Paradox FAIL

Paradox first games was by far the worst. First EU and first HOI was really bad. In first unpatched HOI I took over the world with Sweden with the first game I played.

HOI2 was really stable and few bugs, but with some balancing issues.
Victoria was stable, but with many issues.
EU3 worked like a charm.
and now HOI3 is stable, but with many issues.

 

That is why some developers have started to offer, at least with preorders, some perks, such as including without charge somewhat older titles of the same genre and similar gameplay quality to tide over this long post-beta testing period.

Paradox did lower the price of their entire catalogue by 50% for a limited time and included some sprite packs to be used in the game. Sega started offering Space Siege for its preoders of Alpha Protocol on Steam.

 

Yeah, you're right - it's best to cough up 50€ for a game and have it collect dust for half an year (or a full year if it's The Witcher) because you can't do much else with it.

 

As others already pointed out - it's catch22.
But personally, if the game looks promising and I know that it will be eventually patched out (like in case of Paradox Interactive) I'll buy it to support devs who make games I like.
It's trickier with newbies like CD Project and Witcher, because it is not known if they will work on the game after release or not. I still think it is better give benefit of the doubt if you can afford it.

 

How about not releasing the game 3 months early? Or would that be too revolutionary in today's PC game industry?

Paradox moved the release date forward, I was expecting it to come out in September.

Like most people I would happily accept a few bugs and lack of balance on initial release, but you need to draw the line somewhere.


Last three mainstream developer games I've bought have been complete disasters: GTA 4, ETW... HoI3.

I was very happy with Fallout 3 the game before GTA, which bucks the trend.

 

No, godfaggot.

First of all, you don't fucking games. You torrent them. THEN if you like them and the DRM isn't too troublesome you buy them.

Second, you don't fucking buy bargain bin games. That's THE dumbest thing you can do when buying something.

 

Why? Sometimes you can find awesome games that you can't find anywhere else in that bin. Psychonauts, freespace 2 and anachronox are all gems that I found in a bargain bin.

 

With Paradox games I tend to wait for the first expansion to hit then I buy both from Gamersgate.

 

Normally, that's what I do. Paradox games are guaranteed 100% to produce patches and good mods, though, so I'd rather buy it now and then just wait a while before playing it seriously. This way they get better sales figures and don't abandon the series because it didn't sell well, like it happened with Victoria*. Paradox games tend to get more and more complex and moddable with each release, as opposed to most other medium/big developers out there. They're the company I would trust most right now.

*The fact that they're making Vicky 2 is incredibly lucky for us. On the forums, the CEO himself posted that he didn't want to make a sequel, that it won't sell and that he only agreed to it because one of the developers swore to him that it would make a profit.

 

Well, HoI2 was dumbed down from HoI and now that HoI3 is massively more complex than HoI2, there has been some whining and crying from fans - probably because HoI2 roped in players that previously had zero interest in Paradox games. They also made that horribly Two Thrones game which I guess was a kiddie-version of EU2 and CK combined. It was quite, quite horrible and luckily didn't sell well.

 

Don't post links to pirated stuff KTHXBYE

~DU

 

Duh. Some people just like to get the entire package and manual and all of games they really like. I still fondly recall the day I found Darklands in its original phat box with bible sized manual. Not bad for about 10 euro.

 

Does it come with eleven 5&1/2 inch floppy discs? I remember the day when one of those discs failed to read. And some people think installing games nowadays are troublesome.

Retry, Abort, Fail?

 

Two thrones was a true cash in. If I am not incorrect that was a game they made for the scandinavian market years before and then just rebundled and translated it for a foreign market.

 

Yup. That's what the torrent is for though.

And the Darklands cdrom edition I found for 1 euro in a pawnshop.