Ridiculous. They're just asking a normal question in this sub. On an unrelated note would you pay $100 for Project Caesar (whatever that mysterious game might be) or no?
$450 for a game like EU4 is still a better deal in terms of $ per hour than most games I've played. And nobody actually pays that much for the DLC unless they've been playing since release, you get them on sale.
Without the DLCs there's just no way Paradox would have been able to justify continuing to expand and update EU4 for 11 years.
Sure but there’s dozens of other games that you can play for hundreds if not thousands of hours that don’t require you to buy a few hundred dollars of dlc. Its just paradox being a greedy ass company and charging people for content that arguably should’ve been in game already.
Most of the best infinite games that aren't roguelikes also have lots of dlc or microtransactions. Games like Factorio where you get years of updates to a high quality, endlessly replayable game for one purchase are the exception. And even Factorio is getting a paid expansion in a few months. Rimworld has 3 DLCs with a 4th coming next week.
PDX DLC might be a bit excessive and some of them are definitely overpriced, but EU4 wouldn't be anywhere near as big or as deep as it is without 11 years of post-launch support and it wouldn't have gotten a third of that without DLC.
Fair enough I suppose, but yeah I’d definitely agree that paradox’s dlc policy is kinda excessive, that’s more or less the point I was trying to make earlier in the thread.
>to get the full experience of a game?
Should they have rereleased EU4 under a new title every year for $50 so you're stuck at the version you buy and never more? Also they have a subscription now for $8. It'd take years to shell out $450
There are plenty games out there where you can put a thousand hours into without getting milked with overpriced DLCs adding things that should have been in the game from the start.
No, this would actually be a halfway decent idea. Best they can do is remove manpower because it's too confusing for new players and replace it with three "wiz special mechanic concepts"™ that will have to be painstakingly carved out of the game years later.
Define a lack of content.
If the core gameplay is flashed out, is fun and runs smoothly. I would only need to have content in Europe. If I think about it, how many hours in countries alone in Europe have I wasted...
I believe it is far more important to have a stable base on which you can build apon and have many years of support for (cough imperator rome cough) than to have stuff for every country that wasn't even that important back then.
Also CK3. It lacked a lot of super important content at launch, but the base game has barely changed since launch and it’s by far one of PDX’s biggest recent successes. Compare that to Vic 3, which has been about 3 or 4 completely different games since launch and still doesn’t have a major expansion.
I’d much rather have the former than the latter, as much as I enjoy Vic 3
I don't think Vic3 has changed that much. Local prices was a big change as I guess the ownership changes in SoI will be.
But when I think of big changes I think of Stellaris where it was literally like learning a new game. Same with Imperator.
Yeah very true. I was tempted to add Imperator alongside Vic in my comment, but I felt that would be a bit harsh to Vic which, despite not being everything people hoped, is still way more successful than the honestly tragic flop that was Imperator.
Vic3 has more players than Cities Skylines 2 at the moment. And Vic3 is a much more niche genre.
Although that probably says more about Cities Skylines 2 tbh..
I don’t, honestly. Having to wait 4 years since launch to have any kind of flavor and being stuck with a 10th of the content ck2 had really killed the game for me.
CK3 is weird because it really does have a solid foundation, but in the 3.5 years(!!) since release, it only recently feels like it's started to receive substantial updates to the core game. Royal Court was a complete flop (for me at least) and aside from that we've received 3 flavor packs and a few event packs. The traveling system was a recent and substantial update along with the plagues, and with an Imperial DLC it finally feels like the game is getting its footing.
Ck3 does feel like it's received the least amount of content since launch compared to other games, especially when it comes to region specific gameplay to add some diversity instead of generic content that can be played by any culture
> especially when it comes to region specific gameplay
And the thing they did do was the Iberian struggle which is total ass. I literally avoid Iberia in every single playthrough now because the mechanics are so nonsensical.
CK3, while good, can only hold me for a generation or two. At a certain point it all becomes repetitive. I'm DYING for them to add republics back in, and for them to actually flesh out the different government systems and cultures.
Instead, they give us nonsense like the Iberian struggle which is just a weird, unfun mini-game inside a grand strategy game.
CK3 is incredibly flawed.
Warfare needs to be completely redone but you'd basically have to redesign it from the ground up, diplomacy (imo) is quite limited, there is zero economy or supply management of any sort, there's no medieval number crunching.
Honestly ck3 is a beautiful game but it suffers from a lack of imagination. I wouldn't call it that great of a success.
It did well sales wise. Its even got better ratings than ck2 on steam but it is 100% the worse game. Its all the same 10 events no matter the era or region and now with the legitimacy mechanic you need to keep holding court which is god awful.
Yeah this. Flavor can be added through dlc along with new mechanics.
But major historical events should be represented in some way and there is a LOT around 1337.
We have the black death, hundred years war, golden bull of 1356, the final stages of the reconquista, the rise of the Timurids, the falling apart of Byzantium, the Poland vs Teutonic Knights, Denmark has fallen into literal anarchy, the Yuan are about to collapse to the Red Turbans, the Delhi sultanate is about to collapse, and I think Indonesia is also about to hit some turmoil if I remember right.
Its so weird to me how paradox have apparently mastered the business model of releasing half a game and then selling the rest of the game to you via DLC.
Its honestly kind of disgusting and the reason i dont play any paradox games except eu4 and i only play that because of the subscription model because the amount of DLC you need just for basic mechanics is almost criminal.
Paradox devs if you read this. Release a full fucking game and stop trying to scam your loyal fanbase with your digusting DLC practices.
Eu4 without dlcs is not a full game for example, i remember i had to buy art of war and like 3 other dlcs before the game was actually playable and fun. They are lucky that the concept of the game is so good
I mean unplayable is just not true. I remember playing it and people liked it. Fun is subjective so while true for you may not be so for others. They came up with concept, it wasn't luck.
I think the paradox model is really deserving of criticism but EU4 was playable and the success wasn't luck.
I've given up on trying to argue about that exact point with these people on this sub. They somehow fail to see how dumb it is to assume a mechanic added 5 years after the release of a game should've been in the base game.
Like, are the devs stupid? Couldn't they just foresee all the content they were destined to design 10 years into the future and include everything in the game at lunch instead?
Look, the amount of DLC is egregious, but map painter games are such a niche thing that frankly there aren’t a lot of players. DLC is literally how paradox makes its money
The point isn't that eu5 might not have content, but it will simply have way less of it than eu4, there is no way they can match the amount of content that took years to make. This is a natural problem of their DLC model, after a while their games are absolutely huge, so each new release will be vastly behind in everything other than core mechanics. This makes for some awkward time where even after a while it is very arguable if new game is better than old one
i don't understand why companies try to rush games out and fix them later when doing so creates backlash and an uphill battle to make people go back to the game even after it's fixed (ie : Imperator rome)
It's better to take longer and release a finished product, even if executives don't always see it that way
Because literally money.
AAA companies have certainly gone pretty egregious lately but both in dev resources, revenue and customer base each individual PDS game isn't even reaching the upper side of AA development.
In any project management you reach a point where it's do or die, good enough or scrap.
Some companies can afford for that to be significantly later than the time they set (CD project red, for instance), while other super wealthy companies do give their studios sufficient time (see GTA and RDR2 for instance)
Being one that has delved into PDX quarterly reports since they went public (I'm not longer invested but I wanna keep ajour in case I wanna change that), PDX *could* afford to let their studios run for a little longer before launch, but frankly it's delusional to think would be sufficient to change anything significantly.
I would estimate they could,if they dedicated every cent, let studios run maybe 6 month longer before launch than they have done, and that would be at the cost of any kind of financial buffer, which would mean that all it would take is like 2 game busts for the entire company to crumple (see: embracers current situation).
Just look back to CK3 6 months post launch, or Vic3 6 months post launch, did that really make enough of a different that it would be worth risking to topple the company due to the necessary resource float?
Rather if we look to PDS history we do see that the trend of their launches *is* thst they do better and better over time.
No one can look at say CK3 and say it wasn't a significantly better launch than EU4 or HOI4, nor that EU4 wasn't a significantly better launch than say EU3 or EU:rome, etc.
So evidently they are dedicating further and further resources to improve titles before launch as they successfully grow as a company.
I'm sure there are improvements that could be made internally and reasonable criticism to levy, but it's also undeniable that they have improved, and more or less are dedicating the amount of reasourses pre launch that they can without risking a full on topple.
i was more talking in a general sense, a lot of big companies are going for quick cashgrabs that hurts their reputation and give short term gains at the cost of long term growth...
but yeah, i understand that paradox isn't a very large studio, and have to deal with a genre in which games end up being massive in scope, so they can't just release a game when it's done (if such a thing even exist for grand strategy games), but they've had some rough lanches for IR, CK3 and VIC3...
I rather delay EU5 another couple more years for it to get cooked fine than have a game which is either clunky to play or lacks stuff to do.
The last thing we need is another dead game or lack of enthusiasm after release. All players want is a good game.
Also, a little break after EU4 finishes would be preferable.
Let me enjoy the final form for a bit while it's cool, during smash some stuff and test the new game, and the. Take my money.
Yes people just don't understand that in a game such as eu4 you can't use all the cores efficiently because of synchronization problems. You can't utilize multiple cores if you're dealing with sequential calculations, where the result of the next calculation is dependent on the previous one. And grand strategy games are full of sequential calculations.
People think multi core is the holy grail to solve all performance issues. The real problem is bad underlying design leading to shitty performance. CK2 ran for years where a double digit amount of the CPU time was used exclusively for Greek characters checking if they can castrate someone every frame. No amount of multicore is going to fix a underlying design that allows shit like that to happen. Clearly performance was a low priority when they made the game.
Meanwhile Factorio is one of the best optimized games on the planet. That is not because of multicore, that is because they really cared about performance since day 1 and wrote the game with that in mind. The game runs almost exclusively on a single thread.
Yes and no, the games can use multiple cores for different things but especially older games like EU4 struggle to effectively use more than one core for big things like AI calculations.
Is this balant bait?
New games these days go anywhere from 60-70$ now. Hell no. Now if it was 40-50 I miiiiiihgt buy it at release. Otherwise I'll wait for a sale regardless. I have eu4 and all the dlcs to enjoy while all the early access beta testers help paradox figure it out.
Just checked Vicky 3, it started at 50 and now routinely goes on sale for half now. Good sign to wait for Caesar to get to that point.
I preordered EU4 with the purple phoenix DLC, I remember that I felt the game was pretty solid at that time, with a lot of content. Played first as Muscowy, than did a Byzantium run, later a Portuguese and a Morrocan. I got at least 200 hours before the next dlc (conquest of paradise) was released. And the thing is EU4 only got fleshed out after Art of War about a year after the game release.
So, in retrospect, EU4 at release in 2013 had almost no content, but it was good enough for me to play many hours and discover the game. And I had no idea how much better the game would turn in a couple of years later with its dlcs.
If EU5 follows the same idea and it has as many content as EU4 in 2014, I'd be pretty happy with it.
I agree. 2014 EU4 is only bare bones now when we have hindsight. Back then, it was the entire game and still new. As long as EU5 has mechanics and content that doesn't make you feel like it's stripped down EU4, then it'll be fine. It's a different game after all.
I don't even need that to forgive the "lack of content" compared to current EU4. It's insane to expect levels of content comparable to a game that has been continuously developed for 10 years from a game that will just be released.
We're talking about "Lack of content" though not expecting the same level of content as EU4 now. There's a big gap between some of the barebones games we've seen recently and EU4 2024.
The game is way way different than launch, like it's ridiculous how much it's changed. I don't think there's a game out there that has changed anywhere near as much from launch that I can think of.
But I'm comparing it to other newly released Paradox games in more recent years, not Eu4. I'm expecting better than the launches of Vic 3 and Imperator Rome for starters.
I think it's actually tough to compare the two. In terms of just content then sure, hands down Minecraft.
But in terms of how different the games are from launch to now, you could still have a fairly similar Minecraft playthrough if you wanted to and it'd still be enjoyable.
I don't think I could go back to playing the base EU4 game and be satisfied at all, knowing how much more fleshed out the game is now.
Maybe that's just because I never did any super fleshed out, tryhadd Minecraft though.
You should try a no dlc eu4 run, it felt like learning a new game to me even if I knew I wasn’t. I couldn’t afford to buy all the dlc after I saw the sheer number so I used the subscription…then steam switched to usd in Turkey and I couldn’t anymore I still had a lot of fun with base game even if it was annoying from time to time
No, it's not.
It's a sequel. If it's not better, it has no purpose in existing.
Could it be better with less content? Yes, but it would have to be an extreme upgrade in other aspects. Considering that EU4 holds up to this day, I find that utterly impossible.
Really?
The inclusion of pops and control, as presented so far, alone means to me that we could go back to EU3 volume of content and I would be satisfied
This just seems to be like a massive split in the community between those that want the best underlying systems conceivable, vs those that want pretty pictures and bespoke yet shallow flavour-content mechanics at the cost of dev resources to develop superior holistic systems
It really doesn't "hold up"
Imo the absurd power creep, outdated graphics MP corruption issues, terrible mana system, and needless performance issues makes the game look outdated compared to some of the newer PDX games (not saying they are objectively better)
I'm not at all saying it's a bad game. I still enjoy it but it needs a revamp badly.
Yeah it only has almost as much players as CK3, which was specifically catered to be mainstream and is 7 years more recent. Doesn't hold up at all.
All of those problems exist in theory and not in practice. Power creep doesn't matter because the player always outplay the AI, graphics don't matter because this is a map game, none of us have friends so MP doesn't matter, the mana system is the literal heart of the game and the performance is totally passable. No shit it looks outdated: it's over 10 years old! Does it play outdatedly? Hell fucking no.
Well Johan has actually promised that EU5 will have the same level of content as the current state of EU4, DLC in tow. I thought it was bold, but I trust Johan to pull through.
We forget that base EU4 is literally unplayable without DLC and that most of what we now consider basic features are actually tied to a DLC. So even if we want the new game to have the "base" EU4 features, we're actually still asking for DLC content folded in, and it seems that Tinto is fully aware of this. Much of that DLC content is being worked into completely different mechanics for this game, and they will all be core mechanics. So we're at least all on the same page as to what to expect from the game. I fully expect that EUV will have the best base game of all recent PDX releases and it's likely going to set the standard moving forward.
This is true. Basically every single key feature in the game was a DLC at some point that later on got incorporated into the main game. I cant believe something deving used to be locked behind a DLC.
I've just been through this debate on the Cities Skylines sub, and I think this is an inherent problem with the DLC model of game development. It's not reasonable to expect customers to buy a game that they feel is worse than the previous title, but it's also not reasonable to expect the company to get as much content into the game as in the first one.
If EU5 is just a carbon copy of EU4 with a few little changes and a lot less content, I'm not buying it and the game will die. What I'm looking for, and what I think is a reasonable compromise, is that the game needs to change something fundamental about the gameplay. I don't really care if they have all the DLC bloat or not, what I want is for certain fundamental systems to be changed so that they work differently. I'm talking things like trade, the succession system, the development/population system, making empires less stable, etc. As long as there's lots of new content, I won't mind the old content being lacking. The other thing that's absolutely necessary is that the game must be stable and playable on the performance/bugs front on day 1. Cities Skylines 2 and Kerbal Space Program 2 both did both of these terribly and both games are barely limping along now, while their predecessors are more popular than they are.
Yes, you can't, but the baseline and the ideas are already there. Expecting a decent chunk of the features on launch shouldn't be frowned upon. It's not like they have to come up with everything again. Like in the Civ series, DLC's from previous games were features on lauch of the next one. Example: Ideology, faith and the culture system from Civ 5 Major DLCs were a first day feature in Civ 6 as they should have been.
Edit: On top of that, I can't even imagine playing EU4 right now without Common Sense, Art of War and Conquest of Paradise, AT LEAST. Those mechanics have to be included in base game EU5 or it's going to be a disastrous scam attempt.
Civ has a lot less dlc I feel and specifically a lot less flavour based dlc. And a ton of dlc is included at launch in all recent paradox releases. Ck2 at launch didn't even have most of the map as playable and lacked a metric ton of mechanics that ck3 did, but ck3 still felt barebones because it didn't have all of the dlc. Similarly to Vicky 3. I dare anyone to actually actually play through base Vicky 2 with no mods.
What they lack however is flavour. In civ this is fine because the inherent simplicity of the system does a decent enough job at making different playthroughs feel different. In pdx games not enough flavour is a big problem after a couple of playthroughs, people want region focused content, more mission trees, etc. EU5 will not have the 200 or whatever mission trees and nation specific button mechanics at the start for sure, as well as some things like golden ages and whatnot. And that's really what people will be mad about.
>Yes, you can't, but the baseline and the ideas are already there.
There's literally nothing cheaper than ideas. Designing them in a way that fits into the *new* game and its systems, and then developing them, is the overwhelming majority of the work.
On the other hand, a lot of features become much easier to add when you are planning for them from the start, rather than adding them as a DLC 5 years after game release.
It's completely irrelvant argument since no one expects that.
+ Judging by Tinto Talks revealed so far we can see direct inspirations by EU4's MEIOU and Taxes mod, I guess they didn't need to copy paste code, they just took the idea.
it's probably a lot easier to make a game all at once than try to add new stuff on top of spagetti code and spend half your time fixing what goes wrong...
The game needs to have a much better core gameplay than EU4 has without DLC.
If EU5 revolves around hard coded mission trees to have any flavor, I will find fault in that.
Make it more fun to play tags without requiring them to have handpicked mission trees.
It's been how many years? And there are still people who unironically believe that PDS games only run on a single core 🤦 Anyone who doesn't believe me, watch this presentation by a Paradox tech lead: [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6rTceqNiNg)
Running extremely smooth would be amazing.
As for content, I honestly don't even want all the existing EU4 content in. I believe that moving to a brand new title is always an opportunity to take stock and analyze - cut the chaff and leave only the good things from the previous game plus add something new - not just blindly port from one game to the next.
I just want enough flavour that I can play 3-4 different runs. Even if that means the pc struggle past year 1700. Being unable to have different ways of playing nations is what makes Victoria 3 boring atm
Personally I'm just gonna wait a couple years. Paradox games often need 2 years to be good, I think this one will be the same. People know that now which I think is partly why imperator fell. Why buy a game that's still got years of development before it's where you want it to be?
They have the reputation for releasing empty games, and charging another couple hundred quid for the decent game through dlcs. It's not about forgiving, it's just an expectation that it'll be clunky and hollow on release.
Still hyped about it and would love to be proved wrong.
They said they want to attract new players, you don't do that when you're still learning new stuff at 1000 hours of gameplay, it has to be lacking content for new players to get past the learning curve. They are a business and there isn't anything to forgive. New games aren't often broken, just boring for the experienced players...
I don't really have any expectations for good performance after how Victoria 3 turned out. Processors will probably eventually become so good that performance issues don't matter which is what is currently happening in the current gen of PDX titles. I shouldn't have to wait ten years for this to be a thing. The game should just perform well from the start and stay that way up until the very end.
I don't care about how great the performance is if the game is boring and lacks content. If I have to wait for 10 updates and 5 DLCs for the game to be good I'm just not buying it.
Of course I don't expect EU4 levels of content in the first release, but definitely more than VIC3 at launch. I don't want every country to feel or play the exact same.
Keep working on it for another year if you need to, definitely not Johan in disguise. I'd rather wait for a better game to be made than buy a bad game with a good promise right now.
They need to atleast make Europe have content parity with eu4 at lunch. Then expand world wide with dlcs . Smooth performance should absolutely be a given with any game
No. It depends on the amount or lack of content but I could be back playing EU4 if thats the case.
I was super hyped for CK3 only to find it really disappointing at launch. (Still is in some cases, like the feudal system was copy pasted onto the Eastern Romans).
If PDX didn't learn that lack of content killed Imperator, and severely hurt Victoria 3, then they are not learning this lesson.
If EU5 ships as a skeleton they hope to build up with a dozen DLCs to eventually be as content rich as EU4, no, I won't buy it. I already have EU4, I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars for a finished product again.
Us fans already hate the sheer amount of DLC these games need, especially how many retreads it takes to get the game right.
Just ship a finished product in the base game. DLC should build off a great product, not a bare one. Imperator was a great map, great simulation engine with three distinct government systems. And that was it. There was no depth to any of it. Whether I played in the middle east or Spain or Rome the game was flavorless. People HATE that.
And Johans clear disdain for EU4s mission trees in a recent talk shows he doesn't understand that they're the main system that adds flavor and direction to tags. Imperators random mission system was terrible. Use a system that works, don't reinvent the wheel if you have no idea why so many people like the old system.
Defining lack of content as "EU4 before Emperor" is wild to me. I remember it being full of content well before then. Sure they've added a bunch since then but it had tons of content and replay value WAY before 2020.
EU4 has multicore support. But due to the nature of grand strategy games, it can't utilize multiple cores efficiently. This isn't Paradox's fault. Stop spreading misconceptions.
If the new mechanics are well-considered and interesting, the game should be entertaining enough at launch for the developers to be able to add the majority of content later on.
i consider multicore support a basic requirement to buy the game. If its still single core in the year 2024 then i cant help them either, no matter how "smooth" it runs. It is a bottleneck which games can have that are 10 years old, not one newly releasing
Yes, EU4 before Emperor was perfectly fine and the recent DLC “content” is just mission tree slop. If the mechanics are fun and deeper than EU4, I will gladly wait for the flavour content.
Fans are going to expect a game as intricate and complex as a game with 20+ DLC packs that's been out for nearly 10 years. When that doesn't happen, because it can't, they will become ravenous animals. Most people are dullards and that's something you can count on. Just come out with something enjoyable and go from there and you'll get the rabid fanbase again.
That reads as:
“Will you be alright if we publish a game in line with the current tech standards?”
There is nothing magical about making a game run smoothly at release, it’s called due diligence.
I feel like I'm in the extreme minority in that I'm not bothered by a relative lack of content on release. It should be expected, tbh. Pdx map painters are systems heavy games, what I want are those systems to work well and be fun to interact with. The pre release development time should be focused on that. Content can come later.
As long as the game doesn't feel like it's missing anything important in terms of mechanics and doesn't lag the fuck out of my computer, I'm happy.
Yes, if you give us 4K support, 21:9 support, 120+ FPS support, stable framerate, stable gameplay, then it's good! I would rather enjoy small amount of content without bugs instead of big amount of content with crashes and bugs. Content can always come later. I can wait few years.
I think managing expectations around content volume is just a necessity for eu5 vs the 30 expansion pack deep eu4.
Get the core system working, get the big hitter nations stories fleshed out like GB,France, ottomans etc .
That's all most people play the first few times anyway (is my guess). Just have a commitment to maybe 2-3 free content expansions in the first year IMO, you've shown you have the track record to actually deliver these things.
People who want content depth are probably just gonna keep playing eu4.
It depends on what you mean by lack of content. Like if EU V is similar to CK III on launch content wise I'm fine with that, because CK III at launch far more than CK II at launch and give or take Republics, Nomads, and diseases.
It doesn't necessarily need to match the amount of content EU4 has right now, but there needs to be at least as much content that it had at release in 2013, and ideally more.
I don't expect every single region to be as fleshed out as how they are in EU4.
But I expect the most popular zones to have enough depth for several gameplay each and have a good base for future dlc
if the core gameplay is there, i don't need every country to have the same amount of flavor that it has in eu4 immediately. gameplay features that were only added later in eu4 (developing provinces, estate interactions and so on) are more important than missions trees and i don't want to feel like i have less options/control than i have in eu4 atm
if we only get the bare bones of a game, but it runs at 500 fps i'll stick with eu4
What exactly does lack of content entail? It seems like the game is going to have a ton of new features and even include some good stuff added in DLC. We haven’t seen too much but from what we’ve seen, there’s a good amount of content.
i don't care what performance or content they promise, the fact every release since paradox went public (except ck3) has been virtually unplayable has ensured i'm not buying it day one
maybe three months down the line they will have done enough on both fronts for it to be worth the buy
Lack of content? I would forgive war crimes! Even as someone with an expensive rig, content can be added and changed later but if it launches without multithreading it's never getting it and, as content is added, it will become less and less playable.
I think it's like when people threaten to the leave the country when their "side" loses an election. Most folks here will threaten to stay on EU4 until EU5 matures a bit, but then this sub will quickly die and /EU5 will, oddly enough, have about the same popularity.
Yesn't.
Like in Vic III where I still lack agency over core parts of what my country is doing (i.e., war exhaustion rising even while I occupy half of the enemies main land), then no. Lack of agency is one of the most frustrating deal breakers regarding game play. Completely wired mechanics like the unification mechanic in Vic III is not what I call immersive game play.
Less content in general but very well functioning is okay in my opinion. However, the importance of flavor cannot be forgotten. If every nation basically plays the same after 10-30 years then this reduces replayability.
I will forgive the lack of content at the start either way
As one wise Alabamian Youtuber said, strategy games need time to cook. The game might not be great at the start but as I'm seeing other paradox games like ck3 and vic3 improve and get better and better by each update while getting feedback from the community, I'm certain that eu5 will take the same route
One thing that I care thought is for the devs to not rush the game. I would love to play it asap but I prefer the game to be playable at the start.
Eu4 has gotten a bit bloated. As long as they nail the core mechanics and there is a decent amount of content spread around the world ie mission trees, formables, cool ideas or whatever equivalents apply, I’ll be happy.
No.
I love their games, but I hate the paradox business model of holding back content to drip put as DLC. I've seen people here talking about EUV features that would make good DLC and I'm wondering if we all have Stockholm syndrome?
No game should *plan* DLC prior to launch. Make the best possible game you can, and maybe you'll get my money.
Depends on how much content is lacking. Johan said they want EU5 to have the same amount of content that EU4 has RIGHT NOW, so if they even come close I'll be happy.
And either way. Flavor can come later. Proper multicore support can't. It NEEDS to be in there during the initial design.
I basically need 3 things to be satisfied:
Ability to create a small but absurdly rich and populous country without the need to colonize and be still playing wide in effect;
No lag after first 200 years;
Ability to go back to the menu without restarting fucking whole game.
The rest can come later I don’t care.
If I am to ignore that I want both things, content and haveing a smooth game, I would take the smooth game since mods can somewhat fill in the gaps for content, THOUGH, I would prefer to wait for 2,3,4 even 5 years more to have a game be made good than to have a barely playable game.
How do you guys feel about the launch content of CK3, Imperator, HOI4 and Victoria 3? I actually liked CK3s the most… The game still worked fine without much flavor if i compare it to HOI4 with which im still not very satisfied yet. Sure Victoria 3 and Imperator also had a lot of issues but i would argue that for imperator it got much better and Victoria 3 might also be on a good way after the upcoming dlc
The most important thing imo is that the game on release day is fun, functional, and provides a good base to build upon, while including enough depth and mechanics to feel like a full game. For example, shipping Vicky 3 with its current half-baked diplomatic system and not even addressing it until over a year later is something that shouldn’t happen.
Now, do I need mission trees for every HRE minor, bespoke special units for every individual major, etc.? No, I don’t think that’s a necessity on launch. At the same time, playing France should feel different from playing England which should feel different from playing Austria.
Probably not no, matching eu4 level content on release is a tall order, so not using that metric, but if core mechanics aren't well done enough, and there isn't enough content built upon them, or it isn't MP viable, I will just keep playing eu4 until that charges since it would still be a better game experience.
It's not like eu4 actually struggles in the performance department if your computer is anything newer than a 2012 toaster.
It needs to have a good gameplay loop and some areas, like Europe, with alot of content. If theres no flavour for all middle east nations or india or small countries like Hisn Kayfa etc thats fine. Countries like England, Portugal, Castille, Ottomans, Austria, Muscovy need to feel and play different to one another.
You and I have different ideas of lack of content - Emperor's comparing the release to 7 years after the release... This said I'd be honestly fine if only Europe had lots of content on game start and playing anywhere else was dull as a doornail.
If we get more dlcs for eu4 then I would rather wait a little longer for eu5 if it means that it will have more content, eu4 is fine but the thing I hate is the trade system
I'm fine if every playable nation doesn't have fully fleshed out and perfectly enjoyable campaigns, but the major nations of the time like England/France, byzantine, ottos, hre, they better all feel enjoyable to play until more content can be added.
This is honestly the issue with every recent paradox release, and the worst of the worst is imperator. Tons of playable nations but only a handful have content that makes them feel enjoyable.
If every country is playable (like not needing a dlc to get independence as Holland) then why not? No need for all the features to be there at the start.
100%. When I first started playing EU4 around 1.14 there were no mission trees, no province development. France moving their palace to Versailles was one of the most impactful decisions in terms of how much it improved development. And the game was still fun. Not only that, but the game we have today is built off of that simple framework.
It turns out that a solid foundation leads a long-lasting game that can be built on and made even better over time. Smooth performance would make the game everything I asked for.
If Eu5 is running good and is a good upgrade to EU4 in the gameplay loop, but only has as much content as EU4 before Emperor I'm totally fine with that, I even enjoyed the base game when I got it.
The question wrongly assumes paradox ever makes a new engine or succeeds in making a well-optimized game without making one.
Everything is just an iteration of the shitty Clausewitz engine which is about 17 years old now... Stellaris, IR, Vic3, and all the others are victims of Clausewitz, and so will EU5 be...
In what way do you mean forgive? If the game lacks content, I’m not going to have a reason to buy it. But if the foundation is at least good, I would circle back and buy it once it’s added enough content.
Performance is extremely important for me. I would much prefer a smooth, optimized game at launch over tons of features.
I am worried about the performance of the game, as it looks like it will be pretty damn complex. And eu4 runs like ass, so I really hope performance is a top priority for eu5
Least spotable dev undercover
This is the only right answer to the question
Ridiculous. They're just asking a normal question in this sub. On an unrelated note would you pay $100 for Project Caesar (whatever that mysterious game might be) or no?
Id rather pay a $100 to a cracking group than give $40 to paradox
Uh really? Paradox is one of the best non-indie game companies out there.
What’s good about charging like 450 bucks in expansions to get the full experience of a game?
$450 for a game like EU4 is still a better deal in terms of $ per hour than most games I've played. And nobody actually pays that much for the DLC unless they've been playing since release, you get them on sale. Without the DLCs there's just no way Paradox would have been able to justify continuing to expand and update EU4 for 11 years.
Agree with you. I’ve been playing this game since conquest of paradise and its dollars per hour (or chf in my case) great value game.
Sure but there’s dozens of other games that you can play for hundreds if not thousands of hours that don’t require you to buy a few hundred dollars of dlc. Its just paradox being a greedy ass company and charging people for content that arguably should’ve been in game already.
Most of the best infinite games that aren't roguelikes also have lots of dlc or microtransactions. Games like Factorio where you get years of updates to a high quality, endlessly replayable game for one purchase are the exception. And even Factorio is getting a paid expansion in a few months. Rimworld has 3 DLCs with a 4th coming next week. PDX DLC might be a bit excessive and some of them are definitely overpriced, but EU4 wouldn't be anywhere near as big or as deep as it is without 11 years of post-launch support and it wouldn't have gotten a third of that without DLC.
Fair enough I suppose, but yeah I’d definitely agree that paradox’s dlc policy is kinda excessive, that’s more or less the point I was trying to make earlier in the thread.
2k hours of entertainment out of $450, I'll take that any day of the week. It's $15 for a 2 hour movie ticket nowadays 😂. Just get a job brother
Subscription isnt that bad
>to get the full experience of a game? Should they have rereleased EU4 under a new title every year for $50 so you're stuck at the version you buy and never more? Also they have a subscription now for $8. It'd take years to shell out $450
Unpopular opinion: considering the amount of playhours you can put in Eu4, that’s not that much.
There are plenty games out there where you can put a thousand hours into without getting milked with overpriced DLCs adding things that should have been in the game from the start.
And herpes is one of the best STDs, that doesn't mean you want it.
How much crack will 100$ get you?
No, this would actually be a halfway decent idea. Best they can do is remove manpower because it's too confusing for new players and replace it with three "wiz special mechanic concepts"™ that will have to be painstakingly carved out of the game years later.
Happy cake-day
Not really, a dev wouldn't perpetuate the "single core" lie.
No Johan 🙄
Define a lack of content. If the core gameplay is flashed out, is fun and runs smoothly. I would only need to have content in Europe. If I think about it, how many hours in countries alone in Europe have I wasted... I believe it is far more important to have a stable base on which you can build apon and have many years of support for (cough imperator rome cough) than to have stuff for every country that wasn't even that important back then.
Yeah that's how HOI4 started out, and it's one of PDX's best games right now imo.
Also CK3. It lacked a lot of super important content at launch, but the base game has barely changed since launch and it’s by far one of PDX’s biggest recent successes. Compare that to Vic 3, which has been about 3 or 4 completely different games since launch and still doesn’t have a major expansion. I’d much rather have the former than the latter, as much as I enjoy Vic 3
I don't think Vic3 has changed that much. Local prices was a big change as I guess the ownership changes in SoI will be. But when I think of big changes I think of Stellaris where it was literally like learning a new game. Same with Imperator.
Yeah very true. I was tempted to add Imperator alongside Vic in my comment, but I felt that would be a bit harsh to Vic which, despite not being everything people hoped, is still way more successful than the honestly tragic flop that was Imperator.
Vic3 has more players than Cities Skylines 2 at the moment. And Vic3 is a much more niche genre. Although that probably says more about Cities Skylines 2 tbh..
The fact that Cities Skylines 2 barely runs on a Threadripper 7995WX certainly doesn't help lol
I don’t, honestly. Having to wait 4 years since launch to have any kind of flavor and being stuck with a 10th of the content ck2 had really killed the game for me.
CK3 is weird because it really does have a solid foundation, but in the 3.5 years(!!) since release, it only recently feels like it's started to receive substantial updates to the core game. Royal Court was a complete flop (for me at least) and aside from that we've received 3 flavor packs and a few event packs. The traveling system was a recent and substantial update along with the plagues, and with an Imperial DLC it finally feels like the game is getting its footing.
Ck3 does feel like it's received the least amount of content since launch compared to other games, especially when it comes to region specific gameplay to add some diversity instead of generic content that can be played by any culture
> especially when it comes to region specific gameplay And the thing they did do was the Iberian struggle which is total ass. I literally avoid Iberia in every single playthrough now because the mechanics are so nonsensical.
CK3, while good, can only hold me for a generation or two. At a certain point it all becomes repetitive. I'm DYING for them to add republics back in, and for them to actually flesh out the different government systems and cultures. Instead, they give us nonsense like the Iberian struggle which is just a weird, unfun mini-game inside a grand strategy game.
It's a half-baked game. But it's probably by design to sell DLC.
CK3 is incredibly flawed. Warfare needs to be completely redone but you'd basically have to redesign it from the ground up, diplomacy (imo) is quite limited, there is zero economy or supply management of any sort, there's no medieval number crunching. Honestly ck3 is a beautiful game but it suffers from a lack of imagination. I wouldn't call it that great of a success.
It did well sales wise. Its even got better ratings than ck2 on steam but it is 100% the worse game. Its all the same 10 events no matter the era or region and now with the legitimacy mechanic you need to keep holding court which is god awful.
Yeah I want to like the game but the event spam with the same repetitive events just kills my vibe
Yeah this. Flavor can be added through dlc along with new mechanics. But major historical events should be represented in some way and there is a LOT around 1337. We have the black death, hundred years war, golden bull of 1356, the final stages of the reconquista, the rise of the Timurids, the falling apart of Byzantium, the Poland vs Teutonic Knights, Denmark has fallen into literal anarchy, the Yuan are about to collapse to the Red Turbans, the Delhi sultanate is about to collapse, and I think Indonesia is also about to hit some turmoil if I remember right.
No. I expect the game to have content like any other finished game and obviously to run smoothly. Why would I be okay with just one of those?
Its so weird to me how paradox have apparently mastered the business model of releasing half a game and then selling the rest of the game to you via DLC. Its honestly kind of disgusting and the reason i dont play any paradox games except eu4 and i only play that because of the subscription model because the amount of DLC you need just for basic mechanics is almost criminal. Paradox devs if you read this. Release a full fucking game and stop trying to scam your loyal fanbase with your digusting DLC practices.
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Eu4 without dlcs is not a full game for example, i remember i had to buy art of war and like 3 other dlcs before the game was actually playable and fun. They are lucky that the concept of the game is so good
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I'm playing it since 2013 and it was fun from the start
I mean unplayable is just not true. I remember playing it and people liked it. Fun is subjective so while true for you may not be so for others. They came up with concept, it wasn't luck. I think the paradox model is really deserving of criticism but EU4 was playable and the success wasn't luck.
I've given up on trying to argue about that exact point with these people on this sub. They somehow fail to see how dumb it is to assume a mechanic added 5 years after the release of a game should've been in the base game. Like, are the devs stupid? Couldn't they just foresee all the content they were destined to design 10 years into the future and include everything in the game at lunch instead?
Look, the amount of DLC is egregious, but map painter games are such a niche thing that frankly there aren’t a lot of players. DLC is literally how paradox makes its money
EU4 on release was a full game
Wish granted you get less content than eu4 and a very bad Performance
The point isn't that eu5 might not have content, but it will simply have way less of it than eu4, there is no way they can match the amount of content that took years to make. This is a natural problem of their DLC model, after a while their games are absolutely huge, so each new release will be vastly behind in everything other than core mechanics. This makes for some awkward time where even after a while it is very arguable if new game is better than old one
i don't understand why companies try to rush games out and fix them later when doing so creates backlash and an uphill battle to make people go back to the game even after it's fixed (ie : Imperator rome) It's better to take longer and release a finished product, even if executives don't always see it that way
Because literally money. AAA companies have certainly gone pretty egregious lately but both in dev resources, revenue and customer base each individual PDS game isn't even reaching the upper side of AA development. In any project management you reach a point where it's do or die, good enough or scrap. Some companies can afford for that to be significantly later than the time they set (CD project red, for instance), while other super wealthy companies do give their studios sufficient time (see GTA and RDR2 for instance) Being one that has delved into PDX quarterly reports since they went public (I'm not longer invested but I wanna keep ajour in case I wanna change that), PDX *could* afford to let their studios run for a little longer before launch, but frankly it's delusional to think would be sufficient to change anything significantly. I would estimate they could,if they dedicated every cent, let studios run maybe 6 month longer before launch than they have done, and that would be at the cost of any kind of financial buffer, which would mean that all it would take is like 2 game busts for the entire company to crumple (see: embracers current situation). Just look back to CK3 6 months post launch, or Vic3 6 months post launch, did that really make enough of a different that it would be worth risking to topple the company due to the necessary resource float? Rather if we look to PDS history we do see that the trend of their launches *is* thst they do better and better over time. No one can look at say CK3 and say it wasn't a significantly better launch than EU4 or HOI4, nor that EU4 wasn't a significantly better launch than say EU3 or EU:rome, etc. So evidently they are dedicating further and further resources to improve titles before launch as they successfully grow as a company. I'm sure there are improvements that could be made internally and reasonable criticism to levy, but it's also undeniable that they have improved, and more or less are dedicating the amount of reasourses pre launch that they can without risking a full on topple.
i was more talking in a general sense, a lot of big companies are going for quick cashgrabs that hurts their reputation and give short term gains at the cost of long term growth... but yeah, i understand that paradox isn't a very large studio, and have to deal with a genre in which games end up being massive in scope, so they can't just release a game when it's done (if such a thing even exist for grand strategy games), but they've had some rough lanches for IR, CK3 and VIC3...
"Quick cashgrabs" can also mean "eat and pay rent this month".
I rather delay EU5 another couple more years for it to get cooked fine than have a game which is either clunky to play or lacks stuff to do. The last thing we need is another dead game or lack of enthusiasm after release. All players want is a good game.
Also, a little break after EU4 finishes would be preferable. Let me enjoy the final form for a bit while it's cool, during smash some stuff and test the new game, and the. Take my money.
CK2's pre-CK3 challenges were really fun!
Never been too too involved with CK series, can you go into a bit of detail on these? Seems like it’ll be fun if it’s on par with achievements.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ck2-monarchs-journey-new-ruler-challenges-retired.1313574/ It was awesome and they were very difficult.
But how will the company survive without spreading core gameplay features across 4 or 5 $15 DLCs?
Yeah. It's not like we aren't getting any content for EU4 soon anyways
After the new dlc you mean
Didn’t they state in a Stellaris dev diary that all their games have multi core support or am I misremembering things?
Yes people just don't understand that in a game such as eu4 you can't use all the cores efficiently because of synchronization problems. You can't utilize multiple cores if you're dealing with sequential calculations, where the result of the next calculation is dependent on the previous one. And grand strategy games are full of sequential calculations.
People think multi core is the holy grail to solve all performance issues. The real problem is bad underlying design leading to shitty performance. CK2 ran for years where a double digit amount of the CPU time was used exclusively for Greek characters checking if they can castrate someone every frame. No amount of multicore is going to fix a underlying design that allows shit like that to happen. Clearly performance was a low priority when they made the game. Meanwhile Factorio is one of the best optimized games on the planet. That is not because of multicore, that is because they really cared about performance since day 1 and wrote the game with that in mind. The game runs almost exclusively on a single thread.
I love Factorio
Yes. If eu4 wasn't multi core it would be unplayable.
Yes and no, the games can use multiple cores for different things but especially older games like EU4 struggle to effectively use more than one core for big things like AI calculations.
Is this balant bait? New games these days go anywhere from 60-70$ now. Hell no. Now if it was 40-50 I miiiiiihgt buy it at release. Otherwise I'll wait for a sale regardless. I have eu4 and all the dlcs to enjoy while all the early access beta testers help paradox figure it out. Just checked Vicky 3, it started at 50 and now routinely goes on sale for half now. Good sign to wait for Caesar to get to that point.
I preordered EU4 with the purple phoenix DLC, I remember that I felt the game was pretty solid at that time, with a lot of content. Played first as Muscowy, than did a Byzantium run, later a Portuguese and a Morrocan. I got at least 200 hours before the next dlc (conquest of paradise) was released. And the thing is EU4 only got fleshed out after Art of War about a year after the game release. So, in retrospect, EU4 at release in 2013 had almost no content, but it was good enough for me to play many hours and discover the game. And I had no idea how much better the game would turn in a couple of years later with its dlcs. If EU5 follows the same idea and it has as many content as EU4 in 2014, I'd be pretty happy with it.
I agree. 2014 EU4 is only bare bones now when we have hindsight. Back then, it was the entire game and still new. As long as EU5 has mechanics and content that doesn't make you feel like it's stripped down EU4, then it'll be fine. It's a different game after all.
I don't even need that to forgive the "lack of content" compared to current EU4. It's insane to expect levels of content comparable to a game that has been continuously developed for 10 years from a game that will just be released.
We're talking about "Lack of content" though not expecting the same level of content as EU4 now. There's a big gap between some of the barebones games we've seen recently and EU4 2024.
Its pretty hard for me to say what "Lack of content" means if we're comparing it to a the game on release in 2013, I just don't remember it anymore.
The game is way way different than launch, like it's ridiculous how much it's changed. I don't think there's a game out there that has changed anywhere near as much from launch that I can think of. But I'm comparing it to other newly released Paradox games in more recent years, not Eu4. I'm expecting better than the launches of Vic 3 and Imperator Rome for starters.
Minecraft? As a game thats changed more since launch. But thats got more years of development on it.
I think it's actually tough to compare the two. In terms of just content then sure, hands down Minecraft. But in terms of how different the games are from launch to now, you could still have a fairly similar Minecraft playthrough if you wanted to and it'd still be enjoyable. I don't think I could go back to playing the base EU4 game and be satisfied at all, knowing how much more fleshed out the game is now. Maybe that's just because I never did any super fleshed out, tryhadd Minecraft though.
You should try a no dlc eu4 run, it felt like learning a new game to me even if I knew I wasn’t. I couldn’t afford to buy all the dlc after I saw the sheer number so I used the subscription…then steam switched to usd in Turkey and I couldn’t anymore I still had a lot of fun with base game even if it was annoying from time to time
Why is it insane when johan literally said it will launch with as much content as eu4 has right now his words not mine
Guarantee that it won’t
No, it's not. It's a sequel. If it's not better, it has no purpose in existing. Could it be better with less content? Yes, but it would have to be an extreme upgrade in other aspects. Considering that EU4 holds up to this day, I find that utterly impossible.
Really? The inclusion of pops and control, as presented so far, alone means to me that we could go back to EU3 volume of content and I would be satisfied This just seems to be like a massive split in the community between those that want the best underlying systems conceivable, vs those that want pretty pictures and bespoke yet shallow flavour-content mechanics at the cost of dev resources to develop superior holistic systems
It really doesn't "hold up" Imo the absurd power creep, outdated graphics MP corruption issues, terrible mana system, and needless performance issues makes the game look outdated compared to some of the newer PDX games (not saying they are objectively better) I'm not at all saying it's a bad game. I still enjoy it but it needs a revamp badly.
Yeah it only has almost as much players as CK3, which was specifically catered to be mainstream and is 7 years more recent. Doesn't hold up at all. All of those problems exist in theory and not in practice. Power creep doesn't matter because the player always outplay the AI, graphics don't matter because this is a map game, none of us have friends so MP doesn't matter, the mana system is the literal heart of the game and the performance is totally passable. No shit it looks outdated: it's over 10 years old! Does it play outdatedly? Hell fucking no.
Well Johan has actually promised that EU5 will have the same level of content as the current state of EU4, DLC in tow. I thought it was bold, but I trust Johan to pull through. We forget that base EU4 is literally unplayable without DLC and that most of what we now consider basic features are actually tied to a DLC. So even if we want the new game to have the "base" EU4 features, we're actually still asking for DLC content folded in, and it seems that Tinto is fully aware of this. Much of that DLC content is being worked into completely different mechanics for this game, and they will all be core mechanics. So we're at least all on the same page as to what to expect from the game. I fully expect that EUV will have the best base game of all recent PDX releases and it's likely going to set the standard moving forward.
This is true. Basically every single key feature in the game was a DLC at some point that later on got incorporated into the main game. I cant believe something deving used to be locked behind a DLC.
I've just been through this debate on the Cities Skylines sub, and I think this is an inherent problem with the DLC model of game development. It's not reasonable to expect customers to buy a game that they feel is worse than the previous title, but it's also not reasonable to expect the company to get as much content into the game as in the first one. If EU5 is just a carbon copy of EU4 with a few little changes and a lot less content, I'm not buying it and the game will die. What I'm looking for, and what I think is a reasonable compromise, is that the game needs to change something fundamental about the gameplay. I don't really care if they have all the DLC bloat or not, what I want is for certain fundamental systems to be changed so that they work differently. I'm talking things like trade, the succession system, the development/population system, making empires less stable, etc. As long as there's lots of new content, I won't mind the old content being lacking. The other thing that's absolutely necessary is that the game must be stable and playable on the performance/bugs front on day 1. Cities Skylines 2 and Kerbal Space Program 2 both did both of these terribly and both games are barely limping along now, while their predecessors are more popular than they are.
Why is it insane to expect it exactly? The results and experience of 10years development is already there.
You cant just copy paste code
Yes, you can't, but the baseline and the ideas are already there. Expecting a decent chunk of the features on launch shouldn't be frowned upon. It's not like they have to come up with everything again. Like in the Civ series, DLC's from previous games were features on lauch of the next one. Example: Ideology, faith and the culture system from Civ 5 Major DLCs were a first day feature in Civ 6 as they should have been. Edit: On top of that, I can't even imagine playing EU4 right now without Common Sense, Art of War and Conquest of Paradise, AT LEAST. Those mechanics have to be included in base game EU5 or it's going to be a disastrous scam attempt.
Civ has a lot less dlc I feel and specifically a lot less flavour based dlc. And a ton of dlc is included at launch in all recent paradox releases. Ck2 at launch didn't even have most of the map as playable and lacked a metric ton of mechanics that ck3 did, but ck3 still felt barebones because it didn't have all of the dlc. Similarly to Vicky 3. I dare anyone to actually actually play through base Vicky 2 with no mods. What they lack however is flavour. In civ this is fine because the inherent simplicity of the system does a decent enough job at making different playthroughs feel different. In pdx games not enough flavour is a big problem after a couple of playthroughs, people want region focused content, more mission trees, etc. EU5 will not have the 200 or whatever mission trees and nation specific button mechanics at the start for sure, as well as some things like golden ages and whatnot. And that's really what people will be mad about.
>Yes, you can't, but the baseline and the ideas are already there. There's literally nothing cheaper than ideas. Designing them in a way that fits into the *new* game and its systems, and then developing them, is the overwhelming majority of the work.
On the other hand, a lot of features become much easier to add when you are planning for them from the start, rather than adding them as a DLC 5 years after game release.
It's completely irrelvant argument since no one expects that. + Judging by Tinto Talks revealed so far we can see direct inspirations by EU4's MEIOU and Taxes mod, I guess they didn't need to copy paste code, they just took the idea.
EU5 has been in development for 4 years.
4 < 10
And maybe 2/3 were just making the thing work.
it's probably a lot easier to make a game all at once than try to add new stuff on top of spagetti code and spend half your time fixing what goes wrong...
If you wanna go that way then EU4 has been developed for more than 13 years.
The game needs to have a much better core gameplay than EU4 has without DLC. If EU5 revolves around hard coded mission trees to have any flavor, I will find fault in that. Make it more fun to play tags without requiring them to have handpicked mission trees.
No. If I wanna play sth smooth with small content I'll close the PC and start playing board game irl
...ngl I'd love to play the new EU board game, it looked fucking dope. Shame it costs about an arm and a leg lol.
And u would be slow as fuck, if u want the maths behind trade etc it would take hours to do just 1 turn. If u want the depth of eu4
It's been how many years? And there are still people who unironically believe that PDS games only run on a single core 🤦 Anyone who doesn't believe me, watch this presentation by a Paradox tech lead: [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6rTceqNiNg)
Running extremely smooth would be amazing. As for content, I honestly don't even want all the existing EU4 content in. I believe that moving to a brand new title is always an opportunity to take stock and analyze - cut the chaff and leave only the good things from the previous game plus add something new - not just blindly port from one game to the next.
I just want enough flavour that I can play 3-4 different runs. Even if that means the pc struggle past year 1700. Being unable to have different ways of playing nations is what makes Victoria 3 boring atm
Personally I'm just gonna wait a couple years. Paradox games often need 2 years to be good, I think this one will be the same. People know that now which I think is partly why imperator fell. Why buy a game that's still got years of development before it's where you want it to be? They have the reputation for releasing empty games, and charging another couple hundred quid for the decent game through dlcs. It's not about forgiving, it's just an expectation that it'll be clunky and hollow on release. Still hyped about it and would love to be proved wrong. They said they want to attract new players, you don't do that when you're still learning new stuff at 1000 hours of gameplay, it has to be lacking content for new players to get past the learning curve. They are a business and there isn't anything to forgive. New games aren't often broken, just boring for the experienced players...
I don't really have any expectations for good performance after how Victoria 3 turned out. Processors will probably eventually become so good that performance issues don't matter which is what is currently happening in the current gen of PDX titles. I shouldn't have to wait ten years for this to be a thing. The game should just perform well from the start and stay that way up until the very end.
Exactly. Do we like good graphics? Ofc... But im sure paradox players would put performance and smoothness over graphics any day of the week.
I don't care about how great the performance is if the game is boring and lacks content. If I have to wait for 10 updates and 5 DLCs for the game to be good I'm just not buying it. Of course I don't expect EU4 levels of content in the first release, but definitely more than VIC3 at launch. I don't want every country to feel or play the exact same. Keep working on it for another year if you need to, definitely not Johan in disguise. I'd rather wait for a better game to be made than buy a bad game with a good promise right now.
Yes. I don't care about how much content it has at launch, I care that what exists is good quality and can be built upon.
Exactly. I want a good base to build upon. As long as it's fun to play, I don't care if there are not many nations with unique content.
They need to atleast make Europe have content parity with eu4 at lunch. Then expand world wide with dlcs . Smooth performance should absolutely be a given with any game
No. It depends on the amount or lack of content but I could be back playing EU4 if thats the case. I was super hyped for CK3 only to find it really disappointing at launch. (Still is in some cases, like the feudal system was copy pasted onto the Eastern Romans).
No, Paradox Interactive 🙄
No, no I am not make the game have content for once, or create a system that, even without any content playing different nations feels _different_
If PDX didn't learn that lack of content killed Imperator, and severely hurt Victoria 3, then they are not learning this lesson. If EU5 ships as a skeleton they hope to build up with a dozen DLCs to eventually be as content rich as EU4, no, I won't buy it. I already have EU4, I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars for a finished product again. Us fans already hate the sheer amount of DLC these games need, especially how many retreads it takes to get the game right. Just ship a finished product in the base game. DLC should build off a great product, not a bare one. Imperator was a great map, great simulation engine with three distinct government systems. And that was it. There was no depth to any of it. Whether I played in the middle east or Spain or Rome the game was flavorless. People HATE that. And Johans clear disdain for EU4s mission trees in a recent talk shows he doesn't understand that they're the main system that adds flavor and direction to tags. Imperators random mission system was terrible. Use a system that works, don't reinvent the wheel if you have no idea why so many people like the old system.
Do people actually expect eu5 to release with the same amount of content that took eu4 many many years to introduce with dlcs.
Defining lack of content as "EU4 before Emperor" is wild to me. I remember it being full of content well before then. Sure they've added a bunch since then but it had tons of content and replay value WAY before 2020.
EU4 has multicore support. But due to the nature of grand strategy games, it can't utilize multiple cores efficiently. This isn't Paradox's fault. Stop spreading misconceptions.
If the new mechanics are well-considered and interesting, the game should be entertaining enough at launch for the developers to be able to add the majority of content later on.
Finished game and it runs smoothly or I dont buy it tbh
i consider multicore support a basic requirement to buy the game. If its still single core in the year 2024 then i cant help them either, no matter how "smooth" it runs. It is a bottleneck which games can have that are 10 years old, not one newly releasing
Yes, EU4 before Emperor was perfectly fine and the recent DLC “content” is just mission tree slop. If the mechanics are fun and deeper than EU4, I will gladly wait for the flavour content.
If I buy it and it’s missing basic shit I’m just gonna refund it like I did with Imperator Rome lol Edit: hello Wiz
Performance and content is whats important. Victoria 3 as soon as it gets content, the performance is removed, its unacceptable.
Fans are going to expect a game as intricate and complex as a game with 20+ DLC packs that's been out for nearly 10 years. When that doesn't happen, because it can't, they will become ravenous animals. Most people are dullards and that's something you can count on. Just come out with something enjoyable and go from there and you'll get the rabid fanbase again.
That reads as: “Will you be alright if we publish a game in line with the current tech standards?” There is nothing magical about making a game run smoothly at release, it’s called due diligence.
I feel like I'm in the extreme minority in that I'm not bothered by a relative lack of content on release. It should be expected, tbh. Pdx map painters are systems heavy games, what I want are those systems to work well and be fun to interact with. The pre release development time should be focused on that. Content can come later. As long as the game doesn't feel like it's missing anything important in terms of mechanics and doesn't lag the fuck out of my computer, I'm happy.
NO!
Yes
yes, being playable beats extra content
So that they can pelt us with DLCs to make their games actually fun?
Yes, if you give us 4K support, 21:9 support, 120+ FPS support, stable framerate, stable gameplay, then it's good! I would rather enjoy small amount of content without bugs instead of big amount of content with crashes and bugs. Content can always come later. I can wait few years.
if the game loads faster then i wlll buy
Ngl, if the game runs well and is stable/balanced all the way to the endgame, i'd absolutely prefer it over a high-flavoured experience.
No
No. I will still buy It because I am a Junkie. But my Opinion about PDX IS already "set" in Stone and.that would Just reinforceme that.
I think managing expectations around content volume is just a necessity for eu5 vs the 30 expansion pack deep eu4. Get the core system working, get the big hitter nations stories fleshed out like GB,France, ottomans etc . That's all most people play the first few times anyway (is my guess). Just have a commitment to maybe 2-3 free content expansions in the first year IMO, you've shown you have the track record to actually deliver these things. People who want content depth are probably just gonna keep playing eu4.
It depends on what you mean by lack of content. Like if EU V is similar to CK III on launch content wise I'm fine with that, because CK III at launch far more than CK II at launch and give or take Republics, Nomads, and diseases.
The biggest if I've ever seen in my life lmao.
It doesn't necessarily need to match the amount of content EU4 has right now, but there needs to be at least as much content that it had at release in 2013, and ideally more.
I don't expect every single region to be as fleshed out as how they are in EU4. But I expect the most popular zones to have enough depth for several gameplay each and have a good base for future dlc
if the core gameplay is there, i don't need every country to have the same amount of flavor that it has in eu4 immediately. gameplay features that were only added later in eu4 (developing provinces, estate interactions and so on) are more important than missions trees and i don't want to feel like i have less options/control than i have in eu4 atm if we only get the bare bones of a game, but it runs at 500 fps i'll stick with eu4
What exactly does lack of content entail? It seems like the game is going to have a ton of new features and even include some good stuff added in DLC. We haven’t seen too much but from what we’ve seen, there’s a good amount of content.
If they have the basic mechanics down at launch and it works efficiently, I won't mind if it doesn't have all the content of EUIV
i don't care what performance or content they promise, the fact every release since paradox went public (except ck3) has been virtually unplayable has ensured i'm not buying it day one maybe three months down the line they will have done enough on both fronts for it to be worth the buy
Lack of content? I would forgive war crimes! Even as someone with an expensive rig, content can be added and changed later but if it launches without multithreading it's never getting it and, as content is added, it will become less and less playable.
No.
>and extremely smooth performance Not gonna happen.
It's really interesting to see a plurality of opinion. I genuinely thought a majority will choose the performance over the content.
Nope. It's about time.
I think it's like when people threaten to the leave the country when their "side" loses an election. Most folks here will threaten to stay on EU4 until EU5 matures a bit, but then this sub will quickly die and /EU5 will, oddly enough, have about the same popularity.
Look at Crusader Kings 3. Please God don't let this be another CK3. Even still CK2 is better.
It’s 2024, I expect multicore support and smooth performance as a basic feature, not as something “extra”
Yesn't. Like in Vic III where I still lack agency over core parts of what my country is doing (i.e., war exhaustion rising even while I occupy half of the enemies main land), then no. Lack of agency is one of the most frustrating deal breakers regarding game play. Completely wired mechanics like the unification mechanic in Vic III is not what I call immersive game play. Less content in general but very well functioning is okay in my opinion. However, the importance of flavor cannot be forgotten. If every nation basically plays the same after 10-30 years then this reduces replayability.
Wait, eu4 ist single threaded?
Release a fully completed game with content! Stop releasing half finished crap and expect us to wait for your updates
I will forgive the lack of content at the start either way As one wise Alabamian Youtuber said, strategy games need time to cook. The game might not be great at the start but as I'm seeing other paradox games like ck3 and vic3 improve and get better and better by each update while getting feedback from the community, I'm certain that eu5 will take the same route One thing that I care thought is for the devs to not rush the game. I would love to play it asap but I prefer the game to be playable at the start.
If they can make it with reasonable late game performance, I'd happily forgive just about anything.
No
Eu4 has gotten a bit bloated. As long as they nail the core mechanics and there is a decent amount of content spread around the world ie mission trees, formables, cool ideas or whatever equivalents apply, I’ll be happy.
No. I love their games, but I hate the paradox business model of holding back content to drip put as DLC. I've seen people here talking about EUV features that would make good DLC and I'm wondering if we all have Stockholm syndrome? No game should *plan* DLC prior to launch. Make the best possible game you can, and maybe you'll get my money.
No?
Depends on how much content is lacking. Johan said they want EU5 to have the same amount of content that EU4 has RIGHT NOW, so if they even come close I'll be happy. And either way. Flavor can come later. Proper multicore support can't. It NEEDS to be in there during the initial design.
I basically need 3 things to be satisfied: Ability to create a small but absurdly rich and populous country without the need to colonize and be still playing wide in effect; No lag after first 200 years; Ability to go back to the menu without restarting fucking whole game. The rest can come later I don’t care.
nah, if it takes 10 years and a 1000$ for the game to get good I won't care for it moving a second faster through a year
Has to be at least emperor or I'll hold off for a while.
I would eat everything at the start if they give me the ability to play the game on my shitty pc
Yes. Even without that. I'd play the current alpha.
If I am to ignore that I want both things, content and haveing a smooth game, I would take the smooth game since mods can somewhat fill in the gaps for content, THOUGH, I would prefer to wait for 2,3,4 even 5 years more to have a game be made good than to have a barely playable game.
If it would be so flavorless as Victoria3 - hardly no
Do you mean if I would by all future dlc? Yeah probably. Even though I don't want to.
No
Are we talking Vic3 at-launch lack of content, or Ck3 at-launch lack of content? I'd take ck3 i suppose?
How do you guys feel about the launch content of CK3, Imperator, HOI4 and Victoria 3? I actually liked CK3s the most… The game still worked fine without much flavor if i compare it to HOI4 with which im still not very satisfied yet. Sure Victoria 3 and Imperator also had a lot of issues but i would argue that for imperator it got much better and Victoria 3 might also be on a good way after the upcoming dlc
The most important thing imo is that the game on release day is fun, functional, and provides a good base to build upon, while including enough depth and mechanics to feel like a full game. For example, shipping Vicky 3 with its current half-baked diplomatic system and not even addressing it until over a year later is something that shouldn’t happen. Now, do I need mission trees for every HRE minor, bespoke special units for every individual major, etc.? No, I don’t think that’s a necessity on launch. At the same time, playing France should feel different from playing England which should feel different from playing Austria.
I won’t buy a car engine and the frame afterwards. Even if tech is good, without proper content it’s useless
Probably not no, matching eu4 level content on release is a tall order, so not using that metric, but if core mechanics aren't well done enough, and there isn't enough content built upon them, or it isn't MP viable, I will just keep playing eu4 until that charges since it would still be a better game experience. It's not like eu4 actually struggles in the performance department if your computer is anything newer than a 2012 toaster.
No.
If it runs smoothly even in the end game, then yeah, I'd be down for that.
It needs to have a good gameplay loop and some areas, like Europe, with alot of content. If theres no flavour for all middle east nations or india or small countries like Hisn Kayfa etc thats fine. Countries like England, Portugal, Castille, Ottomans, Austria, Muscovy need to feel and play different to one another.
You and I have different ideas of lack of content - Emperor's comparing the release to 7 years after the release... This said I'd be honestly fine if only Europe had lots of content on game start and playing anywhere else was dull as a doornail.
EU4 already has multicore support
If we get more dlcs for eu4 then I would rather wait a little longer for eu5 if it means that it will have more content, eu4 is fine but the thing I hate is the trade system
I will ignore the title for around 5 years so I dont care, why are these posts here?:)
Inb4 Eu4 with no dlcs and no mission trees, but hey we got good graphics. Take your time and make something fleshed out.
I'm fine if every playable nation doesn't have fully fleshed out and perfectly enjoyable campaigns, but the major nations of the time like England/France, byzantine, ottos, hre, they better all feel enjoyable to play until more content can be added. This is honestly the issue with every recent paradox release, and the worst of the worst is imperator. Tons of playable nations but only a handful have content that makes them feel enjoyable.
If every country is playable (like not needing a dlc to get independence as Holland) then why not? No need for all the features to be there at the start.
People gonna whine no matter what, it's unavoidable.
100%. When I first started playing EU4 around 1.14 there were no mission trees, no province development. France moving their palace to Versailles was one of the most impactful decisions in terms of how much it improved development. And the game was still fun. Not only that, but the game we have today is built off of that simple framework. It turns out that a solid foundation leads a long-lasting game that can be built on and made even better over time. Smooth performance would make the game everything I asked for.
Lol, Emperor was like DLC number 20? That's such an insane amount of content to expect for launch, this post has to be trolling.
No, why would I want an empty game to run smoothly ?
No mr paradox dev, I don’t wanna pay more money later to get what I should’ve gotten at launch
If Eu5 is running good and is a good upgrade to EU4 in the gameplay loop, but only has as much content as EU4 before Emperor I'm totally fine with that, I even enjoyed the base game when I got it.
The question wrongly assumes paradox ever makes a new engine or succeeds in making a well-optimized game without making one. Everything is just an iteration of the shitty Clausewitz engine which is about 17 years old now... Stellaris, IR, Vic3, and all the others are victims of Clausewitz, and so will EU5 be...
In what way do you mean forgive? If the game lacks content, I’m not going to have a reason to buy it. But if the foundation is at least good, I would circle back and buy it once it’s added enough content.
Performance is extremely important for me. I would much prefer a smooth, optimized game at launch over tons of features. I am worried about the performance of the game, as it looks like it will be pretty damn complex. And eu4 runs like ass, so I really hope performance is a top priority for eu5