Galactic Civilizations 3 announced

I think the paradox model for dlc is excessive (although I’ve bought many of them anyway) but I think what Brad does is actually ok. Small optional dlc and occasional more significant meaty stuff that improves gameplay. I loved galciv 2 and pre ordered 3, but I was not especially impressed by 3 at release. It’s a much much better game now, and if all we had was the release version, I’d have regretted my pre purchase.

Please don’t change your business model because of a single post on the internet, Brad.

I really don’t see the advantages of the old retail model where you got a shot at maybe one expansion, then you lay off most of your devs so you could race to work on something else you could get on the shelves.

If it’s a game I’m enjoying, I love the DLC model of ongoing support and development across genres. Path of Exile, Warframe, and yes Paradox games. Keep plugging away at GalCiv 3 until you’re ready to take the series in a different direction, then work on the sequel.

I feel like the difference between what Paradox does in their grand strategy games and what Stardock does in GalCiv 3 is huge. I can fire up GalCiv 3 without any DLC and play it just fine. Firing up a Paradox game without the DLC just makes me feel like I’m crippled against an AI that gets to play with more toys than me.

The AI can’t use the features you don’t have enabled in DLC, unless something changed recently.

Is that true of say, province development in EU4? I think the AI can’t use expansion stuff in general, but I think there are some exceptions.

Anyway, put me in the group that loves expansions and fixes. Usually changes to the base game improve things, and I don’t believe for a second that the improvements down the line could as easily fit into the base game.

Another thing that Brad mentioned that I want to reiterate: inflation is a thing. The $50 per game in the 90’s is worth a heck of a lot more than $50 for a game today. It would be interesting to compare the cost of games versus the trends for programmer and artist compensation.

The AI cannot, nope. There might be exceptions but they’re not common and I can’t think of any off the top of my head. I know of one instance where the AI used an expansion feature but it was corrected in a hotfix. So @Telefrog doesn’t have to worry about the AI getting to play with toys that he can’t. :)

Any exceptions are a bug, and AFAIK, development was never one.

Put me in the group that’s somewhere in the middle, but doesn’t want to go through the discussion yet again. PDS stuff is expensive, but it’s not their fault if Sweden’s economy does well by not following common nonsense.

I’m definitely on the “Release it, patch it to function, and then save ideas up for a larger, more fleshed-out expansion or sequel down the line” camp, @Brad_Wardell. Piecemeal DLC arriving every couple of months in a never-ending drib-drab of nickel-and-diming; massive game restructuring patches effectively designed-by-committee by the most passionate and vocal minority on the official forums; games left half-finished because of the industry-equivalent of “we’ll fix it in post,” etc. are all among the legion of things that have made me more or less walk away from digital gaming.

I just wanna buy a game that was finished to the best of a team’s ability, implementing the fullness of their vision, play it, and then know I got the full experience and be able to move on, rather than checking back every two weeks to see if the latest rebalance or “story DLC” added just enough novelty to justify digging back in and discovering whether or not the game is “done enough” yet.

I understand that version of things is noticeably harder on a company from a financial standpoint, and sets them up for failure if the one big product flops, so I’m not saying risk the whole company to appease my particular hangups, but I did want to add a voice to the chorus.

Stardock’s current approach doesn’t deeply offend me, but it’s still about 25% more than I’d personally care for, for what it’s worth.

Thanks for the correction!

It sounds good, but I think that in practice, the limiting factor for the initial release is always going to be the “financial standpoint” you mention later, rather than the fullness of the team’s vision. The vision is always going to be bigger than the available time and budget.

That’s what expansion packs are for. Initial game should be feature complete within the limits of the project plan of available time and budget. Expansion packs should add desired features that didn’t fit into that plan or come up after the release date. Bug fixes withstanding, that would be my ideal. ArmandoPenblade stated things so much better than I can.

On the flipside, “gigantic, DLC-sized holes in the game design” grate my nerves horribly, so I wind up doing what a lot of users here have mentioned, and just wait months or years down the line for development to actually finish, and then just buy the whole shebang for pennies on the dollar.

One other thought I’ll add… a game coming out and seeing substantial post-launch paid content offers a living product.

One alternative is a sequel using the same engine with some updates at full price.

Depending on the timing that could be more expensive than the modern release-and-update model.

So how do distinguish between “we couldn’t get that feature in and make our release date, but got it in the expansion” and “we intentionally left a DLC-sized hole in the initial release”? I mean, I think if you asked a Paradox dev, they would be pretty vehement that they fit everything they could into the initial release.

Down to integrity and reputation I guess, I’d accept if most companies said that, but Paradox would release a hard copy manual one page at a time if they could get people to pay for it.

Oh, I will also briefly chime in and say that I really hate the idea of games-as-a-service, insofar as I hate the idea of just-about-anything-as-a-service. I just wanna pay money, own the thing, and be done with it from there. Winding up on the hook for some kinda continuing commitment is icky enough when it’s just Comcast.

. . . one of a dozen reasons I never got into MMOs >.>

I personally haven’t experience “gigantic DLC-sized holes”. I do think that adding too many mechanics through DLC can undermine the game over time. Loss of design focus is something I think I can see in some Paradox titles.

I don’t think there’s been many games that would have ever matched that description.

Before the invention of DLC? I would say that 99% of the games would fit that description.

My feeling - and I’d bet its where KevinC was going as well - is that this part got short shrift. Heck, I feel it still does in many projects.

Ok, I need to modify what I said / meant. I meant, that that many games that came out before DLC was a thing, were complete games unto themselves. However, were they actually achieving 100% of the original vision of the designers? I would say, no. There is always more you want to do and there will never be enough time and budget.

However, I would just like to contrast the seemingly complete games that came out before DLC vs the ones with huge gaping holes in which future DLC will fill, theoretically one day.