OP
I like the Third Rome EU4 variant, despite having used its features only in custom nations, and don't regret its purchase... Bells and whistles, sure, but I like bells and whistles. Toot Toot!
Immersion
As to the criticisms of immersion along the way, I have to say Pds has started doing immersion packs in response to player demand, so why don't we learn from that and explain to Pds what it is we want? If we want immersion packs, it's up to us to tell Pds what we mean by immersion in specific terms - not just letting them thrash around in the dark while we bleat "nyet".
Of course it's fine to say, as does
@Mortheim with perfect validity, that immersion means "deep mental involvement in something", and I concur with that. However I can get "deep mental involvement" in chess, but I don't want any of the EU4 variants to look like chess. Likewise I can get deep mental involvement from reading history, but nor do I want to be completely railroaded in any EU4 variant. I'm just saying it might be helpful for us to be more specific, by throwing out sample ideas of what immersive
mechanics might look like. [EDIT: just as
@Mortheim has done in his suggestions thread: on this I'm unsure how much was done prior to Third Rome coming out?] Because game design is
hard and subject to GIGO, so PDS needs all the help from us it can get as to precisely what we want. One thing is certain:
if we can't even express what it is we want in specific and reasonably unambiguous terms, we are guaranteed not to get it.
DLCs
As to the DLC "debate", I don't see a game paywall or any game issues with DLCs. Why? Because
EU4 is not a game. It's a family of distinct games with distinct software, all of which leverage some basic mechanics in building other mechanics, and all DLC combinations of which thus differ from each other in gameplay. EU4 therefore is mathematically thousands of distinct games (I continue to be astonished there are so relatively few bugs, given the sheer magnitude of the project and the tiny size of the QA/test team), and people can select the one they want to play.
Even without any DLCs at all, there are still many patches to which you can revert in the Steam properties (one of the things Steam does right), plus however many patches you've downloaded and copy-saved offline. I do this religiously, though for disk reasons I cull even the cheesy ones from time to time (laziness, see below). Potentially this amounts to every single major and minor patch. Maybe 40 or so?
That's even before you talk about published mods, though the only one I personally play around with is M&T, and modding it yourself to taste. If I'm seriously worked up about anything
and actually care about it enough to whine about it I'll mod it myself (though mostly too lazy to do this beyond hotfixing the occasional critical bug in events or whatever).
The reason I get endless "replayability" from EU4's variants is
with EU4 it's not about replays. Just when I've done a hundred hours or so on a patch and think I can understand it well enough to play it reasonably well (for the few tags and/or strategies I've had time to road-test), the buggers go and issue another damn patch, which plays differently and makes many of the lessons I learned from the last patch obsolete. Curse you Paradox! Spawn of the devil! Thief of Time! You're cruelly giving me a new game for free. You're dedicated to undermining my family and social cohesion. I'm helpless to resist your game-porn. My name is sr999, and I'm a paradhoxlic.
Personally I tend to play the EU4 variant with the latest patch plus all owned DLCs.That's because (a) I'm lazy, remember; and (b) I like it that the variants tend to get harder overall with each patch and DLC, i.e. nerfs tend long-term to outperform buffs (unless that's my paranoid confirmation bias speaking). Of course if I was interested in the harder achievements or I could cope with the mindless tedium of a WC I'd probably cheese by selecting DLCs.
Some people think the DLC naysayers are just a bunch of people whining about not getting new game development for free.
I don't agree with that, there's way too much passion and diversity for that to be fair. What I do say, however, is that people might try experimenting with the perspective I've set out above, and see if their emotions and arguments change.
Cheers, and apologies in advance if I've unintentionally offended anyone.
