Reject_666_6
Arcane
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.
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.