I know that this isn't typically the way that Paradox does things (at least not on a very large scale), but I've been thinking. A lot of Paradox (read almost all of Paradox) games come out in what is essentially a beta state. It takes several patches until they really even get playable, and generally the fielding of one expansion or mega-mod before they get replayable for a very long time (TRP for HOI 2, DV for Crusader Kings, Revolutions+VIP for Victoria, ect). In the meantime you have a huge number of idle gamers who come, get very frustrated with what appears to them is an unfinished product (and in all fairness, is an unfinished product), and then leave vowing never to play Paradox games again. So why not have a public beta for pre-order customers? Stardock does this quite well and often very far in advance and means that a lot of your bigger problems are ironed out by the hardcore gamers who will love paradox games regardless of initial faults, which means that they aren't alienating those casual gamers who would actually like the game after a few patches, but aren't willing to stick around because the game that they get just out of the box isn't playable by most modern gaming standards. That would make Paradox money (by alienating fewer of its non-core purchasers) and improve reception by a lot of the hardcore gaming community that pre-orders by giving them some ownership in the design process.
Anyways, just throwing that out there. I don't expect paradox to do anything of this nature for HOI 3, but in the future this may be something to consider implementing for the above reasons.
Anyways, just throwing that out there. I don't expect paradox to do anything of this nature for HOI 3, but in the future this may be something to consider implementing for the above reasons.
