Paradox Games

I've been playing some Surviving Mars. Standard disclaimer: I know 'dox is only the publisher, but still a quick thought.

Damn do I like the concept of the game but it's just not finished. Like half of the UI stuff you'd expect isn't there, which leads to a ton of tedious micro. Just for a few simple examples: You can't que commands for rovers, so be ready to babysit them all through individual commands constantly. Or I needed one electronics part to fix a building. Overview menu showed I had some left, but apparently they weren't in range of the drones close to the broken building, so that never got repaired. Coudln't do it manually either, 'cause I coudn't find the resources on the map and there's no search function. The game is basically bereft of any good, in depth explanations of the mechanics or its strategy.

I could keep going, too. It's so frustrating to play that I haven't been able to play more an hour per sitting after the initial few hours I spent figuring out the basics. Shame I didn't give up then and go for the refund.

edited 22nd Mar '18 3:46:18 PM by GabrieltheThird

I've tried to do a China game multiple times and yet I can't get anywhere with it. First time the Japanese steamrolled over me, then last night I was at least inflicting heavy losses on Japan (though they were still steadily advancing) before I got my authority upended in a civil war due to falling behind on political clout among the Warlords.

Maybe I should try Germany instead, or go for an independent Manchukuo.

Ah that's a shame. I was pretty hype.

Its all but been confirmed that it wasn't ready for release and Paradox forced them to put it out when they did.

The devs have gone and stated though that they will be fixing all that, as well as adding things like connections between domes in free content patches.

Between that (assuming it's true) and the White Wolf stuff, Paradox is starting to light my goodwill on fire. Unfortunate

edited 23rd Mar '18 5:41:04 AM by math792d

Paradox is always then the kind of company that likes to perfect the game after it's been released.

It sounds like the game's only barely functional though which is really over a line even for them.

I'd always rather see something delayed and Polished than rushed out and fixed

What White Wolf stuff?

White Wolf (which, remember, is entirely subject to the whims of Paradox Interactive) hired a known serial abuser to write a piece of interactive fiction they did way back when they first acquired WW. Said person proceeded to write a transgender vampire who ended up being a stalker and a murderer and named it after a real-life trans woman who was a critic of his.

Also, they forced Onyx Path (the company that, up until Paradox bought WW) did most of the actual development of World of Darkness stuff to edit a then-upcoming Werewolf: The Apocalypse book by claiming that trans werewolves don't exist because 'Gaia doesn't make mistakes,' homophobia is commonly accepted because werewolves need to breed, and also they're anti-vaxxers.

Also, vampires did 9/11 in VTM's upcoming fifth edition. This is a slightly facetious account, but also kinda true. Just some fun side trivia.

edited 23rd Mar '18 10:16:15 AM by math792d

Yikes.

Sounds like Paradox needs to tighten the leash on White Wolf. But, I couldn't tell due to your wording, did Paradox force the edits that were shitty, or force them to undo the bad stuff? Or do nothing? Who forced Oynx's hands, WW or Paradox?

edited 23rd Mar '18 10:23:35 AM by Rationalinsanity

Well that's terrible, Paradox really needs to reign them in.

It was the people employed at White Wolf, which is essentially a subsidiary of Paradox. So nobody from Paradox was directly involved, but they could have stepped in any time.

edited 23rd Mar '18 10:32:19 AM by math792d

Yeah that sounds like they're being far too soft on White Wolf, that behavior needs to be stopped and frankly it sounds like the organization has some major issues that needs to be addressed.

edited 23rd Mar '18 10:33:36 AM by Fourthspartan56

Paradox is a great developer, but a horible publisher... this isn't even the first time they have pushed a half baled game nor the worst.

That dishonor goes to sword of the stars 2, which was literaly unplayable upon release, and I don't mean "it's so bad you can't play it" I mean it was LITERALY unplayable, it crashed in 2-3 turns gaurenteed, corupted the save in the process.... half the factions didn't work, selecting them gave you some one else, 75% of the tech tree was missing, building spaceships caused an instant CTD....

But the patch notes, man they were a thing of beuty, twice a week for a YEAR after it came out we got patch notes like this (sample from actual patch) but two to three times as big.... (this was painfull enough on phone)

Game is playable now and quite fun, but at the time there was no excuse.

edited 23rd Mar '18 2:29:49 PM by Imca

That's hilarious. That's like pre alpha fixes.

I'm not specifically holding Paradox responsible for White Wolf - if anything, I think Paradox considers White Wolf to be a bad idea that they'd much rather chop up for IP, since the MMO that they wanted fell through. It's not surprising that they're not minding the store. The shitbags are the edgelords who managed to take over nuWW on the strength of their '90s writing credentials.

It'll be a self-resolving problem, though. NuWW have their own plans for "WOD 5th Edition," OPP have their own properties and a free license with Chronicles and Exalted (they're only not getting the latter properties whole cloth because said properties are too big of a Cash-Cow Franchise for WW to let go), and WW will likely crash and burn on its own.

That said, rushing Waking Mars was a dumb idea. Paradox, you know better than this; you released your last three in-house IP in a fully playable state.

With Mars from what I’m seeing of let’s plays it’s not just that there are a bunch of issues with playability but that once you get your base set up and running you’re just kinda expanding for the sake of it with no real challenge or motivation.

There’s a reason that the best city builders and such had fun campaigns and not just pure sandbox mode. Tropico has a great campaign and is pretty boring if you’re just doing sandbox, Pharaoh and Ceaser had great campaigns, ect...

When even people doing let’s plays are so board and out of things to do that they’re going “I’m just gonna let the game run for ten minutes between episodes” you’ve got a problem.

Does anyone know if the Claims-Diplomacy-AI system is getting fixed in the Stellaris beta patch? I've been avoiding getting a work-in-progress patch but AI "allies" hating my guts coz I took over systems they lost to a rival empire (while inviting them to that war!!) is becoming irritating. I'm slowly coming around to the point of view that the only good alien is a dead alien....

edited 26th Mar '18 5:06:09 AM by nightwyrm_zero

It's the War AI that needs improvement, not the diplomacy one. Why would your friends not hate you for taking their former territories and not giving them back? They do need to step up and be more proactive during the war, but calling the relationship issue a bug would be missing the point there. The implication of you calling them into the war is that you're also doing this for them and feel like you don't have the power to do it on your own. Or you're at least giving them a chance to reclaim their territory too. Keeping that territory afterwards is a bad move for friendship.

Allies hating you for taking a system that was theirs makes sense, what doesn't make sense is that when you create a vassal from your territory it still has your claims and thus cannot be loyal do to the claims friction.

Also this is almost certainly something they're aware of.

edited 26th Mar '18 7:11:37 AM by Fourthspartan56

See, I'm not even sure the system I took over ever belonged to my "friend" since when I took it over it only had enemy species pops. But the friend probably laid unexpired claims to it during its previous wars.

And the only reason I invited them was because they were so weak by that point their empire was fragmenting and I wanted an ally that was at least big enough to be useful. Their empire doubled in size in that war, essentially saving them from disintegration, but they were still ungrateful.

I'm just gonna purify the galaxy in my next playthrough. Less headaches that way.

Anyone else think that Hearts of Iron 4 could be better with a ticking warscore system?

Not unless it got disabled at a certian level of world disorder.

The game is suposed to simulate the breakdown that lead to WWII, fighting that in some areas lasted a decade and a half.

It does not fit with the tone and setting of the game at all.

Yeah I don't think that would necessarily fit with the kind of Total War that occurred in the game's timeframe.

Yeah, blocking it at a certain period of world tension would probably be best. But early-game, when for instance you're trying to be a Communist South Africa who wants to liberate Africa, you have to invade Portugal itself in order to get its colonies. Ticking warscore would definitely be more practical in that case. It'd also help with the all-or-nothing part of war that sometimes goes with this stuff.

edited 26th Mar '18 3:57:20 PM by theLibrarian

I've been thinking about getting some of Paradox's other games. I've only every played Stellaris.

What's Hearts of Iron actually play like?