well yes, but what good is that for me? sure its available so its technichally there, but what good does a map extension where 90% of it isnt playable do me?
The Train Simulator sindrome
- Thread starter duhsveti
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
well yes, but what good is that for me? sure its available so its technichally there, but what good does a map extension where 90% of it isnt playable do me?
Sure it's playable. Nothing stops any vanilla player from playing within India.
You just need to crawl over there the slow way
You just need to crawl over there the slow way
I don't think your friend needs to be able to play any country in the game in order to figure out if he likes CK2 or not.
We used to have these things called "demos" that would only let you play one level. Sometimes they would only give you one gun to shoot with...
We used to have these things called "demos" that would only let you play one level. Sometimes they would only give you one gun to shoot with...
I can't even remember how Ethiopia and Mali looked without the African Portraits...
Which might be why there's a "Download Demo" link on the Steam Store page or over at crusaderkings.com. I... haven't played it so I'm honestly clueless as to what it is (Paradox has earned my auto-buy).
There are a few ways to answer this.
1)Dollars per hour. It's a HIGHLY flawed argument, but it's not completely incorrect. I have about 1000 hours. I most certainly did not buy 100% of the DLC at full retail price, but I do own 100% of the DLC. So if you want to look at it this way, I pay 15 cents an hour. And I have fun.
2)Different DLC should be in different categories. There are 7 Expansion Packs. This is where most of the money goes. But, because Paradox is AWESOME, none of them are required. If you play as a traditional Western European Monarch for one or two hundred hours and you start thinking "Hrmm... I bet it might be fun to play as the Arabs or the Buddhists" then go ahead and spend 10 or 15 bucks or however much the one DLC you're looking at costs. These are old school expansion packs. No one should honestly have an issue with these. There are 21 graphics packs. These are truly just to add flavor to the game. There are 11 music packs. Honestly... these add a bit more flavor to the game than portraits and units. The music *IS* amazing, but trust me, at 1000 hours, it's nice to hear a change-up. Then there are a handful of other things. Sunset is basically a neat "what if" expansion pack, and then there's fun fluff like the character customization and the (very neat but not quite perfect) converter for us hardcore fans.
3)Tip Jar.
This is the way I look at it. There are SOOOOOOOOOO many practices that Paradox commits to that might cost them money, such as not REQUIRING that everyone have the same DLC. This might cost them money. But it causes me to love them even more. I'm okay paying a little bit more to ensure that they continue pumping out awesomeness. There's absolutely *NO ONE* else that's going to make these games. I'm not saying you should always put the full retail amount into the tip jar, but........ you should put a bit every now and then.
Plus... for those who are interested in the business side of it... buying the extra stuff really DOES help keep some of the people at Paradox employed. PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong on this. Please. But, to my understanding, everything is done in-house. The musicians/programmers who are the ones making the musical DLC are Paradox people (same goes for the graphics people, but I'm using music people as the current example). They release a full game every year and a half or so. Trust me, there isn't a year and change of work in the base game for those employees. Normal developers let their employees go all the time, or they hire out independent people from the outside all the time. This isn't a bad practice mind you. Jeremy Soule, for example, makes amazing music. But I'm pretty sure Paradox (the Dev Studio, not the publishing company) doesn't have the capability to have that kind of turnover in team. So... when I buy musical DLC... I'm helping to ensure that the musicians stay on board and are there for the next game, ensuring consistent quality. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong on that particular part.
And c'mon... how much do people normally pay for music when they buy retail? Averages around a buck, right? Let's look at a random music DLC. 99 cents for Songs of Byzantium which includes three tracks that add up to 11 minutes. Now... I know most of us aren't loading these tracks up on our mp3 players to jam to on the way to work, but still... it's a good value! I sometimes think back to my old JRPG days on my Nintendo as a kid and how the music just got horribly monotonous, no matter how good it was. With the DLC, you can at least get a nice variety.
Anywayz... those are the three points. I *may* have gotten a bit long-winded, but I think I got just essence conveyed. Just tell them to get the demo (20 years, no save, full-featured otherwise) and then explain all this to them.
Good times.
Except they don't really. MP will usually crash hardcore if someone is running DLC and another guy isn't.
This never happened in my MP games. Only the host had DLC activated and everyone had access to the extra features.
Its a common error that happens that we always try to catch but anything in the Expansion can cause it so from time to time it slips through. If there is any such issue right now you should report it. I usually fix these kind of issues really quickly unless something else major is holding me up.
I remember there was the case where SoA could cause a crash because if you didn't have SoA you didn't create a college of cardinals so when you joined a game with SoA bad things happened. Probably the one you are thinking about.
Honestly, what I'd love to see is a time limit, after which the DLC is folded into the base game. So, after 2 years, any previous DLC would just be incorporated into the main game through patches... So Legacy of Rome would be now included in the next patch, along with Sword of Islam and The Republic. These are DLC that routinely sell for less than $5 (LoR is $1.25 at 75% off, SoI and TR would be $2.50 each), and yet it's really just the principle of the thing. People are (still) shelling out money for the original game that's been out for almost 3 years, but having to add all of the DLC (let alone the face packs, unit packs, etc) just seems to be nickle-and-diming them. I know that a couple of my friends have been turned off by the prospect to the point that they haven't even bothered getting into the game at all... :-\
Many gaming companies do this, as they'll put out the main game, then a couple of DLCs, and after a year or so they'll wrap all of the DLCs (and the main game) into one and just sell that. For example, I don't think you can buy the original Witcher 2 game anymore, as the only one that's for sale is the Enhanced Edition that folds ~2 DLCs into the main game. Or Far Cr 3 folds all four DLCs into a Deluxe Bundle and sells it for $10.
I just wonder if there could be some house-cleaning that could be done to make the game less intimidating for someone looking at buying it?
Many gaming companies do this, as they'll put out the main game, then a couple of DLCs, and after a year or so they'll wrap all of the DLCs (and the main game) into one and just sell that. For example, I don't think you can buy the original Witcher 2 game anymore, as the only one that's for sale is the Enhanced Edition that folds ~2 DLCs into the main game. Or Far Cr 3 folds all four DLCs into a Deluxe Bundle and sells it for $10.
I just wonder if there could be some house-cleaning that could be done to make the game less intimidating for someone looking at buying it?
Overall, for a better selling vision t the players, there should be a CK2 pack with the game and only the gameplay DLC. This would avoid people getting scared because they see a game for 200$ with tons of DLC when in the end it's mostly songs and shiny models that are creating the DLC number.
I agree that Paradox needs to improve/update their pricing. Reduce the price of some old, near-essential DLC, like the Old Gods and Legacy of Rome (5$ to 4-3$) and make an actual Complete Pack. Also, fuse some of the DLC together, like all the Dynasty Shields sold as a pack or have their price reduced by 1/3.
Also, on the Paradox store, some DLC are even pricier than on the Steam store!
Also, on the Paradox store, some DLC are even pricier than on the Steam store!
On a somewhat related note, when I went to purchase the super complete or whatever from Steam, there is no option to subtract what you've already purchased. As I already had CKII and maybe one or two DLCs, I didn't want to re-pay for them. I would have loved to purchase every DLC, however, I only purchased the biggest expansions since I couldn't be bothered to check if every $1 item was already downloaded or not and making that many clicks was way too time consuming! Let's make it easier to complete the package on Steam.
The amount of DLC definitely turns people away, but if you're encouraging someone to try CK2 out the demo helps a lot. I was skeptical about this expensive map-staring game for a long time, but once I tried the demo out I immediately understood that this game could be my cocaine
If CKII goes the trainsim syndrome, does that mean we'll get a Japan-themed DLC sometime in the future?
To be fair that's not in PDX's power, that's just how steam handles bundles. If you re-buy components within a bundle you neither get an extra key nor a giftable copy, also you can forget about substracting the cost of components you already own. Nothing Paradox can do here that is how steam works. It is a lot better now that you can actually see on first glance if you already own something without even navigating to the game or dlc buy page though. But I feel you I had to make a whole goddamn list of components I already owned and crossed through the ones I bought bit by bit, it was a huge hassle. Also for EU IV it's totally screwed for dlc that consists of more than one component. I definitely own things like Call-to-Arms, the Pre-Order-Pack and the "Digital Extreme Edition upgrade pack" (good lord who the f. comes up with these names) and none of these three are marked as "owned" for me, so you can't always trust this new feature.
By the way a question just popped up for me, can you actually play the demo in multiplayer or is it singleplayer only?
Last edited:
Yeah, it was probably SoA.
But it seems like the error log was quite often crashing due to dynasty shield/portrait stuff.
MP is crashing and desyncing anyway. It doesn't really matter if you have the same DLCs or not.