Why is Paradox derping its mod community?

[Reject_666_6]

As most people know, Paradox's more important games have three main peculiarities: 1) They're shit on launch because of instability, incomplete features and bugs. 2) They take around two expansions to perfect. 3) They have very active mod communities that take their games in some amazing directions. Lately, though, they've been fucking with these principles and especially with #3.

First of all, they're going overboard with these expansions.

Hearts of Iron II had one major expansion, Doomsday, which was very well-received and one very small one, Armageddon, that was multiplayer oriented. Many great mods were produced for this game, like Kaiserreich, Modern Day Scenario, Total Realism Project, CORE, Mod34, the World War I mod, World in Flames, etc. Now they've released a new expansion, Iron Cross, a full 5 years after Doomsday was released.

Europa Universalis 3 had its share of expansions, Napoleon's Ambition, In Nomine and Heir to the Throne, and they're continuing this yearly expansion tradition this year with Divine Wind in a couple of weeks. EU3 was blessed with the Magna Mundi mod, and other lesser mods like MEIOU and the Whole World mod.

Do you know what kills modding? The knowledge that your hard work is going to be rendered obsolete every year unless you sink a shitload more man-hours into fixing compatibility and working around the new features, as if it wasn't enough work updating after every patch and hotfix they churn out thanks to point #1. Now you'd think that this separates the big boys with large communities working round the clock from the small, shitty mods nobody plays, but no, this rant isn't over yet.

Apart from putting out so many unnecessary expansions, they have gone one step further and decided to hire mod teams to make stand-alone versions of the games they were modding and sell them for $$$. The team behind Magna Mundi is now making a full Magna Mundi game, which also may or may not benefit form any of the improvements of Divine Wind. Arsenal of Democracy wasn't enough, so they felt compelled to produce another HoI2 spin-off: Darkest Hour. And remember that new expansion for HoI2, Iron Cross? It's going to work with Armageddon, Arsenal of Democracy and Darkest Hour, so not only are they screwing with their own mod community, they're screwing with their mod community's mod community.

And now for the icing on the cake. All this disruption and employment has the effect of completely drying up the mods for their latest generation of games: Hearts of Iron III and Victoria 2. After 2 years, HoI3 has only one major mod, and it's just a standard one that fiddles with the tech tree, fixes balance issues and adds more decision and events. Not even close to all the total conversions that the other games have, even though they added so many modder-friendly features in HoI3 it's ridiculous. Victoria 2 has NO major mods, though this is somewhat justified by its high overall quality at launch, but still... It's like Paradox is actively trying to stop people form modding their games.

 

[torpid]

I purchased EU3 "complete," and then they release Heir to to the Throne... Forced me to stick with the older version of Magna Mundi. Tbh I haven't played it in a long time, but still



And now another expansion? They're obviously milking the games as much as they can, while cashing in on the more popular mods.

 

[Destroid]

There's no great problem for mods sticking with an older version of the game. Well, unless someone plays their game on steam and can't roll back versions/install multiple copies I guess.

Victoria 2 is an extremely new release so it's no surprise there are no major mods for it yet, although a little surprising that no-one has announced any as of yet.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I think that hiring modders to make stand alone games is very cool.

 

[Destroid]

It is kind of funny though to think that there will be EU3 and Magna Mundi as two seperate titles on the same engine, covering the same time period, with similar core mechanics.

Unless they plan to stop producing the Europa Universalis line and hand over production of that to the MM team.

 

[attackfighter]

in nominee + magna mundi is fine how it is, I don't know or care what the new expansions add so for all I care the modders can just ignore them

and any way you look at it you're getting new content, either from modders or paradox itself

 

[kris]

The thing is that when it comes to expansions they often ask their customers if they wanted more... and customers always want more. That's how it goes.

 

[Trash]

The expansions usually come because people on the forums keep asking for them. Many of these being modders. The expansions (most of them very much expansive patches) usually also give more content to toy around with for the modders and fix engine specific 'features' which the modders can't.

There is also plenty of modding going on for HOI3. Problem is however that the basic game is still so bugged that most modding focuses on patching it and trying to improve the AI. Usually it takes untill the second expansion for both the game and the mods to get into stride.

 

[DwarvenFood]

The expansions (most of them very much expensive patches)

Fixed.

 

[Malakal]

Victoria 2 has major mods. It has mods offering event chains for canals, dynamic core system, dynamic research and production based on nationalities and other stuff. It has mods modding in new factories and services (banks), reworking tech tree, combat system, attrition, changing unit sizes (from brigade sized to division sized), changing the global economy.
And its all in a game as complicated as Vic 2. There is even VIP 2 but they are currently doing research. Because, You know, modders for Vicky need to know population its literacy and cultures and employment for the entire goddamn world hundreds of years ago. This stuff takes time.

I cant say anything about HoI3 cause my PC cant run it, but as a rule of a thumb more popular games get modded faster. But wasnt there CORE for HoI3 i development? Check sites for major mods in HoI2, perhaps they are ported. Once again this takes time.

No one forces players or modders to make mods for each expansion. Giving modders new features to play with its fine isnt it? Besides mods that are not worked on arent really good anyway.

Paradox makes complicated games that require dedicated people to mod. Vic 2 had VIP which was what? 0.4 when Vic 2 came out? It takes time to mod such advanced games.

 

[Orgasm]

All mods are fluff and rebalancing.
Paradox fell into the hands of a ( surprisingly ) exiting market for grand strategy and have been releasing the same game ever since.

Good mods are the same as full price games. Conflict of interest.

 

[Malakal]

All mods are fluff and rebalancing.
Paradox fell into the hands of a ( surprisingly ) exiting market for grand strategy and have been releasing the same game ever since.

Good mods are the same as full price games. Conflict of interest.

In the same way You could say all AGEODs games are fluff and rebalancing. They use the same engine, have very similar graphics and only setting and some features change.

Mods change the game within the game itself, they are not a new game but they are the same game viewed differently.

 

[Orgasm]

Your deduction abilities on the matter are exceptional. But.
Stop writing You with a capital letter. Makes You look like a Fag.





Qwinn

 

[Destroid]

Speaking of mod-unfriendly, a friend of mine was telling me that every time minecraft guy updates minecraft he changes the names for all the functions which fucks all the mods.

Confirm/Deny?

 

[Reject_666_6]

@Malakal

The research they're doing for VIP2 is mostly the same data that they used for VIP, but I won't judge this yet because it's still a very new game. But I still predict that VIP2 will move much more slowly than VIP did, despite the head start VIP gave them and the extra mod-friendliness that Vicky2 has.

As for the major mod sequels like CORE2, TRP2 and VIP2 again, their most talented modders and leaders are too busy working on Iron Cross, Darkest Hour and Magna Mundi. CORE2 and TRP2 have not even moved since their announcement.

Another thing I didn't mention is that these new expansions coming out have features done better by the very mods they're fucking up. Divine Wind focuses on improving Asia, but Magna Mundi Platinum 2 and Magna Mundi Ultimate already have those features covered, among their other improvements. Iron Cross just modifies the map a bit, adds events and improves the AI. Apart from the AI thing, that's so far behind what a lot of mods have done that I don't see the point.

Instead of all this bullshit, why not just make the Magna Mundi mod official, and just pay the modders to support it? Why not do the same for the HoI2 mods? Just release the 5 biggest ones as a sort of cheap DLC, so that way all their work doesn't go to waste and keeps getting improved and Paradox wouldn't have to waste resources on making obsolete expansions.

Speaking of mod-unfriendly, a friend of mine was telling me that every time minecraft guy updates minecraft he changes the names for all the functions which fucks all the mods.

Confirm/Deny?

Even if this is true, you can open your code up in notepad and use the Replace function to fix everything. Though, what's the point of changing all the tags and stuff anyway?

 

[Erzherzog]

Eh, Iron Cross is an expansion that essentially made by a mod team so I think it's a little unfair to label it as an expansion that Paradox developed that fucks over mods.

And hell, Divine Wind was developed after a 4 option vote for expansions in several of their core games...an EU3 expansion focusing on the 'rest of the world' ran away with the vote.

 

[Trash]

Like I said, the community itself and the guys that develop the mods keep asking for more expansions for their fav games.

 

[Topher]

Eh, Iron Cross is an expansion that essentially made by a mod team so I think it's a little unfair to label it as an expansion that Paradox developed that fucks over mods.

And hell, Divine Wind was developed after a 4 option vote for expansions in several of their core games...an EU3 expansion focusing on the 'rest of the world' ran away with the vote.

I didn't vote or even know there was a but I'm excited about the new expansion.

 

[MRSA]

 

[Serious_Business]

This isn't a real problem. I don't think people realise how precarious Paradox's situation must be at times. They aren't fucking developing Civilization 6. It's no wonder they're churning out "expansions" all the time that of the size of 10mb, they need the cash. Using modders as developpers is their latest move, and it's not all that bad. It's not like they have started to develop console shooters or some shit. They gave us Victoria 2. Their thing is to tap into a specific market, beyond this market there isn't anything at all to exploit. I'm pretty surprised about how smart and ressourceful they are really, while not dumbing down their products all that much. Rome was an attempt I believe and it pretty much backfired. Either they are too scared to go into the mainstream by making shit products and loosing their fanbase, so they prefer just making small but constant profits, or they are actual bros that like to make the games they want to make.

 

[Kraszu]

The expansions usually come because people on the forums keep asking for them. Many of these being modders.

Maybe they are looking for a job.

 

[Erzherzog]

The expansions usually come because people on the forums keep asking for them. Many of these being modders.

Maybe they are looking for a job.

And?

 

[Kraszu]

The expansions usually come because people on the forums keep asking for them. Many of these being modders.

Maybe they are looking for a job.

And?

And they hire moders to do expansions as was said.

 

[GarfunkeL]

It's still a small company, especially as the GamersGate-side (purely business) was divorced from Paradox the dev-company. They started out as guys making the game they wanted to play (Svea Rike, IIRC) and because it was so popular they made the very first Europa Universalis. Rest is history.

And Serious_Business is right, they must have balanced very precariously on the budget line - HoI2 brought them enough money to actually hire a new programmer (King) but then they had to fire him few months later as they were running out of money and Swedish law demands that newest employee is fired first. Luckily EU3 and its expansions padded their line enough so that they could re-hire him. The unit sprite packs and extra music stuff are pure bling-bling fluff and if people want to pay peanuts for that stuff, great.

And as others have pointed out, they've always asked on their forums if people want new expansions and the answer has always been resounding "yes please", so I think that you, kind sir, are only butthurt because your favourite free mods are drying up or turning commercial. In any case, new modders will crop up. The HoI3 modding forum seems pretty active and at least there you don't have to worry about nude patches or anime re-skins!

 

[kris]

This isn't a real problem. I don't think people realise how precarious Paradox's situation must be at times. They aren't fucking developing Civilization 6. It's no wonder they're churning out "expansions" all the time that of the size of 10mb, they need the cash.

forget size. Size is only graphics and sound. While their expansions hardly is earth-shattering size doesn't measure how good they are.

I think they could make without this many expansions and instead concentrate on making new games, but there are two problems...

1. What is mentioned by me and Trash. The community want these expasions.
2. They have covered the eras they felt they really could and they covered a lot of years and wars by now. To expand on this, all their games are the "babies" of one person and to get something really new... then he must come up with it.