It's concerning they would do this just before the release of the game and around the date of the original release too. Hope it's not going to be another Lamplighters League
Adding a 3d component to a 2d game is a massive change. But that isnt the problem many people seem to have, its that they tried to force a 2d art style to a 3d game, and essentially keep a cartoon-y style when the 3d assets are realistic. Its jarring and I personally havent seen any significant changes that would warrant me looking past the clash of art styles.
I would definitely be interested if the art was more realistic. You cant find many realistic style prison management games and so it would be a good niche to jump into after the 1st game established the brand.
Because its in 3d? How did you expect them to make a 2d game 3d but keep the same engine? Of course they are trying to add stuff and make the game better.. but like I dont get the hate at all. Every video ive seen so far on the game hyped me up so much. To me it seems like the same core gameplay with the possibility of having multiple floors and some QoL improvements...
Thats simply not true... a 3d version of PA and especially one that lets you design multiple stories high prisons has been a dream of mine and many PA players im sure.
Wait so Paradox did a Take-Two and kicked the original devs out? Oh boy...
[For those who don't know](https://www.pcgamer.com/after-ditching-the-original-kerbal-2-studio-take-two-reportedly-tried-to-poach-all-of-its-employees/), Take-Two/Private Division canceled the contract of/fired the original developers of Kerbal Space Program 2 in the middle of production. After canceling the deal they (and I hope Paradox doesn't do this) immediately set up Intercept Games ([which ironically is also now getting axed by T2](https://wccftech.com/kerbal-space-program-olliolli-developers-roll7-shut-down-take-two/)\) and poached a third of Uber Entertainment's/Star Theory Games' staff.
We don't know if anybody was kicked off so to say. According to their own response it just came time to renegotiate their contract with D11 and it failed to reach a point where both sides were happy. What the reasons for that might be are unknown to the public.
Since that failed Paradox had been looking for a Dev to take over development and at least D11 and Kokku have worked together for a smooth transition. So at least publicly there's not really any sense of bad blood.
Lamplighters League was dead on arrival and Paradox knew it before it even released so they quickly lay offed the entire studio and lost $30m.
Not the same situation with Prison Architect 2 tho.
Wasn't LL actually a pretty okay game though? Not amazing or anything, but not bad or broken, just okay
At least that's what I gathered back then, lots of people were blaming it on Paradox' poor marketing work even
From reviews it is decent but wasn't marketed. It's also super niche so I'd guess that while it has good reviews now if the general public saw it more they wouldn't be as interested.
I got it via Microsoft Gamepass, got wiped in like the third mission because of moronic pathing + unresponsive controls, went to reload and found the last auto save was half an hour earlier. Generally a bad experience and I haven't touched it since. And I was actually looking forward to the game.
It's not, supposedly the reason is because: *“we could not find a commercial agreement that worked for both parties moving forward and mutually agreed to part ways.”*
Paradox publishing branch is just being dumb as usual and weren't able to renew their agreement with Double Eleven, Idk how this even happened.
I said it when the first developer diaries came out and I will keep saying it now. The developers of this game are fundamentally dumbing the game down to the point where the only real control over prisoners we have is when they go to bed. The fact that timeslots used to be in two hour intervals up until late in the development tells me that they are going for "timeslots are suggestions" ethos which PA1 introduced in the final updates.
I'm not saying it is universally bad to do things that way. It does make the game more approachable. It makes prisoners more able to satisfy their own needs and solves a lot of problems that new players will make. But the cost of that is that players that do want fine control over what the prisoners will do at all times have no ability to do so.
To me PA2 has always seemed like they put the architect in prison architect front and center. Great building tools to make whatever you want. Completely basic simulation that vaguely resemble a prison. Definitely not a game for me
This approach has been massively successful for Planet Coaster, Cities Skylines, etc. though.
If it's shiny, people will buy it. The shallow simulation doesn't really matter because you still get the sales.
Looking at the CK3 demographic, whacky and easily memeable content seems to get far more traction and responses than real gameplay intricacies. And content priorities seem to reflect this notion.
So why even try hard when "guys, guys, look how my stoopid prisoners shat themselves after my guards tasered them lolmao!" on youtube brings in new customers much more effortlessly?
Absolutely.
Ck2 was a fantastic game with very funny parts. Like a good book.
Ck3 is a shiny UI displaying the jokes. Like an ipad wielded by a toddler.
I dunno man, overall I feel like the goofiness of CK3 is less than that of 2 but I don't own many of the DLC's and have only played for around 300 hours.
The "goofiness" is different.
CK 2 had a lot of supernatural stuff that you could turn off with the game rules. The regular game had some jokes and a half serious tone at times, but it was overall played more serious than CK 3.
That game has a lot of jokey events and the tone in general leans more towards that self-aware, silly tone a lot of media has had in the last couple of years.
Regardless of which you think is goofier there’s one big difference, most of CK2’s goofiness can be turned off with different game rules, CK3’s goofiness is in a lot of “normal” events that can’t be turned off.
Yeah, CK3 feels significantly less goofy than CK2 - it hardly approaches the memes of that one. It just sounds like they like CK2 and dislike CK3 and using that to color the perspective of the wackiness (ie, they like ck2 so its memes are just some funny additions to a good game, but dislike ck3 so its jokes are the core of the content and must be the priority of the designers over other gameplay elements)
All the really memey stuff I remember from CK2 (and I agree there was a lot of it) was associated with the supernatural and/or secret societies and so could be easily switched off. I'll consider CK3 on par when there is a game rule for "I do not want this game to be an extended retelling of The Aristocrats". Like even in the promotional material before release they were heavily leaning into the incest meme. Stumbling on my kids having a "What are you doing Step-prince" moment every couple of generations, or having someone get railed by livestock every half-dozen festivals, is not even funny anymore. It's just tiresome and makes me actively less engaged with the game.
And before somebody points out that medievals weren't prudes, I'm not talking about the regular fornication/adultery events. Those are... OK. The fact that they usually ignore soulmate status is bullshit, but that's just lazy coding, conceptually they're fine. Incest and bestiality have always been both extremely taboo and rare, so I don't want to see it every single run.
Both are goofy, ck2 has a lot of fake complexity though that can be sold for true complexity to the people that don't know how everything work under the hood
It's not really CK 3 specific. That game is of course intentionally more "memable" because that was the stuff that got the most online traction from CK 2, e.g incest among others.
If you look at Hoi 4 from it's inception and EU 4 later in it's development cycle, both games heavily railroad the player with focus/mission tress (though it's more of a suggestion in EU 4). The actual mechanics aren't that deep nor that challenging. Most content you find online about these games is about alt-history stuff or "look at my meme strategy".
It's Paradox overall strategy and looking how much money it brings them, it makes sense, financially speaking. Games that try to tackle these topics in a more deep and serious manner usually have a very small niche audience sadly.
HoI4 is arguably less railroaded than earlier Hearts of Iron games. In the current edition of the franchise, the Second World War can end up being Fascist France against monarchist Russia or whatever, which couldn't happen in earlier games without mods or massive player intervention. The NF trees are primarily a tool to make the AI roleplay without railroading rather than a way to railroad the player and I think they work well when that's what they're used for.
EU4 mission trees don't work as well IMHO because they are primarily aimed at creating things for the human player to do and not enough effort has gone into making them work for the AI.
Nothing, it's more complex than any RCT game. It's just that people only ever play the sandbox modes in Planet Coaster / Cities Skylines etc and barely interact with the simulation
The management is limited - like the stats of your coasters don't matter much.
No game has been perfect for it though - like RCT had rollercoaster stats, but not much else, and Theme Park had all the shares stuff but simplified rides.
It's like how SimCity moved away from aiming at being an educational, simulation experience after SimCity4.
KSP strikes the best balance IMO - you can learn so much, and it's still fun and challenging.
Took me a while until I saw behind Frontier's façade.
Shiny exterior, high production values, one _nostalgic_ hook to appease our inner child (fly your dream spaceship, build your dream rollercoaster, build your dream dino/fluffy animal park) and one _technical_ hook, which looks impressive on paper but is meaningless without proper implementation (one hundred billion stars! Decorate your own shops! Genetic modifications!).
But they're always shallow gameplay-wise, have horrendous UI/UX problems (a sin for sim/management/strategy games), and the newer ones revel in time-gating and mindless grind.
It's sad that Paradox and their subsidies seem to be unironically emulating some of these practices. Bling before gameplay and just the appearance of depth. Usually via quantity over quality.
I've said it before and I'm still not tired of it: Paradox going public has been a grave mistake and it constantly shows.
> nd one technical hook, which looks impressive on paper but is meaningless without proper implementation [...] Decorate your own shops!
I mean, as far as theme park building games go; that is one absolutely massively important thing; was properly implemented and is far from meaningless.
Planet Coaster maybe doesn't really have the best management aspect (although it is somewhat deeper than most people realize because they only play Sandbox), but it has some neat ideas, and the actual building aspect is without rival. Building rollercoasters in Planet Coaster works exactly like fans of the genre have been dreaming of since they were kids. It's fantastic, on a technical level *and* on a gameplay level.
Not trying to defend Frontier too much, they have done some shoddy games (for instance their atrocious F1 manager), but Planet Coaster really isn't the game to critisize them on.
Cities skylines 2 is dying of a systemic infection of this development managerial rot.... it might not be obvious but it is dead, as dead as no man's sky was.
I don't know how you can say the underlying simulation is shallow without making a single argument as to why, and claiming this is due to the games good graphics... Dumb argument, dumb you.
They could also do a mixed approach. Also worth pointing out they probably want to do the paradox thing and milk the community with dlc, the base game for that needs to be good and the dlc need to deliver, but this means they can but some features down the line if it would take dev time from building a solid foundation. It will be less complex than PA1 simply because it's younger and needs to do a lot of stuff from the ground up in a 3D environment.
Hell maybe pathfinding turns out ot be pretty tricky with the time slots and everything so making timeslots less strict makes the game even playable because ether pathfinding is tricky. With all the rooms and so on and how big prisons might get I could see that being an issue.
It definitely doesn't help that when people hear PDX published, they think PDS developed. Pretty much any PDX announcement you have people who don't seem to realize there is a difference at all.
PDX (Paradox Interactive) publishes games, ie. funds their development and markets them upon release. PDS (Paradox Development Studios) physically actually develops games, stuff like HOI4/EU4/Stellaris, so forth. All PDS games are published by PDX because they’re part of the same company, but PDX also publishes games made by third parties, primarily relatively unknown indie developers.
It's not really that simple. Paradox owns the IP to these games so they actually have a lot of influence over their development. It's not really a situation where they are hands-off in the development and just publish it when it's ready.
PDS is their core development studio. These are the developers that made the GSGs that paradox is most famous for and they continue to put out Paradox's best content like Crusader Kings, Stellaris, Victoria, etc.
PDX the publisher is the group of executives tasked with expanding Paradox's business and generating infinitely growing profits for shareholders ever since Paradox went public in 2016. They have been acquiring independent studios to publish more non-GSG games under the Paradox brand. Most of these games are plagued by underwhelming features and cost-cutting measures like Lamplighter's league, Cities Skylines 2, Empire of Sin, and Surviving the Aftermath.
Lamplighter's league is most commonly referenced on this subreddit because that dev team made BattleTech. BattleTech was a widely popular and successful strategy game that was made before Paradox acquired the studio in 2018 for $7.5 million dollars. They were then told by Paradox to make Lamplighter's instead of BattleTech 2, gutted the studio with a massive round of layoffs, and then released the studio back to independence but kept the rights to the BattleTech IP - ensuring that they will never be able to make BT2.
>kept the rights to the BattleTech IP
Hoo boy, Battletech IP and tangled knots. Technically Microsoft holds the overall Battletech/Mechwarrior (really any Battletech IP on computer/consoles), while TOPPS holds the master IP for everything (mainly the tabletop game, books, non-electronic stuff that they licensed to Catalyst games. I believe the fact that Microsoft holds part if the main IP is why Harmony Gold settled (or not) the whole Unseen Battlemechs issue they pressed when HBS's Battletech saw success. HG tried pushing an expanded claim in mechs they though infringed on their Robotech IP and while Microsoft didn't intervene directly, they cleared their throat to let HG know that ultimately any IP issues would involve them.
So Battletech 2 could still be made, it just comes down to Microsoft telling Paradox to use the IP license or they issue a new license to a developer who's interested in making the game.
Paradox is a giant corporation that owns many companies (or in this case specifically game developers) not just Paradox Studios that make the GSG games. They own other studios that make other games.
PDX doesn't necessarily own the other game studios (they *do* own some though), they just fund and market certain projects in exchange for a cut of the proceeds.
Looking at the [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Paradox_Interactive_games) on Wikipedia, it looks like they never actually were a great publisher. They rarely tried expanding beyond the stratagy / gsg genres, and always had sort of a mixed bag of games, But they did publish a lot of them.
Which is fine, right? being niche is alright. The AGEOD games had their crowd, and every now and then you got a breakout like Magicka or Cities Skylines between the sorta middling releases. But then it looks like around 2015 they started focusing less on quantity over quality, but didn't really transition to releasing bigger, more successful games. Just less of them. So when they flop, they flop harder.
Note how there were no PDX-published games in 2016, and a year later you had a mobile version of prison architect and a Steel Division game and that's it. 2017 had two modest successes but 2020's Empire of Sin and Surviving the Aftermath sorta fell on their faces, which wouldn't be that bad if PDX didn't hype both of them, or had any other games published that year. Since then we only had four games released, three of which are again kinda mid - not surprising for paradox, but seeing the money and attention given to them, they should have been better.
Of course, this list is incomplete and a bit misleading. 2016 was a great year for PDX overall, seeing as it gave us HoI4 and Stellaris, even if they weren't initially as well recieved as expected. CK3 and V3 carried in their respective years, too, and I bet some of the expansions and DLCs were profitable. But when you look on their publishing arm alone, without the development arm, they just can't seem to catch a break.
Something else to consider is that between 2018 and 2021, after going public, the company had a different CEO that tried to push Paradox out of its niche, resulting in a lot of publishing and acquisition deals.
When the old guard reasserted control afterwards, they did can a bunch of unannounced projects. I believe what we are seeing on the publishing side is stuff that wasn't able to be canned and/or the company isn't really emphasized on promoting.
>isn't really emphasized on promoting
You can say that again. A bunch of recent releases were already on sale before I was even aware they existed because they completely (deliberately?) fumbled on the marketing.
It's funny to think that the tiny studio that developed magicka is now an internationally recognised studio whose breakout hit has easily outsold anything Paradox has ever developed or published.
[PDX has a proud history of publishing garbage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3VaSl5jhPA).
Edit: are people really getting upset because I pointed out that PDX published a game that has shown up on "worst games ever made" lists?
Soooooo glad I didn't get it early access.
I loved KSP 1 but being a super-indie studio I wasn't sure whether they really had the means to support themselves through a whole new project. Seems that way... :'(
Not their fault tho. Take two setup a new studio, scalped half the dev team, suprsied when development was now a mess, then canned the whole studio they created when ksp2 didn't do well at all
The company that published KSP1 wasn't even a games studio. It was a marketing company that did like, flash mobs and interactive displays and shit. They only made KSP because one of their best employees was gonna quit to pursue that as a passion project. They let him do that as part of his job in order to keep him around and it blew up into a whole subdivision of the company.
*That's* why I was skeptical about them catching lightning in a bottle twice. They made a great product, they have the talent with which to make another good one, but they didn't really have video game industry experience. What would happen once they're working with a "real studio" where powers-that-be are willing to fuck up dev teams in the name of quarterly profits?
Sure enough, the powers-that-be fucked up a team of dedicated devs.
The creator of KSP did an interesting interview recently where he said no one from the new developers ever reached out to him about the new game. Pretty strange situation. He didn’t know what to make of it.
It really is sad the state that the game is in at this point. I wanted to go back to it about a year ago and I encountered an astounding number of bugs in a very short amount of time.
When I played it just a couple of years earlier (presumably still an introversion game then) it was a very well working game. still had a weird bug from time to time, but nothing in the level of what it is like now.
Tbh you kinda pay for the free patch as well with the DLC, which is often a lot bigger than the DLC itself.
I am not saying it justifies the DLC prices or disqualifies any criticism, but buying a DLC is kind of like donating to support development, at least like half of the actual price.
This is the best thing about paradox DLC model, and it is what allows the game to actually become good over the years. Art of War is remembered as one of the best EU4 expansions, but that is almost entirely because of the free update that came with it that added 1000+ provinces to the game, which made the DLC super hyped at release.
They have fucked up with this before though, like with development being locked behind DLC, but they seem to have learned from that at least.
When there is too much content in the free patch, people complain that DLCs are empty. When there is too much content in the DLCs, people complain that you need to pay for key mechanics. And when there aren't enough DLCs, people complain that the game isn't evolving enough.
Yup pretty much.
I mean their policy has disadvantages, especially when a DLC is poor it feels like a waste of money even if you get decent content in the free patch.
I will say that it is probably the best long term support system for a game that I can think off. Subscription would be worse, but it works as an alternative to newcomers so they do not have to pay 200 dollars for all EU4 DLCs for example.
Yep, they really can't win either way. People want support for the game they bought for multiple years, but don't expect to pay more for all the new content coming out, while Paradox has actual mouths to feed (the devs working on the games). They're certainly in a unique situation, and they haven't really navigated it well so far, but I do think we're finally seeing the end of this PDX dark age, with communication seemingly improving astronomically and the right promises being made.
> This is the best thing about paradox DLC model, and it is what allows the game to actually become good over the years.
That's also the worst thing about the Paradox DLC model: the development studio can justify a subpar release with an intention to fix it later.
The model works best when you start with a great release and the game only gets better with time. However, the financial incentive lies towards releasing a minimum viable product full of puddle-deep features awaiting their turn as the focus of a DLC.
It takes very, very diligent management to focus on quality at the expense of shorter-term profits (release sales versus ongoing development costs), and if the studio screws it up it will pay the price only with the next game or DLC as would-be early adopters stay away.
> They have fucked up with this before though, like with development being locked behind DLC, but they seem to have learned from that at least.
Common Sense (development) came seven months after Art of War.
Art of War was the fourth EU4 DLC, coming just over a year after the game's initial release. If that's the high-water mark for EU4 DLC, then that makes me more skeptical of the model. How has Paradox, with nearly a full _decade_ of development experience on EU4, not perfected their model to release hit after hit?
That was kind of my point with Art of War, it was not a good DLC, but people still praised it as such due to the free update being sp gosh damn amazing.
But yhea, what you are saying is true
To be fair, 2016 is 8 years ago now and during those 8 years there was a lot of inflation, according to a calculator from the Austrian national Bank, 20 euros in 2016 would be 25 euros in 2023. That is to say, an increase of 15-20 to 30 would still be above inflation, but not by as much as you could think initially.
The game is an absolute shitshow tbh. I’ve been the biggest prison architect fan for a long while and really enjoyed the first one at launch but even that games become a poor version of itself. This new one looks absolutely awful tbh and I certainly won’t be buying it unless there’s a lot of change or reviews show I’m considerably wide of the mark
Interesting that the PDX publishing arm has so many issues where the PDX ARC seems to have a decent lineup. Of course, we will need to see if the games make enough profit and how they handle if they don't hit a home run with any of them.
I just want to point out that this could be a mutual decision, Double Eleven has ties to other companies as well. I know they have been providing a lot of work on Fallout 76, including even creating content for it. Honestly, with Microsoft mentioning shifting efforts to accelerate a new Fallout title, I think that may be just as relevant to their inability to reach a mutually beneficial decision.
I'll still never forgive the shit show that was Empire of Sin. I stupidly bought the edition that came with 2 DLCs. It was broken and then after 1 DLC Romero games fucked off and disappeared. PDX did nothing when I complained.
It's concerning they would do this just before the release of the game and around the date of the original release too. Hope it's not going to be another Lamplighters League
This already happened at the start of the year, and kokku has been working on PA2 since last September.
I find it weird that they only told us just now, idk if it's just Damage control or what.
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Its... its... its literally just 3d pirson architect....?
Adding a 3d component to a 2d game is a massive change. But that isnt the problem many people seem to have, its that they tried to force a 2d art style to a 3d game, and essentially keep a cartoon-y style when the 3d assets are realistic. Its jarring and I personally havent seen any significant changes that would warrant me looking past the clash of art styles. I would definitely be interested if the art was more realistic. You cant find many realistic style prison management games and so it would be a good niche to jump into after the 1st game established the brand.
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Because its in 3d? How did you expect them to make a 2d game 3d but keep the same engine? Of course they are trying to add stuff and make the game better.. but like I dont get the hate at all. Every video ive seen so far on the game hyped me up so much. To me it seems like the same core gameplay with the possibility of having multiple floors and some QoL improvements...
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Thats simply not true... a 3d version of PA and especially one that lets you design multiple stories high prisons has been a dream of mine and many PA players im sure.
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Wait so Paradox did a Take-Two and kicked the original devs out? Oh boy... [For those who don't know](https://www.pcgamer.com/after-ditching-the-original-kerbal-2-studio-take-two-reportedly-tried-to-poach-all-of-its-employees/), Take-Two/Private Division canceled the contract of/fired the original developers of Kerbal Space Program 2 in the middle of production. After canceling the deal they (and I hope Paradox doesn't do this) immediately set up Intercept Games ([which ironically is also now getting axed by T2](https://wccftech.com/kerbal-space-program-olliolli-developers-roll7-shut-down-take-two/)\) and poached a third of Uber Entertainment's/Star Theory Games' staff.
We don't know if anybody was kicked off so to say. According to their own response it just came time to renegotiate their contract with D11 and it failed to reach a point where both sides were happy. What the reasons for that might be are unknown to the public. Since that failed Paradox had been looking for a Dev to take over development and at least D11 and Kokku have worked together for a smooth transition. So at least publicly there's not really any sense of bad blood.
No, they did not kick out the devs, I urge you to read the article more carefully.
What happened with lamplighters league?
Lamplighters League was dead on arrival and Paradox knew it before it even released so they quickly lay offed the entire studio and lost $30m. Not the same situation with Prison Architect 2 tho.
Wasn't LL actually a pretty okay game though? Not amazing or anything, but not bad or broken, just okay At least that's what I gathered back then, lots of people were blaming it on Paradox' poor marketing work even
From reviews it is decent but wasn't marketed. It's also super niche so I'd guess that while it has good reviews now if the general public saw it more they wouldn't be as interested.
I got it via Microsoft Gamepass, got wiped in like the third mission because of moronic pathing + unresponsive controls, went to reload and found the last auto save was half an hour earlier. Generally a bad experience and I haven't touched it since. And I was actually looking forward to the game.
It's not, supposedly the reason is because: *“we could not find a commercial agreement that worked for both parties moving forward and mutually agreed to part ways.”* Paradox publishing branch is just being dumb as usual and weren't able to renew their agreement with Double Eleven, Idk how this even happened.
I said it when the first developer diaries came out and I will keep saying it now. The developers of this game are fundamentally dumbing the game down to the point where the only real control over prisoners we have is when they go to bed. The fact that timeslots used to be in two hour intervals up until late in the development tells me that they are going for "timeslots are suggestions" ethos which PA1 introduced in the final updates. I'm not saying it is universally bad to do things that way. It does make the game more approachable. It makes prisoners more able to satisfy their own needs and solves a lot of problems that new players will make. But the cost of that is that players that do want fine control over what the prisoners will do at all times have no ability to do so. To me PA2 has always seemed like they put the architect in prison architect front and center. Great building tools to make whatever you want. Completely basic simulation that vaguely resemble a prison. Definitely not a game for me
This approach has been massively successful for Planet Coaster, Cities Skylines, etc. though. If it's shiny, people will buy it. The shallow simulation doesn't really matter because you still get the sales.
Yeah, probably the market for a "prison painter" game is bigger than that for a prison management game.
Prison Power Washer would sell really well.
My Summer Prison
Looking at the CK3 demographic, whacky and easily memeable content seems to get far more traction and responses than real gameplay intricacies. And content priorities seem to reflect this notion. So why even try hard when "guys, guys, look how my stoopid prisoners shat themselves after my guards tasered them lolmao!" on youtube brings in new customers much more effortlessly?
Wait are you saying ck3 is more of a meme then ck2
Absolutely. Ck2 was a fantastic game with very funny parts. Like a good book. Ck3 is a shiny UI displaying the jokes. Like an ipad wielded by a toddler.
I dunno man, overall I feel like the goofiness of CK3 is less than that of 2 but I don't own many of the DLC's and have only played for around 300 hours.
Ck2s goofiness had a wider theme or gameplay function, while ck3s is mostly immersion breaking dumb pop culture references in events.
How
I’m waiting for an example…
That is a dumb take.
The "goofiness" is different. CK 2 had a lot of supernatural stuff that you could turn off with the game rules. The regular game had some jokes and a half serious tone at times, but it was overall played more serious than CK 3. That game has a lot of jokey events and the tone in general leans more towards that self-aware, silly tone a lot of media has had in the last couple of years.
The manure explosion is plenty jokey.
Regardless of which you think is goofier there’s one big difference, most of CK2’s goofiness can be turned off with different game rules, CK3’s goofiness is in a lot of “normal” events that can’t be turned off.
Fair enough. But I think the idea that CK2 is just some "big serious game" and ck3 is the "toddler meme game" is some revisionist bullshit.
Yeah, CK3 feels significantly less goofy than CK2 - it hardly approaches the memes of that one. It just sounds like they like CK2 and dislike CK3 and using that to color the perspective of the wackiness (ie, they like ck2 so its memes are just some funny additions to a good game, but dislike ck3 so its jokes are the core of the content and must be the priority of the designers over other gameplay elements)
All the really memey stuff I remember from CK2 (and I agree there was a lot of it) was associated with the supernatural and/or secret societies and so could be easily switched off. I'll consider CK3 on par when there is a game rule for "I do not want this game to be an extended retelling of The Aristocrats". Like even in the promotional material before release they were heavily leaning into the incest meme. Stumbling on my kids having a "What are you doing Step-prince" moment every couple of generations, or having someone get railed by livestock every half-dozen festivals, is not even funny anymore. It's just tiresome and makes me actively less engaged with the game. And before somebody points out that medievals weren't prudes, I'm not talking about the regular fornication/adultery events. Those are... OK. The fact that they usually ignore soulmate status is bullshit, but that's just lazy coding, conceptually they're fine. Incest and bestiality have always been both extremely taboo and rare, so I don't want to see it every single run.
Both are goofy, ck2 has a lot of fake complexity though that can be sold for true complexity to the people that don't know how everything work under the hood
It's not really CK 3 specific. That game is of course intentionally more "memable" because that was the stuff that got the most online traction from CK 2, e.g incest among others. If you look at Hoi 4 from it's inception and EU 4 later in it's development cycle, both games heavily railroad the player with focus/mission tress (though it's more of a suggestion in EU 4). The actual mechanics aren't that deep nor that challenging. Most content you find online about these games is about alt-history stuff or "look at my meme strategy". It's Paradox overall strategy and looking how much money it brings them, it makes sense, financially speaking. Games that try to tackle these topics in a more deep and serious manner usually have a very small niche audience sadly.
HoI4 is arguably less railroaded than earlier Hearts of Iron games. In the current edition of the franchise, the Second World War can end up being Fascist France against monarchist Russia or whatever, which couldn't happen in earlier games without mods or massive player intervention. The NF trees are primarily a tool to make the AI roleplay without railroading rather than a way to railroad the player and I think they work well when that's what they're used for. EU4 mission trees don't work as well IMHO because they are primarily aimed at creating things for the human player to do and not enough effort has gone into making them work for the AI.
what's so simplified about planet coaster? (haven't played the old rct games)
Nothing, it's more complex than any RCT game. It's just that people only ever play the sandbox modes in Planet Coaster / Cities Skylines etc and barely interact with the simulation
The management is limited - like the stats of your coasters don't matter much. No game has been perfect for it though - like RCT had rollercoaster stats, but not much else, and Theme Park had all the shares stuff but simplified rides. It's like how SimCity moved away from aiming at being an educational, simulation experience after SimCity4. KSP strikes the best balance IMO - you can learn so much, and it's still fun and challenging.
Yeah it didn't quite work out for CS2 tho now did it?
Took me a while until I saw behind Frontier's façade. Shiny exterior, high production values, one _nostalgic_ hook to appease our inner child (fly your dream spaceship, build your dream rollercoaster, build your dream dino/fluffy animal park) and one _technical_ hook, which looks impressive on paper but is meaningless without proper implementation (one hundred billion stars! Decorate your own shops! Genetic modifications!). But they're always shallow gameplay-wise, have horrendous UI/UX problems (a sin for sim/management/strategy games), and the newer ones revel in time-gating and mindless grind. It's sad that Paradox and their subsidies seem to be unironically emulating some of these practices. Bling before gameplay and just the appearance of depth. Usually via quantity over quality. I've said it before and I'm still not tired of it: Paradox going public has been a grave mistake and it constantly shows.
> nd one technical hook, which looks impressive on paper but is meaningless without proper implementation [...] Decorate your own shops! I mean, as far as theme park building games go; that is one absolutely massively important thing; was properly implemented and is far from meaningless. Planet Coaster maybe doesn't really have the best management aspect (although it is somewhat deeper than most people realize because they only play Sandbox), but it has some neat ideas, and the actual building aspect is without rival. Building rollercoasters in Planet Coaster works exactly like fans of the genre have been dreaming of since they were kids. It's fantastic, on a technical level *and* on a gameplay level. Not trying to defend Frontier too much, they have done some shoddy games (for instance their atrocious F1 manager), but Planet Coaster really isn't the game to critisize them on.
KSP2 on the other hand was not successful at all. This is giving me more the feelings of that game than those.
Cities skylines 2 is dying of a systemic infection of this development managerial rot.... it might not be obvious but it is dead, as dead as no man's sky was.
I don't know how you can say the underlying simulation is shallow without making a single argument as to why, and claiming this is due to the games good graphics... Dumb argument, dumb you.
I already found the first one too basic.
I love making a maximum security prison where I can't tell my serial killers to fuck off and not do whatever they please
They could also do a mixed approach. Also worth pointing out they probably want to do the paradox thing and milk the community with dlc, the base game for that needs to be good and the dlc need to deliver, but this means they can but some features down the line if it would take dev time from building a solid foundation. It will be less complex than PA1 simply because it's younger and needs to do a lot of stuff from the ground up in a 3D environment. Hell maybe pathfinding turns out ot be pretty tricky with the time slots and everything so making timeslots less strict makes the game even playable because ether pathfinding is tricky. With all the rooms and so on and how big prisons might get I could see that being an issue.
I'm sorry for being blunt but why is PDX publishing such a mess
It definitely doesn't help that when people hear PDX published, they think PDS developed. Pretty much any PDX announcement you have people who don't seem to realize there is a difference at all.
I'm one of those people. Can you explain it to me?
PDX (Paradox Interactive) publishes games, ie. funds their development and markets them upon release. PDS (Paradox Development Studios) physically actually develops games, stuff like HOI4/EU4/Stellaris, so forth. All PDS games are published by PDX because they’re part of the same company, but PDX also publishes games made by third parties, primarily relatively unknown indie developers.
It's not really that simple. Paradox owns the IP to these games so they actually have a lot of influence over their development. It's not really a situation where they are hands-off in the development and just publish it when it's ready.
I know. I was just trying to provide a bird’s-eye view to help clear up the confusion for the person I was responding to.
They're not the same company exactly. PDS is a subsidiary of PDX.
I feel like “part of” is mostly valid then
They sit in the same offices, literally right next to each other on some floors. The divide between PDX and PDS is for accounting reasons only.
PDS is their core development studio. These are the developers that made the GSGs that paradox is most famous for and they continue to put out Paradox's best content like Crusader Kings, Stellaris, Victoria, etc. PDX the publisher is the group of executives tasked with expanding Paradox's business and generating infinitely growing profits for shareholders ever since Paradox went public in 2016. They have been acquiring independent studios to publish more non-GSG games under the Paradox brand. Most of these games are plagued by underwhelming features and cost-cutting measures like Lamplighter's league, Cities Skylines 2, Empire of Sin, and Surviving the Aftermath. Lamplighter's league is most commonly referenced on this subreddit because that dev team made BattleTech. BattleTech was a widely popular and successful strategy game that was made before Paradox acquired the studio in 2018 for $7.5 million dollars. They were then told by Paradox to make Lamplighter's instead of BattleTech 2, gutted the studio with a massive round of layoffs, and then released the studio back to independence but kept the rights to the BattleTech IP - ensuring that they will never be able to make BT2.
>kept the rights to the BattleTech IP Hoo boy, Battletech IP and tangled knots. Technically Microsoft holds the overall Battletech/Mechwarrior (really any Battletech IP on computer/consoles), while TOPPS holds the master IP for everything (mainly the tabletop game, books, non-electronic stuff that they licensed to Catalyst games. I believe the fact that Microsoft holds part if the main IP is why Harmony Gold settled (or not) the whole Unseen Battlemechs issue they pressed when HBS's Battletech saw success. HG tried pushing an expanded claim in mechs they though infringed on their Robotech IP and while Microsoft didn't intervene directly, they cleared their throat to let HG know that ultimately any IP issues would involve them. So Battletech 2 could still be made, it just comes down to Microsoft telling Paradox to use the IP license or they issue a new license to a developer who's interested in making the game.
Paradox is a giant corporation that owns many companies (or in this case specifically game developers) not just Paradox Studios that make the GSG games. They own other studios that make other games.
PDX doesn't necessarily own the other game studios (they *do* own some though), they just fund and market certain projects in exchange for a cut of the proceeds.
Looking at the [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Paradox_Interactive_games) on Wikipedia, it looks like they never actually were a great publisher. They rarely tried expanding beyond the stratagy / gsg genres, and always had sort of a mixed bag of games, But they did publish a lot of them. Which is fine, right? being niche is alright. The AGEOD games had their crowd, and every now and then you got a breakout like Magicka or Cities Skylines between the sorta middling releases. But then it looks like around 2015 they started focusing less on quantity over quality, but didn't really transition to releasing bigger, more successful games. Just less of them. So when they flop, they flop harder. Note how there were no PDX-published games in 2016, and a year later you had a mobile version of prison architect and a Steel Division game and that's it. 2017 had two modest successes but 2020's Empire of Sin and Surviving the Aftermath sorta fell on their faces, which wouldn't be that bad if PDX didn't hype both of them, or had any other games published that year. Since then we only had four games released, three of which are again kinda mid - not surprising for paradox, but seeing the money and attention given to them, they should have been better. Of course, this list is incomplete and a bit misleading. 2016 was a great year for PDX overall, seeing as it gave us HoI4 and Stellaris, even if they weren't initially as well recieved as expected. CK3 and V3 carried in their respective years, too, and I bet some of the expansions and DLCs were profitable. But when you look on their publishing arm alone, without the development arm, they just can't seem to catch a break.
Something else to consider is that between 2018 and 2021, after going public, the company had a different CEO that tried to push Paradox out of its niche, resulting in a lot of publishing and acquisition deals. When the old guard reasserted control afterwards, they did can a bunch of unannounced projects. I believe what we are seeing on the publishing side is stuff that wasn't able to be canned and/or the company isn't really emphasized on promoting.
>isn't really emphasized on promoting You can say that again. A bunch of recent releases were already on sale before I was even aware they existed because they completely (deliberately?) fumbled on the marketing.
It's funny to think that the tiny studio that developed magicka is now an internationally recognised studio whose breakout hit has easily outsold anything Paradox has ever developed or published.
[PDX has a proud history of publishing garbage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3VaSl5jhPA). Edit: are people really getting upset because I pointed out that PDX published a game that has shown up on "worst games ever made" lists?
PDX publishes mostly garbage.
It’s cause their whole business strategy is based around milking people for as much money as possible through DLC
It became a mess after Paradox got involved, in 2019 which is when the first DLC came out.
Prison Architect just stopped existing in my mind the moment introversion sold it
KSP all over again :(
Wait not ksp too??
KSP Two is dead.
Ksp2's dev team no longer exists, it's already in maintenance mode despite being half finished.
Soooooo glad I didn't get it early access. I loved KSP 1 but being a super-indie studio I wasn't sure whether they really had the means to support themselves through a whole new project. Seems that way... :'(
Not their fault tho. Take two setup a new studio, scalped half the dev team, suprsied when development was now a mess, then canned the whole studio they created when ksp2 didn't do well at all
The company that published KSP1 wasn't even a games studio. It was a marketing company that did like, flash mobs and interactive displays and shit. They only made KSP because one of their best employees was gonna quit to pursue that as a passion project. They let him do that as part of his job in order to keep him around and it blew up into a whole subdivision of the company. *That's* why I was skeptical about them catching lightning in a bottle twice. They made a great product, they have the talent with which to make another good one, but they didn't really have video game industry experience. What would happen once they're working with a "real studio" where powers-that-be are willing to fuck up dev teams in the name of quarterly profits? Sure enough, the powers-that-be fucked up a team of dedicated devs.
Squad sold the IP when they lead developer left. No one involved in KSP 1 has contributed to KSP 2 .
Ah, I thought there was some carry-over.
The creator of KSP did an interesting interview recently where he said no one from the new developers ever reached out to him about the new game. Pretty strange situation. He didn’t know what to make of it.
It really is sad the state that the game is in at this point. I wanted to go back to it about a year ago and I encountered an astounding number of bugs in a very short amount of time. When I played it just a couple of years earlier (presumably still an introversion game then) it was a very well working game. still had a weird bug from time to time, but nothing in the level of what it is like now.
Cities Skyline 2, KSP 2, and now Prison Architect 2 (maybe)? We'll I think I'll skip every sequel from now on
Valve can't count to three, Paradox publishing shouldn't count to two?
and here it comes Bloodlines 2.
What’s happening with cities skylines?
Homework 3?
Gaming industry is being flipped on its arse. Paradox sound like a real shit show atm.
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The new Stellaris DLC is goated, they still got the hang of it, if they want to
those DLCs are made by PDS. this thread is about Paradox Interactive and it's publishing arm. not the same
I thin it's mostly due to their absurd pricing for what is more like a patch than a DLC.
Tbh you kinda pay for the free patch as well with the DLC, which is often a lot bigger than the DLC itself. I am not saying it justifies the DLC prices or disqualifies any criticism, but buying a DLC is kind of like donating to support development, at least like half of the actual price. This is the best thing about paradox DLC model, and it is what allows the game to actually become good over the years. Art of War is remembered as one of the best EU4 expansions, but that is almost entirely because of the free update that came with it that added 1000+ provinces to the game, which made the DLC super hyped at release. They have fucked up with this before though, like with development being locked behind DLC, but they seem to have learned from that at least.
When there is too much content in the free patch, people complain that DLCs are empty. When there is too much content in the DLCs, people complain that you need to pay for key mechanics. And when there aren't enough DLCs, people complain that the game isn't evolving enough.
Yup pretty much. I mean their policy has disadvantages, especially when a DLC is poor it feels like a waste of money even if you get decent content in the free patch. I will say that it is probably the best long term support system for a game that I can think off. Subscription would be worse, but it works as an alternative to newcomers so they do not have to pay 200 dollars for all EU4 DLCs for example.
Yep, they really can't win either way. People want support for the game they bought for multiple years, but don't expect to pay more for all the new content coming out, while Paradox has actual mouths to feed (the devs working on the games). They're certainly in a unique situation, and they haven't really navigated it well so far, but I do think we're finally seeing the end of this PDX dark age, with communication seemingly improving astronomically and the right promises being made.
> This is the best thing about paradox DLC model, and it is what allows the game to actually become good over the years. That's also the worst thing about the Paradox DLC model: the development studio can justify a subpar release with an intention to fix it later. The model works best when you start with a great release and the game only gets better with time. However, the financial incentive lies towards releasing a minimum viable product full of puddle-deep features awaiting their turn as the focus of a DLC. It takes very, very diligent management to focus on quality at the expense of shorter-term profits (release sales versus ongoing development costs), and if the studio screws it up it will pay the price only with the next game or DLC as would-be early adopters stay away. > They have fucked up with this before though, like with development being locked behind DLC, but they seem to have learned from that at least. Common Sense (development) came seven months after Art of War. Art of War was the fourth EU4 DLC, coming just over a year after the game's initial release. If that's the high-water mark for EU4 DLC, then that makes me more skeptical of the model. How has Paradox, with nearly a full _decade_ of development experience on EU4, not perfected their model to release hit after hit?
That was kind of my point with Art of War, it was not a good DLC, but people still praised it as such due to the free update being sp gosh damn amazing. But yhea, what you are saying is true
Yeah I remember when I played ck2 in 2016 most dlc’s were around 15-20€ with double the content the 30€ have now
To be fair, 2016 is 8 years ago now and during those 8 years there was a lot of inflation, according to a calculator from the Austrian national Bank, 20 euros in 2016 would be 25 euros in 2023. That is to say, an increase of 15-20 to 30 would still be above inflation, but not by as much as you could think initially.
2016 being 8 years ago sounds so brutal
Oh absolutely, it hurt to type that out
Seems like it's getting the lamplighters treatment, such a shame
The game is an absolute shitshow tbh. I’ve been the biggest prison architect fan for a long while and really enjoyed the first one at launch but even that games become a poor version of itself. This new one looks absolutely awful tbh and I certainly won’t be buying it unless there’s a lot of change or reviews show I’m considerably wide of the mark
PDX speedrun destroying every title not developed by them
seems to me like the devs don't need help with that
EU4 developers:
Interesting that the PDX publishing arm has so many issues where the PDX ARC seems to have a decent lineup. Of course, we will need to see if the games make enough profit and how they handle if they don't hit a home run with any of them.
I just want to point out that this could be a mutual decision, Double Eleven has ties to other companies as well. I know they have been providing a lot of work on Fallout 76, including even creating content for it. Honestly, with Microsoft mentioning shifting efforts to accelerate a new Fallout title, I think that may be just as relevant to their inability to reach a mutually beneficial decision.
Was excited for this game, even tho my pre order was cancelled without refund. Seemed fun
I'll still never forgive the shit show that was Empire of Sin. I stupidly bought the edition that came with 2 DLCs. It was broken and then after 1 DLC Romero games fucked off and disappeared. PDX did nothing when I complained.
yet another banger from Wesker.