I agree that gymnastics is marvellous and should be practised by everyone, everywhere.
Are DLC's worth it?
- Thread starter pirro
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I agree that gymnastics is marvellous and should be practised by everyone, everywhere.
Playing PDX games without gameplay content DLCs is like eating a pizza with just the crust.
The DLC's are definitely not good value in my opinion. I managed to get most of mine for £2-£3 and that's what I think they're worth. Content-wise, free mods do a far better job of providing depth and immersion. I also feel that PI have been particularly sneaky in salami slicing what were historically core game mechanics and spreading them across the range of DLC's, in an attempt to monetize every last little feature and piece of content.
There are those who will always buy PI's products at full price, no matter the quality or the price point, and although I earn a six figure salary and have lots of disposable income, I refuse on principle to be taken advantage of, so I always look for DLC's highly discounted. I find it quite sad really that PI would treat their player base in this manner.
There are those who will always buy PI's products at full price, no matter the quality or the price point, and although I earn a six figure salary and have lots of disposable income, I refuse on principle to be taken advantage of, so I always look for DLC's highly discounted. I find it quite sad really that PI would treat their player base in this manner.
Let's say you buy Death and Dishonour for ten bucks and play for twenty hours (which is a crazy low estimate).... 50 cents an hour for your amusement is not good value?
Well that's the thing isn't it....I'm not playing Death and Dishonour, I'm playing the game I already paid for (hoi4), plus the ability to convert equipment, which is the only feature from the DLC I actually want. I never play as the axis minor nations and I've no interest in the additional music/art. So, what did I give PI £10 for?? How is that value for money compared to what I can get for £10 elsewhere? I bought fallout 4 for £10. I bought the horizons expansion for ED for £10. It's an absolute no-brainer in terms of value for money.
I could go through all of PI's DLC for EU and HOI and give exactly the same statements. Each DLC has a tiny slice of game, surrounded by a bunch of box filler.
I think PI released some stats which showed the nations people play. The overwhelming majority play Germany, and so all these updates for minor factions probably get used by a tiny proportion of the p/b. I suspect(although I've no evidence), that the majority of customers of DLC buy them for the game mechanic updates, like me. Updates which historically have been part of the base game.
What I find galling is that hoi4 is not a step change in complexity to produce from hoi3, yet when you purchase all the DLC at full price, it'll probably be £200 worth. Same for the EU series. From my perspective, it's clearly a money grabbing exercise by PI, but it's fine if you and others disagree; we each have our opinions. Judging by a lot of the comments on steam though, a lot of people share my view.
Thats just, like, your opinion, man.
I like minors having custom NFs trees that better represent what they did in the war--even if i dont play them....I cant just delete HUngary from the game....I either give them the OP default tree and we see GOSU hungary...or you get the DLC and get a more realistic Hungary...perhaps the best exmaple is Raj. It doesnt matter if you play Raj they are still on the board. Generic NF Raj starts out MUCH stronger than TfV raj.
Also I happen to like the art and music.
Have you heard of a little game called World of Warcraft. Its old you may not have heard of it. But in that game, you'd have to pay $60 to get it, and $12-$15 a month! in order to play! Then every 2 years you'd have to buy an expansion for $40! I played for ten years. Thats $1440 in just subscription fess.
Ill take $200 bucks over 3-4 years for 2000+ hours of gameplay.
Err, yes?!?? Isn't that what every forum post is?
Anyway, I also played a subscription game for 10 years too(ww2 online), probably paid $15 a month. It had(and still has) shitty graphics, but it was a blast, and I got my moneys worth out of it because of the squad/clan I was in. The company were always living hand to mouth, and often asked the playerbase to stump up additional money in fundraisers, for specific updates. Also there was a lot of infrastructure which needed maintaining as it was a 24/7 multiplayer game, so I could see where the money went.
So, I actually didn't mind this so much. It was a company serving a very niche market(PI is mass market by comparison), and the devs were being up front about what they wanted and what it would give you. In PI's case, I think there is a certain craftiness about how the updates are packaged which I dislike. Certainly I think hoi3/eu3 were far better value and far more "honest" in the way the updates were developed and released.
As for the minor nation updates, yes you are correct, but I almost always play hoi4 with overhaul mods, since the vanilla game really lacks immersion....and those mods generally overwrite all of the vanilla focus trees anyway.
I was gonna say something about multiplayer but I don't want Paradox to get any ideas...
My point was, unless you want to turn literally everything into a piecemeal purchasing scheme...some packaging is to be expected. It’s life.
The. Again what is packaging to you is a literal gold mine of every feature you could ask for to someone else.
Look at movies on TV. A network will rent/lease (whatever the term is) a “book” of movies from a studio. The network really just wants Shawshank redemption—as it is guaranteed to get viewers this advertisers will pay a bit more air their wares during it. But it’s a packaged deal, they still have to show Caddyshack 2.
I don’t want to have to pay by the sprite. I don’t want to have choose if I get the orchestral songs (with on this one, really don’t care—spotify or documentaries are on anyhow). I don’t want 50 steam items per dlc release.
All that said, as compared to WTT or expansions of the 90s and early 00s Tfv and dod are weak. WTT is what dlc/expansion should be.
Going forward I’d like larger game altering dlc, like wtt. With the exception of say like a Spain dlc where it only focuses on Spain and makes civil war revamps. Limited in scope, faster to produce and still globally appealing.
The. Again what is packaging to you is a literal gold mine of every feature you could ask for to someone else.
Look at movies on TV. A network will rent/lease (whatever the term is) a “book” of movies from a studio. The network really just wants Shawshank redemption—as it is guaranteed to get viewers this advertisers will pay a bit more air their wares during it. But it’s a packaged deal, they still have to show Caddyshack 2.
I don’t want to have to pay by the sprite. I don’t want to have choose if I get the orchestral songs (with on this one, really don’t care—spotify or documentaries are on anyhow). I don’t want 50 steam items per dlc release.
All that said, as compared to WTT or expansions of the 90s and early 00s Tfv and dod are weak. WTT is what dlc/expansion should be.
Going forward I’d like larger game altering dlc, like wtt. With the exception of say like a Spain dlc where it only focuses on Spain and makes civil war revamps. Limited in scope, faster to produce and still globally appealing.
I think if you look historically at updates for hoi3, semper-fi, ftm, and tfh, they were probably £20 or so to purchase iirc, but I think they were packed with content compared to the HOI4 expansions. The updates were released about 12 months apart, so probably a lot more effort went into them.
Judging by comments from other customers a lot of people think that PI got too greedy, and judging by Waking the Tiger they're probably adjusting their dlc strategy and I think that it is a small step in the right direction in terms of value for money. There are 3 or 4 decent features in there that I quite like the look of and it's a bit more fully featured than other DLC's. I'd have to say it's still not worth the £15.49 being asked imho, but I'd probably pay half that, so I'll pick it up on offer.
Judging by comments from other customers a lot of people think that PI got too greedy, and judging by Waking the Tiger they're probably adjusting their dlc strategy and I think that it is a small step in the right direction in terms of value for money. There are 3 or 4 decent features in there that I quite like the look of and it's a bit more fully featured than other DLC's. I'd have to say it's still not worth the £15.49 being asked imho, but I'd probably pay half that, so I'll pick it up on offer.
HoI3 updates packed with content? Really? It depends on the expansion I guess, alot of it was QoL that are free nowadays or sounded cool but was meaningless in practice, like the overhaul of politics in FtM. Just look at the features lists available on Steam and ask yourself if you would pay 20$ for this. Also, there was the fact that you wouldn't get access to further updates released AFTER the expansion if you didn't purchase it.
I'd say that is alot worse than what you percieve as "salami slicing what were historically core game mechanics and spreading them across the range of DLC's, in an attempt to monetize every last little feature and piece of content."
I guess they better cut out lend-lease and repackage it in DLC, since that was historically added in Their Finest Hour (The last expansion! One of the most crucial aspects of WW2 and it came 3 years after the base game!)
Nostalgia has its place, but it's not in the way expansions were handled by Paradox in the past.
The previous expansions really were packed with content in comparison to current ones. The fact that PI are forced to list things like focus tree changes and art/music as major features shows how watered down the expansions have become.
So, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. Ultimately, HOI4 will become at least twice as expensive as HOI3 for what is essentially a game of similar complexity to produce.
If you think HOI4 offers good value compared to HOI3, then you're entitled to that opinion. Judging by customer reviews, I would say a significant portion of PI's customer base would disagree.
P.S. I'm still waiting for the "message settings" option, which I can't believe was left out. No doubt it will be packaged for £7.49 with a new focus tree and sprite update for Haiti....
So, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. Ultimately, HOI4 will become at least twice as expensive as HOI3 for what is essentially a game of similar complexity to produce.
If you think HOI4 offers good value compared to HOI3, then you're entitled to that opinion. Judging by customer reviews, I would say a significant portion of PI's customer base would disagree.
P.S. I'm still waiting for the "message settings" option, which I can't believe was left out. No doubt it will be packaged for £7.49 with a new focus tree and sprite update for Haiti....
I agree that PDX's DLC policy is unsustainable and borderline exploitative in the long run, but I don't think HoI4 in particular has been an offender in that regard.
Autonomy, equipment conversion and spearhead are minor things imho, when compared to stuff like the air overhaul we got, and cornflakes will give so much for free, you will be getting a lot of value from WTT even if you don't pay a cent.
One could argue that HoI4 launched in an incomplete state in the first place, but they are getting there and without deprecating the value of the base game so far (unlike EU4 and CK2), which is a great thing and I hope they keep that up).