Understanding strange attitude of Paradox loyalists

[Drowe]

For me it's very simple, if I go through my steam library and look at the time I've played the various games in there, out of the 5 games I've played the most, 4 are Paradox titles. Each of them I've played for more than 200 hours, Stellaris has 460 hours. I've paid about 60€ for the game so far, that's currently 0.13€ per hour, I would call that 60€ well spent.

Another thing is the lack of comparable titles, there are simply no or very few games equivalent to Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings or Hearts of Iron. And in my opinion, Stellaris is in the same position. For me, Stellaris is not a 4X game and can therefore not really be compared to games like MoO or GalCiv, that's like comparing a fighter jet with a jumbo jet because they are both airplanes. They have vastly different scales.

From my perspective, the Paradox developers have earned the goodwill and trust, I extend to them by making games that I enjoy playing and by continuing to develop their games until long after other companies would have stopped development. They earn my goodwill and respect through admitting when something went badly wrong and fixing it very quickly, like with the 1.6 update. Yes I know the game isn't perfect, there are a lot of things I personally would like to see improved or extended. But none of them are things that make the game unplayable for me. And since I want the game to get even better than it already is, I am willing to invest in it by buying the DLCs so that they can continue to do so.

This doesn't mean, that I particularly like the inevitable bugs that come with each major update, but as a software developer I can understand why they happen. I would prefer it if they pushed back the release date if their schedule and reality don't match up, I think that would curtail the, often well deserved, criticism. But they may not have much of that much choice about release dates, as many assume. PDS is owned by their publisher in a very literal way.

 

[Alzara]

Just wanted to add something now I've had a chance to review several responses.

I have noticed that several people have questioned me on the nature of "crippling" bugs. Now I understand that some people place more emphasis on certain bugs over others, but there evidently are several that truly are crippling regardless of personal opinion.

I will highlight a couple off the top of my head:

Governing ethics attraction does nothing. This is crippling as it removes an entire aspect of gameplay and introduces a disadvantage to many spiritualistic societies where they would otherwise have an advantage.

Having no food has no consequences. I do not need to comment further. You cannot disagree that this is a crippling gameplay bug.

Missiles are a huge disadvantage and have been for a long time. This is massively unbalancing and hence crippling for gameplay. It has also been an issue since many patches ago.

Now, I'm not really complaining or being dramatic here, but I have named but a few of the plethora of continuing problems that still exist presently (one of which has been a problem since the start). If anyone could explain how these are not crippling that would be great. In my mind they are all game breaking issues.

 

[LiberiusX]

Just wanted to add something now I've had a chance to review several responses.

I have noticed that several people have questioned me on the nature of "crippling" bugs. Now I understand that some people place more emphasis on certain bugs over others, but there evidently are several that truly are crippling regardless of personal opinion.

I will highlight a couple off the top of my head:

Governing ethics attraction does nothing. This is crippling as it removes an entire aspect of gameplay and introduces a disadvantage to many spiritualistic societies where they would otherwise have an advantage.

Having no food has no consequences. I do not need to comment further. You cannot disagree that this is a crippling gameplay bug.

Missiles are a huge disadvantage and have been for a long time. This is massively unbalancing and hence crippling for gameplay. It has also been an issue since many patches ago.

Now, I'm not really complaining or being dramatic here, but I have named but a few of the plethora of continuing problems that still exist presently (one of which has been a problem since the start). If anyone could explain how these are not crippling that would be great. In my mind they are all game breaking issues.

I mean thats fine and all, and I'll add one: Factions do nothing, unlike what we were told about how they were supposed to work. i.e. make large empires potentially unstable...you know like in every other PDS game.

To me, that's disappointing, but not crippling.

The missile thing is a pet peeve of mine as well, and a large reason why I haven't played since Leviathans was released, because that's when I noticed they were really messed up(and many other people did too).

I can ignore certain things and some things irritate me, but the missile and faction thing are why I don't think I'll buy Utopia, though I have moments of weakness.......

 

[Alzara]

I mean thats fine and all, and I'll add one: Factions do nothing, unlike what we were told about how they were supposed to work. i.e. make large empires potentially unstable...you know like in every other PDS game.

To me, that's disappointing, but not crippling.

The missile thing is a pet peeve of mine as well, and a large reason why I haven't played since Leviathans was released, because that's when I noticed they were really messed up(and many other people did too).

I can ignore certain things and some things irritate me, but the missile and faction thing are why I don't think I'll buy Utopia, though I have moments of weakness.......

Indeed. The missile thing is hugely unbalancing. Since that accounts for 1/3 of the weapons of the game, it is evidently unbalancing.

 

[LiberiusX]

Indeed. The missile thing is hugely unbalancing. Since that accounts for 1/3 of the weapons of the game, it is evidently unbalancing.

Most of the other things I can live with, because they affect every player, but the AI doesn't know not to open with or research missiles. That's pretty messed up. It's like when some of the Country AIs in EU4 didn't know that picking Espionage as one of their first few idea sets was a bad idea.

Also, this is partly why I chuckle at people complaining aboutt HOI4 but then praising Stellaris. At least all of the AI in HOI4 is equally stupid and players and AI alike are handicapped by the battle planner, so you can intentionally handicap your playthrough to give yourself a (frustrating) challenge.

I guess I could choose missiles as a starting weapon in Stellaris, but that doesn't help AI that chose missiles fighting AI with kinetics.

 

[Alzara]

Most of the other things I can live with, because they affect every player, but the AI doesn't know not to open with or research missiles. That's pretty messed up. It's like when some of the Country AIs in EU4 didn't know that picking Espionage as one of their first few idea sets was a bad idea.

Yes exactly.

 

[Kelarys]

I love Stellaris but it had/has many major bugs.


an example
only fixed in 1.5:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...lculation-in-ship-targeting-mechanism.984224/


or here, the unofficial patch which fixes things that are broken since 1.0

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=803752381&searchtext=risa

The AI rebellion is super broken :'(

The game has come along way but I don't agree with the way they address bug fixes.

Sometimes things are left broken because they want to do an overhaul of the feature in the future

Blizzard is the monster it is today because they polish their games to oblivion and back before introducing new things.

Despite all that I keep coming back, I find this game unique.

I have ~100 hours in the game, but I have NEVER finished a single game (as in I never got to late game). I always encounter bugs that make me restart to avoid them or just stop and wait for a patch.

Please pleaseeeee make bug fixing a priority, make portraits DLC or similar if you need my money, I don't mind, but only introduce new stuff after making sure the game in the current state is near bug free.

Make a DLC with new graphics/art I WILL THROW MORE MONEY AT YOU! but please fix things before adding new features

excuse my English not a native speaker

spread the word about the unofficial patch, maybe they will see it. I think they don't know about it.

I love new art.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Blizzard is the monster it is today because they polish their games to oblivion and back before introducing new things

Blizzard does also have (according to Wikipedia) 20 times more employees than PI, which does help

 

[Kelarys]

Blizzard does also have (according to Wikipedia) 20 times more employees than PI, which does help

they were small once too and it has always been their philosophy

if PDX needs more money make more graphics dlc I will buy it all

 

[SaphireSeas]

For me, Paradox is a great developer.

• They consistently fix bugs, even for games that have been out of development for years(eg Victoria II).
• They release beta patches and hotfixes within days, if not hours from Major, Game Breaking Bugs.

From my perspective, the Paradox developers have earned the goodwill and trust, I extend to them by making games that I enjoy playing and by continuing to develop their games until long after other companies would have stopped development. They earn my goodwill and respect through admitting when something went badly wrong and fixing it very quickly, like with the 1.6 update.

• They frequently release dev dairies to explain the direction the game is going(and familiarity leads to acceptance)
• They have a solid QA section, and a well designed forum, not to mention a friendly and helpful squad of forumites.

While PDX may have as many(or more) bugs in their games as any developer, they have a long history(In game development terms) of hard work, quick fixes, and reliability. That has earned them a little loyalty from many, despite the odd game-breaking bug.

Indeed. The missile thing is hugely unbalancing. Since that accounts for 1/3 of the weapons of the game, it is evidently unbalancing.

And I bet that because they are aware of the problem, they will take steps to re-balance or redesign the system in the next substantial patch, because that is what they've always done before.

 

[Darrenb209]

While I have my issues with Paradox, I respect them too much for what they have tried to do and how much effort they put into supporting their games to pick fights over anything short of gamebreakers.

Any other company would have abandoned CK2 years ago. It's over 5 years old now and has recently gained another decent DLC. EU4 is running up on 4 years and is also still getting support.

I can't find any game like those that are anywhere near as fun or that get anywhere near as much support.

I think the only time where I have been outright angry with Paradox was the 1.6 issue. They have some of the best customer support from any gaming company. They do actually listen to the players most of the time. They could be better, but they are already my favorite gaming company. I preorder their games when they seem interesting because I know that they will try and fix any issues. I know that I will get at the very least a decent game by the time they are finished.

Most of my games I barely play 50-60 hours on. My total across CK2, EU4 and Stellaris is many, many times that.

 

[Chengar Qordath]

I wouldn't say Paradox's level of support for their titles is some amazingly unique thing that no other company in the industry does. The DLC model has given plenty of companies a strong incentive to keep supporting their games, and Paradox has always been up-front about the fact that they put out DLC because it's profitable. Heck, the most common answer given for "when will you stop making DLC for your older games" has always been "when people stop buying it."

That said, they're certainly a lot better at supporting their products than, say, EA dropping a gigantically and infamously buggy game, then killing all support for everything but microtransactions two months after release. While Paradox titles are infamously buggy, most of their customers are confident that those bugs will be dealt with at some point in the game's development cycle.

That said, I'm not wild about the DLC model thanks to it's constant pressure to put out new content that can be locked behind a paywall (something even Johan conceded can be a problem). Much as I love CK 2, there's a definite quality gap between features that came from early DLCs and features that came from later ones and it certainly feels like the dev team has hopped over to working on the next DLC before ironing out all the oddities produced by the last one.

 

[Egodeus]

Just wanted to add something now I've had a chance to review several responses.

I have noticed that several people have questioned me on the nature of "crippling" bugs. Now I understand that some people place more emphasis on certain bugs over others, but there evidently are several that truly are crippling regardless of personal opinion.

I will highlight a couple off the top of my head:

Governing ethics attraction does nothing. This is crippling as it removes an entire aspect of gameplay and introduces a disadvantage to many spiritualistic societies where they would otherwise have an advantage.

Having no food has no consequences. I do not need to comment further. You cannot disagree that this is a crippling gameplay bug.

Missiles are a huge disadvantage and have been for a long time. This is massively unbalancing and hence crippling for gameplay. It has also been an issue since many patches ago.

Now, I'm not really complaining or being dramatic here, but I have named but a few of the plethora of continuing problems that still exist presently (one of which has been a problem since the start). If anyone could explain how these are not crippling that would be great. In my mind they are all game breaking issues.

Well, respectfully, in my opinion these are far from crippling. As in except for the missiles thing I hadn't even noticed any of them in playing the game and probably they won't affect my playing and enjoying the game at all in the future until they are fixed at some point.

Gov eth attraction: This might of course explain why I couldn't get authoritarian attraction up in my game as an egalitarian, but other than that, it only causes big empires to not fracture that much. It would be better if the faction management would be more difficult, and then this would become a serious bug as not having large opposition factions would keep large empires too manageable. As for spiritualists being underpowered, well, maybe, but they still get enough things that my next game is going to be with a spiritualist empire to see what the ascension and warp thing does. It would be nice if they could also more easily maintain larger empires with not too much dissent, but as I said, this is quite far from being a crippling bug.

No food penalty: Haven't noticed at all. Because I always rp as a nation that would never let their subjects (or drones) starve, I've never been on negative food production for more than it takes to build new farms and as long as the AI doesn't exploit this, this won't have any effect whatsoever to my games, nor my enjoyment of the game.

Missiles: Yeah, they are broken, but I'm willing to wait until they do a bigger iteration on the combat system since there's quite a lot of things there that should be improved upon. But even then, they aren't a crippling bug that would make it impossible for me to play nor enjoy the game. I actually usually start the game with missiles, since they are simply OP against the early game corvettes with their high evasion but become obsolete later on when hull sizes increase and point-defense weapons are developed. But I've won many early game conflicts due to the fact that my nuclear missiles always hit enemy corvettes and their mass drivers or red lasers don't. And there is nothing that feels as good as fielding a massive PD screen against the neighbour that relies on missiles later on in the game. If anything they would need the AI to understand that they are simply an early game weapon that you need to replace with something else once PD starts to be a thing.

In the end, none of these are game breaking. In multiplayer when players start to exploit them perhaps, but for my own single player games one of these is a non-issue, another one is at most a mild annoyance, and the third is is yeah, a larger bug, but still something that requires you only know about it, but something that I'm hoping will get fixed in the midterm.

Perspective my friend, perspective.

 

[Dodge]

I think the Paradox devs are very clever and understand the Ikea effect ie when something is 80% completed and the users add the 20% by modding they feel that they are more connected to the end product, and thus become great fans of the work

 

[NicoH]

To be honest in my 150 hours of stellaris, I never encountered a game breaking bug. I often read about them in the forum, but never encountered them myself.

Though I never finished a game of stellaris, because once you have conquered over half of the galaxy it gets boring.

 

[Lexo]

I have almost all of their games and they are one of the very few devs who make a decent sandbox game but they do have a habit of release then patch it up i must admit. It does suck but i would add that it hasnt had a massive negative impact on their business model. Where the most dammage being done is the new DLC policy which isnt bad in itself but they price has been going up and the quality is going down. I use EU4 as a perfect example of this and where i have stopped buying DLC for the game and have given up on it after being a massive fan of EU3.

On a side note i think they also get a lot of loyal fans with their modding support and the way the comunity gets involved in this as well as general feedback. Look at what Bioware has done to destroy thir brand as a guide on what not to do.

 

[Lexo]

Stellaris has much more developed exploration and a far more robust events system. And DW doesnt really even take a stab at politics other than general happiness and certain racial preferences.




you can actually pretty much have your empire run by AI in Distant Worlds. The original idea is that you could even just focus on being a fleet admiral or captain of individual ship while your race developed on its own initiative. The gameplay isn't quite there for it, but you can still do it. It is also a very interesting comparison on how a game can avoid doomstacking.

Distant worlds is bug riddled and has a lot of issues and is still superior to Stellaris in so many ways i lost count. The downsides do ballance the overall equasion but it realy is a way better game in terms of depth and even down to automation.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Why do I trust PI ?
I have more than a thousand hours on CK2 and nearly 500 on EUIV (the only other game which can come close to that is Skyrim). I will have to buy Stellaris some day (can play it with a friend, so I don't play much but still I am a bit familiar with the game), but if I do so I know that I will put hundreds of hours in it. Even Victoria II has some place in my heart (the technology system - mainly the discoveries - was something which really struck me). I don't really play HOI (too modern for me), but even on this I trust them.
If a company was making bad games, and was letting its games broken for years (some parts may be, but not any major component of the game), would I have put more than 1500 hours on my life in it ? Probably not.
Their games are on my favourite list. I spent countless nights staring at my screen, either trying to have this powerful vassal assassinated so I can finally have a stable kingdom, or waging a war against a rival to then smile as his country was partitioned by our neighbours.
It's not something that I have felt for a lot of games (again, maybe just Skyrim but that's the only exception), so yeah I may be biased towards them. But they earned it. Times and times again. I know that the problems we face in our games will be fixed. It won't be today. Maybe not tomorrow. But one day, they'll announce the patch we were all waiting for, as well as new features making us rediscover the game we already put so much time in.

 

[TheArchduke]

Paradox produced deep, good games at a time when pretty much everyone was doing shallow, 3D stuff.

Also they tend to look after their games admirably.

Granted, they are not the small developer they once were, but my confidence is high, that if something does not work, it will be fixed.

Also, they are great guys.

 

[Hype Train]

Honestly, he kinda has a point. Why the hell do people just sit back and let Paradox have humungous bugs in their BUGFIX UPDATES, and yet when Assassins Creed Unity has a bunch of bugs, everyone cans it and calls Ubisoft garbage? Not that im defending ubisoft mind you. I think paradox does have a strong loyalist fanbase. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, but if you guys reeeealy want bugs to be fixed at a more rapid pace, i think you do kind of have to treat paradox less like a 1 man indie project and more like an actual company, which they are.