I Don't Want To Be That Guy But...

[Almond_Brown]

There is a new Dev Gaming concept these days. It is know as the MVP concept.
Minimal Viable Product. Since Dev time cost so much money, the only way to truly fund new games is to build for as short a time frame as possible, deploy that MVP and then follow up with the funding it generates. It then becomes a cyclic pattern until at the end, a new game is deployed and the cycle simply repeats.

It is the new norm and something we as "gamers" will simply have to come to grips with. Gone are the days of "Gold CD's" going to get burned to then be put in boxes, headed for shelves with no, or little follow up. The whole "completed" thing is on that Disk, in that box.

For better or for worse, it appears there will be no going back. So as the wise man always says, you no like things the way they are, keep your wallet in your pocket. Someone out there will always try to get into your wallet. You just have to have the will power to stay your course and keep taking those old boxes of your gaming shelf and putting those old CD's in that "old" drive.

 

[GamerSteve]

I'm going to start by doing something most people won't. I'm going to admit that you're right to both notice the departure from standard game design philosophy and the pitfalls of it. I only know of one game outside of a Paradox product that has as frequently completely revamped core systems, Blizzards flagship MMO World of Warcraft, but that's spaced out over more than 10 years and in response to a drastically changing MMO market.

Yes, WOW does it, and most other MMOs (if they are still around) do it. By "it" I mean, change core gameplay features over time as new stuff is added.

However, and this is a huge however, MMOs can only be played in multiplayer, and consequently, all players' client software must be identical. Players *have to* update to play with each other. This is not the same thing at all as a game like Stellaris which, although it can be played co-op, only requires (at most) the several co-op partners to have the same version of the game, with or without DLC (and mods), and not the same as all other players everywhere in the world. Additionally most MMOs use a subscription model (or something akin to it), and consequently they have to put out new content every couple of months or people will start to ask what they keep paying for. And finally, I would also point out that most MMOS (I don't play WOW but I played CoH/V for years, SWTOR for a couple of years, SWG, and a few others) put out regular small patches to fix bugs and do minor balance issues, and then put out major updates only every so often. This allows them to make small adjustments without having to do a mega-update just to fix, e.g., how war score works.

Anything in the 4X or Grand Strategy genre? Not at all. Civilizations 5 was on the market for almost 11 years, and it produced less than half the expansion than EU4 has produced in half the time.

This is a fair point... Civ gets expansions at about 1/4 the rate of EU4 or CK2, which shows that pdx is more invested in improving the gameplay. No question about that.

However, here is why I think it's a necessary evil.

If they hook a player with a game like Stellaris a launch, they'll find that player is happy to spend 20 dollars an expansion every 6 to 9 months. Or 10 dollars on a story pack. 8 dollars on a cosmetic expansion. If the customer base for their next expansion seems too small, if the barrier of entry for, say, EU4 gets to be too steep that they no longer feel they can sell enough copies of Mandate of Heaven, they put on a sale. When I got into EU4, it was during a massive sale. I spent around 40 bucks to get 120 dollars worth of software and expansions. Then I was hooked, invested, paid full price for Cossacks, Common Sense and Mare Nostrum. (CLIPPED FOR LENGTH)

Yes, I get it. I do not object to DLC.

What I object to is doing both balance passes and content increases at the same time. This is sometimes tried in MMOs per your WOW example and always -- always -- has disastrous results. The reason is, as I have said, because the variables involved make it impossible to do balance passes on old/existing content while at the same time adding new content that alters the balance ratios that were present in the first place. These things need to be done, and should be done, separately. Do the balance pass in a free update, and get it all fixed and working properly in the base game. Then release the content update into the now balanced (or at least more balanced) game.

I write computer code for a living. It's scientific, not commercial, but this is something I am very careful to avoid. I do not do bug fixes at the same time as adding new features to the software. If I did, and something blew up, I wouldn't know if my bug fix (or balance pass in game terms) was flawed, or if the new feature was flawed. I fix a few things at a time, and iterate after that to make sure the fixes are actual fixes and didn't break something else (as they seem to do more often than not)l. Similarly I make sure the new feature I just added doesn't break any of the old stuff.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

that method works fine for one coder and perhaps small projects, but larger multidiscipline teams can't focus to that degree. At any rate delaying the start of DLC development to concentrate entirely on bugfixing also means you get much less time to iterate on the DLC systems - which is deeply problematic.

in any case, Stellaris isn't nearly as fragile as an MMO. Major systems changes will change up the gameplay, but even flawed systems won't wreck the game. MMOs are tightly controlled experiences by comparison, and players are encouraged to invest dozens to thousands of hours into particular characters; big changes can piss them off and for good reason. In Stellaris you have little commitment beyond your current game.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

What I object to is doing both balance passes and content increases at the same time. This is sometimes tried in MMOs per your WOW example and always -- always -- has disastrous results. The reason is, as I have said, because the variables involved make it impossible to do balance passes on old/existing content while at the same time adding new content that alters the balance ratios that were present in the first place. These things need to be done, and should be done, separately. Do the balance pass in a free update, and get it all fixed and working properly in the base game. Then release the content update into the now balanced (or at least more balanced) game.

And yet, assertions to the contrary, I have two PDX titles that prove it does work. They release balance patches along with content patches. More often than not the content actually aids to the balance, rarely are the results disastrous and when they are, hot fixes and rapid adjustments can be made.

I write computer code for a living. It's scientific, not commercial, but this is something I am very careful to avoid. I do not do bug fixes at the same time as adding new features to the software. If I did, and something blew up, I wouldn't know if my bug fix (or balance pass in game terms) was flawed, or if the new feature was flawed. I fix a few things at a time, and iterate after that to make sure the fixes are actual fixes and didn't break something else (as they seem to do more often than not)l. Similarly I make sure the new feature I just added doesn't break any of the old stuff.

One, by treating the two goals as completely separate, you're discounting the possibility that a balance issue can be resolved by new content.

Two, trial and error is not the only way to determine cause and effect. If you know how gravity, density and air resistance works, you don't need to throw things up in the air one at a time to predict that the feather is going to land slower than the ball and you don't need to invoke Aristotle's famous non-answer to explain it. Similarly, if you know missiles are experiencing overkill because their initial four salvos always target the lead enemy ship, you know that randomizing missile targets will increase overall damage in large numbers and decrease kill count in small numbers. If you put missiles on an independent targeting track that allows them to redirect if their current target is destroyed, you know that will prevent any sort of massive overkill and your dps numbers become more accurate. If you put missiles on an independent targeting track that allows them to continue their flight even if their launcher has been destroyed, you know you can eliminate the damage penalty they suffer from flight time.

Now, to make all of these changes at once will add a level of unpredictability. But on the flip side, to add only one change at a time slows things down unnecessarily. Perfect accuracy may be necessary in scientific coding, but this is a video game and in a video game I'd prefer to have a good enough fix now, instead of a perfect fix later.