What? Johan said HoI 3 is the reason why they are being more focused in their games instead of having insane feature bloat.
Here's what I was refering to:
If you don't want day#1 dlc, you can go back to the time before we did it.. And enjoy games in the high quality of HoI3 1.0.
Using the logic of "It's either Day 1 DLCs, or HoI3-style releases"
I did not say there would always be a day 1 DLC, but that there would always be something left out of the game. Ergo there will always be something that could be a day 1 DLC. The other part of my post is that the actual release day of the DLC is irrelevant because it's a different team working on it, so this fixation on day 1 is silly. Is your stance that Paradox can include anything and everything they would like to in the base game and A)release on schedule B)release on budget?
It very well may be that Portugal should have seen more development time in the base game as you say, but that would take development time away from something else: development under a schedule and a budget is a zero-sum process. So ultimately, including the Portugal content would have left something else for a hypothetical DLC, day 1 or day 500. That's my point.
Your point appears to be that Paradox is purposely choosing shorter development cycles and smaller budgets in order to make more money and their success as a company proves that they are, to some degree, ripping us off by doing so. They could have done this day 1 DLC and a lot more and still sold the game at $50 and made a tidy profit. Having been around here as long as you have, I can only say I don't agree, but you are entitled to your opinion. But guess what, even if they done exactly that, something would still have gotten left out and still could have been made as a day 1 DLC.
Obviously that there's always something that theoretically could be Day 1 DLC, that's a statement of fact in regards to the limited manpower of gaming studios. And no, Paradox is going for longer and longer development cycles. And my point is quite simply put: You're paying for the game on release, but you're not getting the whole content developed on release. Their success so far has been based on competence and hard-work, not on ripping off customers, thus far.
Explain how it is "not very honest" to charge for DLC.
Read the post where I wrote that. The "not very honest" part is a conclusion to the arguments I had forwarded during the post.
Not quite. More accurately it points out why:
- DLC must be paid for - thus it will be given out for free.
- Some amount of DLC will usually be available on day 1
Presumably you are arguing that either:
1 - DLC available on day 1 is given to you for free - in which case you need to reread post #591 more carefully.
2 - or DLC available on day 1 should be artificially delayed by a few months.
Option 2 would actually be quite good PR, as it would stop those who lack the subtlety to differentiate between PI's business practices and EA's business practice from whining. On the downside it would also stop gamers getting there hands on available content as quickly (though said gamers may not care as they would be busy playing their new copy of EUIV).
Personally, I'd be entirely happy with option 2, as I want to see Paradox thrive, and day 1 DLC will cause anger amongst a sizable minority of their target market... even if that anger is illogical.
Option 2 is not honest as well, but does indeed get rid of the bad publicity Day 1 DLC gets. It remains a question to the marketing/financial department of Paradox to realize if the bad publicity and potential lost revenue from non-purchased games as a consequence of the generated bad publicity is greater than the foreseen sales of the Day 1 DLC.
But I'm actually referring to Option 1. It has to do with financial elasticity of the company and if the company has available manpower that it must innevitably pay (As the DLC team is under contract), and if there is a decision by the company to allocate to the developing game, and the company should absorb the costs of the action, so long as the end product still brings profit. Besides, there's also the side that with greater manpower working on the base game, it will translate into a more polished and developed game, and in turn generate more main game sales, which in turn mitigates or overrides the absorption cost that the company had to take when it chose to allocate further manpower/labour hours into the development of the game. So long as all available manpower is actually developing the man game rather than monetizable DLCs, developed in parallel with the game, then there's never any potential Day 1 DLC, only potential DLCs that start being developed post-release.
And you saw the huge free patches, graphical improvements and expansions given for free because they should have been in the base game anyway?
Actually, besides the patches (Unless you're suggesting gaming companies shouldn't have patching policies), I never saw graphical improvements (Unless they fall under the optimization criteria) or expansions being given for free. Likewise, I don't think they should have been in the main game (Besides HoI 2: Armageddon, but that's a different story).
Yes, it gives us more money.. So we can spend more time on the games.. and have a proper QA team, and more coders and scripters.
Following that route, you could have modulized EU4 into a EU3 clone, just with shiny new graphics and new base mechanics and new AI and game balance, and spent the rest of the EU4 development time just developing all new innovations as DLCs. That would have probably given you even more money to spend even more time . But fortunately you're more honest than that.
Opposite business model got us an understaffed team working lots of overtime and releasing games early to get money, and postrelease bugfixing being done on weekends in my sparetime.
I'm sure that an understaffed team needs to work lots of overtime in any business branch, regardless of the business model. And don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to DLCs in general, and from what I've seenl, your CK2 major DLCs look and are said to be exceptionally good and add a great deal to the original games. Regardless, your company and team expanded greatly since those days, without the help of Day 1 DLCs.
With this new business model, people can go home after working their office hours, and we don't get deaththreats because of buggy games.
I don't think Day 1 DLCs are the difference between working like a slave being flooded with complaints or living like a King, and getting unanimous acclaim.
But nevertheless, Day 1 DLCs is just a minor spot in a great company. Thank you for making the games you do.
