Experimentation

[marquina#9999]

I am making this comment to say that I love EUIV and want it to be profitable for PI and fun for people to play. As long as it does not negatively impact the quality of the game, adding new payment methods which some people will prefer, seems like a pure win and I support PI doing what they need to do to keep making great games.

Quick and easy buck for an horrendous monetization form that disrespects users in every regard does not make a better game. It makes lazy developers. Yes it is optional. But when the other option is buying 300€ worth of DLC it's just choosing the lesser evil. Eu4 shouldn't be a game as a service. It's a single player experience. When you buy a copy of EU4 it's not deducted from a finite amount of copies.

 

[cac579]

Looking at this through the lenses of money because thats all a public company cares about. The people that make the decisions have one thing in mind money. I highly doubt the decisions makers care about the consumer because they havent shown this. money > quality game. (also keep in mind they released a mobile cash grab and totally PR BS'ed it as wanting to introduce a good game into the market)

So looking at it from this perspective this test comes at a time when there is huge gap between paradox dlcs which is a huge money maker for paradox. So a subscription service would be a possibility to fill in the gaps of very little revenue. This way seems highly suspect but it would i guess depend on the price and even though they say it wont be exclusive they could always change their mind if they think there will be a net gain in monetary value. (loss would occur from outrage). This change wouldnt occur in one of the current games but in any newly released title.

People have pointed at what seems like a decent compromise/solution in after a certain amount of time dlc gets integrated or goes on sale based on how long its been out. (or u know just not have overpriced DLC).

side note:
i think its funny paradox is like oh no its too expensive for new players to get into the game. lower price? nah. sale solution? nah. subscription model where u dont own anything?

 

[Volodio]

Why make a subscribe system instead of including earlier DLC mechanics into later DLC, as it was done by Holy Fury including Pagans? Because one of the problems of the DLC system is the lack of improvement of the earlier DLC-introduced mechanics, and the subscription system isn't solving this issue.

 

[Cymsdale]

Seems simple to just price old content appropriately.

 

[Eelectrica]

Seems simple to just price old content appropriately.

Yeah, I stocked up when they had the 5 year anniversary sale. 75% off the DLC up to third Rome if memory serves.
DLC over 2 or 3 years old gets the 75% off instead of the usual 50% perhaps.

It seems to take about a year for DLC to be 50% off. I picked up Dharma a few months ago at 50% around a year after release.

 

[IEKevin]

Would there be any upcoming fix for local mods not registering on the launcher? dunno why but it seems to happened to me all of a sudden when it was working fine before.

there isn't any problem with steam workshop mods, just local ones

 

[Darsara]

As long as the current model remains at the same time, then i guess whatever?

It can be months between me wanting to play this game, and the idea of needing to pay a recurring fee for the potential to play, but don't for long periods does not sit well with me.

 

[Jack Churchill]

I'm definitely not in the intended demographic, but I can see the appeal of 15 dollars or so to test the game out with all the mechanics fleshed out. My only real concern would be if the subscription model might impact how often the expansions go on sale.

 

[Ark Tolei]

I'm basing this post of the first and 7th page of this thread, so if something is contradicted by a statement in the middle somewhere I apologize. I can't see a downside to adding a subscription model. I've been paying a subscription already, I just do it every development cycle in a big chunk. Switching methods makes no financial sense for me, but approaching several hundred dollars worth of DLC for a new player to start playing the same game I am is a big problem not just for that player, but also for me (both as a player of every expansion, and as a livestreamer who tries to help people troubleshoot).

Having multiple styles of revenue generation can be very powerful, and I think it substantially benefits the underperforming expansions. If an expansion comes out and bombs because its mechanics don't work very well, it's less likely to be updated and fixed, because less players have it. It's more developmentally efficient to make a new expansion than to fix an old one. Just look at the development cycles of poor performing expansions in world of warcraft. They just revealed that they're cutting an entire patch off the current expansion because it's more valuable to focus development resources on the next one. They wrote off Warlords of Draenor almost immediately after the launch flopped, which made that expansion far worse and content sparse than it should have been, in addition to all the problems it had baseline (that made it unpopular in the first place). Having a core demographic of players who actually use every piece of DLC substantially increases the incentive to make the weak content stronger, rather than pretend it doesn't exist. For those who are unaware, with WoW each expansion effectively erases the previous one. People almost never touch content that isn't in the most recent expansion.

There are serious problems with the continual expansion strategy that Paradox has gone with, because for people who always play the most updated game, with every content update installed, they can feel angry when the stuff they payed for is given away for free, but if it isn't, you eventually run into a situation where it takes hundreds of dollars up front to play the game I'm playing. When I'm trying to help someone troubleshoot on my livestream there's always a problem of "Is X mechanic tied to some expansion from 3-5 years ago? I don't even remember now."

It makes it harder to help people who have relatively simple questions, when there are thousands of rulesets out there, and it's not necessarily obvious what's missing. When I started my Byzantium runs I didn't realize I had somehow missed the Byzantium content years ago, and it has a meaningful effect on the gameplay of that nation. Obviously having subscriptions doesn't fix this problem entirely. It's entirely possible for someone to not use the subscription model and only have access to 3 random expansions, but I think it's going to be more common for new players to just pay a subscription for the months they decide to play, than it will be for them to meander throught the back catalogue and buy 100 bucks worth of random content. Most players today seem to only own a hodgepodge of random expansions, and I don't think that's healthy for the game.

For older players who know exactly what expansions they have, and which ones they do not, and what that means for their game, it isn't an issue. For new players trying to figure out what mechanics are even active is a huge headache.

So for my part I'm actually quite happy with this idea. If I wanted to jump into EU4 today I almost certainly wouldn't, because I'm cheap, and I have no interest in playing with a bunch of random mechanics disabled. I'm lucky that I got into the game reasonably early, and after over a thousand hours played the cost-benefit of buying all those expansions is completely worth it, but I had no way of knowing I'd play EU4 as much as I have going into it, and neither does a new player starting today.

 

[Dunbal]

Sooner or later everyone wants to move to a rental business model. I pay enough rent what with television, internet, telephone, HOA fees, finance charges from my bank, etc. I would rather forgo a game that my computer is perfectly capable of handling just because the publisher is seeking rent and so moved the model to the "cloud". This is a step backwards, to the bad old days where Big Co./University owned the mainframe and charged you for CPU use when you accessed it via your terminal. The personal computer was meant to be the antithesis of that model, putting computing power firmly in the hands of the user. I'm not going back.

I'm perfectly happy with supporting Paradox through occasional DLC, where I have the option of choosing if I want specific content or not. I understand the DLC model helps to keep the cash flow positive so that the company can continue maintaining the software. But DLC is not rent. I have the option not to buy it.

 

[Arowan]

Just look at the development cycles of poor performing expansions in world of warcraft.

Speaking of wow. In the old days, we had to buy the base game and all expansions to be able to play if I remember well which was quite expensive for new players. I remember seeing some battlechests with the base game plus a few expansion to help new players get into the game.
When the expansion number started to grow too much, they simply decided that only the last expansion was mandatory and that the previous ones were included for free when buying the last expension.

It has been suggested many times but I don't understand why the 'most logical solution' to make old content dlc (i'm not talking about cosmetic ones) free or sell them in a bundle at a reduced price at all time is not chosen.
I don't think that many old players who paid the full price for dlc or bought them during a sale would complain if the first 3 or 4 released dlc were included for free in the 1.30 dlc. Then when 1.4 dlc is out, you add one more free dlc in the bundle and so on. That would allow devs to consider that old dlc features are now core features and would give them an easier time.

Or if you're concerned about new players and if they only buy dlc on a sale, then why not have a permanent shop that look like this : base game + old dlc price A. semi old dlc price B, 2 latest dlc price C and make it so that buying everything always costs something like other AAA game + 2 fully priced dlc? I'm not saying it's good, but most of the other popular games consist in the base game plus one or two big dlc and people seem to accept that model.

 

[pizzapicante27]

Do you mean a new business model? Because I can assure you that pretty much all commercial games have a business model from the start.

And I'm not sure this is such a pivot in our business model. My sincere conviction is that it won't have any effect on either balance or design of the game.

As many models as you're planning, if the last couple of gaming years have showed so far its that once you start with these kinds of things its in for a pound, in for a penny.

Hey, remember when Bethesda promised to never ever ever monetize gameplay features in their games for the sake of an in-game store?, man, I sure am glad you can always trust profit-driven organizations to stick to their conviction and design when push comes to shove.

 

[Pete0714]

Sooner or later everyone wants to move to a rental business model. I pay enough rent what with television, internet, telephone, HOA fees, finance charges from my bank, etc. I would rather forgo a game that my computer is perfectly capable of handling just because the publisher is seeking rent and so moved the model to the "cloud". This is a step backwards, to the bad old days where Big Co./University owned the mainframe and charged you for CPU use when you accessed it via your terminal. The personal computer was meant to be the antithesis of that model, putting computing power firmly in the hands of the user. I'm not going back.

I'm perfectly happy with supporting Paradox through occasional DLC, where I have the option of choosing if I want specific content or not. I understand the DLC model helps to keep the cash flow positive so that the company can continue maintaining the software. But DLC is not rent. I have the option not to buy it.

Think you but the nail on the head. DLC is not rent. It was never supposed to be, according to Paradox,. They said at the time of the start of ck2 and eu4, dlc was for additional support to the base game, and allowing for solely optional features that you paid for to add to the experience and help development at the same time. Problem is they have flawed marketing which makes the dlc seem mandated and makes the game appear extremely expensive. Rather than fix this error, now there is an attempt to make us forget the past optional purpose of the DLC, by making it part of a subscription rather than add ons that you bought as an investment in the game.

 

[RikiBreeiki]

i just came here to say before buying this game i asked my friend " it says it has 200 DLCs i am not buying this product of evilness???" he said dont worry if host has all DLCs you can still play mp with DLCs and anarchist devs made all DLCs piratable for mp enviroment".

To add i would have never bought this game after seeing the amount of DLCs on workshop unless it had some reasonable priced packages or a subscription system or a way to have fulll game experience with reasonable amount of money , which it defınately did not . so Thank you for in 2020 finally realizing you were doing something not right..

 

[derly2004]

This is a just a cash grab, no wonder they didn't want everyone to know in the first place.

They should have started making EU5 years ago, not just continuing to milk an old cow dry.

So disappointing.

 

[grotaclas]

The negative effect is that the ironman savegame is no longer ani ronman savegame. And you can only switch back to Version 1.28.X and not to 1.29.3
Nice to know that mods are more importand than ironman runs...

The patch doesn't ruin ironman games. I have continued my ironman game from version 1.29.3 without problems in 1.29.4 and achievements are still enabled. But of course it is a good idea to make a backup of your save file to which you can go back to if achievements get disabled for you(e.g. because the connection to steam broke)

 

[Mr.Grizzly]

While I may not be in the target audience for a subscription I'd still like to voice my opinion on the matter

While I am personally against subscriptions, at least how they are implemented for everything these days, I understand why some may like them and choose that path, and that is their choice and I respect it. However, if the goal is to bring in new players to the game, simply throwing together some sort of weekly/monthly/yearly or whatever subscription is not the path I would take, though I am a consumer and not the seller so the point of views are different. The common complaint about the price of all the content together being too high is reasonable, and Paradox's argument of frequent sales are too, remember that most people, I don't have numbers but I would imagine it'd be this way, buy through Steam, who takes 20-30% of the profits. One would also point out however, that the prices of older DLC AND the game have not dropped in value despite being older products, a common trend in physical content that appears to be dying for digital products.

Now personally, I'd rather the first few DLCs and some mechanics from the latest DLCs to be added to the core game, not only would it make consumers happy with more content being stored into the base game so less need to buy expansions, but also help the developers be able to flesh out those major mechanics even more. EU IV, and other PDX games but mostly EU IV, have a problem of reworking major mechanics or implementing new ones which is great, but locking it behind a DLC causing issues. You can't add to it anymore because you're making DLC for a DLC, and you can't make major changes again because people bought it and you might accidentally make the mechanics less impactful and causes consumers to feel like their money was wasted. EU IV seems to have a problem choosing what is in the update and what is in the DLC. If we look at Dharma, government reforms completely changed the system, and for the better, but now it means the old system is pointless and people feel the need to buy it. Considering how important government is for your country, imagine if a shooter game released an expansion that completely reworked the shooting and and was so much better and everyone who already bought the game gets the new DLC and is happy, the new people who pick up the shooter a week or so later, but no the expansion, go "why is such a major mechanic locked out for me after I bought a full game, now I have to go dish out more" and it might turn them off from the game.

What Paradox and many other companies in my opinion have forgotten is the base game is suppose to be just as playable, DLC is suppose to expand upon the features/mechanics/gameplay of the base game. Now pardon me for the game example, but if I go out and buy Call of Duty, I know I'm so sorry, and buy a map pack DLC, it doesn't change the core game while it expands what I already have by giving me a larger map selection. Now I'm not saying I want Paradox to stop adding major mechanics in expansions, but what I'm trying to say is core features should only be touched for free updates, as well as some huge QoL mechanics like province control, to me it's embarrassing that was a DLC feature and it took so long to be added to base game. For example with Dharma, I would've made the government rework as part of the update, but because I'm focusing on India, add some in depth reforms for the Indian nations with unique mechanics to make them stand out from the other nations and their reforms. By doing this, you keep your base game playable and you EXPAND, not replace, upon your core features.

So, how many copies of your base game do you sell? It's been out for almost 7 years now, it's a strategy game on PC, you can't attract new people, maybe reduce the price of it by 25%? I highly doubt EU IV base game is a big money maker still. Take core feature rework and mechanics that were introduced in DLCs and add them to the base game. Now I'd rather all DLC up until start of 2018, I think 2 years is more than enough time to make your profit, be incorporated into the base game, but if you absolutely insist on still selling them, have their price reduced by at least half, permanently. As someone said earlier, introduce a "life cycle" of a DLC, give it 2 years where it's standard release price, then after that it drops by 50% like the older DLC already would be. Stop selling major reworks, let the base game and game with DLC FUNCTION the same, and focus on making DLC that expands on your game's features on introduces new smaller interesting mechanics that aren't so crucial. As much as I hated pirates being added to the game, that system is good for an expansion to me, you're adding a new way to play the game, but not changing the core game. Rework trade, naval combat, land combat, government, religion and whatever else, but everyone should be on the same page for these important mechanics, leave special units, new small ways to convert land or move trade power around to your expansions. If you reduce the cost of the base game by 25% and all the DLC pre-2018 by 50%, for me the cost becomes $164.85, that's not counting all the DLC released in 2018 to today. Now while that may look much better than what it is now, remember that someone new might see that and still flinch, this is why you make the base game playable. So people here in Canada, if the cost was reduced by 25%, can buy the game for $33, reasonable for a good 7 year old game, and try it out for what it almost is like today then decide how they want to expand their style and slowly pick and choose different expansions.

At the end of the day, I believe Paradox dug a grave with it's DLC policy when it meant to dig a garden. While it initially was making money, helping the company grow, enabled lots of post-release support and opportunities for more and better DLC, they just kept digging instead. Now with the idea of a subscription, you realized you're in a grave and want to get out, so with your shovel you start to dig but this time to the side to make a tunnel and hide the problem that still exists, you're stuck in a hole, this time the hole is the price to own the base game and it's expansions. The thing with the DLC being released it constantly is it made it feel like a tax, "Ah look, Lord Paradox has sent his servants to support us but we must pay our bi-yearly tax" instead of "Oh damn this is a fun game, I'm going to buy this DLC to make it better". Come on Paradox, even Activision lowered the price of the older Call of Duty games on Steam, don't let Activision look better than you.

I hope I was able to make some sense in this, it's 1:40 in the morning and I am very tired.

P.S. NO EXCLUSIVE DLC FOR SUBSCRIBERS

 

[Stronghold]

Is pdx trying this model because GC has sold so badly? (besides being easier for newcomers)

 

[Niljapoli]

I would of course never consider paying for a subscription since I like to play different games, and a subscription fee would make me feel obligated to play something I subscribed to. And the decreasing quality in paradox titles recently would make me very reluctant to subscribe even if the paid service included all their games.
I think the best way to make the games more accessible was to lower the cost of old expansions significantly as they aged.

 

[abedfo]

This is why you don't develop a game for 7 years and keep adding expensive DLC that pro actively make the game worse.

I made a stand and stopped buying DLC for the game at Mare Nostrum as it was becoming a rip off for the amount of time I had to play the game.

A subscription service for me would be the same, it only has value if you have a lot of time to play, especially when it will probably be over £10/pm.