I think some of you are overestateing the dlc requirement. You don't need all the dlc, sure you can't imagine playing without various bits of dlc now but that's only because you've been exposed to them.
EU4's recent Steam reviews are now at Mixed with 48% rating. Discuss?
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I dunno I think the game is far more playable then CK 2, and sure you can turn off half of the CK 2 DLC and get a better experience.
But shouldnt the DLC be good and "feel" mandatory.
But shouldnt the DLC be good and "feel" mandatory.
I really dislike strawman fallacy.
You were trying to equate two different business models. WoW is a game that never quite relied on units sold, but on monthly subscriptions [15$ a month].
Were you to actually make a valid comparison, I would've marked it as "helpful" and on my way to check said game.
Edit: BTW, you can get the "full" EU4 experience for 282.25$ USD with the EU4 Collection Bundle + latest expansion/content [which also includes over 100$ of non-gameplay DLCs - graphic/music/ebooks]. So even the above is unfounded.
Edit 2: The "full" EU4 experience [as of 2017-06-16] will cost 294.28$ USD [non-sale price].
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Are you suggesting that 254 dollars is a reasonable amount of money to charge for a single video game?
We can't really consider Steam review as a reliable sample for the state of the game (same goes for the opinions on the forum). If someone is ready to invest money (and a lots of time) in Eu4, their decision will most likely not be based only on Steam reviews. I suspect that most new players buy the base game to try it out and then start investing in DLC if they really like the game. Steam sales also make it very cheap to acquire old DLC so the cost can be alleviated.
I don't think the DLC price is rebuffing many new players (in particular in rich countries). Johan sowed some interesting statistics at PDXcon and the conclusion was that the player base have grown a lot since release and is still growing. To be honest, most DLC are not mandatory to enjoy the game. In fact, even if you own all DLC, it is unlikely that you will notice all of the additions that have been made, in particular those for specific countries. There are, of course, some DLC, that will significantly impact your game regardless of what nation you play, but a new players that is not used to them won't know what he is missing.
The very harsh learning curve (and the lack of a decent tutorial) is probably the biggest factor rebuffing potential new players.
I don't think the DLC price is rebuffing many new players (in particular in rich countries). Johan sowed some interesting statistics at PDXcon and the conclusion was that the player base have grown a lot since release and is still growing. To be honest, most DLC are not mandatory to enjoy the game. In fact, even if you own all DLC, it is unlikely that you will notice all of the additions that have been made, in particular those for specific countries. There are, of course, some DLC, that will significantly impact your game regardless of what nation you play, but a new players that is not used to them won't know what he is missing.
The very harsh learning curve (and the lack of a decent tutorial) is probably the biggest factor rebuffing potential new players.
I don't think "reasonableness" is an interesting question when applied to the pricing of luxury "goods" that exist purely as a licence to copy a certain pattern of bits onto your hard disk and tell your computer to run them.
This is a difficult topic. I really like EU4 and Paradox seems like a bunch of very nice people. But if I were to take a step back and evaluate my purchase soberly - yes, I'm pretty sure I spent way more money on EU4 than I'm usually comfortable spending on computer games. The slice tactic of offering another DLC every so often really works on me since the individual purchases all fall under my pain threshold. I should mention at this point that apart from Common Sense I haven't bought a single DLC without a discount. So I bought almost everything about my EU4 experience at a discount and I still think that collectively I spent too much on the game!
I'll also happily admit that I'm spoiled. I almost exclusively play games that have endless and/or randomized content. So yes, spending ~75 bucks on EU4 (without Mandate of Heaven naturally) is actually a pretty bad value proposition for me in terms of games, even considering my 350 hours on record. There are plenty of much much cheaper high-quality games that provide an equal amount of entertainment. Comparing it to 5-10 hours on a modern story-driven 60 bucks game makes EU4 shine. Comparing it to Civilization 4 on sale (~6 bucks for base game plus all add-ons) makes EU4 look pretty bad.
Base game on patch 1.13, Wealth of Nations, Res Publica, Art of War, El Dorado and Common Sense all bought on sale (should be around 35 bucks I think?) is a pretty good value proposition! They should advertise such a pack to new players and rope them in, before trying to push several 15+ bucks DLC on them for very little added value.
Edit to add: We should probably also consider the target demographic. This isn't exactly a game aimed at teenagers who have to buy it from their allowance or from delivering papers. EU4 draws a more mature audience that usually comes with higher purchasing power and less concern about blowing 15 bucks on a DLC every half year. I personally know plenty of lawyers who play EU4. They're neither the type to think twice about 15 bucks, nor the type to complain on the forums or on Steam. They use their precious time to actually play the game! Looking at community feedback will never give you a clear picture of everyone's opinion, since not everyone has incentive to give it. And gripes usually give more incentive than satisfaction...
I'll also happily admit that I'm spoiled. I almost exclusively play games that have endless and/or randomized content. So yes, spending ~75 bucks on EU4 (without Mandate of Heaven naturally) is actually a pretty bad value proposition for me in terms of games, even considering my 350 hours on record. There are plenty of much much cheaper high-quality games that provide an equal amount of entertainment. Comparing it to 5-10 hours on a modern story-driven 60 bucks game makes EU4 shine. Comparing it to Civilization 4 on sale (~6 bucks for base game plus all add-ons) makes EU4 look pretty bad.
I agree, but with a little twist: They should advertise the beta branches of old versions way way more, maybe even making them default. I'm not a big fan of upgrading the base game beyond a DLC you don't own, since many of them (up until now at least) are actually essential in many ways. But nothing stops you from rolling back to 1.13 and enjoying the experience of a complete game for a fair price (on sale at least). I think handing new players a bare base-game on version 1.21 is a bad idea and will inevitably lead to complaints (but maybe that's what they want since discomfort creates incentive to buy DLC). Especially if you're a new player you wouldn't really know what you would be missing without the more recent updates. I've had a lot of fun on 1.13. I'm not sure if the price tags of Cossacks, Mare Nostrum, Rights of Man and Mandate of Heave properly reflect the comparatively small gain in marginal fun over 1.13.
Base game on patch 1.13, Wealth of Nations, Res Publica, Art of War, El Dorado and Common Sense all bought on sale (should be around 35 bucks I think?) is a pretty good value proposition! They should advertise such a pack to new players and rope them in, before trying to push several 15+ bucks DLC on them for very little added value.
Edit to add: We should probably also consider the target demographic. This isn't exactly a game aimed at teenagers who have to buy it from their allowance or from delivering papers. EU4 draws a more mature audience that usually comes with higher purchasing power and less concern about blowing 15 bucks on a DLC every half year. I personally know plenty of lawyers who play EU4. They're neither the type to think twice about 15 bucks, nor the type to complain on the forums or on Steam. They use their precious time to actually play the game! Looking at community feedback will never give you a clear picture of everyone's opinion, since not everyone has incentive to give it. And gripes usually give more incentive than satisfaction...
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What are you talkining about? Any product can have an unreasonable price, whether it's a luxury good, or something essential like food, water or shelter. A reasonable price is a price that potential customers are willing to pay (again, the product in question is irrelevant). 254 is unreasonable because very few people are willing to pay that kind of money for a single video game.
That's actually a great suggestion! Paradox already made quite a good cash on Conquest of Paradise/Wealth of Nations/Res Publica for example; these DLC are already three years old (huge time in gaming), why the hell not sell them in a discounted bundle?
Either that, or return to the traditional industry method of constant patches BUT only a couple of huge, almost standalone expansions.
I remember when TF2 went f2p
The frustration and rage that I saw was amazing and scary
I figured I would chime in as an actual new player to this franchise.
I had seen a friend of mine playing this game and asked about it. I liked most of the things he told me about the game and how it worked. So I looked it up on steam and saw that the game and DLCs would cost me $250.
I saw that there was a demo of the game so I downloaded that and played it for a while. I decided that I did like the game and wanted to get it but that $250 price tag was not going to be easy to accept.
I talked some more with friends and gathered more information about the game and found out that a new DLC(Mandate of Heaven) was going to be coming out soon and that they usually did a sale on DLC launch. I thought that maybe then I could purchase the game.
The Steam sale happened and I saw that everything was 50% off except the newest DLC. Then I saw there were content packs, and unit packs, and music DLC... Now more research was in order and I was on a deadline because the sale was ending in a couple of days.
All accounted for I spent about $160 on this game in one purchase. That is a massive investment for any game at once. The $250 price tag stopped me completely. A possible $150 price tag still took a month of research self convincing to finally accept.
People say that you don't need all of the DLC, but what new player is going to know about that without doing a decent amount of reading first? I personally feel that the entry cost is far to high for this game and a couple more years and even the 50% off sale price will be too high even for me. I can completely understand people with less income than myself not even giving the game a second glance.
Only Paradox can determine if they have priced themselves out of new player reach and if that is acceptable to them or not.
I had seen a friend of mine playing this game and asked about it. I liked most of the things he told me about the game and how it worked. So I looked it up on steam and saw that the game and DLCs would cost me $250.
I saw that there was a demo of the game so I downloaded that and played it for a while. I decided that I did like the game and wanted to get it but that $250 price tag was not going to be easy to accept.I talked some more with friends and gathered more information about the game and found out that a new DLC(Mandate of Heaven) was going to be coming out soon and that they usually did a sale on DLC launch. I thought that maybe then I could purchase the game.
The Steam sale happened and I saw that everything was 50% off except the newest DLC. Then I saw there were content packs, and unit packs, and music DLC... Now more research was in order and I was on a deadline because the sale was ending in a couple of days.
All accounted for I spent about $160 on this game in one purchase. That is a massive investment for any game at once. The $250 price tag stopped me completely. A possible $150 price tag still took a month of research self convincing to finally accept.
People say that you don't need all of the DLC, but what new player is going to know about that without doing a decent amount of reading first? I personally feel that the entry cost is far to high for this game and a couple more years and even the 50% off sale price will be too high even for me. I can completely understand people with less income than myself not even giving the game a second glance.
Only Paradox can determine if they have priced themselves out of new player reach and if that is acceptable to them or not.
I bought most the dlc(no artwork/music) in a 75% off sale. The problem is they got me hooked now and I'm paying full prices on release day. I'll probably even buy the Russian one even though I've never played or considered Russia, still haven't tried china.
BTW, your 'full' EU4 experience is not quite full as its missing the latest expansion + content pack.
My price for the 'full' experience is $368 but thanks for telling me i pay less than 300.
Steam reviews are not very reliable, to say the least.
Get your game rating from independent gamer sites or magazines.
Just to give you idea:
an hour after some eu4 dlc got released, people already posted 100 bad rating reviews.
Yeah, sure.
On the other hand, those bad reviews might be from newcomers that see a mountain of feature bloat, a sky high learning curve due to all DLC, and simply say
"sod this" and give bad review.
Get your game rating from independent gamer sites or magazines.
Just to give you idea:
an hour after some eu4 dlc got released, people already posted 100 bad rating reviews.
Yeah, sure.
On the other hand, those bad reviews might be from newcomers that see a mountain of feature bloat, a sky high learning curve due to all DLC, and simply say
"sod this" and give bad review.
You're right, my apologies. I rectified the post**.
Even so, the total is 282.25$ USD and not as posted above.
Edit: The "full" EU4 experience [as of 2017-06-16] will cost 294.28$ USD [non-sale price].
**I never even claimed it is a good price - that is for each of us to decide. I do claim, however, that some of the posters exaggerate stuff on purpose to fit with their agenda.
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Whelp. I was half-considering going and doing a positive EUIV review myself (since I've, at least, very much have enjoyed stuff so far), but on learning that... Suddenly lost a chunk of my good will for PDX.
I do hope the gentleman that decided that increasing a lot of global prices took into account the fact it would cost them a great deal of sales (many, I suspect, due to angry customers - and sadly, perhaps not entirely unreasonably). The fact that this was sneaked out indicates that the PDx were clearly aware this was going to be a problem. Even I (who was up to until this morning quite happy to be buying PDX DLC on release) will have to consider very carefully on future expansions at release, now that they are +20% more expensive.
(And almost certainly means I'll be skipping on Third Rome.)
I'd have understood if they'd raised the prices for everyone more, even, but whatever you do, raising the prices (significantly) for one or more nationality of players is going to cost you both money and PR, because it's going to wind people up. It will be interesting to see how this affects PDX's sales for the next few expansions/games.
I had the impression they simply raised the prices in anticipation of the steam summer sales, at which time they will drop the prices back down to normal and call it a sale.
Even the 89% score on steam is too high. I didnt get around to it yet, but i would certainly leave a thumbs down review. Business practices possibly worse than EA\Ubisoft while the game has simply feature bloated with positive additions far and few inbetween, and those features tend to get neglected and never improved much if any. (nation designer, new revolt system) You could easily take a full 50% of the more useless features out of the game without damaging it one bit.
Even the 89% score on steam is too high. I didnt get around to it yet, but i would certainly leave a thumbs down review. Business practices possibly worse than EA\Ubisoft while the game has simply feature bloated with positive additions far and few inbetween, and those features tend to get neglected and never improved much if any. (nation designer, new revolt system) You could easily take a full 50% of the more useless features out of the game without damaging it one bit.
300 dollars is a reasonable price to pay for:
1) The base game plus all the free updates and patches in the nearly 4 years since release
2) 10 major DLC released over the course of 4 years.
This is calling an eight course meal, with lots of extra drinks, a "dinner" or a "meal" as an attempt to complain about the price. This is complaining that you can't get The Complete DVD Series for the same price as a single season DVD. It's wondering why you have to pay hundreds of dollars for all the splatbooks and adventure paths for a tabletop RPG, I mean, it's just all one single game, right?
I gave a negative review because the Mandate of heaven DLC. How did paradox managed to destroy the play-ability of one country by publish a DLC that focus on this country?
Did you put it on the Mandate's steam page or on the EU4 as a whole?