The real curse of the paradox is the fact, that they don't have any real competition to worry about. So they don't have to make an effort.

The paradox model has a serious problem where games become fleshed out and more beloved after years of dlc, then when a sequel comes out, it goes back to the barebones state of the release that doesnt compete with its built up predecessor at all. Every paradox sequel is doomed to be a disappointment.

The real curse is releasing half finished/ broken games and then charging you extra for each feature. First impressions count. Victoria 3 Doesn’t have spheres of influence? What?! that is a core feature.

Personally my biggest problem with Paradox has been their abandonment of Imperator. I don't like how games are released full of bugs and unfinished mechanics and features but I can accept it, with the expectation that games will get better after a year or two. Paradox completely broke my trust in them, not when they released the broken mess that was Imperator, but when they abandoned it after such a short period and when it was finally reaching a state where I actually found it enjoyable. Imperator Rome has soooo many nice mechanics and enjoyable content, but rather minor problems just ruins it for me. The optional autonomous armies are amazing but the entire food mechanic is terrible, high tier forts basically has your armies starving themselves. You can be right next to your capital with 5k food in store and yet your army can't resupply without abandoning the siege or manually splitting your army to send part of it back for food. You can't even split your army if they're loyal to the commander, they'd rather starve to death than move one province away for a month or two. But personally I find the absolute worst part of it to be how you can't get food in allied territory. Any ally worth having is going to have a decent amount of territory and your armies will be halfway starved to death before they even make it to the enemy. To be fair, the food issues only really start getting bad from the midgame and onwards, early game there'll be plenty of food because nations are smaller overall so you don't starve walking through allied territory and armies are smaller in general so they resupply faster.

I've never played Vic2 and Vic3 was still a huge disappointment. The problem with that game is that there are no meaningful choices to be made, and war is simply a numbers game, the only choice you can make is to have the bigger numbers. You can't choose to have your army defend mountains and leave the plains alone, or do anything strategic in this grand strategy game. When it comes to building up your country, every single country is the same - again there are no choices there - except if you have an event or two specific to your nation. By removing control of armies they also downgraded the importance of geography, which, when you are staring at a map the entire time, ought to be important. And there is just so much tedious shit to do in that game. I remember in 1.0 when the entire game was just staring at the construction queue, and now that there is a private construction queue it feels like there is barely anything to do except stare at the map. The diplomacy is lacklustre due to the play system. While the play system has improved, it still isn't fun and is way too gamey. And of course because of it they completely removed the ability to attack by surprise or to break truces. Overall I still don't find Vic3 enjoyable even with all the updates, maybe once we get to 2.0 it will get fun lol.

imo the best thing they could do is a beta / early access phase for EU5, so they can collect some feedback on what works and what doesn't. Otherwise they run the risk of having to redesign large parts of the game like with Imperator and Vic3

Took them 3 years to put logistics back in Hoi... yeah they are not getting my money again

These "accusations" as you so defensively put it are in fact true. Paradox themselves admitted to releasing unfinished games, KNOWINGLY, with Skylines 2.

"Paradox actually maintains their games for years on end"- while showing a clip of Imperator. God, I love paradox games but that is crazy to me. Paradox has set the precedent for abandoning their games. The "curse" isn't people expecting too much, though that is true. It's the fear that even if I do enjoy the game, I won't know if paradox will fix the numerous launch issues before dropping the thing.

Expectation to get a full game at release are not wrong expectation. You need to unlearn what PDX teached you those past 20 years and stop accepting them selling you half-baked product made to be able to add DLCs on it.

The expectation for Victoria 3 was to have a good game in the Victoria franchise. I don't think that is too high an expectation. Vic3 still fell short.

Oh no. I'm so sad that Paradox is having issues. It's almost as if their DLC policy is biting them in the backside.

Perhaps, but EU5 seems to incorporate already available features in M&T3, which is an amazing mod. Estates. Levies. Pops. etc... M&T3 is basically a blueprint for EU5.

Im not finished the video yet, but CK2 was an all time success as a Grand Strategy game. But CK3 is very worthy successor that made HUGE improvements to UI and gameplay. The major issue is that it's too easy. Way too easy.

in the last tinto talk, johan, in the comment section, said that he and his team plan to release definitely-not-EU5 with as much flavor and content as EU4 right now

As a person who plays paradox games almost exclusively for mega campaigns I'll wait 3 years when everyone shills EU5's "comeback" through dlc which will cost over 100 usd

I'll be honest, the problem with vic3 can be easaly summed up by this: It is wide as an ocean, but shallow like a lake. In vic2 pops are legitimetly meaningful. Treat them too harschly and they either die, revolt or leave the country. Also they removed coalitions. In vic3 it feels like you can gat away with anything. edit: I also forgot player agency.

Vic2 vets do not think that vic3 is more feature-rich because they aren't looking at the number of features, but if the features they got used to and like using, are there. Sphereing is one example, another is foreign investment. Both of which are getting added in later in Vic3, than they got added in Vic2, with a much smaller budget and crew.

from the scraps of information the tinto talks gave us I'm optimistic, all the systems shown so far look like a straight up better version of what we have in eu4, sure some features might not make to game launch (like custom nations my beloved) and others might be discarded (my guess would be RNW), but at the same time they already started communicating with us before even game announcement, so I expect about 3-4 years before launch when they can shape the game with community feedback and, hopefully, have no UI problems or major bugs at launch. Also, even as a eu4 main with over thousands hours in this game I have to say... eu4 already is a dated game, sure it's fun and all but c'mon, just look at it. if you would prefer to ignore the positives and be pessimistic about it, then take a look at the wastelands shown in tinto talks 2, that one really needs some changing in some areas alright.

I bought Victoria 3 a few weeks after its release. I knew about the issues with it, and while I like the game-I have over 700 hours in it-Victoria III has many problems. I primarily play the game in multiplayer, but Paradox doesn't seem to care about it. Almost every update breaks multiplayer, and some updates never fix it. For example, version 1.4 had multiplayer broken the entire time, and I can only hope that 1.6 fixes it, as it's currently broken. The war system has definitely been improved; you can actually see your armies, and they're a bit easier to control. However, it's still an awful system. The entire game, including warfare, is built on you doing something, then waiting. There's nothing in between, and that comprises most of the game-waiting. I hope and really want Victoria 3 to be a good game, but I feel like it's always going to be flawed. Now, for EU5, I think they're taking a much better approach. I don't think it's going to be like EU4, and I believe they're going to improve it and make it different where it counts. It doesn't have to come out with hundreds of mission trees or flavor. As long as the fundamentals are good, which is something I think Victoria 3 failed at, I think the game will be great.

Problem is that the PDX business model only works with either a new francise (stellaris) OR the first time you implement it with an existing franchise (CK2 and EUIV) CK2 and EUIV at launch were rouhgly on par with their predecessor content-wise. People are willing to pay for it, if only because of better looks and performance. And then the slow adding of new features for a price is ok. Yes it's expensive when you add it all up, but no more that buying FIFA every year fo 10 years straight (which is in essence a glorified database update). And because those features are new you can enjoy them while they come out.... But you can't pull that trick a second time........ CK3 and EU5 can NOT be on the level of CK1 and EU3 to start with: 1) people will sit on the fence until it is at least 80% of what it was before (no income for PDX) 2) But when it gets there, they see how much it wil cost them for the base game + DLC's JUST TO CONTINUE WHERE THEY LEFT OFF in terms of gameplay features. NO ONE is going to fork out €300 to play what is essentially, in terms of gameplay terms, a feature complete EUIV but with better graphics and maybe some redesigned mechanics. PDX needs to rethink their business model, because THAT had reached end of life....

Paradox should change the way they make their games. If they would launch them on a finished state, and the dlcs were fewer but richer in content (which could make them more expensive, as a benefit for the company), people would have less problems with them. But you can't launch a game 30% done and finish it with 40 dlcs in the span of a decade, like EU4.

The paradox curse is not expectation its greed. Instead of updating the engine/visuals and adding new features, they instead try to sell u old features AGAIN

9:30 "paradox listened to the players and improved the warfare system" considering players said that BEFORE the launch and paradox did nothing... well, not a good argument mate

EU5 will be barebones and only contain probably like 10% of all the DLCs from EU4. Then PDX will sell all the missing features from EU4 as DLC for EU5. People will complain but at the end of the day, people will still buy EU5 and its DLCs because there are no other strategy games like Paradox's.

CK3 did not get criticized for being unfinished?? Vicky 3 literally was trash at launch and remains shit

Props on pronouncing Johan's name properly like the Swedes do. But yes, the problem is, they have some sort of internal rule where before next iteration of a flagship game starts development, it needs to get a "champion" designer. Which means a person needs to come up with a core design for the next game and there is like a break down in %s of how much of the old game gets ported and how much is replaced by new stuff. This is why they dont simply port the entire old game and build a new one on top, but they appear to drop beloved features and add brand new ones that often dont feel like they belong in that game. And youre right, this is compltely of their own doing. So what you end up with depends greatly on who the base design turns out to be and what their preferences are. Sadly.

why not just copy paste all eu4 content but with updated graphics and better UI?

You're clueless, Victoria 2 only had 2 expansions, completely different to ck2 and the others.

The light of hope I have for EU5 is that Johan and others are very active on the forum asking the community what they want. Imperator was made in 6 months which is why it released in that state- it was Johan's passion project with a very tight deadline. Now EU5 development starte in 2020 which Johan confirmed himself and it's still being worked on, so by the time of its release it'll be the longest running project Paradox worked on so far, combined with the input from the community, shaping it up to be the best game PDX made to date, and radically different than EU4. From the start date being over a century earlier than EU4, no mana, pops system instead of development and estates, manpower, trade and so on being directly tied to the pop system, etc.

paradox games should release with comparable features to the previous game in the series. the releases are totally embarrassing lately.

The only curse is paradox realising games that are just worse/unfinished. If the sequel only has like 2-3 new features, 20 features missing and is just worst product with better graphics overall then ye its a shity game. The expectations are not to high, they are far to low with every paradox game.

The majority of bad reviews I saw for Imperator were with regards to the game feeling shallow despite that fact that it released with comparatively more content than CK2 and EU4 at launch, which was wild to me. I loved Imperator because of all the potential I saw in it

Eu4 basically had almost all the features of the DLC's up Until divine wind, sans lack of colonies which was wild to fight spain back then. It was the reason why I bought eu4. It was already a full experience, mostly.👀 So Most of the missions and decisions from previous games I do kinda expect,

As someone who never had the dlcs for ck2 I must say that basegame ck3 is FAR better than basegame ck2.

I like that IR soundtrack was the background music here, because it absolutely slaps. One of the best soundtracks ever produced by Paradox.

Hey, are you interested in discussing the optimization challenges your channel is facing?

The curse of Paradox is not the consumer's expectations it is that fact that they moved to a DLC model when they release unfisnihed games. EU1 and EU2 and the early HOI games were mostly decent, you had a few DLCs but it was not DLC heavy with features added in that the previous game already had a release nor did they do reworks of major game mechanics like with Stellaris and other recent games. Now they release beta versions and then 2-3 years after release you get a proper game.

CK3 was a good restart worth from the start, though, IMO. It didn't restart that much from zero. Also when I changed from EU3 to EU4, I never looked back. Tbh I found Stellaris and Imperator Rome boring in ANY later stage. Ok when you said you only now regard CK3 as acceptable, we have apparently WAY different views and expectations.

Well CK isn’t the best baseline imo. Some serious mistakes have been made regarding the DLC pipeline, they spent way too much time and money on the Courtroom expansion and it didn’t really meet expectations. They have been fighting an uphill battle ever since. The game had great potential at launch, but it’s largely fallen flat in my own opinion. I think Vicky is moving in the right direction and I’m excited for Eu5.

Im not even going to look at Eu5 for the first 3 years of its release. Victoria 3 taught me well.

Tbh from what I see I have faith in Johan and the eu5, because it has been first being worked on 4 years ago in comparison to imperator Rome which was made from scratch to release in 6 months and I’m sure there wasn’t a lot of time for ck3 and Vicky 3, paradox likes to rush the game to release but Johan sees the aspect of a good launch and to minimise amount of DLCs, and UI has been constantly being worked on and will change before release , but maybe my hopes are too high and I love it’s literally a new game, new meta, and I love the Tinto talks as it allows the community to ask and support the team before launch

It was a "wrongful expectation" to assume Star Trek Infinite would be supported for at least a year, was it?

i disagree with you on the "paradox curse" most players understand that new games will not have the content and the polish of old games because of the numerous dlc and patching, i remember when CK3 launched everyone was saying it needs time to reach the level of CK2 but it has good foundations, so the concern is if the new games have good foundation to build on, and victoria 3 doesnt because for example its combat system is garbage no matter how many dlc they throw at it. they're simplifying their games for new players. the attractive element of paradox games is their complexity and they're moving away from that it seems.

The only reason why im excited for EU5 is that there is a chance for another humble bundle for EU4

What is the point of a sequel if it is not at least matching predeccessor? They are also relying on their built playerbase so they willl not do much marketing outside of already built community and of course those players expect something that is more worth their time thna previous title. I:R was mostly advertised towards EU4 and CK2 players so without bugs, it could have survived in its barebone state if they tried to get new playerbase.

Why tf would you throw out all the mechanics and depths of a previous game? Like, how does that make any sense?

IMHO one of the most important check-boxes for a Paradox game would be for it not to be too broken lmao

If they literally just took all the old mechanics, and just introduced new systems to account for that, everyone love it.

Fundamentally agree with the idea that the paradox model is risky, but much more rewarding. Will the average audience have the patience to struggle through the early days of EU5, CK3, V3? I hope so but its not a given

I'm just waiting for the Grey Eminence. EU V if comes out, it will take at least 3 years of new dlcs to become enjoyable without mods.

This problem is like Sims Syndrome, the Sims series are always selling the same expansions/dlcs with each new game. There is a pets expansion for the all 4 of the Sims games, for example(not sure about 1🤔)

My real expectation for any new paradox game is atleast have as many functioning systems as the previous title in the series and also atleast all the major powers in each playable region are fleshed out like for example the fact that in Ck3 republics and hordes still lack content when they are major elements of the setting is absurd but in like Vic 3 or hoi4 I get like minor nations not getting flavor for a few years

i had some fun with imperator rome. a mix between crusader kings and europa universalis but not as good

The way I see it, EU5 should not lack any features EU4 has unless its a better replacement feature. Rather, it should be a significant upgrade on the prior game. Paradox can put a lot more into their next title, and STILL add dlc content because they can ALWAYS come up with more dlc content.

Im personally happy whith pdx whith how they market the system and build games up over time, the problem is every purchase is made in the good faith that pdx will build upon the groundwork and move forwards with it 1.Reputation is key 2.imperitor is a recent blemish on that Reputation 3.sequals take more effort to compete whith there predecessors Pdx needs to 1. Make clear what work it wants to do whith these titles 2.make promises on requirements like purchases required before getting peoples hopes up 3.maintain its good community response

the problem is, even if theres new games, it should atleast have 3/4 content of the original game (full of updates), not 2x of the content of the original game (when released)

I’m a bit worried they’ll use a similar method to military mechanics as Vic3 and that’ll be a complete no go for me at the start

that creally cool but my headphone dont work can you write article also in hungarian please ty love from magyar

I can deal with minor bugs and issues no problem. What I struggle with the most is the complex gameplay and UI, which I can never get around to enjoying. I constantly come back looking to spark some interest in the game that I did not find before, but I am always disappointed. That being said, I am restarting Imperator Rome this evening. Maybe I can last longer than a few hours without getting overwhelmed and bored

tbh, CK3 has 6x current players CK2 has and a few thousand more than EUIV (at this exact point in time)

I think Paradox biggest problem is trying to completely rework things, it sometimes works, sometimes does not but is generally positive for pre-existing games to keep it fresh, but when combined with a game being new on top of that and thus far less content fille it only makes it worse when something falls flat flares out on top of missing content people are used too. In this regard I believe new releases (that arent a new series entirely like Stellaris) should focus more on maintaining as much existing content as possible before even thinking about any major and massive changes and any additions should build upon what already exist. For example alot Paradox games have resources a given province might make, something to add would be more resource variety, and depending on the game series build upon what can be done with resources both new and pre-existing. After that we should see at least 1 or 2 years of 'restoration' efforts for anything that could not make it into the release either in free updates or DLC before facing any massive overhauls. In case they want to take a game in a entirely new direction, DONT, just DONT, when people buy a strategy game that's not a entirely new game series they are expecting either the same thing but better, or the same thing but executed less well, if your gonna make a different game, give it a different bloody name, but Paradox might be a bit addicted to the idea that any game made in a specific timeframe of history has to be part of a specific game series, which fair that makes sense but just wont end up well if you suddenly decide to drive the train off the tracks seconds after leaving the station.

When they release a new game it shoul include all the previous one's features at launch and then build uppon that. Dev time would be significatively longer but players would not be dissapointed

I'm not worried about the DLC hole. What I am worried about is the signs coming from Cities Skylines that appear as though PDX are trying to exert stronger control over mods.

I fully agree with the testing, UI and optimization, but I do think the games have been releasing without obvious features that should be at launch. Spheres of influence and foreign investment in Victoria for example, or a military system that works, or some flavor. Essential to the core of the game, unexcusable that its not vanilla.

"Are Paradox so out of touch? No... it's the players who are wrong"

I don't know why people get mad. I play pirate version of EU4 with the latest update and DLC and is amazing, then Epic Games gave an opportunity to have EU4 completely for free, so I "bought" it and I didn't see the small letters of the contract, I was getting almost the 1.0 EU4... It was a horrible experience. If players could ever play the old "better" versions of the game they would immediately stop playing (I stopped playing that Epic Games EU4 before 1500 since there's not so much to do and I ain't spending almost a day on a chair viewing a map).

On one hand the developers dont have alot of excuse for leaving out big systems that people have gotten used to in older releases of a series. On the other EU5 is not EU4, just like CK3 is not CK2. Youre playing a different game that is designed to appeal to different playstyles, allow for different stories and to be more accessible to people in different ways. Paradox has relied too much on forcing you to buy the DLC to not be punished by the free updates in some ways. EU4 you can easily play without any dlc but dlc does give you alot more power.

I wish they would improve the journal entries on Vic 3, it's so annoying that you can't see the consequences of finishing a journal entry and what it can lead to. The mission trees on EU4 are so much better and usee friendly.

the problem is that they make the game on purpose and then sell us dlcs to fix up these problems.

Makes me glad that my first paradox’s games were HOI4, EU4, and CK3. I’m not comparing these games to HOI3 or CK2. I just get to enjoy them. Even if EU5 is barebones at first, if it’s basically Vic 3 in EU4 time period but with micro warfare that would be cool.

if they went in more interesting new directions it might not be a gigantic issue when they dont have as much flavor as older games. ck3 and vic3 are both ok but they didnt make a big change to their series so they ended up as prettier and less developed versions of their prequels. i hope eu5s pop system distinguishes it and changes up the gameplay loop

Agree fully with this. Yes games shouldn’t be unplayable on release, but people are delusional if they think PDX can afford to spend 10 years developing a game so that its ’content complete’ on release. They’d have to charge £300 for each game, and we’d have nothing to play while the game is being fully developed. I really like growing as the game does and getting to grips with each new mechanic as it’s released.

It's not a curse, it's their own doing.

the biggest problem i have with it is half theyre dlc is the same cost as the base game if you dont catch eur on sale or on humble bundle its like 300 or 400 dollars its still better then the micro blackholes like ROK and state of survival and such but its the cost of like 4-5 major league games. its still the same game no matter the dlc stellaris being one of the worst about it they just partially change the game mechanics every year or so and hope people keep paying as there are no alternatives worth buying

The is true ,if you launch the game at least try to have some of the good features the previes game had,dont make it bland with nothing in it and then resell the same features as dlc again,dlc should be about new mechanics that are a breath of fresh air to the game. Great video thanks🫡

Victoria 3 is just amazing for me and the evolution in 2 years was much greater then i anticipated! Paradox games are for the long run boys

Honestly I do not know why anyone could possibly defend paradox after all these years given their track record. After all when you buy a game like any product you expect a certain standard to be met when it comes to the product, think of a bottle of dish liquid as a paradox game which has both the shiny label, says what it does but then when you go to use this product you end up finding out that you need to pay for the dish liquid inside the bottle to have extra cleaning power as well or otherwise you are left with basically slightly bubbly water that barely works, or another example take a banana but without the fruit inside and what you got is exactly what paradox does to the consumer not mentioning the amount of product you get with dlc instalments. At the end of the day however it isn't paradox that is the issue here but rather the customers who enable this level of behaviour and they very well know it and until people get their heads out of their arses and stop being mentally feeble is the day that pigs fly.

EU4 has all those things, i mean you have t buy a DLC to upgrade or sell ships and do things that should be in the base game.

i mean as far as i understand features shouldn't be lost when we get a sequel.

Kinda agree but also no. It worked for them in case of EU3 and EU4 where only after Common Sense DLC game started feeling like next succesor and not simplified rip-off with more provinces

the Paradox model is like advertising a Big Mac, then just selling you the patty amd having you pay extra for the bun and all the toppings, relying on people who just buy whatever PDX shovels out. Unfortunately for PDX, the number of those people are rapidly shrinking

I don't know why but I have the feeling they're releasing their games this way because they want to do something that feels "unique" compared to other entries in a series, it is unpopular and doesn't always work but I understand why Paradox is staying on this way.

HOI IV was really good already on release, getting a lot of innovative mechanics after the years. It lacked a few ones that HOI3 had, but it was surely an improvement.

As Paradox falls, Hooded Horse rises.

It's not a curse, it's incompetent executive management; and the snowballing of consequences of bad decisions.

Imagine being a fan of a series that always has sequels that are worse than the last one. Man, I wish I had a Pokémon pfp right now. Would perfect the joke. I can't be bothered to download one though.

The biggest problem I have with Paradox games is their cash grab DLC strategy with selling skins that should already be in the game. Also, the amount of DLCs is too much for me. EU3 had 5 iterations of the game, each one being better than the previous. While I love EU4 and its expansions like The Art Of War, it had lots questionable mechanics added later, like the Class system. I just wish they'd tone it down with DLCs and keep it simple with up to 5 major expansions per game.

Me waiting to play as venice in ck3 (it's 2089)

2:33 this doesnt count it was 8 10 years ago tech and skill has increased

I expected support for Star Trek infinite but Paradox stabbed us in the back

Does anyone still remember when CK2 got popular and everyone was frustrated that you were only allowed to play as Catholic Kings in Europe?

nope the most forgetten is march of the eagles it was never remembered

I think that Paradox got several problems. The most dangerous is that their audience is a niche, with very strong expectations plus rather heavily invested to games they are fans of (money + time I mean). So it is impossible to make a next installment that changes main direction of specific series. Victoria is a prime example - fans wanted better version of Vic2 with QoL in place, better mods support, better graphics and long-term support. That game was pretty complex. PDX went for sth different - I believe with a task to have a wider audiance. So we got a game for no one - it is not interesting to new players (still from grand strategy niche but new to Vic series) and it is an abomination for most fans of Vic2. For me it is more like mobile phone "clicker". I am afraid that with approach to games that PDX has - you launch game and you gradually improve it with DLCs and patches Eu5 would have a bumpy road ahead. So what PDX can do to mitigate that risk? Make a different game based on same foundation - we have different time span for example, we may have different mechanics etc so this game will be very different experience from EU4. This is still a gamble as they did sth like that with Vic2 and Vic3 however Vic2 was rarely played and out dated, Eu4 is still alive.

We have Victoria already, which is struggling, despite haveing good ideas and innovation in the game (while missing out a lot of stuff as well). EU5 will fail no matter what Paradox does. Not worth it.

imparator rome did get a new official update, so maybe there is hope

I mean what else do we expect when they release a alpha version of each game after less than 1 year of real development then spend the next half a decade leisurely filling it up small bit by small bit with dlcs that eventually triple the cost of the whole thing AND THEN WE KEEP BUYING IT and telling them its fine to be money grubbing cheats?

Victoria 3 could have become a great game. I honestly don’t understand how you can protect the game so much. The only flavour that can be found is within the ottomans and USA until mid game. Most other flavour features consist of 1-2 events. One could argue that this may be the biggest detriment to the game since major powers like Austria, Prussia, UK and Russia do not have any flavour. In the end, the game is a massive spreadsheet sim as the war mechanics do not demand any real input. Compared to other Paradox games, you do not feel in control. In EU4, Hoi4, stellaris and other titles give you more or less total control over the economy, diplomacy and warfare. Those are crucial aspects of a strategy game. The biggest point is that many features have been developed across the years. Victoria 2 had a decent warfare system, hoi4 has a good system now. Imagine hoi5 with NO features from hoi4, as if it never existed. Then it feels as if paradox is trying to milk their games. It does not support innovation as they already know what features are necessary etc. paradox has created a golden era of strategy games and instead of carrying on innovating, they would rather try and milk. A case is CSL 2 which did start off with many features of CSL 1, BUT the game felt unfinished, especially as it was proven that the core mechanics of deep sim were fabricated (idk if one could actually sue them for that). The game felt as if it had little replay value, just like Vic 3. Why? No flavour. It’s all a cycle in the end

Although I agree that paradox games are never what they should be on release, but its still very frustrating if yoy spent hundreds of dollars on a game like eu4, hoi4 or ck2 just for the next one to be "next gen" yet lack the most basic stuff. Imagine a hoi5, but with no equipment designers, navy designer, agency, vic3 combat, just for all of it to be behind a 20 dollar paywall for the smallest thing.

I think the development you refer to is a difference between PC and console game producers/community.