im kicking around at 1.5k hours in eu4, Its been great value for me.
Never said the game itself is a great value.
Fun fact, this latest game is the first time I have ever played past the 1540s with one of the major euroscums. Time to see what an english great brittain is like.
So in your mind it's alright it took four iterations to reach that point?
I more than got my money's worth. If I didn't, I wouldn't buy them.
Value is in relation to the base game, which was the entire point of this thread to begin with.
I just leave a few thoughts here. If you(ambiguous you, not directed at anyone) bought said DLC that makes a certain part of the game better, but never use it. You can only blame yourself for not using it. Assuming you did what a good consumer does, and looked into what you were buying, you would know what is there and what is not. Now, that is not counting companies/publishers intentionally hiding information to cover up their mistakes.(Rome 2) Allowing you to buy a faulty product.
Well, let's take Art of War, for example, which is hands down the best DLC ever to this point according to most people here. Let's look at every feature it has in the paid version (from the EUIV Wiki):
Mothball fleets: Great, but I stopped doing it because I don't want to wait 6-8 months for my fleets to become 100% after a war begins. Too much micromanagement.
Upgrade individual fleets: This is an awesome update. But really, why did it take three extra iterations to include this as a feature? It's been an issue since at least EUII and I assume, though have not played, EUI.
Sell fleets: Never once used this. I can only assume the value of it is if you are wealthy and are trying to boost up a vassal or a recently damaged ally. Seriously, does anyone use this?
Auto transport: Would be a great feature if it wasn't so broken. Fleets don't enter ports so if friendly to friendly province, it takes far longer than it should. It takes generals last so if trying to take an island back from rebels and not enough transports for your full army, your general comes last. Sometimes that is the difference between beating the rebels and losing your army. It also has this stupid thing where if transporting from say Neva to some place in England, it will bring your troops to somewhere in Denmark, then repick them up on the other side rather than go straight to England.
March: Never used this, but that is actually due to my own ignorance. I only remember ever reading "cannot be annexed." I thought march status was permanent, but apparently growing them to over 60 basetax removes the status. This is a useful feature I will begin to use in future games.
Revamped peace mechanic: Useful, but could have easily been with the base game.
Templates: Useful in theory, but I never use them because every time I try to make one, it wants to build my entire army or navy in one province rather than spreading it out like "build all mercenaries" does. I am sure there is a way to make this work properly, but I have not figured it out. I planned on making a thread on this but forgot.
Cardinal system: Neat idea, but like most others, I leave Catholicism once the Reformation begins. Should have been with the base game anyways.
Sorties: Sorties don't end sieges where the opposition has a similar strength unit in the province. The only value I've found for sorties is to sortie right before your army arrives for the additional manpower bonus. Though I don't know if this hurts generals at all as I am still unsure if only the first units tactics are used or if the highest ranked generals tactics are used. Either way, this option, while nice in theory and probably better for multiplayer, has gone into the dustbin for me.
Transfer occupation: This here is the one game changing feature of the entire Art of War patch. This here allows vassal feeding unlike ever before. It is an extremely important feature, but really should have been standard with EUIII if not even EUII. I don't know how many times I was annoyed in the past because an ally beat me to a province I wanted to siege one or two game days prior to me.
Allied objectives: Great idea, but usually only works with your subjects and even then it's spotty. I select provinces nearby subjects to be besieged all the time and sometimes they siege them... most of the time they don't.
Subject military focuses: I experimented with these and found they can be useful, but generally let subjects do what they want.
Army builder: The problem is like I said before. I don't know why it doesn't work properly for me, but when it says it will take 35,000 days for my fleet of 100 to be completed. Well, then you know there is an issue.
Peace improvements: War reparations is a neat idea. I almost never use concede defeat anymore as I'd rather three prestige and ducats over 10 prestige. Nations don't always show their disapproval. I had France lose over 50 favor with me because I didn't give them a core/claim. Their shields are not listed next to the provinces like mine and there was no red thumbs down.
Declare war in support of rebels: Since supporting rebels rarely seems to work, especially later in game, I've never used this. My fault? I guess?
Fight for your subjects: Great feature.
Client states: Never use them. They come late in game and I like annexing as many provinces as possible. Not releasing them. I see no point to ever do so.
Religious League Wars: I only see leagues form about half the time and never saw any icons for either league. I have no idea how to join them (I play mainly only Scandinavia). Usually I play as Protestant, but last time I was reformed. Education on this may help, but I am not sure I'd want to be drawn into a major war anyways where I am not war leader. Especially since vassal feeding makes capturing other religion provinces less important.
Canceling idea groups: Good idea, but should have been with the game. Either way, I've never canceled one yet. The only one I could think I would ever cancel is expansion ideas, but I don't take them anymore anyways.
Giving up cores: Why would anyone do this? To improve casus belli relations hits?
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So there you have it. That's what you get for $20. Compare that to the base game of $50 and you can see the value really, really lacks.
If someone wants to argue what should be DLC and what should be "free", then that is a debate worth having. If you think the price for what is being offered is not worth what you are getting, then you can wait on buying or not buying it at all.
Transfer occupation is a game changing feature. That's what makes the Art of War a must have in my opinion. But that doesn't mean that at $20 it is anywhere near the value of the base game. It simply is not.
As far as gaming in general. The more I look around, the more I see games now a days costing more, but offering less content than their predecessors. They also seem to be half done. Glaring bugs(and Paradox isn't immune to this.) that are left in the game for way too long if they are patched at all. On top of all that, there are companies that make you pay extra, just to get some fairly basic stuff added to the game that should/could of been there from the start.(or small stuff that wouldn't take that long to make)
one can only hope that one day, gaming in general gets better. Until then, I am a fan on waiting a few months or years before you buy something. Maybe by then, bugs will be removed, the game plays like it should, and you get what you think you should out of the game in terms of time and money.
This is often true, especially with companies such as EA. One of the reasons I have stuck with Paradox for so many years is how much they support their games. Patches go years after a game is released and this occurred even before they began releasing DLC. This is also why I am a huge fan of CDProjektRed. For their "The Witcher" games, they keep getting bigger and all their DLC is free. The original Witcher was re-released as the Enhanced Edition and added many features and eventually even a director's cut. The third is out next week and I have it pre-ordered. The game is massive compared to the second and has already received great pre-release reviews. It is what is causing me to take a break from EUIV.
IMost of us buy the DLCs to support the continued development of the underlying game - the vast majority of new/improved content is now distributed for free with the main patches. Sure, that means some people will be free riders, but enough won't, and enough find it worthwhile to get the extra events, merchants, and what not that lurk behind the paywall.
I don't buy DLC for the continued development of a game. I buy it for what it gives me. WWII Online has builders to continue their development. Those are essentially donations with some mild perks (such as a statue with a users name on it). I would be fine with that. Have an EUIV builders program. Donate so much money and maybe have a general named after you or something. But you are admitting what i said in the original thread is true. The value of DLC is low compared to the base game.
Actually, why would you be buying any game or expansion new, if you're that price sensitive? They ALL come down in price in less than a year. And, if you're so enamored with the value inherent in EU3 (a great game for its time) it's still available for a song.
I imagine he creates a budget so he can buy some things. I also don't think the whole "price comes down in less than a year" is a good argument, though I've seen it a lot. The value of the DLC does change when that happens, for sure. But the point here is when it's at full price or just released, it is not a very good value.
Inflation per year at 3% would mean that they should have increased the price by 20% from 2007 (EU3) to 2013 (EU4). I feel that I get more than €3 in added value and features from EU4 compared to EU3, even adjusting for the changes in average application quality.
And if the gaming industry in general did that, I would understand it. I would rather see full price right away than pay full price over time. I don't need credit.
And that's assuming similar dev team sizes. In fact, it seems that with the increased size of the dev team, we're getting quite a bargain. Probably because the franchise has grown in popularity, allowing them to better amortize the costs among the player base.
Gamers don't care about the size of a development team. Mortal Kombat Trilogy for my N64 was $80 when it was first released in 1996. Mortal Kombat X will be about $60. I would imagine their development team has also greatly expanded.
You kinda implied it when you said that launches are incomplete now and referred to EU3 for when things were better.
EU3 wasn't very complete after 2-3 expansions. Are you saying that EU4 dosen't feel relatively complete if you buy 40-60 dollars of DLC?
Are you alright that EUIII was not very complete until after 2-3 expansions?
But it hasn't failed. If it had, they wouldn't do it anymore
Nor have micro-transactions from most any cellphone or EA game. Just because they work doesn't mean they are right.
EU4 at launch was as fully featured as EU3 was after all it's expansions. Everything they add to it afterwards is extra - extra features, extra development, and therefore extra cost.
Not really as the base was already in place. I am sure a large part of the code has been copied over. But EU III was launched what? Six years prior? EUIV should be much bigger. It's kind of like saying Doom III is all extra compared to Doom I plus all the episodes. It's not even comparable due to the changes in games in general.
But it's not the same game, at all. Feature by feature, art content by art content, data by data, EU4 is a tremendously larger and better made game in every respect. You may not like it or the ways that it's a larger game, but to state otherwise is either being blind to nostalgia or willfully ignoring reality to prove a point.[/QUOTE]
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