Hacker News Reader

Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

I’m glad there is this whole parallel universe of amazing single player (or MP-optional) games with absolutely no dark patterns, loot boxes or any of the shit people who play MP games have to put up with.

I buy a game, and unless I get the DLC(s)/Expanions pack(s), that’s all I’ll ever have to pay. Civilization V: Over 2000 hours. Pathfinder: Kingmaker/Wrath of the righteous: Over 1000 hours each. Stellaris [0]: Almost 1000 hours.

[0]: Some people hate the Paradox DLC style, personally I think it’s amazing. Content DLCs are accompanied by free feature patches, cosmetic/minor DLCs are well, minor. No one forces you to get all of them. And thanks to this DLC policy, Stellaris will soon turn 6 years old while still getting regular updates.

View on HN

> Some people hate the Paradox DLC style, personally I think it’s amazing

Yep. Some people might argue that this or that mechanic should be in the base game because it's too important, but in general the Paradox model is great. Games get interesting new content many years after release, which you have to pay for, but it enables Paradox to actually do the work. The latest DLC for Hearts of Iron 4 took more than a year to develop and drastically changed the game ( it added logistics, trains, depos) for the better. If it were not paid, they wouldn't have been able to afford it.

It's true that they add more content per DLC, but I question the amount it adds versus the price they include.

In addition, I noticed every new paradox release their base game tends to be broad, but shallow; almost as if it was intentional. They fill in depth with DLCs which one could argue should've been there in the first place. Try playing any of their recent games without DLC.

Often, content also does end up in the base game after some time. It happened with Utopia for Stellaris, most of what it initially offered is now included in the base game.

And people who can’t or don’t want to pay still get some benefit as part of the features are always public and not DLC-only.

And there are promos a few times per year where all the DLCs are available at a huge discount. And now there's a monthly subscription for all the DLCs. So there are multiple options available to get DLCs. All in all, not a bad way of doing things.

From an engineering perspective I wonder how sustainable that is. For every new DLC X you need to test with (X-1)! combinations of previous DLCs. Sure, not all DLCs interact with each other but many will in some limited way.

They have been following this model for years, CK 1-3, EU 1-4, Victoria 1-2, Stellaris. So it seems to be pretty sustainable?

It is a common joke among fans for these games that Paradox Interactive does not have a QA department, given how incredibly buggy their DLCs are at launch.

Hasn't Paradox this sneaky thing going, where they put new mechanics from DLCs into the main game, but only useable by the AI? Thus shifting the balance slowly against the player and forcing them on the long run to buy DLCs to get a fair balanced game again.

Similar to things happening in MMOs with extensions. A new extension usually forces most players to buy it fast, so they can continue to play with the other players, access new raids, skills and gain from the new items on the market.

Not for Stellaris, but considering that their games are pretty much about emergent stories, I wouldn’t even complain about it. For MP only the host needs to have the DLCs.

Paradox DLC policy is problematic I feel: they gate some of the visual flair and more troublingly some of the soundtrack behind payed DLC. How would it be if a movie charged you extra for listening to its score?

Also the large number of DLC makes it difficult to determine what set I may have do give a canonical experience or if it is even viable gameplay wise.

> and more troublingly some of the soundtrack behind payed DLC. How would it be if a movie charged you extra for listening to its score?

Why is it problematic that they include extra music in expansions? They're not leaving out an essential part of the game you bought, just adding more of it when you buy DLC. The base game soundtrack is so good that there are times I just pause the game and listen to the music.

> Also the large number of DLC makes it difficult to determine what set I may have do give a canonical experience or if it is even viable gameplay wise.

I like this about Paradox games. When you buy a DLC, it doesn't merely expand the game, it totally alters it. I can see why people don't like this, but sometimes, a total reimagining of a game is fun. Especially in strategy games.

Civ V is an interesting case, since there's another thread in here somewhere about companies charging to fix design mistakes, and Civilization was really one of the OGs when it comes to that.

I wouldn't say Vanilla Civ V was bad, but it wasn't great. I probably wouldn't recommend it without the two expansions. I guess it's a moot point these days though since it's all sold together.

A mod from the early days of Civ V was Communitas [0], it became the Community Balance Patch and is nowadays called Vox Populi [1]. It vastly improves AI, balance and adds a ton of features. There is still regular development, with stable versions being released every 1-2 months.

Without this mod I’d have long stopped playing Civ V, and the lack of such a fix/balance mod (Civ V had an official source release and SDK which is what made the mod possible) is why I can’t get into Civ VI

[0]: https://civmodding.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/balance-units/

[1]: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/community-patch-how-t...

Yeah I've been playing the same mod for years now too. It's basically the 3rd expansion as far as I'm concerned haha.

I just remember picking up Civ V when it came out and going back to Civ IV because it got boring after a while. I loved the main changes (more vibrant and realistic graphics style, one unit per tile combat), but the systems didn't seem that fleshed out yet and the games were a bit repetitive. I don't think the game really hit it's stride until the first expansion, so it felt a bit like having to buy the game twice just to get a good product.

I honestly can’t remember :D Only about 300 hours were unmodded ;)

Speaking of which EU4 is currently on humble bundle. You can get it and all DLC for £20

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/europa-universalis-iv-com...

Or... you could just buy it all from Steam, where right now it's going for only... $384.89.

Huh.

If you're going to pick up EU4, wait until one of the times it goes on sale (it does so frequently). You'll be able to get a bundle with the main game and most of the expansions for ~75% off the bundle price (itself a decent discount over buying everything individually).

The person I was responding to mentioned that it was on sale in a Humble Bundle for $20—I was just amazed at how big the price difference was!

The same is true for most AAA single player games as well. God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Zelda Breath of the Wild, Souls games. None of these have microtransactions.

The milk only seems to sour once there is a significant multiplayer component. GT7 sticks out as a recent example where the presence of multiplayer negatively impacts single player as well.

I wouldn't know, I hate action games and I'm not sure there are other AAA games ;)

Grim Dawn also has a ton of content without any psycho crap built-in. MP is optional but adds fun and has a good community too.

Honestly, these are a lot closer to "Expansion Packs" of the old days than what a lot of people think of as DLC. It's maybe a distinction without a difference, but expansion packs didn't sell you horse armor they sold horse armor+a new campaign+some new player classes or something.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com