Development pace, prizing and content. Whats your opinion?

[Sithodox2286]

In two years, 2 packs and 1 large DLC that equals 10 packs and 5 large DLC after 10 years for a total of 15 (not counting for any possible speed up in development thanks to a larger staff) now half of the people complaining about not enough or taking too long will be complaining in 10 years that “there are just too many DLC” and “this is ridiculous, I can’t play x dlc with y mod but I hate the mechanics in z dlc”

If they do things that way then many will be pleased.

But I doubt the court DLC can be as influencial to gameplay as Way Of Life, The Reaper's and Monks DLC back in CK2. Even the earlier ones, like sons of abraham had like tons of new events along with the Papal and Religious Order mechanic.

I think the devs for CK3, however, are entrusting the modding community to provide mechanics and functions. But there are something that just hard to mod and not always fun because we believe it would come up eventually in later updates. For example, the republic government types and the plagues which many of us believe would be included in future DLCs/flavour pack. I know there are mods on them already but my reason stands.

And, since someone mentioned different type of governments, the contract mechanics is a very good platform for different types of governing system because it has modifier, effects and can be check in other places with triggers.

However, it is still very diffifult to mod for republics, theocracies, nomadic hordes and islamic/byzantine/india/eastern/some other things in fantasy mod monarchies because their government involving a lot of not-land titled elites/bureaucrats. Becuase you will always need a "land title" to owe a contract. (I know this was also somewhat a thing in CK2, but come on, don't modders ask for it back then? We did get republics and hordes playable at the end, and we have an overhual of byz's government type making it "different" in later updates.)

 

[Sithodox2286]

I disagree with that reaction, and I think it's full of misconceptions.

HOWEVER, this is exactly the kind of reaction Paradox would get by making this announcement, after already getting negative reactions from Royal Court. Managining a playerbase isn't about who's right or wrong. Negativity is gonna happen, and if you provide fuel for hate and disappointment, there'll be hate and disappointment.

So it doesn't matter that I disagree, that it's completely false that CK3 reuses 80% of the content of CK2 or whatever. What matters is that by fueling the hate and disappointment, Paradox is creating a situation where everything is going to be received with negativity. Which means more toxicity within the community, less motivation to make mods, more negative reception everytime there's a new DLC, and less money. Because some people will just decide to play and buy Paradox products.

Yes, just because of a small price increase. But the truth doesn't matter. What matters is that people said that CK3 was a bad copy of CK2 without the content, that they said RC was just some random 3D assets, and now we're getting a price increase. This is terrible handling of a playerbase. When people complained that Stellaris had feature creep and a huge technical debt, devs said they'd work on the latter and the decision was taken to have a group of [whatever it's called] to work on enhancing old features.

The obvious move here would have been to provide additional content for already released expansions/DLCs in free updates. Maybe even a new struggle in a beta patch, something like that. Why they didn't do it is beyond me. It seems like some people at Paradox want CK3 to crash. And maybe that's really the case. Maybe they think ambitious games like CK3 aren't worth it, so they intentionally reduce them to money-milking status until they get cancelled so they can focus on whatever generates more money for shareholders...

Yeh, the situation is that the community is more or less disappointed and angry. However, the timing they got in updating CK3 is more or less "disappointive", which is the thing people complaining the most.

Another thing that could have gone better, personally, would be the gameplay or plot for different culture/region rulers, which may or may not solve by furture "flavor packs" on different regions in game.

No mater what happens, I think the best thing paradox could do at this moment is just get more frequent updates. DLCs, Flavor packs, Events or just anything that you actually can read and select in game (which art staff and 3D models don't really like that). I don't think people who willing to buy and keep buying paradox products are actually worrying about price rocketing or too many DLCs or what.

I mean, whether the firm are trying to make more profit, different design, change of plan or what, you need to firstly have a product for people to buy right?

 

[Niall9]

actually ended up playing Fate of Iberia since I wasn't expecting an entirely new mechanic to show up in a flavor pack and was really disappointed. It never felt like I was actually in a struggle for the fate of Iberia. It was just basically which specific modifiers can I take advantage of to get to the ending that I want because that's kind of what you have to do.

This is one of my concerns too which is similar to Stellaris.

Role playing seems to consistent of moderate modifiers which don't drastically change the feel of the game.

 

[Niall9]

My biggest concern isn't content. I have generally liked what has been added in each update.

But pace is definitely a concern. Royal Court's release was seriously botched: took a while to announce, and news about it dragged out for ages.

I think game has lots of potential but concerned it will get abandoned

 

[Ghost12345]

Barebones when it was released, Too slow updates, too little content in dlcs and doing the absolute bare minimum when making them(riddled with bugs, barely any content)

Ck3 is their best selling game ever and yet they treat it like crap and doing the bare minimum. The only reason the game isn't dead is because modders is keeping the game on life support.

They had a solid but very shallow base game they could've built on instead they've essentially waste 2 years on adding almost no content(although the few mechanics they've added as shallow as they are, are indeed good just not fleshed out which thankfully modders do for them for free...) and demanding extremely high prices for it.

TLDR:
Too slow
Too little content
Too expensive

 

[solid steak]

Content that is there is great, but it's not coming out fast enough. And, as a newer fan of Paradox's games, one who was introduced by CK3, I found that I'd actually prefer to play CK2 now, just because there's a real lack of depth and flavor for most regions in comparison to the older game. I really only want to play it anymore either for achievement hunting, or to try out mods.

I love the game still, and I think it will be great and can surpass CK2 in years to come, but they really gotta bring out the content more frequently, and make it genuinely worth the money.

 

[Troyen]

they've been setting up studios all over the place during a pandemic. give them a break IMHO

I think it's unfair to lump all of Paradox together, there's three (or is it four now?) separate developer arms and they all take different approaches. Because the CK3 team rarely engages with the community and there's little insight into what's going on or what's coming next, nobody knows why the game updates take so long to come out. Even bugfixes come out as a trickle, where we have to wait until 1.7 for the next chance to fix major issues, but who knows when that'll be?

Compare that to Stellaris. A game in a disastrous state as recently as a year and a half ago. They now have regular and consistent three-month updates (including free updates, alternating DLC with a free patch), a team dedicated to fixing bugs (including major deficient areas like the AI which went from "would struggle playing against a loaf of bread" to "serious contender" over four patches), adding new content to old DLC that they thought wasn't worth the price (the Planetoids and Humanoids species pack), and has maintained a very consistent weekly update dev diary schedule. The reorganization which gave us the custodian team and massively restructured the Stellaris development process...took place during the pandemic, but they pulled it off.

The hope was other Paradox teams would see the how the Stellaris model was universally praised by the community and adopt it for their games as well. That has yet to happen. It's nice that a CK3 dev was looking into reworking populist factions (which has been a major sore point since launch), but retroactively doubling the price of a two-year-old DLC that was already kinda light on content stands in stark contrast to adding free additions to old DLC, and signals a very different approach between how the development studios want to treat their games.

 

[The Russian Empire]

It's interesting that the game which has sold over 2 million units for Paradox has received only 3 (relatively simple) flavor packs and one major expansion two years since its release. Unfortunately, I'm not very optimistic about the future of the game at present.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

I think it's unfair to lump all of Paradox together, there's three (or is it four now?) separate developer arms and they all take different approaches. Because the CK3 team rarely engages with the community and there's little insight into what's going on or what's coming next, nobody knows why the game updates take so long to come out. Even bugfixes come out as a trickle, where we have to wait until 1.7 for the next chance to fix major issues, but who knows when that'll be?

Compare that to Stellaris. A game in a disastrous state as recently as a year and a half ago. They now have regular and consistent three-month updates (including free updates, alternating DLC with a free patch), a team dedicated to fixing bugs (including major deficient areas like the AI which went from "would struggle playing against a loaf of bread" to "serious contender" over four patches), adding new content to old DLC that they thought wasn't worth the price (the Planetoids and Humanoids species pack), and has maintained a very consistent weekly update dev diary schedule. The reorganization which gave us the custodian team and massively restructured the Stellaris development process...took place during the pandemic, but they pulled it off.

The hope was other Paradox teams would see the how the Stellaris model was universally praised by the community and adopt it for their games as well. That has yet to happen. It's nice that a CK3 dev was looking into reworking populist factions (which has been a major sore point since launch), but retroactively doubling the price of a two-year-old DLC that was already kinda light on content stands in stark contrast to adding free additions to old DLC, and signals a very different approach between how the development studios want to treat their games.

yeah, nothing here is unfair

 

[DinoMight]

as ive written in my steam review

i will try to keep it short here

game is broken, unstable, barebones mess
it has too many flaws... from bad AI, to lack of events, to a lot of non-sensical mechanics that just break the immersion (like feasts and hunts costing more than entire castles and its buildings) for a game that they brag so much that is rpg, and imo rpg elements are the weakest part of the game

its boring, after about 200-250 hours, youve seen it all, literally, in some cases you can see all during just one game from starting to finishing date

its unchallenging, someone on steam complained that its game made for children... i agree, its too easy

and its ahistorical in a strange way, only historical thing about it is the starting date screen, the moment you hit space, you are playing medieval saints row

if i want medieval ages game, i go back to ck2 and medieval total war 2, both have better RP and better immersion than ck3


in a strange way, game suffers from the same problems that imperator rome does
i dont know how they can fix it and make it fun, for real, i cannot even imagine what they need to do to make this game make sense, imho its a bad game, not even "good game in a sea of excellent games"
gaming market hasnt seen an excellent game in a while till elden ring, we have a sea of good games though, and ck3 is a black sheep, its not a good game by far

if im being generous, ck3 will get another cycle of dlcs (meaning flavour, expansion, flavour), about again two years of development, and than it will enter post development where they will fix the majority of buggs and game breaking issues, so they can say game is stable and out in full, and just leave it for EU5
it awfully reeks of abandonware, they are just looking for a nice way to do it, so backlash wont be too harsh, after all vic3 is on the way, and it seems more complete than ck3 (though in pre release DDs for ck3, it seemed to me that we are getting more as well, so who knows, maybe vic3 will be barebones as well, i just know i wont buy it even if its decent/good)

and who ever thinks I:R is not abandoned and its just dormant, is lying to him/herself

 

[Niall9]

its boring, after about 200-250 hours, youve seen it all, literally, in some cases you can see all during just one game from starting to finishing date

I mean 250 hours of gameplay is pretty good value for money

 

[SeraphAscending]

I do find a lot of estimations of people very odd.

To clarify, i have several hundreds of hours in the game that i enjoyed. And i paid a total of 80€ for it. That is pretty good value for me.

The game is not perfect, but actually gamebreaking problems are exceedingly rare in my experience. The odd bug here and there, but something that ruins my plans or breaks my immersion entirely? Barely encountered that in my 200+ hours of this game.

The game is expansive and has a lot of content. I've still not done many of the runs i want to do long-term. (i.e. playing an intrigue character with the intention of exposing catholic priests to reduce catholic fervor until heresies rip the entire faith apart and central europe gets a whole lot messier.)
Because the game doesn't give you a lot of specific goals that are not tied to "control this area to form this kingdom/empire", i think a lot of people lack the drive to lean into the RPG possibilities.

CK3 is not a conquest simulator and not an economy simulator either. Its fundamental sandbox nature is regarding the character interactions.
These mechanics are far from perfect either, but that's where the focus is.

For me personally, the expansions we have received so far have brought me many dozens of hours of fun i wouldn't have had if i didn't buy them. So for me they were worth it. They do have their shortcomings, but overall they are fine by me. I liked the additions to the northern realms (especially Mann and the Isles. It's just fun.),

However, increasing the prices for these with no justification is something i simply can not get behind and it makes me seriously doubt whether i want to support that route. I am considering not buying future DLC, because of this pricing policy mess. I would probably get MY money's worth considering how much i play this game, but i'd want to compare it to Mobile Games and the horrendous microtransaction culture there.

The reason why mobile games are so incredibly awful is because they are not designed to be fun and interesting for people who are willing to spend some money on them. They are designed to be addictive to the people who will spend money uncontrollably on it. For everyone else it is just supposed to be interesting enough so the whales can dominate them in PvP and leaderboards and feel great about themselves.
Do they think they are getting their money's worth? Probably. But there is the side-effect of having fostered an incredibly awful industry that refuses to produce proper games, because that is not as lucrative as milking whales and feeding gambling addictions.

This is specifically, why i am hesitant to support PDS in this change, even though it will probably not affect me negatively in any meaningful way. If they can give me a good reason why this change is happening, i'll accept it. If they don't, i might have to drop my support for this game. ( I created a petition post to get some numbers of community dissatisfaction. The idea is to demand a justification for this price change. Let's see if that works. )

I just refuse to accept a notification of "We're doubling prices. Have a nice day.", when there is no indication of why this is happening.

 

[TheMind]

In two years, 2 packs and 1 large DLC that equals 10 packs and 5 large DLC after 10 years for a total of 15 (not counting for any possible speed up in development thanks to a larger staff) now half of the people complaining about not enough or taking too long will be complaining in 10 years that “there are just too many DLC” and “this is ridiculous, I can’t play x dlc with y mod but I hate the mechanics in z dlc”

10 years is A LOT for games, in this period.
Or better, it’s an insane lifetime for a game.

 

[Troyen]

and who ever thinks I:R is not abandoned and its just dormant, is lying to him/herself

I:R is officially shelved. There wasn't a big announcement about it, just a reply in a thread, but now there's official closure.

 

[DinoMight]

I mean 250 hours of gameplay is pretty good value for money

90euros for 250 hours? thats about 2.7 euroes per hour (edit: yea my mistake its inverse, its 0.36 euroes per hour, but again compared to 0.03 euroes i payed for two synthetik games, CK3 is literally 100 times more expensive experience LOOOOOOOOOOOL)

i think thats horrible, people work for less in some countries
its especially bad since those 250 hours i played were like 50 hours of content and 200 hours of waiting for it to happen

compare it to synthetik 1 (now in addition syntethik 2, if i combine their price its about 30 euroes) or slay the spire i payed like 12 euroes for (on discount in early access)

in S1 i played for about thousand hours + hundred from S2, and slay the spire i played for about 600 hours just on steam (not counting the yarrr game i had before steam)

now those two games were good bang for a buck

you know which other game i have over 1k hours and i think its good bang for a buck, even after all dlcs i got? Hoi4, its way better paradox game ck3 will ever be
and if i feel like playing crusader kings game, i load CK2

 

[DinoMight]

The reason why mobile games are so incredibly awful is because they are not designed to be fun and interesting for people who are willing to spend some money on them. They are designed to be addictive to the people who will spend money uncontrollably on it. For everyone else it is just supposed to be interesting enough so the whales can dominate them in PvP and leaderboards and feel great about themselves.
Do they think they are getting their money's worth? Probably. But there is the side-effect of having fostered an incredibly awful industry that refuses to produce proper games, because that is not as lucrative as milking whales and feeding gambling addictions.

you do realise you can play ck3 on steam deck, consoles and even tablets and probably on phones in the future (i think they mentioned porting it on one of their quartal reports)

ck3 literally feels like mobile game, is brainded easy, and i dont know about you, but for me, first repeated event during the rule of barely second ruler in succession, ruins my immersion
feast ending in an event that gets your court artefact damaged, every single feast, every single time, every time same flavour text, and every time you will chose the same decision, the one where you are not mad, because there is no incentive for other options, not even if you get little stress for it
and even if its for role play, its very illogical for a rich god king to be mad for like 10 gold of dmg on his artefact which he doesnt even care for or knows its name because its so bland and meaningless you barely remember anything


not sure about you, but that breaks my immersion, sadly though, i wish that was the only thing, there is like dozens of other issues that break the immersion too
and 200 hours i have the game are imho generous, because in my experience, i saw everything the game has to offer in like first 80 hours, rest of 170 hours i spent was proving myself that every region of the map, every different culture and religion, feel the same, after i saw that everything is the same, i have no reason to open the game anymore besides waiting for another dlc, or waiting for another total revamp mod, and please dont use mods as an argument that game is good because of them. game first needs to be good, than mods make it better, if game is bad from the start, yes dlcs will make it better, but not also make it good

not to mention crashes i experience since release of FoL, even after both bugfix patches, i have reported it many times, but no answer from them, nor did they answer my buddy and to his reports, later we convinced our third friend who wanted to buy the game after fol, not to buy it, instead we play ck2 now

if you play CK for RP, go play ck2, its straight better, graphics are imho least important thing for RPing, so essentially you are not missing anything from ck3, there is just so much you can do in ck2 LOL

 

[Troyen]

90euros for 250 hours? thats about 2.7 euroes per hour

You got your math backwards, it's 0.36 euros per hour.

I don't think every game needs to be 1000+ hours. That's actually pretty rare for a game outside of an MMO or maybe somebody's favorite paradox game, but is almost unheard of for 99.9% of games out there. I'm happy as long as my hours played > $ spent, and CK3 well exceeded that for me (186 vs $60). So for a past purchase, I don't regret buying it.

That being said, I don't really feel any inclination to play CK3 again. If they want me to spend more on their new DLC, then they need to improve the systems that are lacking in the game.

The RPG aspect in particular is lacking because the events don't have proper scoping. I can deal with getting the same events every 50 years, but only if the events have meaning. Some of them are okay where you get to make a meaningful choice. Some of them are woefully imbalanced where you get/spend an amount of gold disproportionate to the economic system. And the majority of them are just "random character was chosen to do arbitrary thing" with no narrative context. Trix's 1.5 review thread described the problems here the best: whatever I do on the game map has very little relation to what happens in events. It's hard to experience any sort of narrative cohesion when you get silly things like your wife petitioning you to find her husband or that guy whose land you took last year attends your feast and has let go of all his grudges.

If they wanted to spend a few months really scoping down which characters are eligible for each event in a way that made sense or that allowed you to start recognizing and actually caring about the characters you interact with instead of treating them as disposable NPCs, then the game would have some level of roleplay immersion to fall back on. Since it doesn't, we're left leaning more on the game's other systems...and they're also not in that great of a shape.

So I don't really have a reason to pick up CK3 over something else and expending effort doubling the price of released DLC doesn't change that.

 

[Sagrifizius]

I don't think every game needs to be 1000+ hours. That's actually pretty rare for a game outside of an MMO or maybe somebody's favorite paradox game, but is almost unheard of for 99.9% of games out there. I'm happy as long as my hours played > $ spent, and CK3 well exceeded that for me (186 vs $60). So for a past purchase, I don't regret buying it.

That being said, I don't really feel any inclination to play CK3 again. If they want me to spend more on their new DLC, then they need to improve the systems that are lacking in the game.

I feel similarly, although that may be because of Stockholm Syndrome if you'll excuse the pun. An hour played in PDX games feels like less of an experience than in most other games, so it's hard to add up. All in all I don't really regret the purchase, but don't plan on revisiting the game either.
Which means CK3 was a fine experience for customers like us, but might become problematic for PDX - as their business model depends on long-term engagement. Their new pricing model surely won't help, either.
Time will tell, I guess.

 

[Andrzej2]

Recently I came back to Ck2 and it was so much more fun! I even played to the end date. In Ck2 AI can build big empires and the world is much more alive than in Ck III.

Most of my rulers died from murder, cancer, wounds at various age. It kept me engaged in the story. Ck3 is boring - i never get murdered or get sudden disease - all player characters live long enough to pass crown to their grandchildren.

No ridiculous massive doomstack spawning wherever you want. I need to gather forces and in the case of having rebellion with different parts of country controlled by enemy it gives another challange.

Succesion laws are tied to the crown - it created a good stories and is easy to comprehend. In Ck3 laws are tied to character and it's just confusing mess.

Reforming your realm by gradually abolishing power of the council makes sense and is entertaining. In Ck3 we have feudal contracts - they would be fine as an option to have with more significant vassals but we should also have crown laws like in ck2! In Ck3 i rarely use fuedal contracts when im a suzerain - too much micro and pushing higher taxation or levies is not worth constant rebellions.

I can give lands to Holy Orders and watch them fight.

After initial appreciation of the few good features of Ck3 (stress system, dread, guests at court, graphics) Im ready to give up on this game. I doubt it will ever be better than Ck2.

 

[SeraphAscending]

After initial appreciation of the few good features of Ck3 (stress system, dread, guests at court, graphics) Im ready to give up on this game. I doubt it will ever be better than Ck2.

CK2 has 8 years more content. I don't know how much rework went into the game, but looking at Stellaris' 5 years that means a lot.
Stellaris is functionally an entirely different game now. There have been so many reworks.

Was CK2 2-3 years after release as good as you find it now?

Personally, i found CK2 very hard to get into before playing CK3. There were a lot of very unintuitive systems that didn't get explained very well.
I think if i had a go at it now, i would fare significantly better, but i feel like it is a major factor of what you're used to.
I by no means think CK2 is a bad game. It's extensive and there it has a lot of good content. But a few things have not aged well. By that i don't mean the map or the graphics, but the menus. And in PDS games you spend a lot of time navigating menus.

Starting CK2 now as a newcomer is very hard. I don't know if CK2 is to a significant extend still held up as such a good game, because of all the added content and a significant nostalgia-ish factor, or if it actually is a lot better.
I can definitely say that my ~10 hours in CK2 were significantly less enjoyable than my hundreds of hours in CK3.