|
I think what I'm trying to address is the problem paradox sometimes has with building on top of a myriad of other DLC where they have to ignore or make a bunch of compromises to work around DLC-added mechanics and resources. They jam as much as they can into the free patches, which is nice, but the entirely free patch model gives us stuff like Stellaris' big 2.2 update. Some great ideas, but so often it really feels like there just wasn't nearly enough resources put towards it. I'd hope if they rolled what they try to do piecemeal through free patches that are subsidized by the DLC and do it all as a paid Expansion (not DLC, since all future updates would require it) they'd have the budget to really put the time and resources needed into it. Like I rather pay for an update that's really fully developed and tested than keep getting free update after free update that clearly didn't spend enough time in the oven. They get into these technical and game design deficits and they need to sell more DLC to pay for the budget to fix this deficit, but then DLC then adds more problems and it seemingly never ends. Sometimes a good DLC/Patch will be 2 steps forward 1 step back, but then the next might be 1 step forward 2 steps back. When you have a really good foundation and are just adding more meat to the bones the DLC system works, but when you have a deeply flawed game that needs radical surgery it's better to save up your changes and do it in one big go rather than trying to string it out over time in little uncoordinated drips and drabs that you can coax out of the DLC budget.
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2019 22:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:20 |
|
|
I have two very thoughts on the "tall" question. 1. The very idea of making playing "Tall" competitive with "wide" is dumb as hell and ruins games. If not expanding and just turtleing is actually competitive and "balanced" with playing wide and conquering vast swaths of territory you're going to end up with a boring and lovely game with a broken risk/reward system. 2. I love to turtle and play tall and if I can't I have a hard time enjoying games. These two points are not contradictory though because for me anyways the joy of going tall is knowing that it is not optimal and that I'm surviving despite it. Going "tall" should always be an option, but it should always be a much much worse ROI than going wide. Going tall should not be a distinct strategy but rather just the thing you do if you've been boxed in or run out of land or want to give your self a weird challenge.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2019 22:24
|
|
|
I don't even want Vicky 3 at this point because I have zero faith that paradox's current management could pull it off.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2019 20:05
|
|
|
Huntress X Thompson has a video specificially talking about the politics of Paradox games that is pretty good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX-0pn_Xyyk
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2019 20:07
|
|
|
Fister Roboto posted:MOO1 was better Correct. Moo1 is vastly superior. It's tighter, way better balanced, and remains a challenge to this day. Its amazing design is only really noticeable if you play a lot of it and get into the harder difficulties. The AI actually is a challenge and there's so many simple but clever little mechanics that can keep the game interesting up until the end. The economy is simple enough that the AI can handle it. The tactical combat while much more simple than moo2's is way more balanced presenting ongoing interesting choices without single best/correct answer. The diplomacy is surprisingly well developed with results that make sense. If you are too aggressive at the start and make enemies there's a good chance who ever's in 2nd place will get the other powers to rally behind them to take you down, so there's almost an EU4 coalition/badboy mechanic that can sometimes really effectively counter run-away victories. I'll continue to stand by my take that Moo1 is still by far the best space 4X and the reason the genre is so stuck and lovely in modern times is that everyone keeps cribbing from the unbalanced mess of moo2 rather than the tight challenging near perfection of Moo1
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2019 18:15
|
|
|
"complexity" and "features" aren't some RPG stat you can assign to your video game. People like games because they are good, and fun to play. It doesn't matter how much poo poo you pile onto your game, if the core design isn't great or the tone isn't compelling or the setting isn't interesting none of that poo poo matters. This isn't some "video game tycoon" game where you play the game developer and assign stats to projects to find the best combination for sales. "hmm my last product had a complexity rating of 3 and a budget of 10 and sold 500k units, but this project had a complexity rating of 5 and a budget of 15 yet only sold 300k units, this makes no sense and is not fair!!!"
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2019 21:56
|
|
|
It's often hard to say what makes a good game good or a bad game bad. We like to focus on the details of mechanics, mana systems bad and so on, but at the end of the day it all comes down to the experience. Sometimes a really janky game can provide countless hours of fun because despite the jank it has enough character and results in really fun stories to keep you coming back. Other times games can, on paper, have all the correct mechanics and focus but just be a boring slog. Or sometimes it's all jank plus no character...
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2021 19:05
|
|
|
Also you stupid fucks keep voting with your wallets that current paradox policy is good.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2021 02:28
|
|
|
If you're going to make money making fun games based on WWII it should be your moral duty to make sure your community is purged of any war-crime-defenders or minimizers. Don't "ban both sides" only ban the people spreading clean Wehrmacht poo poo. Having discussions on those subjects and moderating them is the price you pay for making games out of horrific human disasters. Take a side and ban the other side, banning the topic entirely is a cowardly and cynical move. But of course moderating and banning nazi's and their sympathizers would require extra labour and alienate a good chunk of their customers, and that hurts the bottom line.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2021 19:45
|
|
|
I want to play v3 and make sure wiz can eat.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2021 03:06
|
|
|
Groogy posted:Bit late but since there's been a bunch about this and I was briefly mentioned. I just want to say none of you scared me away even if some here can get a bit brazen with their... critique. Besides being very busy at work I am also chairman of the local union chapter at pdx, plus my housing coop so I've just had way too much to do to dip in. But I do check in from time to time to see what people generally think about our games. Sounds like you're doing some good and important poo poo on top of making video games for weirdos.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2021 22:20
|
|
|
Stellaris is by far the paradox game I've put the most hours into, 1000+, but it's probably the paradox game I've liked the least. Just so incredibly thirsty for a good space 4X I'm willing to drink seawater. Every DLC was me thinking "oh, maybe I won't throw up after drinking the sea water after this big patch!" but I never ever learned.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2021 18:38
|
|
|
I want Stellaris but designed with the same ideology as V3. Detailed economic/political/diplomatic focus, not ship design and order micro.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2021 19:49
|
|
|
genericnick posted:This, but actually I just want V3 Yeah same. Very hyped.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2021 20:05
|
|
|
Yeah one of my big issues with Stellaris is all empires are kinda the same and play the same and every map is the same. Technically every empire and every system is randomized, but sometimes the more random something is the more the same it is. It's like a pile of sand, you can shovel it up and dump it over and over and technically it's different every time but it's always the same very familiar pile of sand. Ultimately every game just comes down to big annoying fleet doomstacks and tedious ground invasions and an economy that manages to find the absolute worst sweet spot between "so complicated it eats up all your cpu cycles and the AI is hopeless at figuring it out" and "There's always a single clear optimal choice but you have to do it by hand"
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2021 23:29
|
|
|
I'd love some big Dune / Emperor of the Fading Suns sort of vibe game made by paradox.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2021 23:39
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:There's already Rotk by Koei, and I don't think Paradox could do better It would also manage to be illegal in China
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2021 06:49
|
|
|
I love this page: "A paradox china game would absolutely be banned in china" "no it wouldn't come on that's just a meme that says china bans everything, the laws are very misunderstood in the west and China is only going after predatory games to protect children" "Actually pretty much all paradox games are banned in China, even Stellaris simply for including the concept of democracy and internal political factions"
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2021 18:53
|
|
|
I'm hoping 23 at the earliest, otherwise it will probably be a half-baked disaster.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2021 21:49
|
|
|
Stairmaster posted:instead of reading the turtledove books you should just read that one fic where earth circa (2015) gets invaded by those guys and the elephants from larry niven's footfall simultaneously For some reason I read all of this! It was cute. The only thing that got me upset was the author thinks tank autoloaders are good despite all the research they put into the writing. Oh and the whole bit about how the red army was only a tornado of mass rape and war in WWII and you'd never see that sort of behavior from russia again.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2022 07:52
|
|
|
Part of me expects some time-travel stuff for Stellaris using save states. Send a chunk of your military back in time, stupid poo poo like that.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2022 05:20
|
|
|
I'm really happy that in V3 provinces can have multiple resource operations, so even a minor nation with only 3 provinces can produce more than 3 resources.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2022 21:11
|
|
|
I was the biggest paradox fanboy with like hundreds or thousands of hours in all the big classic paradox titles, but I've noticed I haven't really been gripped by any paradox game in a solid 5 or more years. I don't know if my own gaming tastes have changed, if the paradox formula has become stale, or the games are actually getting worse. Maybe a bit of everything. It's really sad because I so often want to enjoy some grand strategy map game but none of them are in good places right now. Eu4 became such a stupid bloated mess especially that I can't even go back to it to recapture that joy when the game was at its peak. Even though its an entirely different genre I think BG3 has also showed me that there's zero excuse for paradox constantly kicking half baked buggy games out the door with all of us conditioned that its unavoidable and normal and paradox games just need a couple years of patches and DLC before you can say if they're good or bad. Stellaris has had almost every mechanic thrown out, gutted, redone, sometimes multiple times. V3 is already heading down the path of major mechanic changes and re-thinks. Is it that hard to have a more solid design before you invest countless hours and money on bad mechanics you'll have to iterate on post-release? You don't see BG3 announcing the turn based combat system just didn't work out so the next major patch will try out a real time system. Or that its clear the fast travel system was harming immersion so they're working on something entirely new. Those sort of big changes and design refinements are supposed to happen way before the game is even in beta. Trying to piece by piece re-build and re-design a game after release always ends up a mess. It's like trying to totally remodel an existing building with people living in it rather than getting the blueprints right from the start. Paradox keeps doing this, they come up with half-baked designs for games. They release them, clearly knowing a lot of the mechanics just aren't working great. Then they spend the next 10 years selling us DLC and piecemeal patches that try to cludge together fixes and improvements and new features. But since none of it was part of the original design, they lack cohesion and end up feeling tacked on and sloppy. Game design is hard, but Paradox needs to stop relying on the crutch of years of sloppy messy post-release surgery or grafting new limbs on. It always ends up a messy Frankenstein situation.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2023 20:22
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:20 |
|
|
nessin posted:You do realize Baldur's Gate 3 was first available for sale three years ago, right? That's a weird write up for someone making an argument for early access as a good thing but you couldn't mean it the other way around given BG3 was an early access product. Early access is ok. Paradox kicks like pre-EA quality games out the door then spends the next 5 years doing the standard early access stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2023 01:15
|
|