Should DLC Policy change be considered?

[InvisibleBison]

Continuous addition of features which have not been part of the original vision, a.k.a. "Agile development" is a bad approach for games development.

It may be good for the revenues of the developer or for pumping the playtime hours of the player, but the best strategy games were not the result of Agile development but of clear and holistic vision for what the game should be. Patches were aimed at balancing factions, and the number of expansions was 1-2, with some QoL features.

Ceaser 3, StarCraft, Age of Empires, Red Alert/Command & Conquer.

I'd say this development model is stopping Paradox from producing a true masterpiece of strategy gaming. Only for CK2 I could say that it's got one foot inside the pantheon.

Quality is subjective. Of the games that you've mentioned, the only one that I've played is Age of Empires, and I'd say that it's nowhere near as good as any of the Paradox games that I've played.

 

[Cysiek]

Not true, if you are comparing content. Player bases are incomparable, though Paradox games still can't compete with the best RTSs of the old generation.

I am sorry, but I don't see how one can play Ceasar 3 or AoE and say that those have more content than any modern PDX title. All of the games you mentioned are much simpler and have much smaller replayability value (in SP, MP is only important for some people) than modern titles.

 

[johnty5]

Rather than having paid and free features, I think it could be healthier long term for the game if all the features were available to all players. The paid content would be for flavour and cosmetics.

I actually think this has been the direction of travel over the last few years.

CK3's first expansion was a flavour pack that you'd only need if you wanted to play that particular region and the big mechanical change of the upcoming Royal Court expansion (dynamic cultures) is, at least partially, in the free patch - with flavour aspects (the royal court itself and the flavour stuff built on top of the dynamic cultures) being the paid content.

That means that mechanical changes can be built on - rather than being gated behind DLC purchases - and make the DLC more optional. I think Stellaris DLC has similarly been heading in that direction of late.

Certainly a big departure from early EU4 DLC where big mechanics changes in DLC meant you were playing a wildly different game depending on whether you had a particular DLC or not.