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I'm not quite sure how to respond to most of this for several reasons, one of which is that I really need to go to bed. Your opinions are noted nonetheless. But I will address the last point at least because it's an easy one. We've said over and over that we have no intention whatsoever to make this anything but optional. I'm not sure how many times more I can say it. If you already own most content there is not any real reason for you to consider this option.

I wholly believe that this is what you've been told to tell us, but, with all due respect, we all know it didn't fall into you, as a community manager, to make the decisions that are very quickly turning EU4 into a pile of gunk. It's easy enough to believe a claim that there is no such plan, but it's hard to believe the ever so cryptic "higher-ups" won't have some newfound joy in changing the "we have no intention" into "we're considering it", perhaps even into a "yeah, we're doing it". Perhaps not for EU4, but maybe EU5. Or CK3. Or the eldritch horror that is Imperator.

The vast plethora of issues that have been mentioned in the previous 8 pages aside, calling this a solution to the entry barrier just doesn't work. Many people, myself included, will instantly leave a Steam page the moment they see a hint towards some sort of subscription. Further, I've bought EU4 - my first pdx game - back in the Common Sense era, and ever since then, countless of times, there were better, simpler suggestions to lower the entry barrier that don't raise red flags for people, and they were all ignored, when it would take merely one to mitigate the issue:

-Bundling for cheaper big purchases: There is a bundle including the most popular DLCs, but that's it;
-Integration of old content: Not charging for 3 year old content (a good chunk of it so broken that Johan himself called "a mistake" in cons) by moving them to basegame;
-Price cuts in old content: Or at least lowering the entry barrier by not making people spend hundreds on the DLCs that have very little persistent impact;
-Making the base game free: Complete removal of entry barrier, anyone with remote interests in single player eventually caves in to the DLC purchases (provided they're good, that is; worked out for CK2, but hard to say if it'll work out in the game that spawned Golden Century);
-Shuffle DLC content for better modularity so we can actually tell our friends that the game doesn't force you to buy DLCs to be enjoyable;

Look no further than Reman's video back during the price hike drama, which holds up better than ever:
 
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I like idea of subscription being some sort of trial, so you can look around in game without buying it for full price. Even better if we get access to all pdx games with one subscription for reasonable price - just to try it, play for a week or two to decide if I want buy it / which one fits me best. Right now basically only option to test game before buying it is to download pirated version.
However if it suppose to be new way to pay for game/support devs to eventually replace current model I will strongly oppose it. It is nice to pay for one month right to play ck2/stellaris/etc to see how if I like them, but if I have to pay every month to play my favorite game it’s deal breaker for me.
 
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Indeed, I agree. But if you suddenly got a new patch version without any form of communication I think things would go pretty haywire too.

Yeah, but how hard would have been to put together a quick bug-fix patch (it isn't like EU4 lacks bugs to fix :p)? or maybe some small free content patch, like a couple of songs, or some extra units (as a bonus preview for the DLC, maybe) and sneak in the subscription in there. no one in eu4 team have some Intrigue education?:cool:

About the subscription itself, I don't really care, both generally (I don't like subscriptions, I prefer pay for what I want once, and keep it, still think in the long period is more convenient) or specifically for EU4, the problem with the "full EU4 experience" is that I think some DLCs make the game worse (i am looking at you, Golden Century) and beside already own all the DLCs I want , the only one I am on the fence is Dharma (and maybe the new one, but I have still to hear something that make me want to buy it)
 
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Yeah, but how hard would have been to put together a quick bug-fix patch (it isn't like EU4 lacks bugs to fix :p)? or maybe some small free content patch, like a couple of songs, or some extra units (as a bonus preview for the DLC, maybe) and sneak in the subscription in there. no one in eu4 team have some Intrigue education?:cool:

About the subscription itself, I don't really care, both generally (I don't like subscriptions, I prefer pay for what I want once, and keep it, still think in the long period is more convenient) or specifically for EU4, the problem with the "full EU4 experience" is that I think some DLCs make the game worse (i am looking at you, Golden Century) and beside already own all the DLCs I want , the only one I am on the fence is Dharma (and maybe the new one, but I have still to hear something that make me want to buy it)


If the build that the bug fixes are in is the same build as the changes for 1.30, disentangling the bug fixes from the new stuff is likely incredibly tricky.
 
If the build that the bug fixes are in is the same build as the changes for 1.30, disentangling the bug fixes from the new stuff is likely incredibly tricky.

True. Also, I have full confidence in this community to dig around and quickly find changes we were not supposed to notice even without any suspicious announcement like this one. So it would likely have been noticed anyway.
 
True. Also, I have full confidence in this community to dig around and quickly find changes we were not supposed to notice even without any suspicious announcement like this one. So it would likely have been noticed anyway.

Well I for one tend to run diffs using WinMerge between different version to check what the unlisted changes are.
 
In ESO, you can either buy a DLC or use the Subscription.
One of things the subscription gives is that you get is that it gives you Crowns (if you want to buy a DLC, you buy Crowns which you then use to buy DLC) for the amount of money you spent on the subscription. This way, you can save Crowns to eventually buy a DLC you like without feeling like you spent more money than if you just bought it.
So although you spent 60$ on subscription, you can still spend those same 60$ on buying actual DLC. Something like this I think would be good here.
 
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The only, and only way I'm fine with this is if this model doesn't replace the old one for any past or future games (as others have pointed out).

As a side note, I guess this dispels any concern anyone might've had about the end of EU4's dev cycle, as it would make little sense to do this if the game only had one or two more updates down the road, wouldn't it? It is a long term model after all.

But I also agree that the full price of EUIV is something hard to deal with, so why not consider doing something in the midle :
You subscribe to it for a certain price per month, and once you've paid up to the full game price, you own it and your subscription end automatically.
That's a pretty good idea.

The fix for that is the same as it was all those years ago: make DLCs less pricey for every [PERIOD] of time that passes.
My ideal model as well.
And perhaps when the price goes below a certain threshold, say $2, it simply becomes free.
That would have the interesting side effect that, with time, when a new customer sees the steam page with that wall of DLCs, instead of thinking "wow, look at all these things I have to pay for" (actively harmful for sales, and true even if the items are cheap, say <$2), he now thinks "wow, look at all this free content" (actually a selling point).
 
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Well, I'm one of the few people that got affected by this little update sadly. Whenever I launch the game, the game crashes after the logo screen appears. I had to roll back to 1.28.3 like some of the others in the technical help forum. So, it not affecting the players went out of the window.

I don't think I'm a paranoid guy either and do think I count as a long time supporter of PDS/X titles. However, I do feel you're deliberately vague about this still. What exactly could you be testing that would be relevant to the overall inquiry? You can already see who owns what DLC. You've already added notifications about what DLC would enrich your experience for specific tags or regions. You already get data based on what tags are most popular to play as, which idea groups people prefer to take etc. Aka, the possibility to extract data from the players is vast already. What data could you be looking for and through what means that weren't available yet?

Is it even legal to subject an entire playerbase without permission to such tests while providing so little information?

I'm not mad, but I am disappointed it did affect my game as I can't play it (and I have to host/stream a multiplayer game on sunday. Fingers crossed the issues are fixed before then) and a little suspicious about the overall vagueness. I don't mind if someone needs to get real technical here, but I do think the player base is owned more of an explanation.

I would like to suggest that you find a willing group for such a test in the future, but I figure such a small group would not be sufficient for the data you're looking for?

About the subscription model... As long as both the DLC and subscription model would always exist, I suppose it doesn't have to affect the current customer at all. Although I feel you'd be even more focussed on earning more money from your existing customer base. If DLC's don't earn enough money anymore, perhaps go the CK II route and finally start on a sequel or try to expand the player base instead.
 
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I'm back! Happy to see there hasn't been many pitchforks and guillotines being assembled while I slept :)

From what I can gather the main concerns with this whole thing are the following:
1. You are worried that we are looking to start doing subscriptions only (not only for EU, but for more future titles)
2. You are disappointed that we still haven't permanently lowered the prices of old content instead, as you feel this would be the preferred route to lower the entry threshold
3. Subscriptions changes the way you own your games
4. Not really related to this particular topic, but still iterated a lot: Concerns with how we've handled updates in the past (quality of expansions and what's paid/free)

My thoughts on the above:
1. Seems nothing I say will ease your mind about this, so I'll resort to my standard thing of we'll prove ourselves with actions instead of sweet talking. I hope you won't be disappointed.
2. A valid opinion indeed. But a lot of the discussions around it is based in pure speculations to be honest. I appreciate your feedback from your experience buying our stuff (thank you so much for that btw, I sometimes feel this gets lost in the discussions. But we are considering ourselves extremely lucky to have such a passionate and devoted group of people buying and playing our games <3), but I think that our discussions would be way more productive if speculations about the economic realities behind what we do was left out of the conversation instead of being accepted as facts and used as a foundation for further discussions. So for the sake of the quality of the discussion, please don't present speculations as truths, and take other posts presenting economics with a grain of salt. Sadly I can't talk about our financial results as we are a publicly traded company, and it's not really my field of expertise. But I know enough to know what's speculations and what's facts.
3. This I really can't say anything about. It's very much a viable concern and it's just a fact of subscription models. I guess it will just be a downside of it that can only be considered in relation to possible upsides, hopefully with the latter overtaking the former.
4. We've admitted that we've made poor decisions in the past, and we'll probably make a few more going forward. All I can say is that we hear you and we are really trying to improve going forward.
 
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Well, I'm one of the few people that got affected by this little update sadly. Whenever I launch the game, the game crashes after the logo screen appears. I had to roll back to 1.28.3 like some of the others in the technical help forum. So, it not affecting the players went out of the window.

I don't think I'm a paranoid guy either and do think I count as a long time supporter of PDS/X titles. However, I do feel you're deliberately vague about this still. What exactly could you be testing that would be relevant to the overall inquiry? You can already see who owns what DLC. You've already added notifications about what DLC would enrich your experience for specific tags or regions. You already get data based on what tags are most popular to play as, which idea groups people prefer to take etc. Aka, the possibility to extract data from the players is vast already. What data could you be looking for and through what means that weren't available yet?

Is it even legal to subject an entire playerbase without permission to such tests while providing so little information?

I'm not mad, but I am disappointed it did affect my game as I can't play it (and I have to host/stream a multiplayer game on sunday. Fingers crossed the issues are fixed before then) and a little suspicious about the overall vagueness. I don't mind if someone needs to get real technical here, but I do think the player base is owned more of an explanation.

I would like to suggest that you find a willing group for such a test in the future, but I figure such a small group would not be sufficient for the data you're looking for?

I have no idea what may be the cause of this issue for you, and I'm sorry it happened. The stuff added with the patch shouldn't have any such effects, and it doesn't for the vast majority of players :/ Please submit a ticket through support.paradoxplaza.com

"I would like to suggest that you find a willing group for such a test in the future..." - This is pretty much what we are doing. Not sure how you envision this will be going down?
 
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I have no idea what may be the cause of this issue for you, and I'm sorry it happened. The stuff added with the patch shouldn't have any such effects, and it doesn't for the vast majority of players :/ Please submit a ticket through support.paradoxplaza.com

"I would like to suggest that you find a willing group for such a test in the future..." - This is pretty much what we are doing. Not sure how you envision this will be going down?

I can't refuse taking part of this new experiment as I can't play the game up to date anymore. At the moment there is no option to revert back to 1.29.3 either which would be a way out. This update was sprung upon us.

I actually wouldn't mind taking part of whatever test you are running, don't get me wrong. It's possible to receive beta codes; the test update could have been sent through beta codes to people that gave permission before. I honestly doubt you'd have trouble finding plenty of people here assuming it indeed wouldn't affect the game at all. But then I would still consider it common courtesy telling us what we'd be installing.
 
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Since the cat is out of the bag, do you mind, Bjorn, if I share the screenshot?
The gui file is in everyone's game folder, after all.

sub.png


I don't know how to trigger it normally, so we can't see the proposed price. Which, I feel, is the crux of the matter here.
Like, I'm in the target audience. I only own Mare Nostrum. If the price was good, I could consider this.
 
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I appreciate that you're trying to clear things up BjornB, but I'm disappointed that it is necessary in the first place.
You're always quite transparent about everything and now you come up with this vague announcement, which sounds to me as: 'We're doing something bad, but we're not telling you what it is'

Only when everybody is pissed off you decide to explain yourself. That's why I'm disappointed, I didn't expect something like this from PDX. (I'm referring to the way of communication, not to subscription model)

In regards to the subscription model; It's a good way to introduce new players to EU4.
If you make any game subscription only, then I would never buy it.
 
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1. Seems nothing I say will ease your mind about this, so I'll resort to my standard thing of we'll prove ourselves with actions instead of sweet talking. I hope you won't be disappointed.
Well, correct me if I'm wrong here (and please do), but I get the feeling that most are still concerned about it because it seems that, while you are vehemently discarding the exclusivity of the subscription model for EU4 in the future, it doesn't look as clear for future games (like CK3, EU5, HoI5, Imperator 2 and, dare I say, Vic3, etc etc).
Being clear with a statement like "no PDX game, now or in the future, will use a subscription model exclusively" would be helpful imo.

2. A valid opinion indeed. But a lot of the discussions around it is based in pure speculations to be honest. I appreciate your feedback from your experience buying our stuff (thank you so much for that btw, I sometimes feel this gets lost in the discussions. But we are considering ourselves extremely lucky to have such a passionate and devoted group of people buying and playing our games <3), but I think that our discussions would be way more productive if speculations about the economic realities behind what we do was left out of the conversation instead of being accepted as facts and used as a foundation for further discussions. So for the sake of the quality of the discussion, please don't present speculations as truths, and take other posts presenting economics with a grain of salt. Sadly I can't talk about our financial results as we are a publicly traded company, and it's not really my field of expertise. But I know enough to know what's speculations and what's facts.
Take that as you will, but I also have my anecdotal experiences to back me up.
I have at least a few friends who I've religiously tried to get into PDX games before, some of them even big strategy games fans, and every time they get to the steam page and see the bottom price I get the big fat "nope".
And I'm fairly sure most of them wouldn't be into a subscription service either, as the entry barrier for a PDX game is significantly higher than for, say, WoW.

3. Subscriptions changes the way you own your games
As long as we have the current model alongside of it, I am sure nothing will change.
 
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2. A valid opinion indeed. But a lot of the discussions around it is based in pure speculations to be honest. I appreciate your feedback from your experience buying our stuff (thank you so much for that btw, I sometimes feel this gets lost in the discussions. But we are considering ourselves extremely lucky to have such a passionate and devoted group of people buying and playing our games <3), but I think that our discussions would be way more productive if speculations about the economic realities behind what we do was left out of the conversation instead of being accepted as facts and used as a foundation for further discussions. So for the sake of the quality of the discussion, please don't present speculations as truths, and take other posts presenting economics with a grain of salt. Sadly I can't talk about our financial results as we are a publicly traded company, and it's not really my field of expertise. But I know enough to know what's speculations and what's facts.
Also, I have no way to know how true this is for PDX DLCs, but it is a reported fact that most games make most of their sales on the weeks following launch.
I know I myself wouldn't stop buying DLCs at launch at all if that was the case.

So that begs the question: how harmful to the bottom line would gradually reducing DLC prices really be?
That, of course, comparing to the potential new customers brought in which, not only would be paying for the game upfront, but would also expand the playerbase to buy future expansions at full price.

Just some food for thought.
 
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1. You are worried that we are looking to start doing subscriptions only (not only for EU, but for more future titles)

[...]

My thoughts on the above:
1. Seems nothing I say will ease your mind about this, so I'll resort to my standard thing of we'll prove ourselves with actions instead of sweet talking. I hope you won't be disappointed.

There's a reason contracts exists. It is to ensure both parties agree on the words given and cannot retract on it, while everything said outside of it has no legal value. If needed, add to the EULA that the DLC model shall not be impacted, so it becomes binding, but this wouldn't cover future titles anyway.

When you have dealt with companies like EA or Bethesda, suffice to say that an announcement made by a community manager are of little value, even when the individual is respected for his job (because you are. Community manager isn't exactly the less stressful job ever). Ultimately, you are not the one making the decision, you are only communicating what is told by and to the higher up. I want to have confidence in you, as an individual, but this is negociating the future of a product with a company here.

That said, your company doesn't have the ill reputation of those two listed above, so hope that this confidence is well placed remains, there's still that.
 
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In ESO, you can either buy a DLC or use the Subscription.
One of things the subscription gives is that you get is that it gives you Crowns (if you want to buy a DLC, you buy Crowns which you then use to buy DLC) for the amount of money you spent on the subscription. This way, you can save Crowns to eventually buy a DLC you like without feeling like you spent more money than if you just bought it.
So although you spent 60$ on subscription, you can still spend those same 60$ on buying actual DLC. Something like this I think would be good here.

This model is actually the best one I can think of ! Completely respectful for both the old player who buy all dlcs and the new one who want to try them and get the one they prefer when the subscription end !
 
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