I don't want to Sim Britannia 4

[Bibor]

I don't mind paying the occasional 10-20 € bill to see the game refreshed.
I also don't mind smaller DLCs being a testing ground for future mechanics.

But, refreshing, at least in my limited knowedge of English, presumably means adding something fresh. Can't make chocolate milk with sour milk.

If it's really a "a wargame at its heart" (to quote Reman's latest video), one would presume it would at least at some point focus on some of the core aspects of wargames like resource balancing, proper naval combat (for a game set in Age of Sail, no less), army comp/movement/logistics.

If it's an empire-building game, one would presume new ways of handling development, a new repertoire of government forms and casus belli come in addition to actually having meaningful domestic empire management and enaging international politics.

It's all starting to smell pretty SimCity4-ey. Paradox, of all companies, should know how that story ended. The reason why it wasn't "history repeating" so far is because EU4 vanilla was an excellent product. But that still doesn't explain the €120+ DLC milking nonsese that came afterwards.

EDIT:

If I sound bitter, it's because I am. Is there anything wrong with EU4? Not by a long shot. But this is not about EU4, it's about long-term company policy.

Are we to expect future cosmetic changes and wait for proper naval and land warfare and diplomacy in EU5?

At some point, milking just becomes too obvious and I wonder if we, as players, were just plain lucky with what we got with vanilla EU4. Is vanilla EU4 the baseline for the quality we are to expect, or is it the development of the game from that point onward that is the reality? I didn't buy HOI4, but from the several dozen videos I watched, I find that game in a really bad shape. Superficial complexity and banal gameplay that lets you world conquest after a few weeks as Albania.

 

[Mortheim]

Are we to expect future cosmetic changes and wait for proper naval and land warfare and diplomacy in EU5?

Don't wait for EU5 until players accept current situation. They gain money -> they produce. Tbh if one of their 3 current secret projects is EU5 i will piss myself from happiness. Man, you can't leave to main menu - this shows how popular this game it is if they still milk it.

 

[Bibor]

Don't wait for EU5 until players accept current situation. They gain money -> they produce. Tbh if one of their 3 current secret projects is EU5 i will piss myself from happiness. Man, you can't leave to main menu - this shows how popular this game it is if they still milk it.

EU4 has no real competitor, except its own games. I'd love to see Russians develop an EU4 killer, like they did with Panzer Corps and King's Bounty. Similar with Witcher 3 that gave a huge slap to Bethesda.

 

[Mortheim]

EU4 has no real competitor, except its own games. I'd love to see Russians develop an EU4 killer, like they did with Panzer Corps and King's Bounty. Similar with Witcher 3 that gave a huge slap to Bethesda.

EU4 has good background - it has 3 previous games and boardgame.
There was game "Knights of Honor", but it wasn't real competitor.
As i see it - they need to accept and move on or somehow find newblood that will question their current ideas. Cause their solutions remind me of one quote on this forum from one interesting guy "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

 

[rauyran]

I don't mind paying the occasional 10-20 € bill to see the game refreshed.
It's all starting to smell pretty SimCity4-ey. Paradox, of all companies, should know how that story ended. The reason why it wasn't "history repeating" so far is because EU4 vanilla was an excellent product. But that still doesn't explain the €120+ DLC milking nonsese that came afterwards.

I don't get this attitude at all. You can buy EU4 for the flat ~$40 and have a great game that will last you hundreds of hours. You can spend ~$10-20 on a DLC to get another 100 hours of gameplay easily.

For a game company to remain in business they need regular income, so there are 2 main models:

1) release a new game every 2 years for ~$40
2) release a new game every 10 years for ~$40, plus optional DLCs for ~$10-20 every 6 months

You seem to want a 3rd alternative:

3) release a base game for ~$40 and new content forever and for free

Why would any game company do that? Their income would be solely from new sales or merch so the game would have to be simplistic so it appeals to as many people as possible. This is where Minecraft is. I'd rather play games developed by companies that love making games, not licensing t-shirts and movies.

 

[Gornova]

I think that a good move for Paradox and in particular for EUIV will be release it for free!
Imagine.. EUIV fan base can expand a lot.. a good way to take another people into the paradox loop for other games ( stellaris, HoI4, etc...) and push DLCs buys.. if core game is free and is huge, any new player can invest in some small DLCs.. right ?

Right now EUIV is more a platform to sell DLCs over time, so lower the barrier is a good choice, even for future plans to create EUV.

Note: it's something that even Blizzard, for Starcraft 2, is doing

 

[Bibor]

I don't get this attitude at all. You can buy EU4 for the flat ~$40 and have a great game that will last you hundreds of hours. You can spend ~$10-20 on a DLC to get another 100 hours of gameplay easily.

You miss my point completely.

Yes, you can buy EU4 for the flat $40 and have:
a) no hours of gameplay, because you can finish a few semesters of university, considering the time you have to invest into forums and wiki to learn the game. This is how my CK2 game time looks like. I bougt it and gave up because CBA to invest that much energy after CIV4 and EU4.
b) hundreds of hours of gameplay because the game is good value/money
c) thousands of hours of gameplay for the same reason

Once you get to hundreds/thousands hours of gametime you're presented with the option to expand on the game that you learned to love and hate and spend double/triple the original amount of money. Is it a bargain? Yes. Did I get what was sorely needed? No.

It's a free market. And the free market spirit says "why am I paying for something (cosmetic changes) that modders already do for free? Would it not be reasonable to expect meaningful changes to gameplay mechanics?

To be perfectly fair, EXPANDED DIPLOMACY and BETTER FONT MOD (personal preference, but you get the point) are more crucial to gameplay than half the DLCs combined. I guess it would be okay then for PDOX to kill those mods and charge 100€ for their functionality.

 

[rauyran]

It's a free market. And the free market spirit says "why am I paying for something (cosmetic changes) that modders already do for free? Would it not be reasonable to expect meaningful changes to gameplay mechanics?

To be perfectly fair, EXPANDED DIPLOMACY and BETTER FONT MOD (personal preference, but you get the point) are more crucial to gameplay than half the DLCs combined. I guess it would be okay then for PDOX to kill those mods and charge 100€ for their functionality.

I think you are missing the point. The game has changed its mechanics in meaningful ways since its release 5 years ago. You're missing them because the changes have been incremental and over a long period. Things like the fort system, claim fabrication, development, institutions or the age mechanic. In this upcoming release there is a huge mechanics change: the mission system.

Paradox have a vision for the game they want to make and little by little they are evolving it from the 5 year old base they started with. They haven't made all the changes they want to yet because it takes time to create them. Luckily they support a vibrant mod community so you're free to keep the base game and add as many mods as you like to make your own variation. You have complete power.

 

[Bibor]

The game has changed its mechanics in meaningful ways since its release 5 years ago. You're missing them because the changes have been incremental and over a long period.

And yet, with all the changes, the game still revolves around killing the enemy to win. I didn't miss the changes, they are just not what I'm talking about.

It's bizarre that at the fundamental level, SimCity 4 or Cities:Skylines model EU4 better than EU4. I see EU4 as sim city with units and competing cities. Because that's what it tries to simulate. If that's the case, then it's quite logical that at some point, at least two cities will grow together in numerous ways, ways that an all-out war would absolutely devastate (including the economy).

It's these inter-national connections that the game (developers) decided to almost completely ignore. For no apparent reason.

In EU4, every nation is it's own castle, it's own means to it's own ends, nations that simply refuse to acknowledge that they need other nations to thrive.

 

[XYN]

You miss my point completely.

Yes, you can buy EU4 for the flat $40 and have:
a) no hours of gameplay, because you can finish a few semesters of university, considering the time you have to invest into forums and wiki to learn the game. This is how my CK2 game time looks like. I bougt it and gave up because CBA to invest that much energy after CIV4 and EU4.
b) hundreds of hours of gameplay because the game is good value/money
c) thousands of hours of gameplay for the same reason

Once you get to hundreds/thousands hours of gametime you're presented with the option to expand on the game that you learned to love and hate and spend double/triple the original amount of money. Is it a bargain? Yes. Did I get what was sorely needed? No.

It's a free market. And the free market spirit says "why am I paying for something (cosmetic changes) that modders already do for free? Would it not be reasonable to expect meaningful changes to gameplay mechanics?

To be perfectly fair, EXPANDED DIPLOMACY and BETTER FONT MOD (personal preference, but you get the point) are more crucial to gameplay than half the DLCs combined. I guess it would be okay then for PDOX to kill those mods and charge 100€ for their functionality.

There isn't that much learning. PDX games may look "deep", but they are pretty shallow. The only thing that really gives challenge is the ever changing mechanics. One day you can get fleet access and colonize Americas, next day you can't. Or, one day you can declare a war and attack directly from your transport ships, and then in a new patch they become exiled, and then in yet another patch they are reverted to the original.

 

[jdavis86]

Do we have any evidence that Paradox is financially incentivized to not improve the areas OP mentions?

I have a feeling that if the dev team had a brilliant idea for improving naval, it would be in the game by now. Heck not a single Paradox title has a good naval system.

EU4 has always been a title that struggled with deeper, interactive systems. OP is right about that. Devs add new stuff instead of fleshing out existing systems.

Some things I think are too core to hope for improvement at this point.

 

[SolSys]

And yet, with all the changes, the game still revolves around killing the enemy to win. I didn't miss the changes, they are just not what I'm talking about.

It's bizarre that at the fundamental level, SimCity 4 or Cities:Skylines model EU4 better than EU4. I see EU4 as sim city with units and competing cities. Because that's what it tries to simulate. If that's the case, then it's quite logical that at some point, at least two cities will grow together in numerous ways, ways that an all-out war would absolutely devastate (including the economy).

It's these inter-national connections that the game (developers) decided to almost completely ignore. For no apparent reason.

In EU4, every nation is it's own castle, it's own means to it's own ends, nations that simply refuse to acknowledge that they need other nations to thrive.

And... you want to tell me you did not stumble into such situations? In EU4?!