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If you had asked me this question 6 years ago I would have been extremely excited for the (hypothetical) upcoming release of Victoria 3. Or any Paradox game for that matter. But nowadays I am completely disillusioned with Paradox games. The quality of their games have diminished significantly, and their pricing models have just gotten worse and worse. Victoria 3 in particular has some baffling design decisions that has only bolstered my belief that either the talent has all left, or are being hamstrung by management. 2016 marked a serious turning point for the company, the year they went public. Though, many of horrible decisions (from my player's perspective, not business perspective) started a few years before that, perhaps in preparation for going public.
A huge problem with Paradox is that they have a de facto monopoly on their small little niche of strategy games. There's no one else really trying to make the same style of games as them, outside of a few recent indie studios that remain to see how they do. It's a similar problem that was caused by EA (yes, Paradox is turning into strategy EA) having a de facto monopoly on Sims-style games and Sim City games. They could charge ridiculous prices and have extremely consumer-unfriendly business practices because they know that no one else is making similar games to them, the players have to come to them to get their fix. Of course, the Sim City franchise was eventually challenged by Cities: Skylines (ironically published by Paradox) who beat them so hard that Sim City is now effectively a dead franchise. People often say that games like Total War or others are similar to Paradox games, but in my opinion they're not the same experience.
The quality of Paradox games have become worse. Whereas as previous games really tried to have strong historical simulation elements, dynamic gameplay elements, etc. the more recent Paradox forgo this for increasingly gamified mechanics (e.g. the absence of population mechanics). I increasingly feel like I am playing a glorified boardgame than I am a historical simulation grand strategy game. But maybe that's what the people want. They do seems to be trying to appeal to a broader audience, dumbing down their games. Maybe it is a sensible business decision, but I am allowed to call their games shittier for it. Though, I have a strong suspicion that there's a lack of talent/creative vision in Paradox devs now, with all the old guard either becoming washed-up and promoted to management, or just simply left, and the new talent just being shit.
Speaking of business decisions ruining Paradox games, I despise the monetization model they've adopted because I think it genuinely incentivizes them to make shit games. Like EA, the modus operandi is now to create a shell of a game, with bare bones mechanics and content - really putting the 'minimum' in 'minimum viable product' - and then slowly actually develop the game piecemeal and selling it to players over the next decade. This does not make for robust, interesting games. And that's even assuming they actually do attempt to develop robust and interesting mechanics for DLC. More often than not, it's lazy shit like just giving a few countries new mission trees, something that should be in the base game. Oh god I hate the mission system and 'focuses' that now have infected most of the Paradox games. I know some people like the mission system but I despise them, and embodies everything wrong with Paradox games. Rather than having dynamic mechanics that allows players to create their own story (history), we're going to rail road players (and the AI) into a couple of set paths. In its worse form the mission mechanics turn Paradox games in to interactive light novels (HOI4). This lazy, hollow development process did come to bite them in the ass with Imperator: Rome, which was released so barebones and lacking in content that even the biggest Paradox simps and fanboys admitted it was a pile of dogshit. I know that people always talk about the exorbitant cost of Paradox games, which is an issue, but to me the biggest failing of the monetization model is how it incentivizes them to make their games in the worst way possible. Also, people defending the price as 'but you'll spend hundreds of hours in' is a stupid argument, because literally nothing else is priced based on the hypothetical amount of use you will get out of it. No one would defend spending $300 on a copy of LotR because you'll read it many times. What about the person who buys a Paradox game and DLC and doesn't sink hundreds or thousands of hours into it? The reason they charge so much is simply because they have a monopoly on their genre and can get away with it.
Victoria 2 was unironically peak Paradox. Sure, Victoria 2 is extremely janky, and has some serious problems. But what makes it so good is its genuine ambition and dedication to historical simulation, such the economy and population mechanics, which allows for extreme depth and dynamic gameplay. CK2 is a close second for similar reasons, though it was the first game to embrace the Paradox DLC chain.
Will I buy Victoria 3? Definitely not on launch. Probably will some number of years from now when I can get it for next to nothing from Humble Bundle or whatever.
I honestly don't think they have a choice. Especially due to the AI. A lot of the immersion-breaking simplifications are justified on the grounds that the AI being too dumb to not have cheats and railroads.
Now, could Paradox theoretically just fix that with more focus and elbow grease? I guess. I think this is an actual hard problem. As you point out: they're in a niche. Maybe it's for a reason.
And, tbh, even other Triple-A strategy games - despite being less complex - have serious problems with the AI. Total War has good enough tactical AI but I've always heard complaints about their strategy, for example.
The problems with Total War's strategic AI are real, and always have been a problem. As a player the main issue I would run into (not as bad in more recent games) is that the more powerful I got, the more likely people would declare war on me. Which made no sense: tiny kingdoms on my borders, instead of looking at offers of trade deals and non-aggression pacts with their superpower neighbor with relieved enthusiasm would instead spit in my face and boldly declare that they would crush me beneath their boots! After I inevitably rolled them up into my empire, the tiny kingdoms that neighbored my now expanded borders would do the same. It made no sense, but it did keep you in a constant state of warfare through the late game. Since the focus of the game is on battles, I could see why it stayed broken in that particular way for so long.
In more recent Total War games they've improved it a good bit, but more importantly they revamped the diplomacy system to make it transparent: you can not only see how much another power likes you, but also see exactly why they feel the way they do: disliking Great Powers is -X, you fighting their enemies is +Y, etc. The transparency means that you have less moments of saying "What in the world is wrong with these people? Why are they acting this way?!" Now you know exactly why, which means you can make more interesting diplomatic decisions.
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This argument has never really held water with me, those other games have a lot of other things to sink their budgets into, paradox games do not, the AI and how it handles strategy is the game.
Paradox are just cheap and know they've cornered a niche market and are content to put in the minimum amount of effort they need to continue milking the whales that buy their dlc.
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