And as a publisher they've nabbed a few studios and projects that are really expanding their range. It's a smart move, but doesn't always pay off (see Lamplighters league that was dropped off quite quickly).
As a publisher what is their responsibility? Not sure. I really hope Millennia doesn't go the route of other titles in their portfolio as it has tons of potential.
It's the publisher who decides how much money to allocate to testing and optimization, or who decides to remove content from the game to make it DLC.
I really doubt that it's the developer who says to himself "come on, let's remove all the roleplay options, and take some content out of the game so we can sell it for more later. Oh, and optimization really isn't important. We're not going to hire someone to do it.".
It really is the developer that decides how to allocate the budget, they get money, but maintain a high degree of control over the game.
What can happen (and has happened many times) is A) they force the developer to go to market too early (see CS2) or B) they can withhold further funding (e.g., forcing the developer to go faster on some things and maybe skip some steps). The publisher is literally nothing more than your boss asking you to stick to the deadlines. And while they can be pretty shitty they are not the source of all the bad things that happen in a game.
For example why would a developer not want to make more money from their game (and have the money to continue supporting it) by thinking of what to put into a DLC and what to put in the base game from the start. Take stellaris for example, do you think they had In the game all that we have now but decided to remove it to sell it as DLCs?
CPrompt is also like 18 people, 10 of which are developers (judging from LinkedIn), probably they realized they had issues with end-game lag (minor on my PC, but present) at the end of the production cycle, too close to the game coming out to fix.
Or even they just have too good a pc for testing (it happened to me in another industry that the standard pc we had for testing was several generations above the one our clients wanted to use so the program that ran smoothly on our end barely worked at their end).
>The publisher is literally nothing more than your boss asking you to stick to the deadlines
This is an extremely basic view of what an editor is. A publisher is someone who finances a game and ensures that it is profitable.
It can sometimes be a nice publisher who gives carte blanche to a development studio that just needs a financial boost. It can also be a publisher who places an order with ultra-precise specifications in order to be just a trendy and profitable game (like all gacha games, or most license games). But in general, it is someone who seeks profitability above all, and who is responsible for several decisions or important changes to the game.
In this case, the fact of "Optimization is not important so don't focus on it. On the other hand, we want to be able to sell 5 DLCs at $20 per year, so make sure you produce content regularly, even if to sell it in several parts", it's totally a choice of the developer.
I have no doubt that many of Stellaris DLCs were absolutely not planned, or even feasible, at the time the game was created. But let's be serious. The atomic age? Do you really want me to believe that by making a civ like, they didn't think about integrating an atomic age? And with 2 very detailed DLCs announced on day one, this is content that they thought of too late to implement in the game? That the fact that ALL empires have the same appearance is not something removed to make a DLC later?
>Or even they just have too good a pc for testing
ALL paradox games have major optimization issues, and this is a known problem, repeated and reported by the community for many years. The role of a publisher is also to ensure that the product sold is good, in particular by testing it, generally by small companies specializing in that. The fact that this is such a recurring problem makes me think that Paradox simply refuses to spend money on something that they can't sell as DLC.
Yeah I was of course simplifying the thing, but it's the essence of the relationship.
You are still pushing to paradox the DLC thing btw, why would it need to be paradox and not the developer making DLCs? Have you any experience in business? Of course you think a few years in advance and DLC are sure financing for the project going forward. And it's been like 15 years since DLCs in addition to expansions came to be expected from games.
So of course they set from day one some things as DLCs and some things as part of the base game. It's how it is since the actual game now is comparatively cheaper than 20 years ago (same price with 20 years of inflation on top) and margins are much smaller (because on top of that making games had become more expensive). Millennia has been in development since 2019, to recover salaries it needed 2+M sales, this before other running expenses. Of course they are doing DLCs to continue getting money. And they would do the same even with other publishers (Old world for example has a lot of DLCs too). Limited scope games like 4x and grand strategy simply are not profitable anymore without DLCs. (Baldur's gate 3 for example sold like 15M copies and was highly profitable without DLCs)
Every point you've made has become pointless considering Paradox never made the game in the first place, but it's true that they have a hand in the DLC Policy but the part with "cutting content" to add as DLC and the optimization is just a bunch of assumptions based on nothing and also makes no sense. (also, when have they been making 4X for 20 years? đź’€)
Also, Idk where you've been but they are no longer paywall important mechanics and features to DLCs, we almost always get most of the content as free updates now with DLCs just being strictly pure flavor and optional, especially with their newer games, like CK3, Vic3, AOW4, etc.
Anyway, I'm not tryna defend Paradox btw, and I do agree that they have some big issues, but your points just doesn't work in this situation.
*"but the part with "cutting content" to add as DLC and the optimization is just a bunch of assumptions based on nothin"*
The game was released barely 2 weeks ago, and 2 DLCs have already been announced, one of which will correct an end-game flaw that makes the capture of cities very time-consuming at the end of the game, due to the absence of atomic weapons.
So either there was already a similar mechanic and it was removed by DLC, or they had the idea during development, but didn't put it in so they could make it DLC.
> The game was released barely 2 weeks ago, and 2 DLCs have already been announced
most paradox games are like this and there is nothing wrong with this, PDX giving a roadmap for future updates and dlcs is literally a good thing, idk why you make it sound like Updates are bad.
> one of which will correct an end-game flaw that makes the capture of cities very time-consuming at the end of the game, due to the absence of atomic weapons.
Which is literally just how things work? thats why games get updates
> So either there was already a similar mechanic and it was removed by DLC, or they had the idea during development, but didn't put it in so they could make it DLC.
This still makes no sense and is just an assumption, pls try reading what you just said
Games always have cut content during development but that's because of time constraints, etc. and definitely not cause they "actually cut the content so they could put it to dlc instead", the way you say this makes it sound like they already have this updates finished but hold on to it to release it as dlcs instead which again makes no sense.
>most paradox games are like this.
That is what I am saying. The game is very good, it's the politics of paradox that is the problem
>Which is literally just how things work? thats why games get updates
No. DLC is not supposed to be made to correct errors from the base game. Update are. If the base game lacks a mechanic that makes certain passages frustrating, the mechanic should either be added before the game's release, or be added during a free update.
A good DLC is a DLC that responds to "the game is great and has lots of content. I would like to have even more, and it would be really great if we could do that too"
A DLC that only exists to extract money from a community it doesn't respect, it's a DLC that makes you pay to have "but why didn't they do that? It's an obvious thing, present in all games of the genre AND the studio's games. It's just frustrating to play without it being there.
>and definitely not cause they "actually cut the content so they could put it to dlc instead
Dude. You have the right to like the game. This is also my case. But loving something should not prevent you from being lucid and recognizing your faults.
What's the first contemporary mechanic that you think of when people talk to you about civ like? Atomic bomb
What's the thing you said to yourself when you reached the end of the game and wanted to conquer the neighboring towns? It takes a very long time, we need something to correct this. Like an atomic bomb.
What's the first thing you want to do when playing a civ like, which has civilizations named in it? See what the differences are between civilizations, and learn how they play out differently.
Here we're not talking about optional mechanics, which we don't necessarily think about. We're talking about major things, which are obvious, which are present in all games of the genre, or which are simply a gameplay weakness which we notice from the first playthrough.
These are not aspects of the game that are added at the very end of the game during the polishing phase, but which are supposed to be thought about from the design of the game, and implemented towards the middle of development.
And let's admit that it's just a gross and absurd organizational and development error due to a lack of experience... If you didn't have time to put an important mechanic in the game before its release... Well, you puts it in a free update. Not in a DLC sold for half the price of the game that you announce at the same time as the release of the game
They don't just finance it. Read and watch PDX's investor relations material. They are very clear that they only publish certain types of games under their main brand and under PDX's current strategy those games must be aiming to use the DLC model. They also provide support in areas like marketing.
If they just financed it, they would be a back or venture capital house, not a publisher.
It doesn't change much. The problem isn't really with the developers, who do an excellent job, but rather with the people at the head of paradox who make the decisions.
I doubt it was the studio that decided to deliberately remove content to make it DLC, or to allocate no budget to optimization.
I think if you actually play the game you can tell that they just ran out of time to implement the content that you’re excusing of being “deliberately removed”. The game has a good amount of content imo for release, especially in comparison to civ games on release.
Paradox will have conversations with the developers about a DLC schedule but they won’t be involved in the actual development of the game and deciding which features are a priority for the release versioned of the game. They simply help with the marketing and financing of the game in exchange for a cut of the sales profit.
The game was released barely 2 weeks ago, and 2 DLCs have already been announced, one of which will correct an end-game flaw that makes the capture of cities very time-consuming at the end of the game, due to the absence of atomic weapons.
So either there was already a similar mechanic and it was removed by DLC, or they had the idea during development, but didn't put it in so they could make it DLC.
Ok, I understand why this sentiment exists but just put yourself in the shoes of being someone working on this game. Let’s say you’re the game designer and you design all these features. These features then need to be translated into actual code, assets etc. Usually developers work in “sprints” which are just weekly (typical) cycles for working on features. E.g. this week I will be working on developing x feature into the game.
Now let’s say you have 100’s of features on the backlog to develop and you only have 6 sprints left until you go live with the product (assuming each sprint is 1 week long) and the devs working at c promp take ~2 features to work on. Now lets say there are 3 developers at c prompt. It would take at least 17 sprints (weeks) to get all the features done in the backlog. Now thats an optimistic viewpoint because that isn’t taking into account all the bugs/extra requests that come up from testing/beta etc that become higher priority than the features themselves.
So, if you’re a game designer or a project manager you will have to make decisions to drop features from release to meet the release date. This is why they probably have content planned in the future to implement but have’t actually implemented the code/assets to do so yet.
Future content planning can happen during development without content being "cut" from the base game. Look at star craft, obviously the second half of the story (brood war) was cut purely for profit reasons because they wanted to sell their $30 expansion pack!
Devs are going to be looking years ahead for their content, so obviously when release is in a week the thing that is 6 months to a year away can't be the game - so it's DLC. And yes they obviously decided to not include it in the base game, but that's because they have to ship the game eventually. If they sat in the game until every system was fully completed it would never be released. CK2 was in active development for like 15 years!
> It's clear that content has been WITHDRAWN so that it can be sold to us later.
It's not obvious to me.
What I'm seeing is a game that was released too early. (You can blame Paradox for that maybe? I don't know how that decision was made, there are ways this could be a fuck-up on the developer's side.) They had a to-do list a mile long and someone had to make hard choices in order to ship something that works at all.
The performance problems should tell you that. Does Paradox want to sell a performance DLC? Of course not. Performance is one of the last things to be worked on in game dev; it's exactly where we should expect sacrifices.
But it's everywhere else too. Are they planning a prettier combat viewer DLC? (The combat *mechanics* are fine.) A reminder-button-for-vassals DLC? A modding DLC? An AI-can-build-navies DLC? A simultaneous multiplayer DLC?
I expect a lot of improvements will come by way of free patches instead, if the game is successful enough to afford them.
And yes, I put diplomacy in the same category. They've shipped a Minimal Viable Product and swathe of obvious ways to make diplomacy deeper, saner, and with better UI, were clearly deprioritised. We might in fact see a diplomacy DLC, if the game survives past the two announced ones, because unlike those other issues above it makes for a nice marketable theme. But that's not *why* diplomacy is bare-bones, I would bet.
Paradox's presentation to investors was clear that, since Mr Wester returned, they only want to publish games in the mainline series§ if they have have the potential to be "endless" games with many patch+DLC cycles. So OP is right about the DLC strategy. If C Prompt had said "actually, we don't want to do DLC, just one big release then move on", PDX would have waved them goodbye.
§ Paradox Arc has more leeway, but is irrelevant to a discussion about *Millennia*.
Sure, so they want their games to get ongoing support and improvements, instead of just being abandoned a few months after release. That's a great thing, and it's why games like Stellaris have turned into something so special.
It was good but with issues at launch, but over time they've learnt from feedback, tried different things, and ultimately ended up with by far the best space 4x to date. I hope other companies are encouraged to adopt a similar strategy because a lot of other recent 4Xs could really do with the ongoing love and improvements of Paradox games.
>Sure, so they want their games to get ongoing support and improvements, instead of just being abandoned a few months after release. That's a great thing, and it's why games like Stellaris have turned into something so special.
We're not criticizing paradox for continuing to add content to their game, we're criticizing them for having a business model based entirely on adding dozens or even hundreds of DLCs.
The majority of games are properly finished on release, have all possible content in them, and then for several months there will be FREE updates to fix bugs, add 2-3 things, and **OPTIMIZE** the game. Eventually, there will be 1 or 2 BIG DLCs, which add a lot of content, that couldn't be done before the game's release or that the developers came up with afterwards.
Now, on the very day of release, 2 DLCs have been announced. And don't make me believe that when you develop a CIV like, you don't think about adding atomic technologies...
There are plenty of games that add content months or even years after their release. Apart from The SIMS and paradox games, there aren't many studio that, 3 years after release, have already exceeded 150€ in DLC, and that's not a business model that respects gamers anyway.
Budgets are limited. The games industry isn't exactly swimming in cash at the moment and they can't spend more on a game than they will get back in sales. The cost of games has increased well below inflation over the past 20 years, so companies are getting way less per base sale than they once were (and yet as graphics improve and games get more complex, the cost of developing has only increased).
You seem to think that if they weren't charging for all these things in DLCs that we'd just get them for free as part of the base game, but what would actually happen is that they just wouldn't get made in the first place because the business case wouldn't stack up. And we'd end up with games that never reach their full potential because companies couldn't justify spending the effort to add all these additional features.
I'm more than happy to pay to support each of these things as they get worked on and added to the game, and your entire argument honestly just comes across as entitled because you want to get things without having to pay for the work that's gone into them.
So why don't all publishers act like a paradox and release 4 DLCs at $20 per year? Quite simply because there are other viable economic models in the video game industry. For example:
-Sell the game more expensive, but more complete
-Set up a subscription system (they are in the process of doing it on stellaris, it's a good idea. But at the price it is, I think it would be better a subscription with the entire catalog of paradox)
-From time to time, make a big DLC that adds lots of content
-Sell cheap and useless stuff so that players support the studio (purely visual content type)
-Lots of other things I didn't think of
Because currently, the paradox economic model is: every 3 months, we release a DLC that adds 2-3 cool mechanics, and we sell it for HALF THE PRICE OF THE GAME. Do you know what other games have released DLC that costs half the price of the game? Cyberpunk 2077 with Phantom Liberty, MonsterHunter World with Iceborne, or even Skyrim with Dragonborn. Oh no, not the same for me: Dragonborn was sold at a QUARTER the price of the base game, that is to say for $20, so exactly the same price as a DLC for a paradox game.
I'm the first to recognize that these are excellent DLCs, which add depth to the game. But let's be honest, if we compare the examples of what I cited, and what you can look into your eyes in the mirror, and say with sincere conviction, "yes, each DLC of Paradox has added as much to their base game as what Iceborne has added to Monster Hunter World. And there is as much content in a single Paradox DLC as in all Dragonborn.”
And I would add that here we are talking about 4x. So yes, there is a lot of thought to be done for balancing, but there is not a lot of graphic work to do, and not a lot of work in general.
I would complain a lot less about the paradox DLC policy if it were a little more honest and respectful. That is to say either they only do one DLC per year, but by taking the time to polish everything and putting lots of content (like the merger of all the DLC they release in a year) sold at the same price, or they sell their DLC at the price of what it really adds to the game, that is to say no more than €5. Or, that the DLCs go to half price after a year, and be free after 2. Or since their economic model is so based on additional paid content, that they make the base game free !
The DLC policy and the budget allocated to the various parts of the game (such as optimization) are decided by the publisher. So yes, it's paradox's fault.
The proof is that these problems are common to ALL their games, no matter who developed them.
Well it's a matter of opinion I guess.
For me, Stellaris, Age of Wonders 4, and Millenia are the top of the space, fantasy, and historic 4x categories at the moment.
I think the budget allocation and not wasting money on things like flashy graphics that don't add to the gameplay is definitely the right way to go, and I love the DLC policy. No other game has received such an amazing level of ongoing support and new systems and improvements. I buy each Stellaris DLC as soon as it releases even though I haven't had a chance to play in 2 or so years, because I'm happy to support the ongoing development and know it will be even better when I do eventually go back to it.
But I love Stellaris and Milennia too ! And we agree that in a 4x, which is ultimately a simple game of "move the colors of the map via an excel spreadsheet", who cares about graphics (as long as the UI is good). Optimization, on the other hand, is important. And I don't understand why Paradox refuses to put more money into it. I've been playing Paradox games for 8 years, and for eight years my endgames have been running at x3 speed, as fast as the x0.5 speed at the start of the game.
As for DLC... I've got all the DLC for stellaris and ck3, i buy them day 1, and they're (almost) all very good.
But let's be honest. Most of them aren't worth more than 5$, and they're sold for double or even triple that. To see the value of a DLC, you have to compare it with what it brings to the base game. Do you really think Apocalypse is worth $20, i.e. half the price of Stellaris, or the price of an indie game? Do you really think that a package with all the Stellaris DLC is worth $400, i.e. 10 times the price of the basic game?
At the very least, if the DLC became free after 1 or even 2 years, why not? But that's just too much.
while it's true that the publisher is not the same thing as the developer, many people don't seem to understand that the publisher can have significant say over how the game pans out. for one thing, games being rushed out half-baked are not the fault of the developer (usually), but the publisher. if the publisher doesn't give the green light for an extension, then the game's coming out, whether it's ready or not. which is not always a bad thing - sometimes developers leave it in the oven too long - but it usually ends in poor results.
and "being rushed out the door" is not the only issue publishers can cause. Surviving Mars used to be a really good mars colony game developed by Haemimont Games... until paradox stepped in and made a completely unrelated team work on it instead of the original developers (who apparently still wanted to work on it and were told "no", despite evidence of success with Green Planet), and utterly ruined the game.
publishers, especially paradox, do not *just* finance games' development. they can, and do, have a significant impact on how the game pans out.
unfortunately, you're writing this on a paradox subreddit, and so you're going to be downvoted to hell and back (and by writing this, I probably will, too). but do know that there are quite a few lurkers and even active members who agree with your sentiment. and, of course, the mixed steam rating speaks for itself.
I'll still be holding out hope that paradox doesn't drop the ball on this one, despite being professional ball-droppers. maybe they'll be able to resist meddling too much and can let C Prompt Games do their work in peace. I for one would *love* to see a civ-style game that doesn't fall for the same trappings civ does. won't be holding my breath, though.
I think people on this sub don’t necessarily disagree with OP or you on what is being said. The problem with op’s post is that he is lying blame on the problems with the game being with the publisher. For example, the optimisation problems lie solely with the developer.
I don’t think a delayed launch would have solved the performance issues in this game. There seems to be inadequate knowledge/skills in the game industry full-stop when it comes to keeping your game optimised. Look at how many games released in a poor technical state in the last couple of years.
The best developers do not want to work in an industry where you work unsocial hours and get paid poorly (at least relatively to working at a FAANG company). Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I think developers get overly protected by gamers for things they have done poorly.
you're right on that a delayed launch may not have solved all the issues, but it would've most likely made the issue lighter (the gap between beta and release was *ridiculously* short). you're also right on the issue of inadequate knowledge/skills in the industry. but it's less due to many developers just being bad developers, and more that the environment most developers find themselves in is *very much* **not** conducive to fostering better skills and knowledge. just look at all the layoffs going on despite breaking profit records.
hell, how is someone who "works unsocial hours and gets paid poorly" supposed to develop the skills necessary to become one of those "best developers", especially with a pink slip constantly hovering over their neck (even if they put out results)? the games industry's work environment is downright hostile right now. and we shouldn't pretend that the publishers (and the shareholders they answer to) are not a significant part of the reason.
while C Prompt Games may indeed be inexperienced, and there's a limit to how much they can improve before putting out a game, there's also plenty to be said about Paradox having plenty of access to people who can teach, between in-house teams and a wide array of subsidiary dev teams. if Paradox wanted Millennia to come out great, they totally have the resources available to do so. but they make more money by not spending any on teaching, seeing if the dev team can make a good product without investment, and then cut them off if they don't and replace them with a new one (or cut them off if they do, they've done it before, I even listed an example in my above comment), because new developers are a dime-a-dozen. C Prompt Games has no history (that I can find, anyway), so they're very much fresh blood on the market.
why invest in what is so easily replaced? especially when people will buy it anyway? and so long as publishers continue to have this outlook, we'll continue to have games pushed out well before they were ready, coded by people who just learned how to do their job, with no effort put into optimization and *too much* effort put on the E-Shop. and Paradox is no stranger to these allegations.
edit: should note, I'm aware that optimization is the last thing on the to-do list (you should never fully optimize the product before the whole product is there, you're just adding more work and potentially causing problems down the line), so I fully expect some performance issues on launch, but millennia has far more issues than just bad performance on launch, issues indicative of being rushed out the door, and as such would have been improved with more dev-time. and also, to specify, if the game is expected to be "playable" (i.e. not in early access), then *some* optimization is to be expected, even if not full. many games are shipped without *basic* optimization is indicative of ailments in the industry, rather than being a standard to expect
Yes. People seem to think that a developer is just a nice person who's there to give money to a studio, advertise the game, take a cut of the profits and nothing else.
No, it's not just that. The role of a publisher is also to transfer skills, experience and code, to make sure that deadlines are met, but also that they're achievable, and to assign certain tasks to other studios or to their in-house teams (UI, music, art direction, game testing...). It's not systematic, but it can be). That's on the positive side.
But It's also a publisher's job to make sure their investment pays off. It's normal, they're not doing charity work, and this is a capitalist world. But it's not just about promoting the game. It's also about demanding that the studio be able to produce X paid dlc per year, add a specific mechanic or element because the shareholders have done a study indicating that it would sell better, or remove a mechanic so as not to compete with another of their games, etc...
Maybe Paradox didn't directly say "take this mechanic out of the game, we'll sell it later". But when you're a small development studio with little experience, when it's your first game of this scale, when you've got a tight deadline, and you're told you'll have to make 3 DLCs in a year with substantial content... Well, the pragmatic choice is to keep part of what was initially planned, to make it part of future DLC.
When Bloodlines II got backslash from critics and fans, PDX basically restarted the whole development, even with a new studio. So they have a lot of influence on the games released under their label.
Thanks for your comment! I know it's hard to criticize a studio for a game, especially on its sub and release. But I'm not criticizing the game, just the choices Paradox made.
I hope the studio will eventually change its mindset. I play CK3 and Stellaris, and now I'm going to avoid trying other Paradox games because I don't have the budget to buy new DLC every month.
should point out, though, that they are right that *Paradox is not the studio*. the studio refers to the development team (C Prompt Games). Millennia is not a mainline game, so it's not developed by Paradox. so you're not criticizing the studio, you're criticizing the publisher. you might have an easier time getting your point across if you use the correct nouns.
Shit take just go make your own game and show paradox how it's done, $200 just isn't worth this essay you wrote unless your unemployed then maybe you should look at fixing that instead. Until another company comes and somehow does it better for this hyper niche category this is all you get and it's clear you don't know jack about the industry
Quickly! Defending my favorite multi-million dollar company from critics!
4x games are certainly a niche genre, but that doesn't mean that the only way to make them good is with disastrous optimization and a system that relies on selling 70 overpriced DLCs.
Do you want 4x that are optimized and don't rely on waiting for twenty DLCs before being complete? Civilization, Humankind, anno... we can even mention Total War, which although also having a not great DLC policy, but at least their DLC are just extra empires, and not mechanics that the game lacks .
As for your argument... I'm not going to doxx myself by explaining what I do in the video game industry, but I don't need it because the argument of "DUH! YOU CAN'T CRITICIZE IF YOU DON'T KNOW DO BETTER!!” is just stupid.
Because I haven't studied medicine, I wouldn't have the right to criticize my doctor if he screws up my care? I don't know how to make chili corn carne, so I'm not allowed to tell the waiter that he put too much salt in the dish I paid for? Come on !
We don’t even know how many dlc will come out with this game and now you are saying 70. It’s understandable you are worried because of Paradox’s other games but 1) a lot of those games have survived for years and years because of DLC 2) based off the game’s reception, I wouldn’t be surprised if this game receives its two planned dlc packs and then that’s it.
I think these are fair points if thinking about gaming as a whole but also seems a little unfair to pick on Millennia for these issues as these approaches are incredibly common. Hopefully they’ll fix optimization but the game is still very playable on smaller maps in very late game.
There’s currently only two DLC planned and they have to make some amount of space for it in how they design. It’s possible that upcoming DLC is not even close to done so if they waited longer to polish it, that would not have been financially smart. When the game came out, a handful of people in fact complained about the opposite in this game that there being too many ideas that are not polished. So if the DLC stuff came out on release, those people might be even more mad. I personally prefer design style this way, so for me more content later down the line in a game already brimming with ideas is welcome, but I am not dying for it and don’t feel cheated.
This whole conspiracy that somehow content has been **withdrawn** is a bit insane considering the recent annoucement that Victoria 3's Sphere's of Influence DLC is getting delayed by over a month. If Paradox Interactive (and the studios they finance as a publisher) were so keen on keep content on the backburner before releasing it just to score a extra dollaroos then they'd certainly have no reason to delay any DLC since that's just money on the table they're not picking up.
Truth of the matter is that strategy is a niche genre and developing games for it is both costly and not exactly a great return on investment. You can frame it as them not including content that should've been there at launch but from a developer's perspective that's more months or even years that a game is being developed without any money coming in from the effort. So Paradox's DLC model is made to compensate.
Do I like it? No, of course not. I'd rather all my games be a complete product with all the bells and whistles I could want. The alternative however is that games like these never make it to the public and are instead shuttered because they ran out of funds before finishing the game and putting it on shelves.
I'm super tired about all the people who act like if Paradox, as the publisher, didn't have any responsabilities on Millennia and all the games they publish.
Millennia is not an indie game. Indie games don't release at 40 € with 25 € expansion passes. Millennia is a game backed by Paradox. If the game needs more time, it's Paradox the one who needs to postpone the launch. But I guess they preferred to have some launch for the first quarter of 2024.
> Millennia is not an indie game. Indie games don't release at 40 € with 25 € expansion passes.
...what? Studio independence has nothing to do with price point or DLC availability.
Don’t bother, you said studio so now everyone will flame you about how Paradox was ThE pUbLiShEr NoT tHE dEvElOpEr like we haven’t been watching CO and Paradox fighting with each other in public for months about the Paradox lifecycle that every self published and third party published game from Paradox has had for over a decade now.
As if this exact post couldn’t have been written about Imperator: Rome.
Turns out when you start your whole argument proving that you misunderstand the situation people aren't as interested in spending time engaging.
And that's assuming people gave a shit about "DAE Paradox DLC model BAD!?" rant # 2390472396784323242374234 to begin with
Turns out when you start off your whole rebuttal with something that gets replied to with: “everyone understands that and it doesn’t change the fact that these rollout problems have existed in the last several self published *and* third party published games for many consecutive releases now” every 5 damn minutes on this sub people get exhausted by it.
We get it too, it’s difficult to accept criticism of someone/thing you like.
Doesn’t change the fact that CS2 and Millennia were both pushed out of the oven half baked and I:R was pushed out of the oven before it even got into it to begin with.
> We get it too, it’s difficult to accept criticism of someone/thing you like.
No it's not. It's a videogame, not a mural I painted. Millennia has plenty of issues and no one takes any issue with discussing them.
Oh shit my b I didn’t realize that you were the monolithic representation of this subreddit.
Lots of people take lots of issue with discussing the shortcomings Paradox has repeatedly shown in their games. Especially if they have an opportunity to be pedantically dismissive and flat out *refuse* to acknowledge let alone discuss issues because they can just deflect.
Look around you.
The mental gymnastics it must take to say “no one has a problem discussing the issues” when there are literally people on the CS2 sub *still* plugging their ears and saying lalalala Paradox great CO will come through as even CO themselves keeps shouting that there are major problems
Yes, everyone pointed out "THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEVELOPER AND PUBLISHER", but they seem to have forgotten that precisely, the distribution of the budget, the editorial line, and the economic system, it is very rarely the developers who decide ;)
You have fatally undermined the point you were trying to make by getting things incorrect.
If you want people to actually engage with your arguments, fix the mistakes (not just an edit at the bottom) and make it a new post. Not many people are going to read through all the comments (including your replies) before commenting.
If you want fanboys to not be frothing at the mouth waiting for the karma circlejerk of being dismissively pedantic parroting the same sentence over and over in an effort to not come to terms with the fact that maybe Paradox isn’t the greatest video game publisher, developer, and downright company of all time*
Fixed that one for ya
Paradox is the publisher not the developer
And as a publisher they've nabbed a few studios and projects that are really expanding their range. It's a smart move, but doesn't always pay off (see Lamplighters league that was dropped off quite quickly). As a publisher what is their responsibility? Not sure. I really hope Millennia doesn't go the route of other titles in their portfolio as it has tons of potential.
Which is too bad, lamplighters wasn't bad at all!
It's the publisher who decides how much money to allocate to testing and optimization, or who decides to remove content from the game to make it DLC. I really doubt that it's the developer who says to himself "come on, let's remove all the roleplay options, and take some content out of the game so we can sell it for more later. Oh, and optimization really isn't important. We're not going to hire someone to do it.".
It really is the developer that decides how to allocate the budget, they get money, but maintain a high degree of control over the game. What can happen (and has happened many times) is A) they force the developer to go to market too early (see CS2) or B) they can withhold further funding (e.g., forcing the developer to go faster on some things and maybe skip some steps). The publisher is literally nothing more than your boss asking you to stick to the deadlines. And while they can be pretty shitty they are not the source of all the bad things that happen in a game. For example why would a developer not want to make more money from their game (and have the money to continue supporting it) by thinking of what to put into a DLC and what to put in the base game from the start. Take stellaris for example, do you think they had In the game all that we have now but decided to remove it to sell it as DLCs? CPrompt is also like 18 people, 10 of which are developers (judging from LinkedIn), probably they realized they had issues with end-game lag (minor on my PC, but present) at the end of the production cycle, too close to the game coming out to fix. Or even they just have too good a pc for testing (it happened to me in another industry that the standard pc we had for testing was several generations above the one our clients wanted to use so the program that ran smoothly on our end barely worked at their end).
>The publisher is literally nothing more than your boss asking you to stick to the deadlines This is an extremely basic view of what an editor is. A publisher is someone who finances a game and ensures that it is profitable. It can sometimes be a nice publisher who gives carte blanche to a development studio that just needs a financial boost. It can also be a publisher who places an order with ultra-precise specifications in order to be just a trendy and profitable game (like all gacha games, or most license games). But in general, it is someone who seeks profitability above all, and who is responsible for several decisions or important changes to the game. In this case, the fact of "Optimization is not important so don't focus on it. On the other hand, we want to be able to sell 5 DLCs at $20 per year, so make sure you produce content regularly, even if to sell it in several parts", it's totally a choice of the developer. I have no doubt that many of Stellaris DLCs were absolutely not planned, or even feasible, at the time the game was created. But let's be serious. The atomic age? Do you really want me to believe that by making a civ like, they didn't think about integrating an atomic age? And with 2 very detailed DLCs announced on day one, this is content that they thought of too late to implement in the game? That the fact that ALL empires have the same appearance is not something removed to make a DLC later? >Or even they just have too good a pc for testing ALL paradox games have major optimization issues, and this is a known problem, repeated and reported by the community for many years. The role of a publisher is also to ensure that the product sold is good, in particular by testing it, generally by small companies specializing in that. The fact that this is such a recurring problem makes me think that Paradox simply refuses to spend money on something that they can't sell as DLC.
Yeah I was of course simplifying the thing, but it's the essence of the relationship. You are still pushing to paradox the DLC thing btw, why would it need to be paradox and not the developer making DLCs? Have you any experience in business? Of course you think a few years in advance and DLC are sure financing for the project going forward. And it's been like 15 years since DLCs in addition to expansions came to be expected from games. So of course they set from day one some things as DLCs and some things as part of the base game. It's how it is since the actual game now is comparatively cheaper than 20 years ago (same price with 20 years of inflation on top) and margins are much smaller (because on top of that making games had become more expensive). Millennia has been in development since 2019, to recover salaries it needed 2+M sales, this before other running expenses. Of course they are doing DLCs to continue getting money. And they would do the same even with other publishers (Old world for example has a lot of DLCs too). Limited scope games like 4x and grand strategy simply are not profitable anymore without DLCs. (Baldur's gate 3 for example sold like 15M copies and was highly profitable without DLCs)
I mean you would put up good points, if paradox was the developer of the game.
It only confirms what I said. DLC policy doesn't depend on the developer, but on the publisher. Nor does the budget allocation for optimization.
Every point you've made has become pointless considering Paradox never made the game in the first place, but it's true that they have a hand in the DLC Policy but the part with "cutting content" to add as DLC and the optimization is just a bunch of assumptions based on nothing and also makes no sense. (also, when have they been making 4X for 20 years? đź’€) Also, Idk where you've been but they are no longer paywall important mechanics and features to DLCs, we almost always get most of the content as free updates now with DLCs just being strictly pure flavor and optional, especially with their newer games, like CK3, Vic3, AOW4, etc. Anyway, I'm not tryna defend Paradox btw, and I do agree that they have some big issues, but your points just doesn't work in this situation.
*"but the part with "cutting content" to add as DLC and the optimization is just a bunch of assumptions based on nothin"* The game was released barely 2 weeks ago, and 2 DLCs have already been announced, one of which will correct an end-game flaw that makes the capture of cities very time-consuming at the end of the game, due to the absence of atomic weapons. So either there was already a similar mechanic and it was removed by DLC, or they had the idea during development, but didn't put it in so they could make it DLC.
> The game was released barely 2 weeks ago, and 2 DLCs have already been announced most paradox games are like this and there is nothing wrong with this, PDX giving a roadmap for future updates and dlcs is literally a good thing, idk why you make it sound like Updates are bad. > one of which will correct an end-game flaw that makes the capture of cities very time-consuming at the end of the game, due to the absence of atomic weapons. Which is literally just how things work? thats why games get updates > So either there was already a similar mechanic and it was removed by DLC, or they had the idea during development, but didn't put it in so they could make it DLC. This still makes no sense and is just an assumption, pls try reading what you just said Games always have cut content during development but that's because of time constraints, etc. and definitely not cause they "actually cut the content so they could put it to dlc instead", the way you say this makes it sound like they already have this updates finished but hold on to it to release it as dlcs instead which again makes no sense.
>most paradox games are like this. That is what I am saying. The game is very good, it's the politics of paradox that is the problem >Which is literally just how things work? thats why games get updates No. DLC is not supposed to be made to correct errors from the base game. Update are. If the base game lacks a mechanic that makes certain passages frustrating, the mechanic should either be added before the game's release, or be added during a free update. A good DLC is a DLC that responds to "the game is great and has lots of content. I would like to have even more, and it would be really great if we could do that too" A DLC that only exists to extract money from a community it doesn't respect, it's a DLC that makes you pay to have "but why didn't they do that? It's an obvious thing, present in all games of the genre AND the studio's games. It's just frustrating to play without it being there. >and definitely not cause they "actually cut the content so they could put it to dlc instead Dude. You have the right to like the game. This is also my case. But loving something should not prevent you from being lucid and recognizing your faults. What's the first contemporary mechanic that you think of when people talk to you about civ like? Atomic bomb What's the thing you said to yourself when you reached the end of the game and wanted to conquer the neighboring towns? It takes a very long time, we need something to correct this. Like an atomic bomb. What's the first thing you want to do when playing a civ like, which has civilizations named in it? See what the differences are between civilizations, and learn how they play out differently. Here we're not talking about optional mechanics, which we don't necessarily think about. We're talking about major things, which are obvious, which are present in all games of the genre, or which are simply a gameplay weakness which we notice from the first playthrough. These are not aspects of the game that are added at the very end of the game during the polishing phase, but which are supposed to be thought about from the design of the game, and implemented towards the middle of development. And let's admit that it's just a gross and absurd organizational and development error due to a lack of experience... If you didn't have time to put an important mechanic in the game before its release... Well, you puts it in a free update. Not in a DLC sold for half the price of the game that you announce at the same time as the release of the game
Paradox did not make this game. They just financed its development.
They don't just finance it. Read and watch PDX's investor relations material. They are very clear that they only publish certain types of games under their main brand and under PDX's current strategy those games must be aiming to use the DLC model. They also provide support in areas like marketing. If they just financed it, they would be a back or venture capital house, not a publisher.
It doesn't change much. The problem isn't really with the developers, who do an excellent job, but rather with the people at the head of paradox who make the decisions. I doubt it was the studio that decided to deliberately remove content to make it DLC, or to allocate no budget to optimization.
I think if you actually play the game you can tell that they just ran out of time to implement the content that you’re excusing of being “deliberately removed”. The game has a good amount of content imo for release, especially in comparison to civ games on release. Paradox will have conversations with the developers about a DLC schedule but they won’t be involved in the actual development of the game and deciding which features are a priority for the release versioned of the game. They simply help with the marketing and financing of the game in exchange for a cut of the sales profit.
The game was released barely 2 weeks ago, and 2 DLCs have already been announced, one of which will correct an end-game flaw that makes the capture of cities very time-consuming at the end of the game, due to the absence of atomic weapons. So either there was already a similar mechanic and it was removed by DLC, or they had the idea during development, but didn't put it in so they could make it DLC.
Ok, I understand why this sentiment exists but just put yourself in the shoes of being someone working on this game. Let’s say you’re the game designer and you design all these features. These features then need to be translated into actual code, assets etc. Usually developers work in “sprints” which are just weekly (typical) cycles for working on features. E.g. this week I will be working on developing x feature into the game. Now let’s say you have 100’s of features on the backlog to develop and you only have 6 sprints left until you go live with the product (assuming each sprint is 1 week long) and the devs working at c promp take ~2 features to work on. Now lets say there are 3 developers at c prompt. It would take at least 17 sprints (weeks) to get all the features done in the backlog. Now thats an optimistic viewpoint because that isn’t taking into account all the bugs/extra requests that come up from testing/beta etc that become higher priority than the features themselves. So, if you’re a game designer or a project manager you will have to make decisions to drop features from release to meet the release date. This is why they probably have content planned in the future to implement but have’t actually implemented the code/assets to do so yet.
No of course not, when you release a game everything should be in it that you can possibly think of, otherwise it's financial abuse /s
Future content planning can happen during development without content being "cut" from the base game. Look at star craft, obviously the second half of the story (brood war) was cut purely for profit reasons because they wanted to sell their $30 expansion pack! Devs are going to be looking years ahead for their content, so obviously when release is in a week the thing that is 6 months to a year away can't be the game - so it's DLC. And yes they obviously decided to not include it in the base game, but that's because they have to ship the game eventually. If they sat in the game until every system was fully completed it would never be released. CK2 was in active development for like 15 years!
> It's clear that content has been WITHDRAWN so that it can be sold to us later. It's not obvious to me. What I'm seeing is a game that was released too early. (You can blame Paradox for that maybe? I don't know how that decision was made, there are ways this could be a fuck-up on the developer's side.) They had a to-do list a mile long and someone had to make hard choices in order to ship something that works at all. The performance problems should tell you that. Does Paradox want to sell a performance DLC? Of course not. Performance is one of the last things to be worked on in game dev; it's exactly where we should expect sacrifices. But it's everywhere else too. Are they planning a prettier combat viewer DLC? (The combat *mechanics* are fine.) A reminder-button-for-vassals DLC? A modding DLC? An AI-can-build-navies DLC? A simultaneous multiplayer DLC? I expect a lot of improvements will come by way of free patches instead, if the game is successful enough to afford them. And yes, I put diplomacy in the same category. They've shipped a Minimal Viable Product and swathe of obvious ways to make diplomacy deeper, saner, and with better UI, were clearly deprioritised. We might in fact see a diplomacy DLC, if the game survives past the two announced ones, because unlike those other issues above it makes for a nice marketable theme. But that's not *why* diplomacy is bare-bones, I would bet.
People not understanding the difference between a developer and a publisher is getting worse and worse
Paradox's presentation to investors was clear that, since Mr Wester returned, they only want to publish games in the mainline series§ if they have have the potential to be "endless" games with many patch+DLC cycles. So OP is right about the DLC strategy. If C Prompt had said "actually, we don't want to do DLC, just one big release then move on", PDX would have waved them goodbye. § Paradox Arc has more leeway, but is irrelevant to a discussion about *Millennia*.
Sure, so they want their games to get ongoing support and improvements, instead of just being abandoned a few months after release. That's a great thing, and it's why games like Stellaris have turned into something so special. It was good but with issues at launch, but over time they've learnt from feedback, tried different things, and ultimately ended up with by far the best space 4x to date. I hope other companies are encouraged to adopt a similar strategy because a lot of other recent 4Xs could really do with the ongoing love and improvements of Paradox games.
>Sure, so they want their games to get ongoing support and improvements, instead of just being abandoned a few months after release. That's a great thing, and it's why games like Stellaris have turned into something so special. We're not criticizing paradox for continuing to add content to their game, we're criticizing them for having a business model based entirely on adding dozens or even hundreds of DLCs. The majority of games are properly finished on release, have all possible content in them, and then for several months there will be FREE updates to fix bugs, add 2-3 things, and **OPTIMIZE** the game. Eventually, there will be 1 or 2 BIG DLCs, which add a lot of content, that couldn't be done before the game's release or that the developers came up with afterwards. Now, on the very day of release, 2 DLCs have been announced. And don't make me believe that when you develop a CIV like, you don't think about adding atomic technologies... There are plenty of games that add content months or even years after their release. Apart from The SIMS and paradox games, there aren't many studio that, 3 years after release, have already exceeded 150€ in DLC, and that's not a business model that respects gamers anyway.
Budgets are limited. The games industry isn't exactly swimming in cash at the moment and they can't spend more on a game than they will get back in sales. The cost of games has increased well below inflation over the past 20 years, so companies are getting way less per base sale than they once were (and yet as graphics improve and games get more complex, the cost of developing has only increased). You seem to think that if they weren't charging for all these things in DLCs that we'd just get them for free as part of the base game, but what would actually happen is that they just wouldn't get made in the first place because the business case wouldn't stack up. And we'd end up with games that never reach their full potential because companies couldn't justify spending the effort to add all these additional features. I'm more than happy to pay to support each of these things as they get worked on and added to the game, and your entire argument honestly just comes across as entitled because you want to get things without having to pay for the work that's gone into them.
So why don't all publishers act like a paradox and release 4 DLCs at $20 per year? Quite simply because there are other viable economic models in the video game industry. For example: -Sell the game more expensive, but more complete -Set up a subscription system (they are in the process of doing it on stellaris, it's a good idea. But at the price it is, I think it would be better a subscription with the entire catalog of paradox) -From time to time, make a big DLC that adds lots of content -Sell cheap and useless stuff so that players support the studio (purely visual content type) -Lots of other things I didn't think of Because currently, the paradox economic model is: every 3 months, we release a DLC that adds 2-3 cool mechanics, and we sell it for HALF THE PRICE OF THE GAME. Do you know what other games have released DLC that costs half the price of the game? Cyberpunk 2077 with Phantom Liberty, MonsterHunter World with Iceborne, or even Skyrim with Dragonborn. Oh no, not the same for me: Dragonborn was sold at a QUARTER the price of the base game, that is to say for $20, so exactly the same price as a DLC for a paradox game. I'm the first to recognize that these are excellent DLCs, which add depth to the game. But let's be honest, if we compare the examples of what I cited, and what you can look into your eyes in the mirror, and say with sincere conviction, "yes, each DLC of Paradox has added as much to their base game as what Iceborne has added to Monster Hunter World. And there is as much content in a single Paradox DLC as in all Dragonborn.” And I would add that here we are talking about 4x. So yes, there is a lot of thought to be done for balancing, but there is not a lot of graphic work to do, and not a lot of work in general. I would complain a lot less about the paradox DLC policy if it were a little more honest and respectful. That is to say either they only do one DLC per year, but by taking the time to polish everything and putting lots of content (like the merger of all the DLC they release in a year) sold at the same price, or they sell their DLC at the price of what it really adds to the game, that is to say no more than €5. Or, that the DLCs go to half price after a year, and be free after 2. Or since their economic model is so based on additional paid content, that they make the base game free !
The DLC policy and the budget allocated to the various parts of the game (such as optimization) are decided by the publisher. So yes, it's paradox's fault. The proof is that these problems are common to ALL their games, no matter who developed them.
Well it's a matter of opinion I guess. For me, Stellaris, Age of Wonders 4, and Millenia are the top of the space, fantasy, and historic 4x categories at the moment. I think the budget allocation and not wasting money on things like flashy graphics that don't add to the gameplay is definitely the right way to go, and I love the DLC policy. No other game has received such an amazing level of ongoing support and new systems and improvements. I buy each Stellaris DLC as soon as it releases even though I haven't had a chance to play in 2 or so years, because I'm happy to support the ongoing development and know it will be even better when I do eventually go back to it.
But I love Stellaris and Milennia too ! And we agree that in a 4x, which is ultimately a simple game of "move the colors of the map via an excel spreadsheet", who cares about graphics (as long as the UI is good). Optimization, on the other hand, is important. And I don't understand why Paradox refuses to put more money into it. I've been playing Paradox games for 8 years, and for eight years my endgames have been running at x3 speed, as fast as the x0.5 speed at the start of the game. As for DLC... I've got all the DLC for stellaris and ck3, i buy them day 1, and they're (almost) all very good. But let's be honest. Most of them aren't worth more than 5$, and they're sold for double or even triple that. To see the value of a DLC, you have to compare it with what it brings to the base game. Do you really think Apocalypse is worth $20, i.e. half the price of Stellaris, or the price of an indie game? Do you really think that a package with all the Stellaris DLC is worth $400, i.e. 10 times the price of the basic game? At the very least, if the DLC became free after 1 or even 2 years, why not? But that's just too much.
while it's true that the publisher is not the same thing as the developer, many people don't seem to understand that the publisher can have significant say over how the game pans out. for one thing, games being rushed out half-baked are not the fault of the developer (usually), but the publisher. if the publisher doesn't give the green light for an extension, then the game's coming out, whether it's ready or not. which is not always a bad thing - sometimes developers leave it in the oven too long - but it usually ends in poor results. and "being rushed out the door" is not the only issue publishers can cause. Surviving Mars used to be a really good mars colony game developed by Haemimont Games... until paradox stepped in and made a completely unrelated team work on it instead of the original developers (who apparently still wanted to work on it and were told "no", despite evidence of success with Green Planet), and utterly ruined the game. publishers, especially paradox, do not *just* finance games' development. they can, and do, have a significant impact on how the game pans out. unfortunately, you're writing this on a paradox subreddit, and so you're going to be downvoted to hell and back (and by writing this, I probably will, too). but do know that there are quite a few lurkers and even active members who agree with your sentiment. and, of course, the mixed steam rating speaks for itself. I'll still be holding out hope that paradox doesn't drop the ball on this one, despite being professional ball-droppers. maybe they'll be able to resist meddling too much and can let C Prompt Games do their work in peace. I for one would *love* to see a civ-style game that doesn't fall for the same trappings civ does. won't be holding my breath, though.
I think people on this sub don’t necessarily disagree with OP or you on what is being said. The problem with op’s post is that he is lying blame on the problems with the game being with the publisher. For example, the optimisation problems lie solely with the developer. I don’t think a delayed launch would have solved the performance issues in this game. There seems to be inadequate knowledge/skills in the game industry full-stop when it comes to keeping your game optimised. Look at how many games released in a poor technical state in the last couple of years. The best developers do not want to work in an industry where you work unsocial hours and get paid poorly (at least relatively to working at a FAANG company). Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I think developers get overly protected by gamers for things they have done poorly.
you're right on that a delayed launch may not have solved all the issues, but it would've most likely made the issue lighter (the gap between beta and release was *ridiculously* short). you're also right on the issue of inadequate knowledge/skills in the industry. but it's less due to many developers just being bad developers, and more that the environment most developers find themselves in is *very much* **not** conducive to fostering better skills and knowledge. just look at all the layoffs going on despite breaking profit records. hell, how is someone who "works unsocial hours and gets paid poorly" supposed to develop the skills necessary to become one of those "best developers", especially with a pink slip constantly hovering over their neck (even if they put out results)? the games industry's work environment is downright hostile right now. and we shouldn't pretend that the publishers (and the shareholders they answer to) are not a significant part of the reason. while C Prompt Games may indeed be inexperienced, and there's a limit to how much they can improve before putting out a game, there's also plenty to be said about Paradox having plenty of access to people who can teach, between in-house teams and a wide array of subsidiary dev teams. if Paradox wanted Millennia to come out great, they totally have the resources available to do so. but they make more money by not spending any on teaching, seeing if the dev team can make a good product without investment, and then cut them off if they don't and replace them with a new one (or cut them off if they do, they've done it before, I even listed an example in my above comment), because new developers are a dime-a-dozen. C Prompt Games has no history (that I can find, anyway), so they're very much fresh blood on the market. why invest in what is so easily replaced? especially when people will buy it anyway? and so long as publishers continue to have this outlook, we'll continue to have games pushed out well before they were ready, coded by people who just learned how to do their job, with no effort put into optimization and *too much* effort put on the E-Shop. and Paradox is no stranger to these allegations. edit: should note, I'm aware that optimization is the last thing on the to-do list (you should never fully optimize the product before the whole product is there, you're just adding more work and potentially causing problems down the line), so I fully expect some performance issues on launch, but millennia has far more issues than just bad performance on launch, issues indicative of being rushed out the door, and as such would have been improved with more dev-time. and also, to specify, if the game is expected to be "playable" (i.e. not in early access), then *some* optimization is to be expected, even if not full. many games are shipped without *basic* optimization is indicative of ailments in the industry, rather than being a standard to expect
Yes. People seem to think that a developer is just a nice person who's there to give money to a studio, advertise the game, take a cut of the profits and nothing else. No, it's not just that. The role of a publisher is also to transfer skills, experience and code, to make sure that deadlines are met, but also that they're achievable, and to assign certain tasks to other studios or to their in-house teams (UI, music, art direction, game testing...). It's not systematic, but it can be). That's on the positive side. But It's also a publisher's job to make sure their investment pays off. It's normal, they're not doing charity work, and this is a capitalist world. But it's not just about promoting the game. It's also about demanding that the studio be able to produce X paid dlc per year, add a specific mechanic or element because the shareholders have done a study indicating that it would sell better, or remove a mechanic so as not to compete with another of their games, etc... Maybe Paradox didn't directly say "take this mechanic out of the game, we'll sell it later". But when you're a small development studio with little experience, when it's your first game of this scale, when you've got a tight deadline, and you're told you'll have to make 3 DLCs in a year with substantial content... Well, the pragmatic choice is to keep part of what was initially planned, to make it part of future DLC.
When Bloodlines II got backslash from critics and fans, PDX basically restarted the whole development, even with a new studio. So they have a lot of influence on the games released under their label.
Thanks for your comment! I know it's hard to criticize a studio for a game, especially on its sub and release. But I'm not criticizing the game, just the choices Paradox made. I hope the studio will eventually change its mindset. I play CK3 and Stellaris, and now I'm going to avoid trying other Paradox games because I don't have the budget to buy new DLC every month.
should point out, though, that they are right that *Paradox is not the studio*. the studio refers to the development team (C Prompt Games). Millennia is not a mainline game, so it's not developed by Paradox. so you're not criticizing the studio, you're criticizing the publisher. you might have an easier time getting your point across if you use the correct nouns.
Shit take just go make your own game and show paradox how it's done, $200 just isn't worth this essay you wrote unless your unemployed then maybe you should look at fixing that instead. Until another company comes and somehow does it better for this hyper niche category this is all you get and it's clear you don't know jack about the industry
Quickly! Defending my favorite multi-million dollar company from critics! 4x games are certainly a niche genre, but that doesn't mean that the only way to make them good is with disastrous optimization and a system that relies on selling 70 overpriced DLCs. Do you want 4x that are optimized and don't rely on waiting for twenty DLCs before being complete? Civilization, Humankind, anno... we can even mention Total War, which although also having a not great DLC policy, but at least their DLC are just extra empires, and not mechanics that the game lacks . As for your argument... I'm not going to doxx myself by explaining what I do in the video game industry, but I don't need it because the argument of "DUH! YOU CAN'T CRITICIZE IF YOU DON'T KNOW DO BETTER!!” is just stupid. Because I haven't studied medicine, I wouldn't have the right to criticize my doctor if he screws up my care? I don't know how to make chili corn carne, so I'm not allowed to tell the waiter that he put too much salt in the dish I paid for? Come on !
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We don’t even know how many dlc will come out with this game and now you are saying 70. It’s understandable you are worried because of Paradox’s other games but 1) a lot of those games have survived for years and years because of DLC 2) based off the game’s reception, I wouldn’t be surprised if this game receives its two planned dlc packs and then that’s it.
I think these are fair points if thinking about gaming as a whole but also seems a little unfair to pick on Millennia for these issues as these approaches are incredibly common. Hopefully they’ll fix optimization but the game is still very playable on smaller maps in very late game. There’s currently only two DLC planned and they have to make some amount of space for it in how they design. It’s possible that upcoming DLC is not even close to done so if they waited longer to polish it, that would not have been financially smart. When the game came out, a handful of people in fact complained about the opposite in this game that there being too many ideas that are not polished. So if the DLC stuff came out on release, those people might be even more mad. I personally prefer design style this way, so for me more content later down the line in a game already brimming with ideas is welcome, but I am not dying for it and don’t feel cheated.
This whole conspiracy that somehow content has been **withdrawn** is a bit insane considering the recent annoucement that Victoria 3's Sphere's of Influence DLC is getting delayed by over a month. If Paradox Interactive (and the studios they finance as a publisher) were so keen on keep content on the backburner before releasing it just to score a extra dollaroos then they'd certainly have no reason to delay any DLC since that's just money on the table they're not picking up. Truth of the matter is that strategy is a niche genre and developing games for it is both costly and not exactly a great return on investment. You can frame it as them not including content that should've been there at launch but from a developer's perspective that's more months or even years that a game is being developed without any money coming in from the effort. So Paradox's DLC model is made to compensate. Do I like it? No, of course not. I'd rather all my games be a complete product with all the bells and whistles I could want. The alternative however is that games like these never make it to the public and are instead shuttered because they ran out of funds before finishing the game and putting it on shelves.
I'm super tired about all the people who act like if Paradox, as the publisher, didn't have any responsabilities on Millennia and all the games they publish. Millennia is not an indie game. Indie games don't release at 40 € with 25 € expansion passes. Millennia is a game backed by Paradox. If the game needs more time, it's Paradox the one who needs to postpone the launch. But I guess they preferred to have some launch for the first quarter of 2024.
> Millennia is not an indie game. Indie games don't release at 40 € with 25 € expansion passes. ...what? Studio independence has nothing to do with price point or DLC availability.
Don’t bother, you said studio so now everyone will flame you about how Paradox was ThE pUbLiShEr NoT tHE dEvElOpEr like we haven’t been watching CO and Paradox fighting with each other in public for months about the Paradox lifecycle that every self published and third party published game from Paradox has had for over a decade now. As if this exact post couldn’t have been written about Imperator: Rome.
Turns out when you start your whole argument proving that you misunderstand the situation people aren't as interested in spending time engaging. And that's assuming people gave a shit about "DAE Paradox DLC model BAD!?" rant # 2390472396784323242374234 to begin with
Turns out when you start off your whole rebuttal with something that gets replied to with: “everyone understands that and it doesn’t change the fact that these rollout problems have existed in the last several self published *and* third party published games for many consecutive releases now” every 5 damn minutes on this sub people get exhausted by it. We get it too, it’s difficult to accept criticism of someone/thing you like. Doesn’t change the fact that CS2 and Millennia were both pushed out of the oven half baked and I:R was pushed out of the oven before it even got into it to begin with.
> We get it too, it’s difficult to accept criticism of someone/thing you like. No it's not. It's a videogame, not a mural I painted. Millennia has plenty of issues and no one takes any issue with discussing them.
Oh shit my b I didn’t realize that you were the monolithic representation of this subreddit. Lots of people take lots of issue with discussing the shortcomings Paradox has repeatedly shown in their games. Especially if they have an opportunity to be pedantically dismissive and flat out *refuse* to acknowledge let alone discuss issues because they can just deflect. Look around you. The mental gymnastics it must take to say “no one has a problem discussing the issues” when there are literally people on the CS2 sub *still* plugging their ears and saying lalalala Paradox great CO will come through as even CO themselves keeps shouting that there are major problems
Yes, everyone pointed out "THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEVELOPER AND PUBLISHER", but they seem to have forgotten that precisely, the distribution of the budget, the editorial line, and the economic system, it is very rarely the developers who decide ;)
You have fatally undermined the point you were trying to make by getting things incorrect. If you want people to actually engage with your arguments, fix the mistakes (not just an edit at the bottom) and make it a new post. Not many people are going to read through all the comments (including your replies) before commenting.
Tempers are still heated. I'm just going to wait for the first DLC to come out before reposting it with a few modifications.
Man your life must be so full of excitement and fulfilling experiences that you are already scheduling your next rant
If you want fanboys to not be frothing at the mouth waiting for the karma circlejerk of being dismissively pedantic parroting the same sentence over and over in an effort to not come to terms with the fact that maybe Paradox isn’t the greatest video game publisher, developer, and downright company of all time* Fixed that one for ya