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Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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