Paradox Studio Thread

[Slap47]

The new Rome game looks pretty good. Shame they'll ruin it with DLC.

 

[millais]

The new Rome game looks pretty good. Shame they'll ruin it with DLC.

Doesn't it usually take them 5-7 DLC after release to make any title playable

 

[Slap47]

Doesn't it usually take them 5-7 DLC after release to make any title playable

They usually create a focused product and then butcher it to cater to the DLC.

 

[not william stenchever]

The only proper way to buy Paradox games is to wait until 5-7 DLCs later and then pick them up on the Steam Summer/Winter sales. But PDX is aware of these sales and release DLC around them. So you've got to wait until the've left the game in the sands of time before you can pick the whole game up for like 250 dollars

 

[Stoneheart]

Doesn't it usually take them 5-7 DLC after release to make any title playable

Its pretty okay right now! its the same price as civ, but its WAAAAY better. also they are already mapping out the first big content patch.
It will be more like Ck2 and not like EU4. so DLCs will be new content and not just balance fixes with a new button.
Johan Cares unlike DDRjake. he will not fail us by putting old stuff behind a paywall.

 

[not william stenchever]

CK II was released as a functioning game at least. It took people quite some time to have their characters fuck their daughters, and that was people trying to break the game. With Imperator Rome people are stumbling over 0 man armies and 0 ship fleets that you can't delete but you can assign a general/admiral to. They should have left this game in the oven another 6 months. nobody would be mad except maybe their shareholders, who don't actually care about quality game design. And what the fuck is this quality assurance bullshit? that sounds like a quarter we're not raking in cash you Swedish cucks!

 

[Kaede Did Nothing Wrong]

imperator seems to have gone over badly with the longtime fans. the general verdict is that the flaws run deeper than a usual lack of content. but idk if the people complaining are the majority buying paradox games anymore.

 

[Zaragoza]

I got the game, the tutorial segment is the best part of it. Paradox did a really good job conveying to the player on how to play this game, unlike CK2...

 

[Stoneheart]

With Imperator Rome people are stumbling over 0 man armies and 0 ship fleets that you can't delete but you can assign a general/admiral to.

and you could never find anything like that in eu4 or ck2?

They should have left this game in the oven another 6 months.

That doesnt help with bugs like that, and they need some feedback to make good content, or you get the Eu4 situation.

imperator seems to have gone over badly with the longtime fans. the general verdict is that the flaws run deeper than a usual lack of content. but idk if the people complaining are the majority buying paradox games anymore.

there are 2 main reasons fans are pissed

1. they are pissed about alot of things PD did in the past and they just vent on this game
2. they are realy stupid and dont understand Mana.

type 2 also crys about broken civilwar and unrest systems, but they just dont understand that you have to you your mana to fix that shit.
I only had one revolt in my first game, i looked into the mechanics and now i dont have any problems anymore.
also they like to complain about sun mana, Sun mana makes the Religion more interesting and important than eu4.
eu4 has pope mana you farm and spend on boni.

 

[Null]

I own almost every Paradox game and the entire EU4 DLC catalog (piecemeal, I've been playing years and have more than 1k hours into it) and I didn't buy IR because it looked shit. All Paradox games are horribly lazy now.

 

[Poop A Loop]

I don't necessarily have problems with "mana", it's just that the implementation of that concept turns the game into a board game rather than an ant farm that you can mess around in. There's no depth to you using it, it just kinda flips a switch and nothing else happens. No events, no repercussions, no management of the concept of you using the mana. I feel like they finally got to the point where that's not so much a problem anymore in Stellaris but Imperator just start back at square one with that problem and I would have expected those lessons to have been learned already.

The game wasn't made by an entirely different company than CK2 or EU4, they work in the same fucking office so even in the beginnings of the project there should have been a common understanding of customer feedback that would have been incorporated into the design. Even shitty little B2B software companies document and learn from the type of stuff Paradox has yet to address. Johan screwed the pooch yet again and we'll have to wait for a couple of years before he works his way around to incorporating paying customer feedback into "his vision".

 

[Kaede Did Nothing Wrong]

paradox can't improve because johan grows more smug with each shitty release.

 

[God of Nothing]

paradox can't improve because johan grows more smug with each shitty release.
View attachment 747589

Wow, what a cunt. There's a reason why businesses always subscribe to the customer is always right way of thinking: they're the people you get your fucking money from. You're doing them a service so they give you a service. Unlike them, you're getting paid for this shit. While the actual usefulness of that way of thinking lies with your customer base, Paradox's is a bunch of domestically beaten servile DLC whores. I'd know from experience being a slave to CK2 and, to an extent, Stellaris.

And, holy shit, that sig is some lazy handwave for why they don't get off their asses to fix their broken ass bug-ridden updates.

 

[Poop A Loop]

Game development studios that get all smug or pissy with customers absolutely amaze me. I've worked in software for a while now and never in my entire career did I ever think a company would tolerate that kind of behavior towards its customers that game devs exhibit. From the small customers who don't pay much to the big ones who make up 50% of your yearly revenue, every customer was required to be treated equally even if we didn't prioritize their needs over the market or other stuff that was more important. And don't get me started on estimates for bug fixes, I've never been able to say "when it's ready" when some harpy account manager gets all pissy about a bug she needs fixed.

Yeah, we'd shit talk the crappy clients internally but God forbid you act like a jerk to a customer because even a hint of that shit meant you were out of the door on your ass in an instant. I even saw token diversity hires booted out of the door immediately when they would get sassy with customers. All the bitching and moaning on reddit and social media about how "toxic" gamers are is a bunch of bullshit, especially when you see how people like Johan Andersson behave like entitled manchildren. No wonder review bombs exist, when you have no other way of telling people like him to fuck off you're going to use it extensively.

 

[God of Nothing]

Game development studios that get all smug or pissy with customers absolutely amaze me. I've worked in software for a while now and never in my entire career did I ever think a company would tolerate that kind of behavior towards its customers that game devs exhibit. From the small customers who don't pay much to the big ones who make up 50% of your yearly revenue, every customer was required to be treated equally even if we didn't prioritize their needs over the market or other stuff that was more important. And don't get me started on estimates for bug fixes, I've never been able to say "when it's ready" when some harpy account manager gets all pissy about a bug she needs fixed.

Yeah, we'd shit talk the crappy clients internally but God forbid you act like a jerk to a customer because even a hint of that shit meant you were out of the door on your ass in an instant. I even saw token diversity hires booted out of the door immediately when they would get sassy with customers. All the bitching and moaning on reddit and social media about how "toxic" gamers are is a bunch of bullshit, especially when you see how people like Johan Andersson behave like entitled manchildren. No wonder review bombs exist, when you have no other way of telling people like him to fuck off you're going to use it extensively.

The nicheness of gaming and the companies that develop them's lack of a grounded culture probably greatly factors into this kind of thing. If Apple did this shit without patting you on the ass, people would be in an uproar. Gamers have been stereotyped as straight white neckbeards as the companies that develop games have been infested by the SJW crowd and politics. If there were more professional not quite scummy pro developers, we wouldn't have this kind of bullshit. The only reason why people like this keep getting cash is because there's little else on the market that offers what they're selling.

Hopefully, things change when the woke crowd really goes broke or else we're going to be stuck in this shit for a while.

 

[Ledian]

Imperator is falling flat on it's face. When big Paradox YouTubers like iSorrowProductions and Rimmy are basically shitting on the game for what it is, they shouldn't expect too much to get out of it now PR wise.

 

[Slap47]

I've been playing the original EU Rome and enjoying it.

Tribes are boring and monarchies are strange but you're playing this for Rome so who cares.

Less Manashit
Pretty refreshing to not have to deal with mana and countries getting special treatment. Rome starts with a huge population of Freemen and this is the basis for high reserves of manpower. The Greeks have less Freemen but have more Citizens. The result is that the Greeks have better research but dogshit manpower. Early Rome isn't strong because it has a special modifier but rather its strength comes from its particular demographic makeup and geographic position (you can travel anywhere by sea and sea trade is the best trade).

I picked retarded laws and ended up with a Freeman shortage. This Freeman shortage made the Populists more popular and forced me to make armies of mercenaries. It was pretty fun to accidentally repeat history in a game.

Also, its nice that you can't just paint the map. Having to actually be an Empire that deals with a diverse group of people is actually fun despite what Paradox says. You can slowly integrate people via trade, good governance so you get a nice mix of core and frontier to work with.

Focus
The Senate isn't a side attraction. 99% of fighting war is ensuring that you have a spectacular general at the helm of your main armies. This encourages you to do anything to get the best possible general and encourages risky political maneuvering.

Good example, I found a godlike general but he's a populist. Populists are dangerous because they switch one of your ideas to something retarded like increased ruler popularity and give negative modifiers when they become Consul. Of course, a general wins popularity, prominence and gold when they lead an army which increases their likelihood of becoming Consul. Worse, the men become loyal to them instead of Rome and they can use that to launch a civil war. This general became extremely popular and was next in line to be consul so I threw him in Jail. There was a chance that doing this would have caused a Civil War and it did.. and he evaded my cops.

Barbarians
Instead of being playable countries, the barbarians are colonization provinces that will occasionally spawn hoards to invade you. You can beat them with much smaller armies when you have good generals but they're tough and occasionally have legendary generals that are actually a threat. This is pretty damn awesome. It's unpredictable and you're forced to actually govern an Empire. You aren't steamrolling because you'll be using most of your armies to protect the frontier instead of just focusing all of your armies on an enemy faction and winning with ease. Late game conquest still requires you to seek out really good generals with all of the political intrigue and drama that is required to do so.

Challenge
Rome is pretty fucked in the early game. Macedon, Epirus and Carthage all have generals that are actually good, larger fleets and actually have access to cavalry. The challenge is actually fun and that challenge extends to the late game because of how many armies you actually need to allocate to defense.

Imperator is falling flat on it's face. When big Paradox YouTubers like iSorrowProductions and Rimmy are basically shitting on the game for what it is, they shouldn't expect too much to get out of it now PR wise.

I'm honestly surprised that its failing. I haven't seen many good arguments for why its bad compared to games like EU4 and CKII. I suspect that people just dislike civil wars and the lack of factions to actually play and paint the map with.

Why are they revolting against mana with this game? Why not the others?

The difference between the "professionals" and autistic fanbase is great.

I own almost every Paradox game and the entire EU4 DLC catalog (piecemeal, I've been playing years and have more than 1k hours into it) and I didn't buy IR because it looked shit. All Paradox games are horribly lazy now.

I don't think they're lazy. I think they're just retarded and have no respect for the intelligence of their audience... although I guess I can't blame them for that last part.

CK II was released as a functioning game at least. It took people quite some time to have their characters fuck their daughters, and that was people trying to break the game. With Imperator Rome people are stumbling over 0 man armies and 0 ship fleets that you can't delete but you can assign a general/admiral to. They should have left this game in the oven another 6 months. nobody would be mad except maybe their shareholders, who don't actually care about quality game design. And what the fuck is this quality assurance bullshit? that sounds like a quarter we're not raking in cash you Swedish cucks!

These glitches exist in the older games though?

 

[Your Weird Fetish]

Imperator is falling flat on it's face. When big Paradox YouTubers like iSorrowProductions and Rimmy are basically shitting on the game for what it is, they shouldn't expect too much to get out of it now PR wise.

It's all happening again. Rome just can't work for these guys.

Et tu, Johan?

 

[Ledian]

I'm honestly surprised that its failing. I haven't seen many good arguments for why its bad compared to games like EU4 and CKII. I suspect that people just dislike civil wars and the lack of factions to actually play and paint the map with.

Why are they revolting against mana with this game? Why not the others?

From what I can see in I:R, it's the fact that mana is seriously overused and takes away the idea of strategy. People really want more of what CK2 and while EU4 has faults with mana, not everything that happens in that game revolves around it. When you can do so many things while paused in I:R for some mana, it makes decision making fault-less. If something goes wrong, just pause and fix it. You don't need to really plan ahead anymore and for a grand strategy that's damn bad thing.

 

[Liquid Cool]

I love CK2 and to a lesser extent, EU4 and have been toying with getting IR, but Johan's posting lately has been so exceptional. I'll probably just sink more time into CK2 and wait a year for an expansion to fix IR.