiascos are still within living corporate memory, that particular bridge is burned hard.

 

[Blackstar]

What's the last time Paradox incorporated a mod into their games? I'm aware of them adding an Asian advisor portraits mod into EU4.