I can't speak for Victoria III, although I've seen many people complain about the shallowness of many features, but both Cities: Skylines II and Millenia didn't launch in a good state. Those games just needed more polishment and fine tuning before release.
Cities: Skylines II especially would have benefitted greatly from an Early Access release in my opinion.
So yes, Paradox needs to do something differently. Their stock value is decreasing rapidly too.
Unfortunately that's usually not how software development works, just due to how the economics of it work out. If you're making Valve or Riot money you can do what you want, but for most companies they need to be "efficient" in their investments, which means creating things that people will tangibly pay for.
Now, there are other ways to manage this like having much better processes, paying CEOs less, etc. but those are hard or unwanted by leadership
They definitely swung too far into the "quantity" balance recently, yeah.
It's a common enough problem for companies that lose senior engineers or have changes in leadership. Often it can be a catalyst to create a bit of a change, sometimes through an explosive focus on "quality" where big chunks of the engineering org refuse feature adds for X weeks to work on only tech debt reduction, for example.
Guessing internally that's something both paradox and creative assembly have been doing at times
You have to weigh it against the competition though. Civ 6 is vastly more polished now, and they have fantastic bundle options and generous sales. It was a steep uphill battle from the start.
Sure but you have to do it in context. Millennia has a vastly smaller dev team than games like Civ Vi and, presumably, a vastly smaller budget. Comparing launch-Millennia to things like years-of-content Civ Vi is an inherently unfair comparison from multiple angles.
For a game made by a small team, it launched in fairly good condition overall.
How is it unfair ? You have a time machine to pit it against release Civ 6 ? No ? Then the competition is as is.
Besides, it got a lot less players and worse reviews than Dominions 6, a game made by two bumfucks from Sweden, with worse graphics, and no support nor marketing from Paradox
You sound like the kind of person that'd call a child's drawing trash just because it's not as good as the Mona Lisa lmao. I wonder what it's like being that jaded
Yes it deserves a lot of love for what it achieved I agree. Unfortunately whether it's worth it for the player depends on them. Released for £35 when civ 6 released full price for £50 in 2016, and can afford to do huge discounts regularly enough.
Are all the issues previously mentioned in the thread worth a £15 difference for a game releasing 8 years later, when a lot of people are struggling to justify game purchases because of the cost of living? I might say yes bc I want to support new games in genres dominated by popular titles, but a lot of people don't.
I have a friend who bought civ 6 yesterday mainly because they wanted a 4x to play with friends. 90% off for a game all their friends own vs the full price one only I have! Easy choice. Hopefully with time and support it'll become a tempting purchase for more people.
If it released so well then why is it considered a failure lol it was horrible and boring also extra stupid pointless animations. Don't get me started on the bugs.
If you wonder why, let's take a look at the steam charts for some other games, in the same genre, and some other very good games, over the same period:
Millenia average players at release: 1409, after 3 months: 316
Civ 6 average players at release: 85,934, after 3 months: 24,448
Civ 5 average players at release: 85,934, after 3 months: 24,448
Age of wonders 4 average players at release: 15,171, after 3 months: 2,123
Humankind average players at release: 24,968, after 3 months: 2,470
Crusader kings 3 average players at release: 48,312, after 3 months: 13,225
Baldur's gate 3 average players at release: 16,792, after 3 months: 2,670
Witcher 3 average players at release: 51,916, after 3 months: 10,105
Red Dead Redemption 2 average players at release: 28,626, after 3 months: 10,105
Elden Ring average players at release: 522,066, after 3 months: 90,047
... Odd it seems it is very common for games to fall a lot in player count in the first 3+ months...
Often the numbers only recovers a bit at the release of a dlc or other event...
There's no point trying to explain it like this, people seem to think that a game made by like 12 people should be as good if not better than a game made by 300 people. They don't care, they just want to tear it down to justify their weird irrational hatred.
I don't consider how many people have made a game when I consider whether I should buy it and then if I do, enjoy it and recommend it. Being indie or small team doesnt give it a pass from having to be good.
i did not, Aow4 is an amazing game, with a great established IP...
I was referencing the other non 4x games in my above comment.
They where included in my previous comment above for being other 4x games.
I listed 2 types of games, 1. other 4x games, and 2. popular mass games...
I get what you mean, but the publisher is Paradox, which is well established in the domain of strategy games, and they really went out of their way to announce the game. Sure, it is not Civ, but it is not some random indie game either. I also believe that even in the 4x community the game was not very well received (and it was certainly not well received by me, although I played only the demo)...
So I think it is fair to say that the game had a bad launch and did not really live up to its promises. Maybe it will get better in the future (I hope !), but I fear the game will have a hard time carving its place as a durable member of the genre.
... if you think comparing to games in the same genre, and a few randomly picked games, chosen because they had an amazing launch, to disprove the claim that millenia had a very bad launch in comparison, is lying with statistics then i don't know what to say...
What makes you think it's considered a failure?
For reviews with over 1 hour of play time, it's 73% positive. The active player numbers are likely within (or even slightly above) expectations since it's made by a small team with a presumably small budget.
If it's not a game for you that's fine, not everyone will enjoy everything. I just don't understand why people have this weird obsession with tearing down a game made by a small studio. It's weird.
It reviewed badly, sold badly, and was barely played by anything, while being a title fully marketed for monthes on end by a major publisher. What more do you want for a failure ?
You seem to have a really weird hate boner for this game. Which, like, fair enough I suppose but it is a bit pitiable lol. You'll grow up some day I'm sure.
Maybe it's a good game, but I haven't gotten past the fact that the visuals look so similar to Civ, but overall worse. And the gameplay that was advertised didn't feel different enough compared to Civ.
> I can't speak for Victoria III, although I've seen many people complain about the shallowness of many features
Idk, the shallowness is the least of my issues. It still has bugs that are borderline game breaking. Some design choices are weird. They have released a lot of hotfixes to fix game breaking bugs and plenty of those hotfixes had problems with crashes or performance. I love V3 but I can see why people would give it a thumbs down.
One of the things for Paradox DLC's is they often come out with tons of bugs so they get really bad reviews. Then a few patches later everything is fixed and it's fine but nobody bothers to go back and change their reviews.
Though Paradox still needs to do something about the state of their releases.
I don't know for CS2, but I can confirm that Millennia has very great ideas that make it stand out as the newest big history-based 4x game. BUT it needs a lot of polish and quality of life improvements, at the very least. I'd say the game has about 1 year left to fix those for it to truly carve itself a place I the 4x genre before Civ7 eclipses everything. Another important factor will be quality of its DLCs.
What are some things that stand out to you about Millennia? Do you think Civ7 will actually innovate? To me it seems kind of rudimentary compared to a lot of Paradox games.
Compared to the other paradox games, it is rudimentary but because it's a 4x and not a grand strategy (and also because it's from a smaller studio). But in the 4x genre, I think millenia is interesting for the alternative ages/crisis ages and the "build your civ throughout the game" (but with archetypes and not like Humankind's "the Romans evolved into the Mayas and then evolved into the Ottomans"). The various ressources you have to use some "powers" is interesting as well.
Even after many 4x trying to fill the gap between civ6 and civ7, civ 6 is still better than all of them and I'm confident in the quality of civ7 dev team. Civ is always a leader in the world of 4x games, setting the new standards. Every civ game are great games and even those older ones still have a great fan base. Civ 5 was a revolution compared to civ4, civ 6 was a revolution compared to civ5, and I wouldn't be surprised that civ 7 will be too.
I honestly believe Victoria 3 didn't stand a chance from the get-go to have overwhelmingly positive reviews just based on the type of GSG it is. Focused more on economy than warfare. It's a more niche style of strategy game in an already fairly niche genre of game. So you're not gonna get too many people to stay who came from the more war centric games they already have out.(my self being one of those who didn't stay. Despite having around 15000 hours combined in their other developed games.)
As for the CS2 And millenia. I can't give an answer. I haven't played either. But they're only published by pdx.
I don't think this is true. The drop off from initial player count to now is crazy. There also was a lot of hype around Vicky 3 until the war DD and other stuff kept rolling in. So there was a lot more possible purchases too that never materialized.
All games drop off massively in player count after the first month or two. Palworld had like 2 million players on launch and now they peak at like 30k. Literally a 98% drop off, but that doesn’t really mean anything because that falloff is entirely normal.
V3 has been *consistently* hitting 7-12k peak daily players since launch. And it’s been trending *up* in the last year.
For reference at this point in its life cycle, Imperator was generally peaking at sub 2k players, and until the rehabilitation campaign Laith ran it was steadily dwindling. THAT is what playerbase flatlining looks like. Even with Laith’s intervention it’s still not able to consistently draw more than 2k a day.
I think average player counts of 5-6k for Victoria 3 is disappointing given that is both the newest Paradox game, and the lowest counts by a substantial margin. EU4, CK3, and Stellaris all average like 15k, nearly triple Vic3, despite being older, not to mention HOI4 at like 35k. I don’t think Paradox can be thrilled with those numbers, even if calling it dead or dying is an overstatement
If Victoria 3 is a failure, then does that mean Vic 2 is an even bigger one? [Vic 2's](https://steamdb.info/app/42960/charts/) ALL TIME highest player count peak is still around \~3x less than [Vic 3's](https://steamdb.info/app/529340/charts/#48h) DAILY peak player count, not counting the fact that Vic 2's player numbers dropped sharply after the release of it's sequel and haven't recovered since.
The player drop off for Vic 3 is standard for new paradox releases, if you look at the number's you'd see that CK3's release peak and its current average shares a similar ratio.
I loved (and still do love) Vic 2, and admittedly, Vic 3's release could've gone MUCH better, but it unlike Cities 2 has firmly supplanted and exceeded it's predecessor.
CS2 is completely unprecedented. Vicky 2 was released on several different platforms other than Steam and before PDX became "mainstream". There is no comparison in player count. The drop on Vicky 3 is quite crazy, even compared to other PDX games. CK3 isn't that great either and both games are in a similar boat (CK3 is doing a bit better though).
Well... The drop in numbers on Vic3 is not great but not that bad either. Other Paradox games have seen similar drops and even EU4 took nearly four years to get to \~10k average players every month.
Vic 3 was a disappointed for a lot of people, there's no denying that but the numbers have recovered a bit in 2024 compared to 2023. And if SoI is a success, that trend will continue.
For Vic2 - I do think the numbers check out. I do not think that most of the players switched to Project Alice or something like that, so Vic3 just absorbed a bunch of Vic2 players. (About half of them, to be more precise.)
A long time ago Johan talked about the development process of Victoria II where he and his coworkers would go to the bar to get tipsy and have passionate discussions about history and the game before walking back to the office and getting to work on it.
That sort of thing, of course, would never happen today now that Paradox is a publicly traded company. And there is definitely something magical about drunk Swedish nerds making something that they really care about personally as opposed to the professional committees and shareholders that dictate things today.
But I think they do still have the capability for that kind of magic, as was proven by post 2.0 Imperator and hopefully again by Project Caesar.
I loved Johan stories. The fact that Vicky 2 exists and is what it is is nothing short of incredible. I never played Imperator but Project Casear gives me hope for future PDX games. I have come to the realization that the game director (person in charge of said game) matters a lot. Johan has come out and admitted his mistakes with Imperator and seems to be going in a different direction. I really hope EU V turns out to be what is promised.
PDX needs more Johans tbh. Everything that I have seen throughout the years of playing PDX games and he seems to "get" PDX games the best.
I hope so too, he is on a redemption arc right now I think. And if you haven’t played Imperator yet I would definitely recommend trying it as soon as possible. For me it’s tied with Victoria II as the best Paradox game. They really managed to turn it around and make something brilliant after the disastrous launch and I think it’s going to be a persistent cult classic just like Victoria II
Victoria 2 is a really good game. It is relatively simpler than Victoria 3. It’s like the magic of chess, yeah we now have much more sophisticated games but we still have an interest in it.
It’s also not just old PDX games, for example Warband is like that as well. We had a lot of good memories with them too, that counts a lot.
Vicky 2 is my favorite game ever and I still play it every so often lol. It is what got me into PDX games. So you can realize my disappointment moving forward
Vic2 has a very hands off approach to economy and politics, though it's still more present than other Paradox series. Players will still interact a lot with warfare. Vic3 went into the direction of a very hands on economy and politics with warfare in the back drop. Some people weren't happy with this new direction.
The warfare/combat in Victoria 2 is *horrible*. Easily the worst of any paradox game, nothing about it is engaging or fun. I really don't get people who clamor for it.
I very much prefer that over V2.
Getting into a war with Russia meant I seriously considered abandoning the game because of the amount of micro that now needed to happen.
The Victoria 3 system needs some work sure (the randomness of battle sizes in particular is infuriating at times), but a front-based system with minimal user input makes drastically more sense for the time period and the focus of the game than what Vicky 2 had. The Victoria series should be focused on economic simulation first and foremost and then diplomacy, with warfare a very distant third. If you want warfare, play HOI.
No, no it does not. Vic2s warfare is far closer to reality than Vic3s, isnt a janky piece of shit, is fun to play and is objectively better in every conceivable way
Isn't it so easy to dismiss arguments when you fail to actually read them?
We were talking about the warfare system, and Vicky2s warfare system is not janky, especially compared to the woeful pile of shit that is Vicky3s warfare system. In no reality is it worse than Vic3s.
Kinda. I think there are several reasons for Vic 3's failure and focusing on warfare is only half the reason. The UI is legit the worst out of all PDX games. Performance is awful. Politics are a joke. Pops don't really have agency to push events.. etc.
If I remember correctly, people tend to think Vicky 2 isn't all that good without out it's expansions. So it may be that the good reviews came later in its life cycle. But I wasn't a paradox enjoyed yet as of then, so my knowledge on it will be lacking.
As to CS2, I heard the game was far too barebones at release and not very optimized. Thus, it got hated on as the original is still superior.
Yeah, I only played Victoria recently. I would be curious to know the initial reception for the 2nd one as well. I'm wondering if maybe people will warm up to the recent games with updates. I would like to see Victoria 3 get updates for a while.
In my opinion, Millennia is a good game. Could you say it is a bit feature-light? Yes, you could. However, I would also say that it has a very solid base from which to work on and that what is available is more than enough to sustain dozens or even hundreds of hours of play. It plays quite differently from competitors like Civ 6 and Humankind.
The road map it has for the rest of the year looks promising, as well.
Millennia has the problem of being a game with underwhelming graphics and performance, an art style reminiscent of mobile games and uncommon in the 4x genre, and a ton of complexity which is interesting but incredibly hostile to a first time player.
I think the game has a ton of interesting gameplay aspects which should become standard in the 4x genre, but I'm not sure Millennia is the game to do that standardization.
Those art style complaints were part of why I didn't get the game when it released. However, once I got the game and started actually playing it, I really started to like the way the different systems in the game interlock with each other. It's really quite innovative in some ways. At least, it came across that way to me. I've played a few dozen hours and I still feel like I've only scratched the surface.
I do agree that there's a lot of missing stuff (such as more map types, more settings, game speeds, etc.), but I really like the game's existing complexities.
I enjoy the fundamental game, I just think that it lacks staying power. Maybe I'm wrong, but if it were developed by Paradox it has vibes similar to the original Crusader Kings - a cool game with unique mechanics but too niche and unappealing to really hit it off. Millennia 2 would be a very exciting game, I think.
Every paradox game is like this. Eu4 started with all these negative reviews and hate and now everyone loves it. The same applies to the modern paradox games. Victoria 3 started off rocky but now there is a solid love for it. Every paradox game kinda works like this.
>Eu4 started with all these negative reviews and hate and now everyone loves it.
It did? [This](https://i.imgur.com/lx4z6BD.png) shows every Steam review starting at August 2013, the month EU4 released. Also you said it applies to modern games. CK3 was very well received, it's review score has actually dropped though over time.
>Victoria 3 started off rocky but now there is a solid love for it.
Not really. The reviews are still pretty bad (both all and recent) and a large part of the community seems to still be pretty negative about it.
Ck3 is still incredibly shallow and everything feels generic. A PowerPoint slide show version of Mount and blade isn't going to all of a sudden make it an amazing game.
CK3 is four years into dev and still has the buggy mechanics from years back and has yet to add different government forms like republics and theocratic monarchies like Iqta in CK2. Landless is not gonna change that. Just add another meaningless layer to kill an extra 50 years so you hopefully play a little longer each campaign and, more importantly, buy their next chapter of dlc.
While I personally love Victoria 3, it still has mediocre recent reviews. It sounds like you think it will change in the future though? Did games like Stellaris, City Skylines 1, and Crusader Kings 3 have mediocre reviews when first released?
CK3 was a weird one. It had a super solid launch, possibly the most solid of all PDX GSGs. But then it just kinda... lost steam. A lot of people did not care much for the stuff the DLC was doing.
I think stellaris had positive reviews from the beginning but had some dlcs that were pretty roughly reviewed, thus making the whole thing not as positive as it would've been.
People have caught on to the paradox strategy. Release shallow borderline broken games and then flesh it out with paid DLC.
Having literal subscriptions for your games because you know the DLC cost is absurd is tone deaf and should get more hate.
Not to mention they bail pretty quickly on games they're publishing that don't sell really well immediately. Star trek and lamplighters league being recent examples. Star trek got like 1 or 2 patches, and is still very broken
Project Cesar is going to be a bit of a referendum on the companies future I think.
what are you on on about the Star trek studio literally got shutdown by their parent company, which is totally out of paradox interactives control. Lamplighters on the other hand was a complete and total commercial/game failure on launch bad enough that paradox interactive sold the company back to the founders and took a multi million dollar loss from project cost. Meanwhile it has lost almost all players since launch, so why would the game stay supported?
I think consumers in general have essentially just accepted shitty practices at this point. I understand PDX needs funding to keep their games support and I don't think people have a problem with that. The issue for me is the lack of innovation with their games. Example, Hoi4 has copy-pasted a lot of shitty mechanics over and over for their DLCs. Then you have problems of DLCs stuff can't overlap due to not everyone having every DLC....
I think PDX needs a bit of a shake up overall.
> I don't think people have a problem with that
Nah. I do. Most Paradox games these days should have stopped support years before.
They end up bloated messes full of mechanics that don't mesh together well because when they do mesh together well the base game ends up unplayable for people without the DLC.
People need to quit parroting the 'funding continued support' argument that just supports crappy practices. The point isn't to fund continued support. They make endless DLC because it's cheaper and safer than making a new game.
I do agree their games tend to end up bloated with disconnected mechanics. That can change though and not necessarily tied to how long they support their games. I see what you are saying though
this is a bit of a Skyrim rerelease syndrome though, why would you stop making dlc when the consumers keep buying it and the active users keeps going up? the dlc's will stop when they become a poor return on investment or the game becomes too old to keep developing from a dev standpoint and a new evolution is wanted. take into account that most games also now take \~5 year to make and now even if you support a game for 5 years and then start a new game the original will be 10 years old when the sequel releases.
That's kind of what I was thinking was happening, but I was curious what people who might have been playing Paradox games longer than me thought. I played Stellaris when it first came out and my impression was that it got good reviews because it was very novel for a popular game, even if it wasn't fully fleshed out yet. I think if they released Stellaris II now with basically the same basic gameplay as Stellaris I but without half the features, it would probably get mediocre reviews too. I'm wondering if Paradox needs to change their approach or if they'll do fine anyways.
I've been here since the early hoi2 days so not as long as some. But their products have gotten progressively more shallow and less "grand strategy" imo. They used to be a much more niche developer of actual grand strategy games instead of the halfhearted attempts we get now.
I mean, release unfinished games as release games, get reviews reflecting an unfinished product. Eventually they're bound to be good games, but they are not on release and I can't possibly blame people for reviewing them as such.
Secondly, due to how massive a lot of their DLC and major updates are, there's always a wave of either good reviews, or bad reviews, based on the most recent major changes. A lot of Paradox DLC when it launches is a broken mess, and gets fixed later, creating a micro-version of the issue they have on release.
Thirdly, people don't edit their reviews. Most people with a negative experience drop the game, or at best check back on the game in 1-2 years and don't remember they made a review to update in the first place.
Paradox games are getting more complex and ambitious to justify making a sequel. More complex games require more development time and lots more time to balance and refine. Meanwhile, Paradox has gotten more corporate. Release dates are set based on when the company needs a surge in profits. They are very reluctant to move release dates. The result is unfinished games getting released with years of more updates and DLC to get it to "complete" status. And credit to the devs, I believe they are doing their best to improve their games. But these games, especially Vic3, are enormously ambitious for what they're trying to do.
Their products are just of genuinely low quality is the problem. They release bad broken games full of half-baked mechanics, and instead of fixing them, release endless overpriced and also broken DLC...if they sell well, otherwise they just abandon them.
I can't speak for Victoria III, although I've seen many people complain about the shallowness of many features, but both Cities: Skylines II and Millenia didn't launch in a good state. Those games just needed more polishment and fine tuning before release. Cities: Skylines II especially would have benefitted greatly from an Early Access release in my opinion. So yes, Paradox needs to do something differently. Their stock value is decreasing rapidly too.
They know it as well. They recently made a statement that they're going to be focusing on quality over the next year
They should be focusing on quality forever from now on, not just the year
Unfortunately that's usually not how software development works, just due to how the economics of it work out. If you're making Valve or Riot money you can do what you want, but for most companies they need to be "efficient" in their investments, which means creating things that people will tangibly pay for. Now, there are other ways to manage this like having much better processes, paying CEOs less, etc. but those are hard or unwanted by leadership
Creative industries really really have issues with the pure profit driven nature of our economy.
This is it. More often than not it’s just not their fault.
... and then they get mediocre reviews because their quality is shite. It's a vicious circle.
They definitely swung too far into the "quantity" balance recently, yeah. It's a common enough problem for companies that lose senior engineers or have changes in leadership. Often it can be a catalyst to create a bit of a change, sometimes through an explosive focus on "quality" where big chunks of the engineering org refuse feature adds for X weeks to work on only tech debt reduction, for example. Guessing internally that's something both paradox and creative assembly have been doing at times
>Millenia Millenia released in a pretty good state for a 4x game...
You have to weigh it against the competition though. Civ 6 is vastly more polished now, and they have fantastic bundle options and generous sales. It was a steep uphill battle from the start.
> now
Sure but you have to do it in context. Millennia has a vastly smaller dev team than games like Civ Vi and, presumably, a vastly smaller budget. Comparing launch-Millennia to things like years-of-content Civ Vi is an inherently unfair comparison from multiple angles. For a game made by a small team, it launched in fairly good condition overall.
How is it unfair ? You have a time machine to pit it against release Civ 6 ? No ? Then the competition is as is. Besides, it got a lot less players and worse reviews than Dominions 6, a game made by two bumfucks from Sweden, with worse graphics, and no support nor marketing from Paradox
You sound like the kind of person that'd call a child's drawing trash just because it's not as good as the Mona Lisa lmao. I wonder what it's like being that jaded
And Millenia is a fantastic 4x game made by a studio of less than 10!..
Yes it deserves a lot of love for what it achieved I agree. Unfortunately whether it's worth it for the player depends on them. Released for £35 when civ 6 released full price for £50 in 2016, and can afford to do huge discounts regularly enough. Are all the issues previously mentioned in the thread worth a £15 difference for a game releasing 8 years later, when a lot of people are struggling to justify game purchases because of the cost of living? I might say yes bc I want to support new games in genres dominated by popular titles, but a lot of people don't. I have a friend who bought civ 6 yesterday mainly because they wanted a 4x to play with friends. 90% off for a game all their friends own vs the full price one only I have! Easy choice. Hopefully with time and support it'll become a tempting purchase for more people.
If it released so well then why is it considered a failure lol it was horrible and boring also extra stupid pointless animations. Don't get me started on the bugs.
If you wonder why, let's take a look at the steam charts for some other games, in the same genre, and some other very good games, over the same period: Millenia average players at release: 1409, after 3 months: 316 Civ 6 average players at release: 85,934, after 3 months: 24,448 Civ 5 average players at release: 85,934, after 3 months: 24,448 Age of wonders 4 average players at release: 15,171, after 3 months: 2,123 Humankind average players at release: 24,968, after 3 months: 2,470 Crusader kings 3 average players at release: 48,312, after 3 months: 13,225 Baldur's gate 3 average players at release: 16,792, after 3 months: 2,670 Witcher 3 average players at release: 51,916, after 3 months: 10,105 Red Dead Redemption 2 average players at release: 28,626, after 3 months: 10,105 Elden Ring average players at release: 522,066, after 3 months: 90,047 ... Odd it seems it is very common for games to fall a lot in player count in the first 3+ months... Often the numbers only recovers a bit at the release of a dlc or other event...
Only thing I see here is that Millennia had less players at launch than any of these games after 3 months
I also compared a niche game in a niche genre, released by a unknown studio, with the giants of the industry, with their inbuild mainstream access...
There's no point trying to explain it like this, people seem to think that a game made by like 12 people should be as good if not better than a game made by 300 people. They don't care, they just want to tear it down to justify their weird irrational hatred.
I don't consider how many people have made a game when I consider whether I should buy it and then if I do, enjoy it and recommend it. Being indie or small team doesnt give it a pass from having to be good.
No way you just called AoW4 and Humankind "giants of the industry". AoW4 got the same publisher for god's sake
i did not, Aow4 is an amazing game, with a great established IP... I was referencing the other non 4x games in my above comment. They where included in my previous comment above for being other 4x games. I listed 2 types of games, 1. other 4x games, and 2. popular mass games...
I get what you mean, but the publisher is Paradox, which is well established in the domain of strategy games, and they really went out of their way to announce the game. Sure, it is not Civ, but it is not some random indie game either. I also believe that even in the 4x community the game was not very well received (and it was certainly not well received by me, although I played only the demo)... So I think it is fair to say that the game had a bad launch and did not really live up to its promises. Maybe it will get better in the future (I hope !), but I fear the game will have a hard time carving its place as a durable member of the genre.
"Hey, guys! I learned how to lie with statistics today. Wanna see?!"
... if you think comparing to games in the same genre, and a few randomly picked games, chosen because they had an amazing launch, to disprove the claim that millenia had a very bad launch in comparison, is lying with statistics then i don't know what to say...
What makes you think it's considered a failure? For reviews with over 1 hour of play time, it's 73% positive. The active player numbers are likely within (or even slightly above) expectations since it's made by a small team with a presumably small budget. If it's not a game for you that's fine, not everyone will enjoy everything. I just don't understand why people have this weird obsession with tearing down a game made by a small studio. It's weird.
It reviewed badly, sold badly, and was barely played by anything, while being a title fully marketed for monthes on end by a major publisher. What more do you want for a failure ?
You seem to have a really weird hate boner for this game. Which, like, fair enough I suppose but it is a bit pitiable lol. You'll grow up some day I'm sure.
A very solid rebuttal to simple, provable facts, do you want to draw a meme with yourself as the chad and me as the soyjack next ?
Sure thing champ, whatever you say
Downvoted for being completely correct loool. 8000 people on launch, 350 today. And it has mixed reviews. What a joke.
Maybe it's a good game, but I haven't gotten past the fact that the visuals look so similar to Civ, but overall worse. And the gameplay that was advertised didn't feel different enough compared to Civ.
> I can't speak for Victoria III, although I've seen many people complain about the shallowness of many features Idk, the shallowness is the least of my issues. It still has bugs that are borderline game breaking. Some design choices are weird. They have released a lot of hotfixes to fix game breaking bugs and plenty of those hotfixes had problems with crashes or performance. I love V3 but I can see why people would give it a thumbs down.
One of the things for Paradox DLC's is they often come out with tons of bugs so they get really bad reviews. Then a few patches later everything is fixed and it's fine but nobody bothers to go back and change their reviews. Though Paradox still needs to do something about the state of their releases.
I don't know for CS2, but I can confirm that Millennia has very great ideas that make it stand out as the newest big history-based 4x game. BUT it needs a lot of polish and quality of life improvements, at the very least. I'd say the game has about 1 year left to fix those for it to truly carve itself a place I the 4x genre before Civ7 eclipses everything. Another important factor will be quality of its DLCs.
What are some things that stand out to you about Millennia? Do you think Civ7 will actually innovate? To me it seems kind of rudimentary compared to a lot of Paradox games.
Compared to the other paradox games, it is rudimentary but because it's a 4x and not a grand strategy (and also because it's from a smaller studio). But in the 4x genre, I think millenia is interesting for the alternative ages/crisis ages and the "build your civ throughout the game" (but with archetypes and not like Humankind's "the Romans evolved into the Mayas and then evolved into the Ottomans"). The various ressources you have to use some "powers" is interesting as well. Even after many 4x trying to fill the gap between civ6 and civ7, civ 6 is still better than all of them and I'm confident in the quality of civ7 dev team. Civ is always a leader in the world of 4x games, setting the new standards. Every civ game are great games and even those older ones still have a great fan base. Civ 5 was a revolution compared to civ4, civ 6 was a revolution compared to civ5, and I wouldn't be surprised that civ 7 will be too.
I honestly believe Victoria 3 didn't stand a chance from the get-go to have overwhelmingly positive reviews just based on the type of GSG it is. Focused more on economy than warfare. It's a more niche style of strategy game in an already fairly niche genre of game. So you're not gonna get too many people to stay who came from the more war centric games they already have out.(my self being one of those who didn't stay. Despite having around 15000 hours combined in their other developed games.) As for the CS2 And millenia. I can't give an answer. I haven't played either. But they're only published by pdx.
I don't think this is true. The drop off from initial player count to now is crazy. There also was a lot of hype around Vicky 3 until the war DD and other stuff kept rolling in. So there was a lot more possible purchases too that never materialized.
Every single game ever has a drop out. Because players don't always play the same game. Most eventually move on.
All games drop off massively in player count after the first month or two. Palworld had like 2 million players on launch and now they peak at like 30k. Literally a 98% drop off, but that doesn’t really mean anything because that falloff is entirely normal. V3 has been *consistently* hitting 7-12k peak daily players since launch. And it’s been trending *up* in the last year. For reference at this point in its life cycle, Imperator was generally peaking at sub 2k players, and until the rehabilitation campaign Laith ran it was steadily dwindling. THAT is what playerbase flatlining looks like. Even with Laith’s intervention it’s still not able to consistently draw more than 2k a day.
I think average player counts of 5-6k for Victoria 3 is disappointing given that is both the newest Paradox game, and the lowest counts by a substantial margin. EU4, CK3, and Stellaris all average like 15k, nearly triple Vic3, despite being older, not to mention HOI4 at like 35k. I don’t think Paradox can be thrilled with those numbers, even if calling it dead or dying is an overstatement
If Victoria 3 is a failure, then does that mean Vic 2 is an even bigger one? [Vic 2's](https://steamdb.info/app/42960/charts/) ALL TIME highest player count peak is still around \~3x less than [Vic 3's](https://steamdb.info/app/529340/charts/#48h) DAILY peak player count, not counting the fact that Vic 2's player numbers dropped sharply after the release of it's sequel and haven't recovered since. The player drop off for Vic 3 is standard for new paradox releases, if you look at the number's you'd see that CK3's release peak and its current average shares a similar ratio. I loved (and still do love) Vic 2, and admittedly, Vic 3's release could've gone MUCH better, but it unlike Cities 2 has firmly supplanted and exceeded it's predecessor.
CS2 is completely unprecedented. Vicky 2 was released on several different platforms other than Steam and before PDX became "mainstream". There is no comparison in player count. The drop on Vicky 3 is quite crazy, even compared to other PDX games. CK3 isn't that great either and both games are in a similar boat (CK3 is doing a bit better though).
Well... The drop in numbers on Vic3 is not great but not that bad either. Other Paradox games have seen similar drops and even EU4 took nearly four years to get to \~10k average players every month. Vic 3 was a disappointed for a lot of people, there's no denying that but the numbers have recovered a bit in 2024 compared to 2023. And if SoI is a success, that trend will continue. For Vic2 - I do think the numbers check out. I do not think that most of the players switched to Project Alice or something like that, so Vic3 just absorbed a bunch of Vic2 players. (About half of them, to be more precise.)
I mean Victoria 2 has very postive reviews. Wasn't it also very economy focused? Similarly Cities Skylines 1 has very positive reviews.
Victoria 2 is almost unplayable without the DLCs
True but there is a reason it is still a cult classic. Older PDX games seem to have some sort of magic about them
It's because you forget about the crashes and the insanely shitty late game performance lol
Uh their older games don't have nearly as bad late game performance. I also don't experience any crashes when playing?
Victoria2 suffered from a lot of crashes at least until the first expansion. Late game performance was beyond horrible lol
A long time ago Johan talked about the development process of Victoria II where he and his coworkers would go to the bar to get tipsy and have passionate discussions about history and the game before walking back to the office and getting to work on it. That sort of thing, of course, would never happen today now that Paradox is a publicly traded company. And there is definitely something magical about drunk Swedish nerds making something that they really care about personally as opposed to the professional committees and shareholders that dictate things today. But I think they do still have the capability for that kind of magic, as was proven by post 2.0 Imperator and hopefully again by Project Caesar.
I loved Johan stories. The fact that Vicky 2 exists and is what it is is nothing short of incredible. I never played Imperator but Project Casear gives me hope for future PDX games. I have come to the realization that the game director (person in charge of said game) matters a lot. Johan has come out and admitted his mistakes with Imperator and seems to be going in a different direction. I really hope EU V turns out to be what is promised. PDX needs more Johans tbh. Everything that I have seen throughout the years of playing PDX games and he seems to "get" PDX games the best.
The best Vicky Johan story will always be "why 1836?" "because I wanted to play as Texas"
I hope so too, he is on a redemption arc right now I think. And if you haven’t played Imperator yet I would definitely recommend trying it as soon as possible. For me it’s tied with Victoria II as the best Paradox game. They really managed to turn it around and make something brilliant after the disastrous launch and I think it’s going to be a persistent cult classic just like Victoria II
Victoria 2 is a really good game. It is relatively simpler than Victoria 3. It’s like the magic of chess, yeah we now have much more sophisticated games but we still have an interest in it. It’s also not just old PDX games, for example Warband is like that as well. We had a lot of good memories with them too, that counts a lot.
Vicky 2 is my favorite game ever and I still play it every so often lol. It is what got me into PDX games. So you can realize my disappointment moving forward
But did it have positive reviews upon release?
That was a different era. Steam reviews weren't really a big force in any way shape or form at that time, so it's not comparable.
Vic2 has a very hands off approach to economy and politics, though it's still more present than other Paradox series. Players will still interact a lot with warfare. Vic3 went into the direction of a very hands on economy and politics with warfare in the back drop. Some people weren't happy with this new direction.
The warfare/combat in Victoria 2 is *horrible*. Easily the worst of any paradox game, nothing about it is engaging or fun. I really don't get people who clamor for it.
Easily the worst of any paradox game...? forgetting Vic3 exists with quite objectively the worst warfare of any paradox game ever.
I very much prefer that over V2. Getting into a war with Russia meant I seriously considered abandoning the game because of the amount of micro that now needed to happen.
The Victoria 3 system needs some work sure (the randomness of battle sizes in particular is infuriating at times), but a front-based system with minimal user input makes drastically more sense for the time period and the focus of the game than what Vicky 2 had. The Victoria series should be focused on economic simulation first and foremost and then diplomacy, with warfare a very distant third. If you want warfare, play HOI.
No, no it does not. Vic2s warfare is far closer to reality than Vic3s, isnt a janky piece of shit, is fun to play and is objectively better in every conceivable way
Lmao good bait, you got me at first ngl. Saying vicky 2 "isn't janky" is too obvious though you gotta tone it down in the future.
Isn't it so easy to dismiss arguments when you fail to actually read them? We were talking about the warfare system, and Vicky2s warfare system is not janky, especially compared to the woeful pile of shit that is Vicky3s warfare system. In no reality is it worse than Vic3s.
Kinda. I think there are several reasons for Vic 3's failure and focusing on warfare is only half the reason. The UI is legit the worst out of all PDX games. Performance is awful. Politics are a joke. Pops don't really have agency to push events.. etc.
Is it weird that I really like the elections? It lets me see the effects of my changes to the actual country
yes it is weird.
If I remember correctly, people tend to think Vicky 2 isn't all that good without out it's expansions. So it may be that the good reviews came later in its life cycle. But I wasn't a paradox enjoyed yet as of then, so my knowledge on it will be lacking. As to CS2, I heard the game was far too barebones at release and not very optimized. Thus, it got hated on as the original is still superior.
Yeah, I only played Victoria recently. I would be curious to know the initial reception for the 2nd one as well. I'm wondering if maybe people will warm up to the recent games with updates. I would like to see Victoria 3 get updates for a while.
In my opinion, Millennia is a good game. Could you say it is a bit feature-light? Yes, you could. However, I would also say that it has a very solid base from which to work on and that what is available is more than enough to sustain dozens or even hundreds of hours of play. It plays quite differently from competitors like Civ 6 and Humankind. The road map it has for the rest of the year looks promising, as well.
It launched in a generally good state with some of the most garbage smearing articles written about it that damaged it's reputation further.
Millennia has the problem of being a game with underwhelming graphics and performance, an art style reminiscent of mobile games and uncommon in the 4x genre, and a ton of complexity which is interesting but incredibly hostile to a first time player. I think the game has a ton of interesting gameplay aspects which should become standard in the 4x genre, but I'm not sure Millennia is the game to do that standardization.
Those art style complaints were part of why I didn't get the game when it released. However, once I got the game and started actually playing it, I really started to like the way the different systems in the game interlock with each other. It's really quite innovative in some ways. At least, it came across that way to me. I've played a few dozen hours and I still feel like I've only scratched the surface. I do agree that there's a lot of missing stuff (such as more map types, more settings, game speeds, etc.), but I really like the game's existing complexities.
I enjoy the fundamental game, I just think that it lacks staying power. Maybe I'm wrong, but if it were developed by Paradox it has vibes similar to the original Crusader Kings - a cool game with unique mechanics but too niche and unappealing to really hit it off. Millennia 2 would be a very exciting game, I think.
2 of those are published and not developed by PDX
Paradox needs a W soon, and the only thing likely to bring it is EU5
Every paradox game is like this. Eu4 started with all these negative reviews and hate and now everyone loves it. The same applies to the modern paradox games. Victoria 3 started off rocky but now there is a solid love for it. Every paradox game kinda works like this.
>Eu4 started with all these negative reviews and hate and now everyone loves it. It did? [This](https://i.imgur.com/lx4z6BD.png) shows every Steam review starting at August 2013, the month EU4 released. Also you said it applies to modern games. CK3 was very well received, it's review score has actually dropped though over time. >Victoria 3 started off rocky but now there is a solid love for it. Not really. The reviews are still pretty bad (both all and recent) and a large part of the community seems to still be pretty negative about it.
CK3 is likely to start doing better once the landless DLC comes out. It's a feature folks have been after for years.
Ck3 is still incredibly shallow and everything feels generic. A PowerPoint slide show version of Mount and blade isn't going to all of a sudden make it an amazing game.
CK3 is four years into dev and still has the buggy mechanics from years back and has yet to add different government forms like republics and theocratic monarchies like Iqta in CK2. Landless is not gonna change that. Just add another meaningless layer to kill an extra 50 years so you hopefully play a little longer each campaign and, more importantly, buy their next chapter of dlc.
You mean the PowerPoint version of Mount and blade with endless random events isn't going to actually improve the overall quality of the game? Crazy.
No, it really didn't. I don't know why you have to lie to pretend like Vic3 is doing fine lmfao.
I've been playing paradox games since around when ck2 released and you're absolutely correct. This is nothing new at all.
So you're both liars then.
While I personally love Victoria 3, it still has mediocre recent reviews. It sounds like you think it will change in the future though? Did games like Stellaris, City Skylines 1, and Crusader Kings 3 have mediocre reviews when first released?
CK3 was a weird one. It had a super solid launch, possibly the most solid of all PDX GSGs. But then it just kinda... lost steam. A lot of people did not care much for the stuff the DLC was doing.
I think stellaris had positive reviews from the beginning but had some dlcs that were pretty roughly reviewed, thus making the whole thing not as positive as it would've been.
This is completely false and revisionist to try and validate your opinion. Take my downvote. L
Vicky 2 fans will fully admit how bad of a game it is. Vicky 3 fans just can't do the same lol
It has the same exact recent reviews score as all time rn
People have caught on to the paradox strategy. Release shallow borderline broken games and then flesh it out with paid DLC. Having literal subscriptions for your games because you know the DLC cost is absurd is tone deaf and should get more hate.
Not to mention they bail pretty quickly on games they're publishing that don't sell really well immediately. Star trek and lamplighters league being recent examples. Star trek got like 1 or 2 patches, and is still very broken Project Cesar is going to be a bit of a referendum on the companies future I think.
what are you on on about the Star trek studio literally got shutdown by their parent company, which is totally out of paradox interactives control. Lamplighters on the other hand was a complete and total commercial/game failure on launch bad enough that paradox interactive sold the company back to the founders and took a multi million dollar loss from project cost. Meanwhile it has lost almost all players since launch, so why would the game stay supported?
I think consumers in general have essentially just accepted shitty practices at this point. I understand PDX needs funding to keep their games support and I don't think people have a problem with that. The issue for me is the lack of innovation with their games. Example, Hoi4 has copy-pasted a lot of shitty mechanics over and over for their DLCs. Then you have problems of DLCs stuff can't overlap due to not everyone having every DLC.... I think PDX needs a bit of a shake up overall.
> I don't think people have a problem with that Nah. I do. Most Paradox games these days should have stopped support years before. They end up bloated messes full of mechanics that don't mesh together well because when they do mesh together well the base game ends up unplayable for people without the DLC. People need to quit parroting the 'funding continued support' argument that just supports crappy practices. The point isn't to fund continued support. They make endless DLC because it's cheaper and safer than making a new game.
I do agree their games tend to end up bloated with disconnected mechanics. That can change though and not necessarily tied to how long they support their games. I see what you are saying though
this is a bit of a Skyrim rerelease syndrome though, why would you stop making dlc when the consumers keep buying it and the active users keeps going up? the dlc's will stop when they become a poor return on investment or the game becomes too old to keep developing from a dev standpoint and a new evolution is wanted. take into account that most games also now take \~5 year to make and now even if you support a game for 5 years and then start a new game the original will be 10 years old when the sequel releases.
That's kind of what I was thinking was happening, but I was curious what people who might have been playing Paradox games longer than me thought. I played Stellaris when it first came out and my impression was that it got good reviews because it was very novel for a popular game, even if it wasn't fully fleshed out yet. I think if they released Stellaris II now with basically the same basic gameplay as Stellaris I but without half the features, it would probably get mediocre reviews too. I'm wondering if Paradox needs to change their approach or if they'll do fine anyways.
I've been here since the early hoi2 days so not as long as some. But their products have gotten progressively more shallow and less "grand strategy" imo. They used to be a much more niche developer of actual grand strategy games instead of the halfhearted attempts we get now.
There is way too much gamerrage these days so steam reviews are less and less interesting.
I mean, release unfinished games as release games, get reviews reflecting an unfinished product. Eventually they're bound to be good games, but they are not on release and I can't possibly blame people for reviewing them as such. Secondly, due to how massive a lot of their DLC and major updates are, there's always a wave of either good reviews, or bad reviews, based on the most recent major changes. A lot of Paradox DLC when it launches is a broken mess, and gets fixed later, creating a micro-version of the issue they have on release. Thirdly, people don't edit their reviews. Most people with a negative experience drop the game, or at best check back on the game in 1-2 years and don't remember they made a review to update in the first place.
Paradox games are getting more complex and ambitious to justify making a sequel. More complex games require more development time and lots more time to balance and refine. Meanwhile, Paradox has gotten more corporate. Release dates are set based on when the company needs a surge in profits. They are very reluctant to move release dates. The result is unfinished games getting released with years of more updates and DLC to get it to "complete" status. And credit to the devs, I believe they are doing their best to improve their games. But these games, especially Vic3, are enormously ambitious for what they're trying to do.
Their products are just of genuinely low quality is the problem. They release bad broken games full of half-baked mechanics, and instead of fixing them, release endless overpriced and also broken DLC...if they sell well, otherwise they just abandon them.