Dear
@Alzara
So I will risk poking my ha'penny's worth into this discussion as well, as given by your responses to others in this thread you do seem to be asking out of genuine enquiry. Something of a wall of text follows, not all of it original. Hope it doesn't bore you to tears. My feelings are my own etc.
For me it comes down to this
1 - History. I have a history with Paradox that is nearly 15 years old - less than some but more than most. By any measure I have a stupid number of posts on these forums. I have seen things go really well, and I have seen things go really quite poorly. And yet, whenever things did go poorly, things got turned around. Therefore PDS have proven to me that if they are not happy with an end product they will keep chipping away at it. The game that really demonstrated this to me was Crusader Kings I, which is a good few years old now. Though there have been moments in other games now and then too.
Of course, someone who has come to PDS games more recently does not have this history. They may be more used to (in my experience) other game companies which leave games in a very poor state. Thing is - mistakes happen. With the best will in the world mistakes happen. What matters is not that you make mistakes - some are, ultimately, unavoidable. What matters is what happens afterwards. That is what can create loyalty. So if you see some folks be loyal to PDS perhaps you might reflect that there is a reason for that loyalty.
Also, there is a difference between folks who are new, and folks who have been around a while. It has happened before, it will happen again. I remember when HoI1 was released, and there was actually some tension between portions of the EU crowd and the HoI crowd. Thing is, from the perspective of a newcomer today the EU2 vet and the HoI1 vet who might have been grumbling at each other 14 years ago both look identical to the newcomer of today. In five years' time I reckon some of the folks criticising Stellaris today will be being named "Paradox fanboys" or whatever the phrase will be in five years' time.
Of course, if PDS suddenly turns into EA I retract that prediction
2 - Age. Whilst there are certainly plenty of younger folks who play Paradox games too, I also have always gotten the impression that the PDS market skews old compared to many computer games. That may be incorrect, but with age also
tends to come a certain perspective - just how bad is it? Generalising here, when someone is younger something can appear gamebreaking. Older folks may be more relaxed about it, having seen altogether more games, more bugs, etc. over their lives. (nb I do appreciate you can get chilled out younger folks and irate older folks, I am talking in generalities in this point).
As an example, when I read about the DoW bug in 1.6 I just went and completed my HoI4 game, figuring by the time I was done it would be fixed. And lo, it was.
3 - Size. PDS remains a relatively small company, and historically is a very small company, creating pretty much niche games. With the partial exception of Stellaris I would say they are all still niche games - if now known to a wider audience. The relative size of the company and the niche-ness of the market means quite a close relationship between the community and the developers - closer I would wager than any major game company.
However, the relatively small size also means that mistakes are probably less likely to get caught, at which point I refer you to point #1 above.
4 - Politeness. Some of those criticising things have been using rather intemperate language. That just rubs some folks up the wrong way. Especially if we think the folks they are criticising are good people at heart.
5 - Culture clash. I said earlier that Stellaris is a partial exception to PDS' history of niche games, for the simple reason from one perspective it is a simple 4x game, and 4x games are (thanks to the Civilization series) not really niche at all. So I think you have two groups with slightly different expectations and experiences. On the one hand you have the old PDS crowd, and then you have the 4x crowd. Now to be sure there is some overlap - but I am fairly sure more PDSers have played 4x than the other way around. (Also note, this is another generalisation so caveat emptor).
6 - QA is hard. This is more a personal one, as my own experience of working in IT is that QA is far far far harder than anyone gives it credit to be. Even other folks who work in IT settings. I think QA would be especially hard in PDS style games which are complex - in some cases (like CK2 is now) incredibly complex - with great player variability. On one level I think PDS is insane to try and make these games. But then PDS was founded by some crazy ex-Vikings and the gaming world is a better place for it.
Anyway, these are my thoughts. I suspect point #1 is really where your answer lies, but the rest perhaps provide context.
All the best
stnylan
