Of course they will. Don’t they deserve to be paid for their work? They’re making a fairly niche product and constantly making improvements to it. What’s to complain about?
$404 divided over 10 years is different than as a lump. But getting the whole bundle for 80% off because it’s been successfully developed for 10 years is value.
I always find this discussion interesting. I don't personally tend to play Paradox games at all so I've no real horse in the race, but I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the model. It's designed around people being able to buy the specific parts they want, and those specific things having a good level of quality / depth to them.
Like, if you're really into early 20th century Japanese architecture, would you rather have a single house thrown into a "kitchen sink" DLC pack that you can copy-paste over and over into your city with no options to customise or expand on that, or would you prefer an entire DLC dedicated to that style so you can build a full district or city in that style?
And conversely, if you're not into early 20th century Japanese architecture, would you rather have a single house in that style thrown into your DLC pack that you don't care about and won't ever use, or would you prefer your DLC pack to contain things you are interested in?
Maybe the average consumer does look and think "wow, I really need to spend $404.40 to be able to play the game" and decide against it, I don't know. But personally, if I see a game has DLCs like "specific niche cosmetic option pack #2" then I see them as not at all necessary, and figure I can play the base game first and just buy any additional packs I want later.
C:S1 is basically designed around most players not buying every DLC. You only buy the ones you want. Also, wait for a sale. $404 over the entire time the game has been out is also not that bad. Sure, buying it all at once it’s a lot, but the player buying every DLC has probably been playing since launch. Think of it as a subscription for new content. You can not subscribe and still get plenty of content (every DLC added stuff to vanilla for free), or you can pay the fee to get everything. If this is your genre, you want to give then money to keep making improvements. If they don’t make money you don’t get anything new.
I picked up I think literally every DLC for CK2 a few months before CK3 was announced. It’s was maybe $50. I think much less (although I already owned the base game and maybe a few DLCs). No one is expecting new players to purchase that at retail price. The sale price is the actual price for a new player. I don’t think it actually really scares anyone off. If you want a city builder, there’s only one option. You stick it on your wishlist for a sale and buy what you want.
This is the classic problem with all paradox games that I don’t really have a solution for. Like as players we want them to support the game for a long time and keep updating it, but unless that’s through dlcs then they can’t really do that without getting paid somehow. The other alternatives are just not doing any updates and releasing a full new game every couple years which would probably have less features added compared to doing dlcs. Or having a subscription that you pay to get new updates which while I’m personally fine with I know a lot of people aren’t. So that just leaves the current strategy of constantly doing dlcs and every once in a while releasing a new game and bringing over as many dlc features as they can to the new one while not making the development time unreasonable.
They could make games outside newer versions of the same game. Game studios used to (and many still do) make a game, put it out, then get started making a whole different game. Even with the modern ability to update games,
Put game out
Update game to deal with unforeseen bugs found once the masses have access
But they point the comment above is making is that the years of support add a bunch of features that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Sure, they could just not. Why would they do that though if they have a team who knows how to work on a thing and people willing to pay for it.
For example, BG3 exists because the studio continued to make games in the same style in the same engine for a very long time. They became absolute experts in it, and continuously improved their tools and techniques. You don’t get that by constantly making new different games.
To be honest, I’d prefer for them to keep expanding a game I like. That’s what kept me playing SC1 for the past 65 years (or however long it has been since the game has been released).
That’s the FIFA, Madden model… release a game, fix a couple things, improve a thing here and there, pull a new roster in and voilà! This year’s new sports game.
Yeah people don’t seem to be understanding that this is a technical and pragmatic issue, not a business decision.
It’s the “new and improved” problem. If it’s new, it’s not improved. And if it’s improved, it’s not new.
If you want a new, cutting edge game, you aren’t just improving the old game. So the old stuff likely won’t be compatible.
If you want an improvement/extension of the old game, you won’t be getting a shiny new game.
They made the choice to make a shiny new game but they need to try to prevent the inevitable backlash from people being upset that they’re favorite X/Y/Z is missing.
Yeah it’s very different these days. In the past DLC was just content (like extra levels) and people don’t expect that in the new game (maybe more levels than when the first game came out), but now DLC usually adds features as well as levels and people want all the features in the new game too.
You’re saying remake all the DLCs and not have people pay for it I assume. How the hell are they going to afford that? That’s not mentioning they might not want to make identical DLCs, and many of the features from them are included in vanilla now.
When did I say that? I just let you know Paradox aren’t the developers like you seem to think. They still need to keep the lights on though. Honestly, tiny indie devs can afford to do crazy things because there are a lot fewer people on the line who need to get paid. The larger the studio, the more careful they have to be. An indie game can run on passion alone.
Exactly, they completely miss the point of a city builder and don’t fit neatly at all into the main game systems. And the zoo example was just because I find zoos revolting.
I enjoyed adding the new areas / zones to my cities, but the mechanics were dry as fuck and required “cheesing” to unlock all buildings.
I think there was a disconnect between what CO intended CS to be, and what it became. The people playing 8+ years after release want a sandbox where they can create their dream cities, not minuscule goals that made that dream harder.
I’m excited for CS2 because it seems more catered to the sandbox but with better city simulation mechanics, but let’s hope they do something interesting with the DLCs (and fix performance, obviously).
That sounds fun to me considering I liked the original Zoo Tycoon and nothing modern scratches that itch.
Was it at least done well, though? I’ve never really looked through the DLCs. I figured most of them were just visual content additions like new styled buildings and what not.
Some of the DLC, like After Dark (adds day/night cycle with changing resource use depending on the time of day) and Mass Transit (adds a bunch of new transportation methods along with new roads) feel almost essential to the game. Most of the others (like Parklife, which adds the zoo and some other stuff) just add a little more to do in the game once you’ve nailed down what it takes to run a city.
And then there’s the radio stations, in case you wanted to pay $4 to listen to the same 3 songs and 4 fake ads on loop.
It’s already kinda annoying not to have all the old content but I can see the reasons behind that. But a new game starting from scratch of a genre they are experienced with should have much better performance now that there aren’t all those additional mechanics. Failing at both of these is just an utter disregard to their customers.
Well the game is out and luckily the rumors weren’t true.
With a medium-density city, I get about 40 FPS @ 4K in the sequel. With the same-sized city, I used to get 20 FPS in the original, so twice the FPS is a massive improvement IMO. But people are still salty cause we live in a world where anything less than 60 FPS @ 1440p is unacceptable. Which is stupid as fuck cause you don’t need 240+ FPS in a city-building game with next to no action in it that would require such a high framerate.
I like Paradox DLC policies. Most of them are actually good and add a lot to the game. It also lets them service the game for a long period of time and push free updates along with DLCs.
I really dislike Paradox DLC policies. Most of them are actually really bad and add nothing to the game. It also lets them procrastinate bigger updates and bugfixes for a long period of time and push free updates along with breaking 50% of the mods.
The base game gets updated over a period of what, 10 years? Core gameplay mechanics which don’t work well or at least don’t make the developers happy are tweaked or revamped all the time. I only really play Stellaris, but the changes to the game throughout the years have kept things interesting.
The alternative is… not updating things which they don’t like? Perhaps that means mods never break, but then we’re shifting the onus of fixing the game to a third party, who can decide to quit whenever they want and let their (closed source) code deprecate. I’ve seen that kind of thing in Civ and I wasn’t a fan.
I guess with a studio that has demonstrated a pattern of long-term support for their games, this is what we get.
Is it that surprising? I feel like nobody else was doing well made, high-profile city management games around that time. SimCity 2013's failure left a time-tested genre without any real big name contenders. Unless they really didn't try, it was a success waiting to happen.
I’ve been a die hard fan of both Bond and Hitman for a very long time. This game has had my attention since its announcement. I platinumed Hitman 3 in like 2 weeks. Look forward to doing the same as Bond.
The hitman series is fantastic, but I will buy a PC and pirate a cracked version of this if they make online necessary.
I lost a lot of progress when I moved house and bought Hitman 3, couple of weeks waiting for connection and then when I get it it constantly drops the server connection.
This game is likely to be incredible but do not IO do that shite again.
The game released on the 19th September, Nominated games had to be released before the 29th September. Golden Joysticks voting was from the 3rd to the 20th October, and the premium DLC that made everyone angry was confirmed on the 24th and then released on the 27th. The timing could absolutely not have fallen more perfectly for MK1.
Right now I’m mainly playing Starfield, have started Alan Wake remastered and only quickly tested Forza Motorsport.
Before Starfield came out I played through some of the Game Pass Library: AC Origins, A short Hike, Bramble, Quake II, Lego Starwars, Lego City Undercover, Planet of Lana, Tunic, lots of Witcher 3, A Plague Tale Requiem, High on Life, Starwars Jedi Fallen Order and many more.
So basically a both xbox games (Starfield & Forza) and a bunch of old, multiplat and indie games.
Not really a good reason to get an xbox over a PS5 which has a string of amazing exclusives. Let alone the fact that there is no VR support on xbox (why even bother releasing a racing game without VR in 2023?).
It’s why I’ve never felt the same ire as those who talk about Nintendo being generations behind. They generally make fun games that age well aesthetically, and I’ll play those games often.
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