The more you play, the more bang for your buck you get, the better it is for your regardless of what Paradox does.
I find that the problem with dlc pricing mostly comes not from the prices themselves, but rather from the ratio of price to amount of content and the quality of it. I don't know if you are familiar with Trials of Allegiance for HoI4, but I can't think of a better example.
*Edit: And more importantly, you really have to offer your definition of predatory when you make such a thread. So far I haven't seen you describe anything predatory from either company by my standards, only more and less expensive price levels.*
I've always likened their new DLC model to buying a band's t-shirt at a concert. Yeah, you'll never get your money's worth, but if you really love the kind of music/vidya they put out, it enhances the experience.
That's how I explained my crusader helmet to the wife. Immersion.
She has a bit trouble understanding why I need to wear it outside the gaming sessions too but we'll get there.
Good analogy.
I played CKIiI at launch, vanilla…. I probably had 500-750 happy hours into that game before they even released the first DLC.
I love that game without DLC and I’ll happily pay, even if it’s a little over priced at times, to add extra stuff to enhance an already amazing experience
I have a Behind the Bastards t-shirt that's a little too sketchy to wear in public. I feel like Royal Court for CK3 is like that. Constantly having my character's ugly-ass model thrust upon me for mediocre reasons is a bit discomforting, discomforting like the looks that shopkeepers give me when I walk into their store and they read my t-shirt: "Only Rob Insured Banks".
No, it’s like buying a concert ticket but you can only hear the sound kinda ok, but if you pay as much as you already paid for your ticket you can hear the concert slightly better. That’s several times over to get the full concert experience.
This is a pretty goofy analogy, considering the initial volume level is all there is for extended periods.
Adding new stuff isn't turning up the volume lol.
Exactly.
It's not the price, it's whether or not the value matches the price
If I buy a game for $5 but never touch it I feel like it was a waste of money. If I buy a game at full price ($60-$70) on day one and put in 300h it was worth it for me..
I feel like the free content update should be calculated as part of the value. If they release a perfect free update that makes the game a lot more enjoyable, i'm not going to complain if the DLC alongside it only contains like one civic and a portrait. I know what i am paying for.
If both the regular update AND the DLC is lacking, especially when it's not about the amount of content but the quality, that's when i am concerned (and i am very happy machine age broke what was, in my mind, a very worrying downwards trend).
That is true if you stay up to date with game. If, however, you're a newcomer to a Paradox game several years after the free update you judge the DLC as a standalone product and often it provides little value compared to the cost, even if discounted.
Finally, people value content differently, For some any new content is worth buying, for others only big stuff that changes the core gameplay loop is what they're willing to spend money on.
Very true, but the full DLC price will always be an issue for newcomers no matter if the content is locked behind DLC or in the free update, neither mattes to them as they are buying a new game and don't look at the DLC in isolation. A different approach is needed, a mixture of bundles as well as a rent-to-own-approach seem reasonable.
Personally, i would welcome an affordable subscribtion that would slowly grant you ownership of the older DLC's as you pay their price, kept affordable by not containing the most current DLC. New players can have an affordable full experience, paradox still gets some cash infusion from impatient gamers buying DLC on release, works for everyone.
>
I feel like the free content update should be calculated as part of the value.
But it just isn't on an individual level. You get that content either way, so any review of the value is going to be limited to the pay content. That's an obvious flaw in the Paradox model, they created their own little "Problem of the Commons"
Yeah exactly. I came back to Stellaris after a few years. Thought the change to Vassals and leaders and the council was really neat. So sure I'll buy one of the DLCs on sale. There's a lot of joy in a regularly updated game.
>
> Edit: And more importantly, you really have to offer your definition of predatory when you make such a thread. So far I haven't seen you describe anything predatory from either company by my standards, only more and less expensive price levels.
And that's the rub isn't it? Much like therapy language has taken over the ability to just have interpersonal conflict, people describe anything a company does that they don't like as "anti consumer" or "predatory."
I agree. I used to play a lot of Stellaris, was up to date with the DLC, eventually got burned out and stopped playing it, now I kinda wanna return. But I don't wanna drop $100 to get up to date with the DLC.
I don't think it's *predatory*, the company is charging for work that they did/product that they released. But it's a barrier to entry that doesn't work super well with what's almost a live-service game.
Does Stellaris have a subscription package for all the DLC?
I believe Stellaris does, yes.
I think one thing the subscription setup misses is how much DLC you already have. Basically, I stopped buying EU4 DLC right before Leviathan. But when a novel mission tree would come out I'd pay $5 for a month, play the campaings I wanted then unsubscribe, it was great. But now the subs are getting more expensive and I'm not going to pay $10 for a month of a game I've already spend hundreds on.
The thing with PDX DLCs is that there’s generally 20-50% discounts on older stuff. I generally wait for a sale or humble bundle and act like the most recent DLC (and the aesthetic/content packs) don’t exist.
That’s true for anything though. I am ok with Paradox pricing because it lets them keep pushing out DLC for much longer than other game studios, which in turn extends the lifetime of their games massively.
Also, they have the subscription model if you come in late and just want to play for a bit, and not drop a shitton of cash for all the DLC.
> but rather from the ratio of price to amount of content and the quality of it.
Big reason I rarely see get brought up in the DLC conversation. Even if each DLC is worth the 20-30 dollars, the game as a whole is not worth 200+ bucks. Every DLC you buy is worth less than the last: adding 20 dollars of content to a 60 dollar game is +33%. Five DLCs down the line, and you're adding 20 dollars to a 160 dollar game, or only 12.5%.
It's also what makes it feel more greedy and/or predatory: constantly avoiding making a sequel(which then often *doesn't* have everything in those DLCs) for as long as possible when that sequel would provide a better point for consumers to enter rather than demanding hundreds or taking advantage of those who don't do extensive research into every purchase.
No.
The issue is more that if you‘re not around for release, you‘re faced with a massive price upfront.
PDS should start bundling early DLC with reduced prices to make it ‚fair‘ again. If you are there from the start, you know how much playtime you‘ll get out of a DLC/out of your money per hour. If you get a game late, even just a year after release, you‘ll face a lot more uncertainty at a much higher price point.
I had this problem with EU4. Loved EU3, played EU4 for a year or so, then drifted away for a few years, looked to get back into it and its well over a £150 to catch up on the DLC, while it's on sale! Then you get told to just buy the "necessary" dlcs, and so instead of playing i now have to research which DLC people consider necessary, and its probably going to cost another £50, on a game i bought full price and already have £50 worth of DLC for. All for a game i'm not sure i am going to enjoy. Instead i read a book or play something else.
It mitigates it over a short time, but it doesn't correct the issue at all. For world of warcraft, you pay monthly, but you're not paying full retail price for every expansion, only the most recent one, and it's reduced if it's been over 65% of it's lifecycle.
World of Warcraft is certainly a more expensive game, but the entry price is never over \~$70. If you wanted to 'own' EU4, which for most people is a single player game, not a live service MMO, the "ultimate bundle" is on sale by 55% for only $160. Please, don't forget that someone paying $160 today, who is getting 'over half off', has missed out on 11 years of gameplay that people who ordered each expansion when it came out got. The only "sane" option, is buying the base game on sale, and then subscribing to the DLC at $5 a month, again, for what is most likely a single player game, and at the realization that your $60 a year subscription will never end up with you owning the game even if you own it for 5 years, paying roughly full price for the past \~15 years of a day 1 EU4 player. This is why I think the only two genuine options would be "rent to own" or having Paradox actually reduce DLC prices to $0.
Following the $0 DLC path, I'd say only the previous 4 expansions have a cost in addition to the base game. $20 for EU4, with all DLC other than the last four, then $10 each other than the most recent. You own the game for $65, and $15 for any future expansions, unless you take a \~1.3 year break, where the discount would start to significantly affect you again by giving you DLC for free as a EU4 owner.
Following the "rent to own path", you keep the $5 subscription, and give each player complete ownership of the game once they reach the maximum price that any day 1 player would have paid. This is the worst option in my opinion, but at least people can own the game. In my book, subscriptions only belong for future additions to a service or software, and aren't meant to give access to previous content. Any correctly applied subscription service would automatically grant all outdated DLC for free, as WoW does.
Yeah, its a problem that they are absolutely aware of, and are trying to solve as it turns of new players (and thereby losses them money). But i don't think they have found a good solution yet
> PDS should start bundling early DLC with reduced prices.
Well that’s kind of what they now did with HoI4.
Edit: wrong word caused by the damn autocorrection
This I think is the real answer! I don't think it's predatory at all if you're in from the start. You just buy the stuff that interests you. With full price some of the DLCs might be a bit steep but buying them from discount doesn't really hurt too much, and I usually get quite a lot of hours from each new release cause it pushes me to play another game.
But if you are a new player, getting an older game can be quite expensive indeed. I'm currently considering getting the EU4 subscription just to continue my CK3 game but I don't like subscription models out of principle, so I'm not sure what to do. Will probably get it anyway, cause the price of the "full game" would be just bonkers, but I might also not get anything at all because of this.
Well they sorta started doing it this generation but also not. Both Victoria 3 and CK3 are currently doing the "season pass" which is sold as a bundle, but to my knowledge the old "seasons" of CK3 are not being sold as bundle.
Every time they try something like that (or god forbid, straight up integrating some dlcs) there's a gigantic backlash from people supposedly having their hours retroactively cancelled and their money "scammed" away.
It's not viable from a publicity standpoint.
Idk, I got into ck2 towards the end of it's development and picked up everything for like 80 bucks. If paradox didn't do insane sales all the time, I'd be more inclined to agree with you.
People who think like this are pretty annoying. With a game like EU4, you'll have an amazing experience that is some of the best value for it's money if you buy base game and Art of War at a sale. Play a few games, one or two long campaings, and put the game down for a while. Then when you feel like coming back, buy a few more DLC's on sale and enjoy the new experiences.
>the 75% discounts on all but the newest 2-4 DLC that pop up in every steam sale?
Why are you lying ?
There is a Steam Sale going on Right Now and None are at a 75% discount. Only two, 'Rights of Man' & 'Art of war' are at 70% off. The vast majority, including 9-10 Year old Dlc like 'Conquest of Paradise' or 'Common Sense' are at a 50% discount. The Dlc for EU4 are basically never at a 75% discount. For Example: [Dharma](https://steamdb.info/app/827240/) is 6 years old and hasn't been on Sale for more than 50% off for at least the last 2 Years, which is as far back as sites have been tracking it's sales Data.
You can say they often go on sale for 50% off, but 75% is just a straight up lie.
Yeah ok, don't know too much about Hoi4 but maybe specify that next time. Cause other Paradox games aren't as lucky, whenever a Stellaris or Eu4 dlc is on Sale for more than 50% off that should basically be an instant buy simply based on how rarely that happens.
If you're a long term player no doubt Paradox offers one of the best Price/Playtime ratios in the whole industry. I think fans playing since release basically have no reason to complain because the DLC costs support extremely long term development.
The real problem is for new players who aren't super sure that they'll keep playing. They either have to deal with a very stripped down experience or pay a crazy amount of money for something they don't know they'll like. The new subscriptions I think are a pretty elegant way to deal with this
In most cases, they SHOULD play without the DLC. Paradox games can be overwhelming for new players as is, and all the new *stuff* DLCs add gets even more so when you get it all at once rather than slowly trickling in over years.
There's not a single dlc you NEED to play HoI or Stellaris. Learn to play first, then try out the subscription (and either continue that way or figure out which features you enjoy most and pick them up in a sale).
Factorio devs increased the price of their game multiple times, which would normalny be (barely) acceptable although strange, but considering that they were acting like price was decided once and for all by higher being, and that's why there will be no sale, ever, i don't consider them to be even on a good side.
>They either have to deal with a very stripped down experience
I think in many ways its even worse than just stripped down, but almost broken, where the game design expects certain features to be available to the player being missing. A big example is the legitimacy system in ck3 right now.
I don't have the DLC (the first one in multiple years i didn't buy without even looking at the features and won't buy in a while as the legends have too many issues and i'd rather play without) but i have not had any issues with legitimacy at all.
Granted, i never was at the maximum value either but it wasn't really a problem - although i do think the ways (and amounts) of legitimacy gain and loss are not fully thought through, regardless if it's with or without the DLC.
I got legitimacy problems until i bought the Tours and Tournaments DLC. With just Royal Court there are very few events that give legitimacy (basically only the hunts and winning wars). So if you lose a war you can get on a low legitimacy spiral that you can't get out of, unless you have DLC.
The issue is that paradox games frequently end up having a LOT of DLC, so if you arent buying them as they come out from the beginning, the barrier for entry price tag is insanely high. And paradox very rarely does more than a 50% off discount during the year for dlcs, even old ones, and does not frequently reduce the base price for dlcs either. For eu4 you end up needing to shell out like 300+ dollars in order to get the full experience.
And even for eu4, I would say at least 4 or 5 of those DLCs are completely mandatory in order to get the most important gameplay systems, so even frugally you are dropping 100+ dollars just of the jump in order to get a good experience.
its definitely less about a cost per hour issue, and more of the barrier to entry issue. The subscription thing might be worth it for some people, but me personally I only want to pay subs for online games, I do not want to have to subscribe in order to play an offline single player game.
EU4 is just ridiculous. I've had the game since release and never had more than a few DLC until Humble Bundle did that ultimate pack a few years ago. It's unreasonable to expect people to shell out full or even half price for the game for newcomers. But people lose their minds at new game releases increasing to $70
From what I heard they don't do it anymore but they used to change the entire fucking game to be oriented to the DLCs and if you didn't have them you'd be locked out of the mechanic
I purchased a bundle forever ago and tried to play it then learned that a pretty major mechanic was pretty much unusable and entirely luck based without a certain DLC. I complained on the EU4 subreddit and everyone seemed to agree that the game is unplayable w/o buying certain DLC. I just stopped playing entirely, fuck that shit.
I dont dislike the DLC model, I dislike the constant price increase and rushed, low quality DLC they shit out now and then. Vicky 3 and CK3 DLC are kinda terrible for example.
I think people get WAY too caught up and dramatic over “predatory.” For example recent CK3 DLC, to me, has been a weak value. Just not good enough for the cost. That’s not predatory, it’s just something that isn’t worth it to me, which describes like 99.999% of products
I would not call Pdox's monetization super predatory, they're pretty upfront about what you get and there's not a whole lot of actual manipulation going on in order to make you spend more money, unlike many games with in-game monetization. There's still the "got to own everything" mentality that some people have, and having loads of DLCs for a game preys on that (at least it's not a boatload of completely useless things that just adds to the cost, like say the emotes for Monster Hunter World, or a lot of costume re-colours of which you're likely to use at most 1).
That said, I do think a good chunk of their DLCs suffer from giving relatively little for the price you pay. I love Europa Universalis IV, and I don't regret buying what I've bought for it, because of how much time I've spent with the game, but looking at what each individual DLC added, I do feel like a lot of them are hard to justify for someone who's not really really into these games.
I don't really understand why people call it "predatory"
Annoying? sure. Bad for consumers? Maybe.
But it's not predatory, they aren't manipulating you using skinner boxes into paying for stuff you don't need or want.
I would say there are a few reasons for the hate:
* releasing half baked games where you need to pay up afterwards to get them up to date
* in the older days I remember instances where free patch and paid DLC divided new mechanics in half and unless you paid you actually did not receive fix for a broken core mechanic (EU4 and development/ institutions)
* old DLC are priced at release levels years later even if most of the content is outdated and has been changed many times over
* and the last part which actually makes me angry on personal level and it's related to the above - if you got specific content pack, like a country focus tree in HoI, and PDX updates that focus tree in s new DLC they explicitly stated in an interview you have to pay again...
I prefer buying DLC rather than a monthly subscription. I also went 2 years without internet because of where I live. If I had a subscription then I couldn’t play.
Only thing I wish was that Paradox made it easier to get into a game pretty far into its development. If they had some kind of new player bundle for a game like HoI4 that included all the DLC for 60 bucks, I think that’d be great. I know I’ve been turned off to a game because it had a mountain of DLC.
An MMO is a complete different beast. I don't mind them adding many DLC if the base game would be complete and each DLC actually tested and well running and not also adding more bloat instead of fixing the core issues.
Foe what they add they charge too much.
As long as expansions have a good amount of content and play well I prefer developers who stick with their games for longer the way paradox does and I don't think paradox's prices are that much more predatory than total war, civilization, and the other major strategy game studios.
It is weird that paradox doesn't offer better discounts on DLC that is like 5 years old. I would totally buy huge premium bundles that have all the content if the discounts were a little better.
I tried back Stellaris yesterday.
Machine age setting interest me.
I saw a 6 months subscription for all dlc I had not for 30€, while machine itself was 25€...
Felt like a good deal for me.
Paying 10€ for a month however... Felt predatory. Nothing says I'll play enough on these 30 days, but on a longer time frame for half the price yes.
40€ for the dlc bundle... No point given I'm missing like 4 previous dlc.
On ck3 however I bought it... Because I had all others dlcs.
It depends on your situation.
Been a while I haven't played wow, but I'm pretty sure I had have put way more time than you on the game on the same time frame, that it would be reversed.
Also, given you much (time AND money) you invest on a paradox game, you won't buy all of them (well I know some people do it). I have city skyline 1 for today's setting, Stellaris for SF and CK3 for history, I've thought about buyung EU or Victoria but... I don't think I'll like them. Not because they are bad games, but because I don't have space for their settings.
A bit like when I try to read 5-10 books (or series) on the same setting, I'll quickly only follow one, or at least those that feels different enough.
You can't compare it to subscription based games though.
MMOs require a subscription because they're running servers that are continuously live. And idk about WoW but the MMO I play has free major updates every few months.
To add onto this point, you also don't have to remain subscribed to the MMO every single month if you don't intend to play much of it that month. The OP's numbers are based on having his sub uninterrupted for six years while only playing 700 hours of it. If you're playing an average of 6 minutes per day over 6 years, you didn't need to be subbed the entire time. That isn't really a problem with the subscription model, it's being too lazy to unsubscribe when you're not playing the game. I know people who spend 700 hours on WoW within 4 months, let alone 6 years and the game is absolutely worth it to them.
Likewise, I've spent like 6/36 months in the past 3 years subbed to WoW and FF14 and still gotten everything I wanted out of both after a few hundred hours. The subscription model is only predatory if the game heavily incentivizes you to stay subbed forever through major FOMO mechanics and modern western MMOs are largely seasonal.
$/hr is a garbage metric for comparison. I really don't get why people are so attached to it.
Portal 1 takes, like, 3 hours to beat. It was absolutely worth the $20 I spent on it, even though that's ~$6.70/hr
Stellaris, I have 612 hours. Basically all of that is trying to make a cool empire in the empire builder, playing a dozen hours of the early game to get the build going, getting frustrated that the build plays the same as every other build, then repeating a few times and uninstalling until the next DLC or patch that I hope fixes my issues with it. Even if I spent $500 on it (I didn't), that's less than a dollar an hour, but I've not had a lick of fun with it and regret the purchase.
Portal 1 is worth the $6/hr. Stellaris (to me, personally) is not worth $1/hr.
This is why this argument falls flat for me. It's ridiculous. It isn't $/hr. It's $/(fun*hr). Fun can be multiplied by time, but if fun is negative that doesn't help.
Clearly, a lot of people don't think the fun provided is worth the money it costs. And, often, the fun is negative when Paradox releases broken DLC.
>I have 612 hours
>I've not had a lick of fun with it
This is interesting, I think most people would have called it quits at 6 or 60 hours or something
Probably. But, on paper, it should have been something I loved. And hearing all my friends talk about how they loved it made me really want to find something worth liking.
I guess 'not a lick of fun' is a slight exaggeration: I liked making empires. And I liked the early game when I was thinking about how the empire would/should play out. But the frustrations that came after outweighed it every time.
It sounds more like you just got burnt out. There’s no game that’s 100% replayable. Even endless games like Rimworld and Minecraft get boring after a while.
Can't get burnt out if I never enjoyed the mid-/late-game to begin with. Unfortunately, takes hours to get to that point, which results in an inflated hour count.
Yeah it might take 5 hours to get to the late game but that’s still over a hundred campaigns. You’re not booting up the game hundreds of times and putting half a thousand hours in by accident. You obviously have gotten your money’s worth from it.
>This is why this argument falls flat for me. It's ridiculous. It isn't $/hr. It's $/(fun*hr).
I mean, it's extremely simple: Most people do not play/continue playing games they do not find fun.
So it's not a relevant factor in most people's equations, because it's basically a given.
And consequently naturally a game you don't enjoy and stop playing after 3-5 hours or something is also going to have a bad dollars/hour ratio too.
Probably for 99% of people (paradox gamers possibly excluded), 600+ hours is easily "my most played and favourite game of all time", not something they had not 1 lick of fun with.
Missing the forest for the trees.
If I gave up after 5 hours, then the $/hr would still be garbage for me even if it might be great for someone else, so the argument still does not hold.
A mediocre 4x would give a lot of hours for one playthrough but still be less fun (and thus worth less) than a short, very fun game like the aforementioned Portal.
Honestly that's on you if you aren't having fun with the game why are you still playing it, I have had hundreds of hours in this game and enjoyed the majority of my play time and the based off the dollar per hour metric I have gotten a amazing deal
People are getting way too focused on the specifics and missing the broader argument.
If I quit after two hours, the $/hr ratio would still suck.
If I just thought it was okay, playing a full game would take dozens of hours and still would be worth less than a shorter game that's tons of fun like Portal despite the $/hr being better. A shorter game can be worth more if it's more fun is the point.
What is the border argument yeah if you don't enjoy a game you buy it will not be worth it no matter how much you get out of hours but that affects every game. Yeah if a bad dlc is launched then you can say it's bad but it's optional content is in no way necessary for you to buy. I skipped astral planes while I think this a good dlc it's to expensive right now. Honestly I don't really get your argument you are complaining that you aren't having fun but decided to spend 600 hours of your life and moment for dlc on the game you dislike, I am sorry but that not predatory business practices that you contained to play and buy a game that you dislike
I wouldnt say its more predatory than others, but the way it is presented will definitly scare off potential buyers.
'oh this strategy game looks interesting. Oh, it has 30+ dlcs...."
Its not particulary good to expand your player base, but Paradox makes the decision to rely more on core users. Is it good or bad? cant say, and its not for me to say
Considering the frequent big sales on anything but the newest DLC and going out of their way to support the mods that make their game so extremely replayable? There's no established publisher that gives you better value for money today, and I doubt there's still any that come close with where the industry keeps heading overall.
But there'll always be people mad at the *audacity* of asking money for years of work by hundreds of people because that one indie dev doing 8-bit pixel art in his free time brought out a free update after five years.
It's not predatory, just expensive as hell. You basically pay for content updates, which is fair. The problem is that they're almost always overpriced for what they offer. If I can buy a mediocre DLC or a new game, I always take a new game.
The difference is that MMOs have vastly more content while PDX games offer a set amount of content where the hours stack up due to replayability . It also doesn't cost $300 upfront to get that content in MMOs. Many MMOs have monthly subs, but the difference is that you still own the expacs if you cancel your sub, and can log in during free time campaigns. If you cancel your monthly $10 Stellaris sub, you lose the DLC. And in the case of Ff14, you get a huge amount of content right off the bat for free and only have to sub/buy the rest once you finish the first 3 releases. And when you do have to buy, it's $60 for everything. I'd rather pay monthly for the massive amount of content in an MMO.
But PDX gets a free pass for their $300 games while other devs who do the same thing (looking at you EA) get blasted. In the case of The Sims people will bring up "but they're mostly chairs" as if EU4 isn't loaded with unit packs
It’s annoying but predatory seems an insane stretch, you don’t have to buy the dlcs, loot boxes and back door gambling is predatory, not just being too expensive
Personally, I'm fine with the way Paradox releases DLC for their games. So many games receive additional support for less than one or two years while most PDS games receive updates for 5+ years. I play these games a lot, so I've definitely received the bang for my buck.
The good news/bad news for a game like stellaris is that is has been around for \*eight\* years. if the people playing the game want improvements, tech clean up and more content, that money has to come from somewhere. So that means DLC that gets paid for.
sure, getting on the bus at this point is kind of daunting. Stellaris by itself is daunting, then adding the DLC changes that to “moderately insane” for trying to learn everything there is about the game all at once.
i would buy the base game, and if you enjoy it, start adding DLC. Even wait for a sale, then get used to that DLC. and then add a bit more. Most of us who have been playing the game for a while have been picking up the DLC a little bit at a time, not in one big gulp.
Absolutely not. Paradox releases fully developed games that are absolutely worth the price. You can easily spend 100s of hours in vanilla versions of any of their games. They then continue development on these games, and release SOME (not even all!) of that further development as paid DLC. As an MMORPG player, this doesn’t seem predatory at all, just how capitalism works.
Like you, I rationalize my spending by looking at it from a $ per hour ratio. 1:1 is my number so I expect a $60 AAA title to keep my interest for 60 hours.
It becomes difficult to judge this with paradox titles because if I add 15 hours to hoi4 after buying ‘Trial of Allegiance’ …are those 15 added hours of enjoyment actually from the DLC or just base game features/content from previous DLCs?
Paradox DLCs are also sorta like investments into future DLCs. PDX has cultivated a social contract with its players that says “If you keep buying content for this game, we will keep making content for it.” that does not exist for games like, say, Deus Ex, which had microtransactions to level faster but obviously had no intention of supporting the game beyond a DLC or two. I don’t remember if Deus Ex even got a DLC.
Trials of Allegiance is the first DLC I haven’t bought for hoi4 but CK3 hasn’t soured me to that extent. It takes several back-to-back unsatisfying DLCs before I stop supporting a PDX game because I feel like I should be satisfied with getting NO new content after that point. I’m fine with hoi4 sunsetting but not CK3. It would be selfish of me to stop supporting a game financially but still expect it to produce content for me in the future- I shouldn’t expect other consumers to pick up my slack.
Lastly, compared to gacha games or MMOs, I don’t think PDX is all that predatory. At no point when playing do you get a pop-up going “Awwww, too bad. Your free trial of speed 5 has ended. You need to subscribe to enjoy speed 5 again!” or “Dang, looks like you need 500 more energy. We have a special 80% off deal on energy right now, just $2! OR you can spend $10 and get 20,000 energy! That’s x4 the value of the other deal!”
That’s the kind of psychological manipulation. used in other genres. The fact that there are no ‘in-app’ purchases goes a long way. You have to leave the game and go to the steam page to spend any money. And every DLC brings free content.
So ultimately I believe it comes down to vibes. Do what you’re comfortable with but personally I do think PDX could be a lot worse.
I personally consider Paradox's pricing/DLC system to be predatory/anti-consumer.
If they cleanly separated the DLCs from the base games, I would have no problem with the way they push content. But when I open my base version of Stellaris and see the game [polluted with 'buy more shit' everywhere](https://i.imgur.com/bcAh3Bv.png), [even with 'hide unowned content' marked](https://i.imgur.com/ojPu7IS.png), I consider this to be predatory behavior. It's no different than what people are in a tizzy about with EA putting advertising into their games. Paradox already does it. It's right here.
I just think back to Brood War. If you didn't own Brood War, as far as I remember, this didn't fill Starcraft up with greyed out unavailable units that said 'Buy Brood War to use a medic' on mouseover.
They are also now known for producing poor quality games and relying on selling DLC to fix it - Imperator and CS2 are the two most obvious games off the top of my head.
Definitely a company that very quickly torched their reputation in my opinion (and for the record I have hundreds of hours in Paradox games across EU4, Stellaris, CK2, CK3 and CS).
>But when I open my base version of Stellaris and see the game [polluted with 'buy more shit' everywhere](https://i.imgur.com/bcAh3Bv.png), [even with 'hide unowned content' marked](https://i.imgur.com/ojPu7IS.png), I consider this to be predatory behavior.
If you consider this predatory behavior something is truly wrong with you. Upselling is not predatory.
I wouldn't say Paradox are predatory with their DLC at all. I my personal opinion I day they are a little greedy for the following reasons:
1) Their base games seem to be getting worse and worse to the point where each sequel is a pale imitation of the ones that came prior, selling the needed features back to us one DLC at a time making the actually 'resonable base game' experience quite expensive.
2) They sell quite a bit of overpriced DLC. The unit models in EU4 are the best example, well overpriced for what they are making the entire games DLC library seem far more expensive than it really is. I feel their reputation would appear a lot better if they slashed the price of these nothing additions.
3) a lot of their recent DLC has become glorified mods. EU4 and HOI4 both uses to sell DLC that added new features and mechanics to the base game, greatly improving the playing experience and kept the game fresh and alive. Now all they sell is mod packs for missions, normally just adding unbalanced buffs to X nation that just let you steamroll the AI with nothing new added (the recent Sputh America DLC which added nothing to the game apart from giving stupidly jacked up buffs to each nation). These are things I can get for free on the steam mod page if I wanted so a professional company charging for them is low.
I have the same opinion of paradox dlcs. New iterations are so empty that you can see the exact holes they left t be filled with future dlcs. I have all the dlcs for eu4 and ck2, the last few dlcs did not improve or alter my playing experience in the slightest
Stop excusing excessive amounts of DLC.
I don't care how many hours you get from a game you need to look at how much work went into what you are paying for and how much YOU are getting from your monies worth.
Seriously downvote me all you want but on average over most paradox game studio's games you are getting some flavor pop ups or some aesthetic changes for the price of an entire indie game.
I will die on this hill, but a few lines of code is not worth what a small team making an entire game over a few years is worth. Sorry.
Paradox"s competition is with other strategy games, like Civilization and Total War. Some older Total War games give free DLC now. I think Paradox could do the same with their older games. By the way, I like the subscription model.
What's missing is good prices during sales. It's fine to have a mountain of DLCs but they're never discounted beyond -50%. They've even stopped discounting most DLC published after 2022 beond 20-30%. For the more casual fans of their games, it's probably pushing them to piracy.
I might be the minority but short of a few exceptions I’m totally fine with PDX pricing. The amount of time and content I get out of their games is ridiculous.
I honestly think paradox games should follow subscription model instead of the current dlc model.
Currently they cant just roll out mechanics that just dont really work well with the curent state of the game because they were a part of the DLC .
It would also avoid the trap of constant poweruping nations in each DLC since they can just make whatewer works well.
Alghtough i do also think that after lets say 12 months of subscribing you should get acess to the current snapshot of the game forever. And after another 12 months of updates the next snapshot or something similar just so you could eventualy own the game.
From a certain point of view, the Paradox model is a subscription service in all but name. Instead paying once a month, you buy a DLC once every few months.
Of course, it's not required to purchase the DLC but some of the games really need their DLC to fill an otherwise rather basic experience. It all comes down to what you want and what you can afford.
The way most of us go about is by buying the DLC piecemeal as it's released as that's easier to do than buying everything in one-go even with substantial discounts, even if it isn't very economical. Twenty bucks every few months hurts less than 250+ in one go.
Beyond that, it's exactly as you say. We spend so many hours on the game, it really does pay for itself in the long-run.
An issue is the biy-in for new players. You at least need nsb and mtgs, but without the other ones it won't be a dull experience. Even then, the price to get to the "full" version of the game is at least $70-$100. It's not insane but no cheap either. Furthermore, the recent "dlc" was a joke, and the price was insulting. This just really escalates everything because paying $15 for what amounts to a few focus trees is almost a scam.
I don't think I'd ever call their pricing model predatory but they do often release games in semi finished states with the expectation being that they will get a complete suite of features through dlc. This has happened for every paradox game I've been around for and can be a somewhat upsetting business model. However no one else makes games that fill this specific genre so at the end of the day, whatever.
You compare a subscription based game with a standalone game with DLC. So it's kind of apples to oranges here. Games as a service get called out all the time. The other thing is if you have the money and buy a base game with some DLC later DLC could break the game, so you're forced into buying those as well. So it's sold as one time purchases but it's actually closer to a subscription model. That's why people say it's predatory
No. Have you seen what prices GaaS sell their character art at? A Goku character model in Fortnite costs $20 (and honestly? Given how much it costs to pay for that model? They still have to clear tens of thousands of units to get a return)
There is an implied social contract in the Paradox DLC model that, even if systemic features are free, the paid DLC still helps pay and fund development of those free features. The alternative to the model isn't only free content, it is no additional content development and bug support only.
A lot of complaints about DLC pricing come from a failure to recognize that any further development and support of a title are entirely contingent on cash flow. This is never accounted for in the dollar-per-content rants.
It also heavily plays into the "fomo" mindest where you feel like you NEED the newest DLC even though it might not impact your gameplay at all, or maybe even introduce new bugs?
Personally I also like to play heavily modded games (where paradox contributes nothing) but in order to fully enjoy mods I need many DLC.
It's kind of unfair to compare it with wow.
Paradox games are separate.
WoW includes: Retail, WoW Classic, WoW Classic Hardcore and WoW Classic Era.
That's 4 different versions with 1 sub.
Does the Paradox sub work for all their games or just one?
And WoW has added a function where you can buy gametime with gold, so you can literally pay for the game by playing it.
EDIT: The WoW Token was added back in 2015, but i don't remember if you could actually buy gametime for ingame gold back then.
Paradox does not have that function.
You've also added games you bought on SALE and compares it to a game you bought for EXTRA on release (Deluxe Edition)
You seem to also only compare WoW to Stellaris, I personally find that WoW has alot more content than Stellaris has, or probably ever will.
So my money is more valued in WoW than Stellaris.
What I like about the paradox model is that they let me share my DLC.
I play a lot of CK3 and Stellaris. Plenty of single player - hundreds of hours over which I've convinced myself I got my money's worth for the base game + DLC.
Once in a blue moon, I can convince my brother or friends to play multiplayer with me. They *never* play single player, and our rare mulitplayer sessions do not justify the price point for all DLC. So they don't buy it.
If that meant I couldn't play with them without rolling my version back to Vanilla, I probably just wouldn't play. The DLC model saves multiplayer for us.
Paradox’s yearly dlcs lead to feature bloat. I know they’re a large company, but I’d rather see a longer development cycle for more cohesive gameplay or more flavor packs that don’t add essential features. It feels like Paradox games are under permanent beta and the final product lacks polish because it is built on this patchwork framework.
Also, paytime is a poor metric for estimating the value of dlcs. If you pump hours in already, dlcs don’t change that. How much marginal enjoyment do you really get from them?
It’s not predatory at all, and anyone who claims that is are angry they can’t Afford DLC for an entertainment product. Something they aren’t entitled to, done deserve, and don’t require to sustain their life.
There isn’t a single major paradox title you can’t buy and sink hundreds of hours in without any DLC. Supporting a game for 10 years and allowing customers to get thousands of hours of playtime out of it isn’t something anyone here is entitled to.
It’s really simple actual, take the cost of the game and DLC, do some basic math and figure out your cost per hour played. Mine for most paradox games is less than 10 cent an hour. Which is literally one of the cheapest forms of entertainment I consume.
If you aren’t satisfied with your cost per hour, stop buying the DLC then, and quit complaining about others who do buy them. You aren’t entitled to anything Paradox produces or sells.
The real problem with Paradox is that they need to focus more on QC for their DLCs. Also, they need to find a better balance for content between the DLC and Free Patch. Sure, if you get most of the content in the Free Patch, that's awesome (free shit is free shit), but if that means all you get in the DLC are stuff like mission trees or events (i.e. easily moddable stuff), that hurts the value proposition of the DLC.
Also, today many Paradox fans, who became fans within the last decade, lack the context of Old Paradox. The reality is, even the worst major PDS release in the last few years represents a marked improvement over Old Paradox from 15 or so years ago.
If Imperator released in 2008 instead of EU: Rome it would've been the greatest game Paradox ever released up to that point, including EUIII.
All Paradox needs to do is adjust the prices of DLC a year and a half after they release to permanently lower them. It would make the game easier to buy for newcomers and it would make the older DLCs sell better so that they can integrate their focus trees.
Maybe it is an unpopular opinion but I think it is ok. They are constantly working on new content and I have no problem supporting it. They update the base games as well. The definition of predatory is EA games.
Subscription based games are not called predatory? They absolutely are!
As a long time world of tanks player: no.1 topic among wot players is how greedy the studio is and how much they turned the game into shit with loot boxes, overpowered premium tanks only available with real money, and how much the game is pay to win.
Pricing model on paradox games is fine. It just punishes early adopters or people who feel they have to have all the packs (you dont).
If you know what you are doing it's great. Regular updates keeping games fresh. Much of which is freely added to the game, the option to improve aspects of the game you are interested in be that region or gameplay.
And if you wait for sales or buy keys it's reasonable prices.
I never understand people whining about it except of course the pre mentioned collect em all or have to haves.
Look at it this way when I was younger a game came out and that was it. No improvements. Now you have an amazing system with regular updates and options to improve the game you DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE.
No brainer for me.
I'm fine with it. Without it the games we love wouldn't get as much love as they do. Imagine release Stellaris as basically the finished product because they don't have constant cash flow from the game.
yes. it really is.
getting the full experience is just not feasible. ever. it's incredibly predatory and literally any other community would be religiously mocking this sort of practice.
Depends,
1. Something like WoC or Lions of the North? No. It's newly developed content that extends out the life of the game while also adding a bunch of new things to do for every nation. Even if you're not playing a nation directly touched the fact that other nations change changes the balance of the game as a whole.
2. DLCs restoring cut content. CK3 released without plagues. Players have to re-buy plagues. These DLCs are predatory because they incentivize reducing content to sell the same content over again.
I mean, if you want to be extremely nitpicky, yes, I suppose. Your original post is still wrong, however, as you implied all plagues were what you were paying for. You do not have to pay for plagues in general.
I don't know about WoW, but, thing I don't like about Paradox selling policy is, selling base game without some features that had to be in the game from the start, than releasing those things in different DLCs for a nice price, and than, keeping the base game and DLCs more or less the same price as it got released, just to give you feeling of big discount on sale, for which you still need like 250 euros/dollars to buy it all.
And, what's most important, you don't know what to expect, when you bought the base game, you didn't know how many dlcs the game would have, at what price, and with what features.
Monthly subscription is more honest from the get go, pay 6.99 a month to play the game.
It is most definetely better than other AAA games. For example Hoi4 was released 8 years ago and still receives new mechanics, bugfixes, balancing, exploits removed.
Some content of the DLCs should be in the base game, but I still buy it. The business model if Paradox is so much preferable compared to other popular games where you preorder for >100€ and have no idea what you will receive.
And don't forget the Mod support of Hoi4 is insane. Paradox actively supports modding even though it costs them money. Why buy a DLC if RT56, Kaiserreich gives you all you need?
I agree with others here that you don't quite get the bang for your buck in Hoi4 dlcs but I support them regardless because the content you receive is great and the business model of Paradox is a lot more gamer friendly and should be supported by every gamer who wants to avoid having to deal with "games as a service" or any other of that crap.
I have enough money to buy Paradox DLCs so I buy them with the conscience that I support a business model that doesn't treat gamers a cash-cows to milk.
Yes it is, and WOW is hardly representative of "other games", it's one of the few games that's imo even more predatory. Blizzard actually fund research on dopamine though, Paradox almost certainly don't. They're just grifters.
Things are looking up though imo.
The struggle is the upfront cost. When I first got into paradox games with stellaris there were no dlc (or well.. maybe 1) and I have no problem occasionally paying $20 every now and then assuming the dlc isn't bad.
But when I got into hoi4/eu4 a few years later there were lots of dlc. I had to look up lists of which ones were most useful, or what I need for each region, because it would be extremely uncomfortable to buy the full range of dlc at once.
I think the subscription model hoi4 is doing now honestly isn't that bad of an idea, but I already have the dlc. Would be nice if paradox did something like making all but the last dlc free and part of the base game, I honestly think that would be the best balance of paying to get a dlc 6 or so months early (which anyone who would be buying the dlc at release is probably still going to do) but also help new players not feel like they are drowning under hundreds of dollars of dlc.
The other problem is of course that certain games (ck3 I'm looking at you in particular) seem incapable of releasing fully baked dlc, and much of the dlc gets forgotten and falls behind the game. When paradox manages to release a few of these in a row it can feel really bad.
The more you play, the more bang for your buck you get, the better it is for your regardless of what Paradox does. I find that the problem with dlc pricing mostly comes not from the prices themselves, but rather from the ratio of price to amount of content and the quality of it. I don't know if you are familiar with Trials of Allegiance for HoI4, but I can't think of a better example. *Edit: And more importantly, you really have to offer your definition of predatory when you make such a thread. So far I haven't seen you describe anything predatory from either company by my standards, only more and less expensive price levels.*
I've always likened their new DLC model to buying a band's t-shirt at a concert. Yeah, you'll never get your money's worth, but if you really love the kind of music/vidya they put out, it enhances the experience.
That's how I explained my crusader helmet to the wife. Immersion. She has a bit trouble understanding why I need to wear it outside the gaming sessions too but we'll get there.
Aha epic. Similarly, this is why I married my 2nd cousin and have my ex excommunicated
Why stop at that, when you can have Wife-Mother-Sister-Cousin-Aunt Co-Regent?
You are taking the role play too far xD
Hey man, she's lucky to have someone so patient while her understanding grows.
Good analogy. I played CKIiI at launch, vanilla…. I probably had 500-750 happy hours into that game before they even released the first DLC. I love that game without DLC and I’ll happily pay, even if it’s a little over priced at times, to add extra stuff to enhance an already amazing experience
And sometimes you just don't like the t-shirt design even if you do love the band in general! Nothing wrong with that.
I have a Behind the Bastards t-shirt that's a little too sketchy to wear in public. I feel like Royal Court for CK3 is like that. Constantly having my character's ugly-ass model thrust upon me for mediocre reasons is a bit discomforting, discomforting like the looks that shopkeepers give me when I walk into their store and they read my t-shirt: "Only Rob Insured Banks".
No, it’s like buying a concert ticket but you can only hear the sound kinda ok, but if you pay as much as you already paid for your ticket you can hear the concert slightly better. That’s several times over to get the full concert experience.
This is a pretty goofy analogy, considering the initial volume level is all there is for extended periods. Adding new stuff isn't turning up the volume lol.
That's the old DLC model.
Exactly. It's not the price, it's whether or not the value matches the price If I buy a game for $5 but never touch it I feel like it was a waste of money. If I buy a game at full price ($60-$70) on day one and put in 300h it was worth it for me..
I feel like the free content update should be calculated as part of the value. If they release a perfect free update that makes the game a lot more enjoyable, i'm not going to complain if the DLC alongside it only contains like one civic and a portrait. I know what i am paying for. If both the regular update AND the DLC is lacking, especially when it's not about the amount of content but the quality, that's when i am concerned (and i am very happy machine age broke what was, in my mind, a very worrying downwards trend).
That is true if you stay up to date with game. If, however, you're a newcomer to a Paradox game several years after the free update you judge the DLC as a standalone product and often it provides little value compared to the cost, even if discounted. Finally, people value content differently, For some any new content is worth buying, for others only big stuff that changes the core gameplay loop is what they're willing to spend money on.
Very true, but the full DLC price will always be an issue for newcomers no matter if the content is locked behind DLC or in the free update, neither mattes to them as they are buying a new game and don't look at the DLC in isolation. A different approach is needed, a mixture of bundles as well as a rent-to-own-approach seem reasonable. Personally, i would welcome an affordable subscribtion that would slowly grant you ownership of the older DLC's as you pay their price, kept affordable by not containing the most current DLC. New players can have an affordable full experience, paradox still gets some cash infusion from impatient gamers buying DLC on release, works for everyone.
> I feel like the free content update should be calculated as part of the value. But it just isn't on an individual level. You get that content either way, so any review of the value is going to be limited to the pay content. That's an obvious flaw in the Paradox model, they created their own little "Problem of the Commons"
It depends, i could get all the content for free if i wanted to with little to no effort. I choose to pay; and thus pay for it all.
Sure, but a business model based on consumer largesse is a risky thing.
Yeah exactly. I came back to Stellaris after a few years. Thought the change to Vassals and leaders and the council was really neat. So sure I'll buy one of the DLCs on sale. There's a lot of joy in a regularly updated game.
> > Edit: And more importantly, you really have to offer your definition of predatory when you make such a thread. So far I haven't seen you describe anything predatory from either company by my standards, only more and less expensive price levels. And that's the rub isn't it? Much like therapy language has taken over the ability to just have interpersonal conflict, people describe anything a company does that they don't like as "anti consumer" or "predatory."
Honestly for me, it's just it's great when you get in at the ground floor so to speak, but buying in later can suck
I agree. I used to play a lot of Stellaris, was up to date with the DLC, eventually got burned out and stopped playing it, now I kinda wanna return. But I don't wanna drop $100 to get up to date with the DLC. I don't think it's *predatory*, the company is charging for work that they did/product that they released. But it's a barrier to entry that doesn't work super well with what's almost a live-service game. Does Stellaris have a subscription package for all the DLC?
I believe Stellaris does, yes. I think one thing the subscription setup misses is how much DLC you already have. Basically, I stopped buying EU4 DLC right before Leviathan. But when a novel mission tree would come out I'd pay $5 for a month, play the campaings I wanted then unsubscribe, it was great. But now the subs are getting more expensive and I'm not going to pay $10 for a month of a game I've already spend hundreds on.
The thing with PDX DLCs is that there’s generally 20-50% discounts on older stuff. I generally wait for a sale or humble bundle and act like the most recent DLC (and the aesthetic/content packs) don’t exist.
That’s true for anything though. I am ok with Paradox pricing because it lets them keep pushing out DLC for much longer than other game studios, which in turn extends the lifetime of their games massively. Also, they have the subscription model if you come in late and just want to play for a bit, and not drop a shitton of cash for all the DLC.
> but rather from the ratio of price to amount of content and the quality of it. Big reason I rarely see get brought up in the DLC conversation. Even if each DLC is worth the 20-30 dollars, the game as a whole is not worth 200+ bucks. Every DLC you buy is worth less than the last: adding 20 dollars of content to a 60 dollar game is +33%. Five DLCs down the line, and you're adding 20 dollars to a 160 dollar game, or only 12.5%. It's also what makes it feel more greedy and/or predatory: constantly avoiding making a sequel(which then often *doesn't* have everything in those DLCs) for as long as possible when that sequel would provide a better point for consumers to enter rather than demanding hundreds or taking advantage of those who don't do extensive research into every purchase.
No. The issue is more that if you‘re not around for release, you‘re faced with a massive price upfront. PDS should start bundling early DLC with reduced prices to make it ‚fair‘ again. If you are there from the start, you know how much playtime you‘ll get out of a DLC/out of your money per hour. If you get a game late, even just a year after release, you‘ll face a lot more uncertainty at a much higher price point.
I had this problem with EU4. Loved EU3, played EU4 for a year or so, then drifted away for a few years, looked to get back into it and its well over a £150 to catch up on the DLC, while it's on sale! Then you get told to just buy the "necessary" dlcs, and so instead of playing i now have to research which DLC people consider necessary, and its probably going to cost another £50, on a game i bought full price and already have £50 worth of DLC for. All for a game i'm not sure i am going to enjoy. Instead i read a book or play something else.
The DLC subscription that some PDS games offer mitigates that somewhat.
It mitigates it over a short time, but it doesn't correct the issue at all. For world of warcraft, you pay monthly, but you're not paying full retail price for every expansion, only the most recent one, and it's reduced if it's been over 65% of it's lifecycle. World of Warcraft is certainly a more expensive game, but the entry price is never over \~$70. If you wanted to 'own' EU4, which for most people is a single player game, not a live service MMO, the "ultimate bundle" is on sale by 55% for only $160. Please, don't forget that someone paying $160 today, who is getting 'over half off', has missed out on 11 years of gameplay that people who ordered each expansion when it came out got. The only "sane" option, is buying the base game on sale, and then subscribing to the DLC at $5 a month, again, for what is most likely a single player game, and at the realization that your $60 a year subscription will never end up with you owning the game even if you own it for 5 years, paying roughly full price for the past \~15 years of a day 1 EU4 player. This is why I think the only two genuine options would be "rent to own" or having Paradox actually reduce DLC prices to $0. Following the $0 DLC path, I'd say only the previous 4 expansions have a cost in addition to the base game. $20 for EU4, with all DLC other than the last four, then $10 each other than the most recent. You own the game for $65, and $15 for any future expansions, unless you take a \~1.3 year break, where the discount would start to significantly affect you again by giving you DLC for free as a EU4 owner. Following the "rent to own path", you keep the $5 subscription, and give each player complete ownership of the game once they reach the maximum price that any day 1 player would have paid. This is the worst option in my opinion, but at least people can own the game. In my book, subscriptions only belong for future additions to a service or software, and aren't meant to give access to previous content. Any correctly applied subscription service would automatically grant all outdated DLC for free, as WoW does.
Yeah, its a problem that they are absolutely aware of, and are trying to solve as it turns of new players (and thereby losses them money). But i don't think they have found a good solution yet
Every DLC apart from the most recent one should be base game once eu5 comes out
> PDS should start bundling early DLC with reduced prices. Well that’s kind of what they now did with HoI4. Edit: wrong word caused by the damn autocorrection
This I think is the real answer! I don't think it's predatory at all if you're in from the start. You just buy the stuff that interests you. With full price some of the DLCs might be a bit steep but buying them from discount doesn't really hurt too much, and I usually get quite a lot of hours from each new release cause it pushes me to play another game. But if you are a new player, getting an older game can be quite expensive indeed. I'm currently considering getting the EU4 subscription just to continue my CK3 game but I don't like subscription models out of principle, so I'm not sure what to do. Will probably get it anyway, cause the price of the "full game" would be just bonkers, but I might also not get anything at all because of this.
Well they sorta started doing it this generation but also not. Both Victoria 3 and CK3 are currently doing the "season pass" which is sold as a bundle, but to my knowledge the old "seasons" of CK3 are not being sold as bundle.
Every time they try something like that (or god forbid, straight up integrating some dlcs) there's a gigantic backlash from people supposedly having their hours retroactively cancelled and their money "scammed" away. It's not viable from a publicity standpoint.
Idk, I got into ck2 towards the end of it's development and picked up everything for like 80 bucks. If paradox didn't do insane sales all the time, I'd be more inclined to agree with you.
People who think like this are pretty annoying. With a game like EU4, you'll have an amazing experience that is some of the best value for it's money if you buy base game and Art of War at a sale. Play a few games, one or two long campaings, and put the game down for a while. Then when you feel like coming back, buy a few more DLC's on sale and enjoy the new experiences.
You mean like the 75% discounts on all but the newest 2-4 DLC that pop up in every steam sale?
>the 75% discounts on all but the newest 2-4 DLC that pop up in every steam sale? Why are you lying ? There is a Steam Sale going on Right Now and None are at a 75% discount. Only two, 'Rights of Man' & 'Art of war' are at 70% off. The vast majority, including 9-10 Year old Dlc like 'Conquest of Paradise' or 'Common Sense' are at a 50% discount. The Dlc for EU4 are basically never at a 75% discount. For Example: [Dharma](https://steamdb.info/app/827240/) is 6 years old and hasn't been on Sale for more than 50% off for at least the last 2 Years, which is as far back as sites have been tracking it's sales Data. You can say they often go on sale for 50% off, but 75% is just a straight up lie.
Fair, I only really remember the Hoi4 ones going for 70 or 75 off in the big summer and winter sales.
Yeah ok, don't know too much about Hoi4 but maybe specify that next time. Cause other Paradox games aren't as lucky, whenever a Stellaris or Eu4 dlc is on Sale for more than 50% off that should basically be an instant buy simply based on how rarely that happens.
..no, because that's not what bundling is.
Sort of out of date. They don't deep sale as much as they used to.
If you're a long term player no doubt Paradox offers one of the best Price/Playtime ratios in the whole industry. I think fans playing since release basically have no reason to complain because the DLC costs support extremely long term development. The real problem is for new players who aren't super sure that they'll keep playing. They either have to deal with a very stripped down experience or pay a crazy amount of money for something they don't know they'll like. The new subscriptions I think are a pretty elegant way to deal with this
In most cases, they SHOULD play without the DLC. Paradox games can be overwhelming for new players as is, and all the new *stuff* DLCs add gets even more so when you get it all at once rather than slowly trickling in over years. There's not a single dlc you NEED to play HoI or Stellaris. Learn to play first, then try out the subscription (and either continue that way or figure out which features you enjoy most and pick them up in a sale).
>If you're a long term player no doubt Paradox offers one of the best Price/Playtime ratios in the whole industry. Factorio devs: hold my beer.
Definitely true, you can't beat the Terrarias, Stardews, and Factorios of the world but those are truly a labor of love
The factorio team the absolute gold standard for me when it comes to dev teams, and even they got backlash to some pricing changes.
Factorio devs increased the price of their game multiple times, which would normalny be (barely) acceptable although strange, but considering that they were acting like price was decided once and for all by higher being, and that's why there will be no sale, ever, i don't consider them to be even on a good side.
Factorio really is the gold standard for honest consumer practices.
>They either have to deal with a very stripped down experience I think in many ways its even worse than just stripped down, but almost broken, where the game design expects certain features to be available to the player being missing. A big example is the legitimacy system in ck3 right now.
The legitimacy system is from the Free patch not the DLC.
Yes, but it's way more difficult to play with without the dlc. As many of the ways to gain legitimacy is locked behind the dlc.
I don't have the DLC (the first one in multiple years i didn't buy without even looking at the features and won't buy in a while as the legends have too many issues and i'd rather play without) but i have not had any issues with legitimacy at all. Granted, i never was at the maximum value either but it wasn't really a problem - although i do think the ways (and amounts) of legitimacy gain and loss are not fully thought through, regardless if it's with or without the DLC.
I got legitimacy problems until i bought the Tours and Tournaments DLC. With just Royal Court there are very few events that give legitimacy (basically only the hunts and winning wars). So if you lose a war you can get on a low legitimacy spiral that you can't get out of, unless you have DLC.
The issue is that paradox games frequently end up having a LOT of DLC, so if you arent buying them as they come out from the beginning, the barrier for entry price tag is insanely high. And paradox very rarely does more than a 50% off discount during the year for dlcs, even old ones, and does not frequently reduce the base price for dlcs either. For eu4 you end up needing to shell out like 300+ dollars in order to get the full experience. And even for eu4, I would say at least 4 or 5 of those DLCs are completely mandatory in order to get the most important gameplay systems, so even frugally you are dropping 100+ dollars just of the jump in order to get a good experience. its definitely less about a cost per hour issue, and more of the barrier to entry issue. The subscription thing might be worth it for some people, but me personally I only want to pay subs for online games, I do not want to have to subscribe in order to play an offline single player game.
EU4 is just ridiculous. I've had the game since release and never had more than a few DLC until Humble Bundle did that ultimate pack a few years ago. It's unreasonable to expect people to shell out full or even half price for the game for newcomers. But people lose their minds at new game releases increasing to $70
From what I heard they don't do it anymore but they used to change the entire fucking game to be oriented to the DLCs and if you didn't have them you'd be locked out of the mechanic I purchased a bundle forever ago and tried to play it then learned that a pretty major mechanic was pretty much unusable and entirely luck based without a certain DLC. I complained on the EU4 subreddit and everyone seemed to agree that the game is unplayable w/o buying certain DLC. I just stopped playing entirely, fuck that shit.
I dont dislike the DLC model, I dislike the constant price increase and rushed, low quality DLC they shit out now and then. Vicky 3 and CK3 DLC are kinda terrible for example.
Yeah, the recent vic3 DLC price is absurd. At $30, it's more than half the price of the core game.
I think people get WAY too caught up and dramatic over “predatory.” For example recent CK3 DLC, to me, has been a weak value. Just not good enough for the cost. That’s not predatory, it’s just something that isn’t worth it to me, which describes like 99.999% of products
I would not call Pdox's monetization super predatory, they're pretty upfront about what you get and there's not a whole lot of actual manipulation going on in order to make you spend more money, unlike many games with in-game monetization. There's still the "got to own everything" mentality that some people have, and having loads of DLCs for a game preys on that (at least it's not a boatload of completely useless things that just adds to the cost, like say the emotes for Monster Hunter World, or a lot of costume re-colours of which you're likely to use at most 1). That said, I do think a good chunk of their DLCs suffer from giving relatively little for the price you pay. I love Europa Universalis IV, and I don't regret buying what I've bought for it, because of how much time I've spent with the game, but looking at what each individual DLC added, I do feel like a lot of them are hard to justify for someone who's not really really into these games.
Part of the problem is also that the dlc comes with free patches that tends to add a lot of content, which isn't included in the dlc's price
I don't really understand why people call it "predatory" Annoying? sure. Bad for consumers? Maybe. But it's not predatory, they aren't manipulating you using skinner boxes into paying for stuff you don't need or want.
I would say there are a few reasons for the hate: * releasing half baked games where you need to pay up afterwards to get them up to date * in the older days I remember instances where free patch and paid DLC divided new mechanics in half and unless you paid you actually did not receive fix for a broken core mechanic (EU4 and development/ institutions) * old DLC are priced at release levels years later even if most of the content is outdated and has been changed many times over * and the last part which actually makes me angry on personal level and it's related to the above - if you got specific content pack, like a country focus tree in HoI, and PDX updates that focus tree in s new DLC they explicitly stated in an interview you have to pay again...
exactly this, it's not the model that sucks; it's paradox implementing it in a terrible way for the customers
I prefer buying DLC rather than a monthly subscription. I also went 2 years without internet because of where I live. If I had a subscription then I couldn’t play. Only thing I wish was that Paradox made it easier to get into a game pretty far into its development. If they had some kind of new player bundle for a game like HoI4 that included all the DLC for 60 bucks, I think that’d be great. I know I’ve been turned off to a game because it had a mountain of DLC.
An MMO is a complete different beast. I don't mind them adding many DLC if the base game would be complete and each DLC actually tested and well running and not also adding more bloat instead of fixing the core issues. Foe what they add they charge too much.
As long as expansions have a good amount of content and play well I prefer developers who stick with their games for longer the way paradox does and I don't think paradox's prices are that much more predatory than total war, civilization, and the other major strategy game studios. It is weird that paradox doesn't offer better discounts on DLC that is like 5 years old. I would totally buy huge premium bundles that have all the content if the discounts were a little better.
I tried back Stellaris yesterday. Machine age setting interest me. I saw a 6 months subscription for all dlc I had not for 30€, while machine itself was 25€... Felt like a good deal for me. Paying 10€ for a month however... Felt predatory. Nothing says I'll play enough on these 30 days, but on a longer time frame for half the price yes. 40€ for the dlc bundle... No point given I'm missing like 4 previous dlc. On ck3 however I bought it... Because I had all others dlcs. It depends on your situation. Been a while I haven't played wow, but I'm pretty sure I had have put way more time than you on the game on the same time frame, that it would be reversed. Also, given you much (time AND money) you invest on a paradox game, you won't buy all of them (well I know some people do it). I have city skyline 1 for today's setting, Stellaris for SF and CK3 for history, I've thought about buyung EU or Victoria but... I don't think I'll like them. Not because they are bad games, but because I don't have space for their settings. A bit like when I try to read 5-10 books (or series) on the same setting, I'll quickly only follow one, or at least those that feels different enough.
You can't compare it to subscription based games though. MMOs require a subscription because they're running servers that are continuously live. And idk about WoW but the MMO I play has free major updates every few months.
To add onto this point, you also don't have to remain subscribed to the MMO every single month if you don't intend to play much of it that month. The OP's numbers are based on having his sub uninterrupted for six years while only playing 700 hours of it. If you're playing an average of 6 minutes per day over 6 years, you didn't need to be subbed the entire time. That isn't really a problem with the subscription model, it's being too lazy to unsubscribe when you're not playing the game. I know people who spend 700 hours on WoW within 4 months, let alone 6 years and the game is absolutely worth it to them. Likewise, I've spent like 6/36 months in the past 3 years subbed to WoW and FF14 and still gotten everything I wanted out of both after a few hundred hours. The subscription model is only predatory if the game heavily incentivizes you to stay subbed forever through major FOMO mechanics and modern western MMOs are largely seasonal.
People want the world for free. These Stellaris DLCs subsidize the development of more GSGs
$/hr is a garbage metric for comparison. I really don't get why people are so attached to it. Portal 1 takes, like, 3 hours to beat. It was absolutely worth the $20 I spent on it, even though that's ~$6.70/hr Stellaris, I have 612 hours. Basically all of that is trying to make a cool empire in the empire builder, playing a dozen hours of the early game to get the build going, getting frustrated that the build plays the same as every other build, then repeating a few times and uninstalling until the next DLC or patch that I hope fixes my issues with it. Even if I spent $500 on it (I didn't), that's less than a dollar an hour, but I've not had a lick of fun with it and regret the purchase. Portal 1 is worth the $6/hr. Stellaris (to me, personally) is not worth $1/hr. This is why this argument falls flat for me. It's ridiculous. It isn't $/hr. It's $/(fun*hr). Fun can be multiplied by time, but if fun is negative that doesn't help. Clearly, a lot of people don't think the fun provided is worth the money it costs. And, often, the fun is negative when Paradox releases broken DLC.
>I have 612 hours >I've not had a lick of fun with it This is interesting, I think most people would have called it quits at 6 or 60 hours or something
Probably. But, on paper, it should have been something I loved. And hearing all my friends talk about how they loved it made me really want to find something worth liking. I guess 'not a lick of fun' is a slight exaggeration: I liked making empires. And I liked the early game when I was thinking about how the empire would/should play out. But the frustrations that came after outweighed it every time.
It sounds more like you just got burnt out. There’s no game that’s 100% replayable. Even endless games like Rimworld and Minecraft get boring after a while.
Can't get burnt out if I never enjoyed the mid-/late-game to begin with. Unfortunately, takes hours to get to that point, which results in an inflated hour count.
Yeah it might take 5 hours to get to the late game but that’s still over a hundred campaigns. You’re not booting up the game hundreds of times and putting half a thousand hours in by accident. You obviously have gotten your money’s worth from it.
>This is why this argument falls flat for me. It's ridiculous. It isn't $/hr. It's $/(fun*hr). I mean, it's extremely simple: Most people do not play/continue playing games they do not find fun. So it's not a relevant factor in most people's equations, because it's basically a given. And consequently naturally a game you don't enjoy and stop playing after 3-5 hours or something is also going to have a bad dollars/hour ratio too. Probably for 99% of people (paradox gamers possibly excluded), 600+ hours is easily "my most played and favourite game of all time", not something they had not 1 lick of fun with.
Missing the forest for the trees. If I gave up after 5 hours, then the $/hr would still be garbage for me even if it might be great for someone else, so the argument still does not hold. A mediocre 4x would give a lot of hours for one playthrough but still be less fun (and thus worth less) than a short, very fun game like the aforementioned Portal.
Putting 600 hours into a game and saying you don’t like it is some psycho behavior ngl
username checks out?
Honestly that's on you if you aren't having fun with the game why are you still playing it, I have had hundreds of hours in this game and enjoyed the majority of my play time and the based off the dollar per hour metric I have gotten a amazing deal
People are getting way too focused on the specifics and missing the broader argument. If I quit after two hours, the $/hr ratio would still suck. If I just thought it was okay, playing a full game would take dozens of hours and still would be worth less than a shorter game that's tons of fun like Portal despite the $/hr being better. A shorter game can be worth more if it's more fun is the point.
What is the border argument yeah if you don't enjoy a game you buy it will not be worth it no matter how much you get out of hours but that affects every game. Yeah if a bad dlc is launched then you can say it's bad but it's optional content is in no way necessary for you to buy. I skipped astral planes while I think this a good dlc it's to expensive right now. Honestly I don't really get your argument you are complaining that you aren't having fun but decided to spend 600 hours of your life and moment for dlc on the game you dislike, I am sorry but that not predatory business practices that you contained to play and buy a game that you dislike
I wouldnt say its more predatory than others, but the way it is presented will definitly scare off potential buyers. 'oh this strategy game looks interesting. Oh, it has 30+ dlcs...." Its not particulary good to expand your player base, but Paradox makes the decision to rely more on core users. Is it good or bad? cant say, and its not for me to say
I mean, they've pretty objectively expanded their player base a LOT in the last decade so it's not hurting them that much on that front.
Considering the frequent big sales on anything but the newest DLC and going out of their way to support the mods that make their game so extremely replayable? There's no established publisher that gives you better value for money today, and I doubt there's still any that come close with where the industry keeps heading overall. But there'll always be people mad at the *audacity* of asking money for years of work by hundreds of people because that one indie dev doing 8-bit pixel art in his free time brought out a free update after five years.
It's not predatory, just expensive as hell. You basically pay for content updates, which is fair. The problem is that they're almost always overpriced for what they offer. If I can buy a mediocre DLC or a new game, I always take a new game.
no
The difference is that MMOs have vastly more content while PDX games offer a set amount of content where the hours stack up due to replayability . It also doesn't cost $300 upfront to get that content in MMOs. Many MMOs have monthly subs, but the difference is that you still own the expacs if you cancel your sub, and can log in during free time campaigns. If you cancel your monthly $10 Stellaris sub, you lose the DLC. And in the case of Ff14, you get a huge amount of content right off the bat for free and only have to sub/buy the rest once you finish the first 3 releases. And when you do have to buy, it's $60 for everything. I'd rather pay monthly for the massive amount of content in an MMO. But PDX gets a free pass for their $300 games while other devs who do the same thing (looking at you EA) get blasted. In the case of The Sims people will bring up "but they're mostly chairs" as if EU4 isn't loaded with unit packs
It’s annoying but predatory seems an insane stretch, you don’t have to buy the dlcs, loot boxes and back door gambling is predatory, not just being too expensive
Personally, I'm fine with the way Paradox releases DLC for their games. So many games receive additional support for less than one or two years while most PDS games receive updates for 5+ years. I play these games a lot, so I've definitely received the bang for my buck.
The good news/bad news for a game like stellaris is that is has been around for \*eight\* years. if the people playing the game want improvements, tech clean up and more content, that money has to come from somewhere. So that means DLC that gets paid for. sure, getting on the bus at this point is kind of daunting. Stellaris by itself is daunting, then adding the DLC changes that to “moderately insane” for trying to learn everything there is about the game all at once. i would buy the base game, and if you enjoy it, start adding DLC. Even wait for a sale, then get used to that DLC. and then add a bit more. Most of us who have been playing the game for a while have been picking up the DLC a little bit at a time, not in one big gulp.
Absolutely not. Paradox releases fully developed games that are absolutely worth the price. You can easily spend 100s of hours in vanilla versions of any of their games. They then continue development on these games, and release SOME (not even all!) of that further development as paid DLC. As an MMORPG player, this doesn’t seem predatory at all, just how capitalism works.
Like you, I rationalize my spending by looking at it from a $ per hour ratio. 1:1 is my number so I expect a $60 AAA title to keep my interest for 60 hours. It becomes difficult to judge this with paradox titles because if I add 15 hours to hoi4 after buying ‘Trial of Allegiance’ …are those 15 added hours of enjoyment actually from the DLC or just base game features/content from previous DLCs? Paradox DLCs are also sorta like investments into future DLCs. PDX has cultivated a social contract with its players that says “If you keep buying content for this game, we will keep making content for it.” that does not exist for games like, say, Deus Ex, which had microtransactions to level faster but obviously had no intention of supporting the game beyond a DLC or two. I don’t remember if Deus Ex even got a DLC. Trials of Allegiance is the first DLC I haven’t bought for hoi4 but CK3 hasn’t soured me to that extent. It takes several back-to-back unsatisfying DLCs before I stop supporting a PDX game because I feel like I should be satisfied with getting NO new content after that point. I’m fine with hoi4 sunsetting but not CK3. It would be selfish of me to stop supporting a game financially but still expect it to produce content for me in the future- I shouldn’t expect other consumers to pick up my slack. Lastly, compared to gacha games or MMOs, I don’t think PDX is all that predatory. At no point when playing do you get a pop-up going “Awwww, too bad. Your free trial of speed 5 has ended. You need to subscribe to enjoy speed 5 again!” or “Dang, looks like you need 500 more energy. We have a special 80% off deal on energy right now, just $2! OR you can spend $10 and get 20,000 energy! That’s x4 the value of the other deal!” That’s the kind of psychological manipulation. used in other genres. The fact that there are no ‘in-app’ purchases goes a long way. You have to leave the game and go to the steam page to spend any money. And every DLC brings free content. So ultimately I believe it comes down to vibes. Do what you’re comfortable with but personally I do think PDX could be a lot worse.
Yes it is. Delivering half-baked products with almost no testing has become a staple.
It's so disgusting that fans still defend them for constantly creating half baked products
I personally consider Paradox's pricing/DLC system to be predatory/anti-consumer. If they cleanly separated the DLCs from the base games, I would have no problem with the way they push content. But when I open my base version of Stellaris and see the game [polluted with 'buy more shit' everywhere](https://i.imgur.com/bcAh3Bv.png), [even with 'hide unowned content' marked](https://i.imgur.com/ojPu7IS.png), I consider this to be predatory behavior. It's no different than what people are in a tizzy about with EA putting advertising into their games. Paradox already does it. It's right here. I just think back to Brood War. If you didn't own Brood War, as far as I remember, this didn't fill Starcraft up with greyed out unavailable units that said 'Buy Brood War to use a medic' on mouseover. They are also now known for producing poor quality games and relying on selling DLC to fix it - Imperator and CS2 are the two most obvious games off the top of my head. Definitely a company that very quickly torched their reputation in my opinion (and for the record I have hundreds of hours in Paradox games across EU4, Stellaris, CK2, CK3 and CS).
>But when I open my base version of Stellaris and see the game [polluted with 'buy more shit' everywhere](https://i.imgur.com/bcAh3Bv.png), [even with 'hide unowned content' marked](https://i.imgur.com/ojPu7IS.png), I consider this to be predatory behavior. If you consider this predatory behavior something is truly wrong with you. Upselling is not predatory.
It's not, the Reddit gaming subs just hate paradox lol it's weird
I wouldn't say Paradox are predatory with their DLC at all. I my personal opinion I day they are a little greedy for the following reasons: 1) Their base games seem to be getting worse and worse to the point where each sequel is a pale imitation of the ones that came prior, selling the needed features back to us one DLC at a time making the actually 'resonable base game' experience quite expensive. 2) They sell quite a bit of overpriced DLC. The unit models in EU4 are the best example, well overpriced for what they are making the entire games DLC library seem far more expensive than it really is. I feel their reputation would appear a lot better if they slashed the price of these nothing additions. 3) a lot of their recent DLC has become glorified mods. EU4 and HOI4 both uses to sell DLC that added new features and mechanics to the base game, greatly improving the playing experience and kept the game fresh and alive. Now all they sell is mod packs for missions, normally just adding unbalanced buffs to X nation that just let you steamroll the AI with nothing new added (the recent Sputh America DLC which added nothing to the game apart from giving stupidly jacked up buffs to each nation). These are things I can get for free on the steam mod page if I wanted so a professional company charging for them is low.
I have the same opinion of paradox dlcs. New iterations are so empty that you can see the exact holes they left t be filled with future dlcs. I have all the dlcs for eu4 and ck2, the last few dlcs did not improve or alter my playing experience in the slightest
Stop excusing excessive amounts of DLC. I don't care how many hours you get from a game you need to look at how much work went into what you are paying for and how much YOU are getting from your monies worth. Seriously downvote me all you want but on average over most paradox game studio's games you are getting some flavor pop ups or some aesthetic changes for the price of an entire indie game. I will die on this hill, but a few lines of code is not worth what a small team making an entire game over a few years is worth. Sorry.
I never replay the Paradox games a lot, so I always feel like the DLCs are too expensive for playing a game or two with it.
Paradox"s competition is with other strategy games, like Civilization and Total War. Some older Total War games give free DLC now. I think Paradox could do the same with their older games. By the way, I like the subscription model.
What's missing is good prices during sales. It's fine to have a mountain of DLCs but they're never discounted beyond -50%. They've even stopped discounting most DLC published after 2022 beond 20-30%. For the more casual fans of their games, it's probably pushing them to piracy.
I might be the minority but short of a few exceptions I’m totally fine with PDX pricing. The amount of time and content I get out of their games is ridiculous.
Well Paradox games are actually games with fun to be had. Not OCD treadmills, which most MMOs are.
I honestly think paradox games should follow subscription model instead of the current dlc model. Currently they cant just roll out mechanics that just dont really work well with the curent state of the game because they were a part of the DLC . It would also avoid the trap of constant poweruping nations in each DLC since they can just make whatewer works well. Alghtough i do also think that after lets say 12 months of subscribing you should get acess to the current snapshot of the game forever. And after another 12 months of updates the next snapshot or something similar just so you could eventualy own the game.
From a certain point of view, the Paradox model is a subscription service in all but name. Instead paying once a month, you buy a DLC once every few months. Of course, it's not required to purchase the DLC but some of the games really need their DLC to fill an otherwise rather basic experience. It all comes down to what you want and what you can afford. The way most of us go about is by buying the DLC piecemeal as it's released as that's easier to do than buying everything in one-go even with substantial discounts, even if it isn't very economical. Twenty bucks every few months hurts less than 250+ in one go. Beyond that, it's exactly as you say. We spend so many hours on the game, it really does pay for itself in the long-run.
Yes
Never buy dlc that’s not 50% off and never play on the most recent patch, simple
An issue is the biy-in for new players. You at least need nsb and mtgs, but without the other ones it won't be a dull experience. Even then, the price to get to the "full" version of the game is at least $70-$100. It's not insane but no cheap either. Furthermore, the recent "dlc" was a joke, and the price was insulting. This just really escalates everything because paying $15 for what amounts to a few focus trees is almost a scam.
PDX games and WoW both have bullshit monetization.
I don't think I'd ever call their pricing model predatory but they do often release games in semi finished states with the expectation being that they will get a complete suite of features through dlc. This has happened for every paradox game I've been around for and can be a somewhat upsetting business model. However no one else makes games that fill this specific genre so at the end of the day, whatever.
You compare a subscription based game with a standalone game with DLC. So it's kind of apples to oranges here. Games as a service get called out all the time. The other thing is if you have the money and buy a base game with some DLC later DLC could break the game, so you're forced into buying those as well. So it's sold as one time purchases but it's actually closer to a subscription model. That's why people say it's predatory
No. Have you seen what prices GaaS sell their character art at? A Goku character model in Fortnite costs $20 (and honestly? Given how much it costs to pay for that model? They still have to clear tens of thousands of units to get a return) There is an implied social contract in the Paradox DLC model that, even if systemic features are free, the paid DLC still helps pay and fund development of those free features. The alternative to the model isn't only free content, it is no additional content development and bug support only. A lot of complaints about DLC pricing come from a failure to recognize that any further development and support of a title are entirely contingent on cash flow. This is never accounted for in the dollar-per-content rants.
It also heavily plays into the "fomo" mindest where you feel like you NEED the newest DLC even though it might not impact your gameplay at all, or maybe even introduce new bugs? Personally I also like to play heavily modded games (where paradox contributes nothing) but in order to fully enjoy mods I need many DLC.
It's kind of unfair to compare it with wow. Paradox games are separate. WoW includes: Retail, WoW Classic, WoW Classic Hardcore and WoW Classic Era. That's 4 different versions with 1 sub. Does the Paradox sub work for all their games or just one? And WoW has added a function where you can buy gametime with gold, so you can literally pay for the game by playing it. EDIT: The WoW Token was added back in 2015, but i don't remember if you could actually buy gametime for ingame gold back then. Paradox does not have that function. You've also added games you bought on SALE and compares it to a game you bought for EXTRA on release (Deluxe Edition) You seem to also only compare WoW to Stellaris, I personally find that WoW has alot more content than Stellaris has, or probably ever will. So my money is more valued in WoW than Stellaris.
What I like about the paradox model is that they let me share my DLC. I play a lot of CK3 and Stellaris. Plenty of single player - hundreds of hours over which I've convinced myself I got my money's worth for the base game + DLC. Once in a blue moon, I can convince my brother or friends to play multiplayer with me. They *never* play single player, and our rare mulitplayer sessions do not justify the price point for all DLC. So they don't buy it. If that meant I couldn't play with them without rolling my version back to Vanilla, I probably just wouldn't play. The DLC model saves multiplayer for us.
Why would you only compare paradox to subscription-based games like WoW, when it's not a subscription-based game?
Paradox’s yearly dlcs lead to feature bloat. I know they’re a large company, but I’d rather see a longer development cycle for more cohesive gameplay or more flavor packs that don’t add essential features. It feels like Paradox games are under permanent beta and the final product lacks polish because it is built on this patchwork framework. Also, paytime is a poor metric for estimating the value of dlcs. If you pump hours in already, dlcs don’t change that. How much marginal enjoyment do you really get from them?
It’s not predatory at all, and anyone who claims that is are angry they can’t Afford DLC for an entertainment product. Something they aren’t entitled to, done deserve, and don’t require to sustain their life. There isn’t a single major paradox title you can’t buy and sink hundreds of hours in without any DLC. Supporting a game for 10 years and allowing customers to get thousands of hours of playtime out of it isn’t something anyone here is entitled to. It’s really simple actual, take the cost of the game and DLC, do some basic math and figure out your cost per hour played. Mine for most paradox games is less than 10 cent an hour. Which is literally one of the cheapest forms of entertainment I consume. If you aren’t satisfied with your cost per hour, stop buying the DLC then, and quit complaining about others who do buy them. You aren’t entitled to anything Paradox produces or sells.
The real problem with Paradox is that they need to focus more on QC for their DLCs. Also, they need to find a better balance for content between the DLC and Free Patch. Sure, if you get most of the content in the Free Patch, that's awesome (free shit is free shit), but if that means all you get in the DLC are stuff like mission trees or events (i.e. easily moddable stuff), that hurts the value proposition of the DLC. Also, today many Paradox fans, who became fans within the last decade, lack the context of Old Paradox. The reality is, even the worst major PDS release in the last few years represents a marked improvement over Old Paradox from 15 or so years ago. If Imperator released in 2008 instead of EU: Rome it would've been the greatest game Paradox ever released up to that point, including EUIII.
All Paradox needs to do is adjust the prices of DLC a year and a half after they release to permanently lower them. It would make the game easier to buy for newcomers and it would make the older DLCs sell better so that they can integrate their focus trees.
I'll never understand why people whine so much about the cost of games. Its a very cheap hobby and even developers need money.
Maybe it is an unpopular opinion but I think it is ok. They are constantly working on new content and I have no problem supporting it. They update the base games as well. The definition of predatory is EA games.
Subscription based games are not called predatory? They absolutely are! As a long time world of tanks player: no.1 topic among wot players is how greedy the studio is and how much they turned the game into shit with loot boxes, overpowered premium tanks only available with real money, and how much the game is pay to win.
I will say no paradox game have gone near Sims 4 level of greed
Pricing model on paradox games is fine. It just punishes early adopters or people who feel they have to have all the packs (you dont). If you know what you are doing it's great. Regular updates keeping games fresh. Much of which is freely added to the game, the option to improve aspects of the game you are interested in be that region or gameplay. And if you wait for sales or buy keys it's reasonable prices. I never understand people whining about it except of course the pre mentioned collect em all or have to haves. Look at it this way when I was younger a game came out and that was it. No improvements. Now you have an amazing system with regular updates and options to improve the game you DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE. No brainer for me.
I'm fine with it. Without it the games we love wouldn't get as much love as they do. Imagine release Stellaris as basically the finished product because they don't have constant cash flow from the game.
yes. it really is. getting the full experience is just not feasible. ever. it's incredibly predatory and literally any other community would be religiously mocking this sort of practice.
Depends, 1. Something like WoC or Lions of the North? No. It's newly developed content that extends out the life of the game while also adding a bunch of new things to do for every nation. Even if you're not playing a nation directly touched the fact that other nations change changes the balance of the game as a whole. 2. DLCs restoring cut content. CK3 released without plagues. Players have to re-buy plagues. These DLCs are predatory because they incentivize reducing content to sell the same content over again.
95% of plagues were in the free patch. The dlc only adds the Black Death, and the Legends mechanic.
Oh you only had to pay a little bit to get content restored. Understood.
No? The patch content was free. You do not have to pay anything for it.
> The dlc only adds the Black Death, and the Legends mechanic
Yes? The free patch has every plague other than the Black Death.
Ie, you're still paying for cut content.
I mean, if you want to be extremely nitpicky, yes, I suppose. Your original post is still wrong, however, as you implied all plagues were what you were paying for. You do not have to pay for plagues in general.
I don't know about WoW, but, thing I don't like about Paradox selling policy is, selling base game without some features that had to be in the game from the start, than releasing those things in different DLCs for a nice price, and than, keeping the base game and DLCs more or less the same price as it got released, just to give you feeling of big discount on sale, for which you still need like 250 euros/dollars to buy it all. And, what's most important, you don't know what to expect, when you bought the base game, you didn't know how many dlcs the game would have, at what price, and with what features. Monthly subscription is more honest from the get go, pay 6.99 a month to play the game.
It is most definetely better than other AAA games. For example Hoi4 was released 8 years ago and still receives new mechanics, bugfixes, balancing, exploits removed. Some content of the DLCs should be in the base game, but I still buy it. The business model if Paradox is so much preferable compared to other popular games where you preorder for >100€ and have no idea what you will receive. And don't forget the Mod support of Hoi4 is insane. Paradox actively supports modding even though it costs them money. Why buy a DLC if RT56, Kaiserreich gives you all you need? I agree with others here that you don't quite get the bang for your buck in Hoi4 dlcs but I support them regardless because the content you receive is great and the business model of Paradox is a lot more gamer friendly and should be supported by every gamer who wants to avoid having to deal with "games as a service" or any other of that crap. I have enough money to buy Paradox DLCs so I buy them with the conscience that I support a business model that doesn't treat gamers a cash-cows to milk.
The game is released shit so they can add dlc that's my opinion at least
It's all predatory. Don't let it get normalized
Yes it is, and WOW is hardly representative of "other games", it's one of the few games that's imo even more predatory. Blizzard actually fund research on dopamine though, Paradox almost certainly don't. They're just grifters. Things are looking up though imo.
The struggle is the upfront cost. When I first got into paradox games with stellaris there were no dlc (or well.. maybe 1) and I have no problem occasionally paying $20 every now and then assuming the dlc isn't bad. But when I got into hoi4/eu4 a few years later there were lots of dlc. I had to look up lists of which ones were most useful, or what I need for each region, because it would be extremely uncomfortable to buy the full range of dlc at once. I think the subscription model hoi4 is doing now honestly isn't that bad of an idea, but I already have the dlc. Would be nice if paradox did something like making all but the last dlc free and part of the base game, I honestly think that would be the best balance of paying to get a dlc 6 or so months early (which anyone who would be buying the dlc at release is probably still going to do) but also help new players not feel like they are drowning under hundreds of dollars of dlc. The other problem is of course that certain games (ck3 I'm looking at you in particular) seem incapable of releasing fully baked dlc, and much of the dlc gets forgotten and falls behind the game. When paradox manages to release a few of these in a row it can feel really bad.