this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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You know, I actually appreciate Paradox. They make top notch games like Stellaris, that are absolutely playable and complete by themselves, then add optional DLC while continuing to support the original game with updates. Some of their DLC is purely cosmetic, but they also add a lot of cool shit like "what if we had giant star sized dragons?"
For a game that's 8 years old, I don't mind dropping a few bucks on interesting DLC every now and then. All in all, I'd say I've spent about $50 on Stellaris DLC and have more than enough content to keep me busy for a while.
The Sims, on the other hand, is just fucking out of control. They've got expansion packs, game packs, stuff packs, and kits. Buying everything for The Sims 4 would be close to $1,100 as of a year ago - probably quite a bit more by now.
People complain about the total cost too get everything in The Sims, but I don't remember anyone complaining about the total cost of every song in Rock Band.
Lol I absolutely complained about the cost of songs in Rock Band and Guitar Hero. I started playing those games in Guitar Hero 2 and refused to ever pay extra for additional songs. I guess in my mind, that was vastly different than paying for stuff like Stellaris DLC since I felt like I was being nickled and dimes.
I take that back though. Now that I think about it I might have paid for the Trogdor song... unless that was included in the base game.
I think that trogdor was free (and he comes in the niiiiiiiiight)
Trogdor was a man. I mean, he was a dragon-man. Or maybe he was just a dragon. But he was still TROGDOR!
My friends definitely did. Granted, we had varying taste in music so there was always a little bit of something for everyone. If we only played it single player we might only have bought a quarter or less of everything.
Sims on the other hand, a lot of expansion packs are features from prior games cut up into small chunks and given new animations then sold for ridiculous amounts of money. After sims 3 I promised myself to never buy another sims game knowing damn well it would just be a constant drain on my wallet if I ever wanted to stay current or enjoy anything close to a complete experience. You certainly can enjoy just the vanilla base game, but everyone who ever played this series before knows you most of the expansion packs if you want to play as intended and experience the good stuff.
The issue with PDX is the total cost can get too high and, I assume, pushes away new purchases. If you play one of their games and buy the DLC as it comes, it's fairly cheap. The base games are a fair $40, which is nice. However, to catch up on HoI4, which I think i purchased the deluxe edition for, would cost me about $115, while most of it is 50% off right now. Admittedly a lot of this is cosmetic stuff that could be skipped, but the price has to scare away new players. EUIV is $248 for me, with most between 30-70% off. Even CK2, which I own every expansion for, is $157 for cosmetics, content packs, music, etc all 50% off. It gets ridiculous.
Personally, I tend to buy these games at launch and, if I want to play them a few years later, I pirate it. I have given Paradox a lot of money and I like supporting their games, but I play far too many of them (basically all of them) for me to think it's reasonable to buy all these DLCs. I'll buy the first couple, but after that I'm probably never putting the time into it like I did at launch and it isn't worth it. Piracy becomes the most convenient option at that point, as long as you don't care about achievements.
I don't really mind this model because it seems to work for them, and it let's them continue to work on a game for a decade or more, instead of being forced to start from scratch and remake everything over and over. I know I'm not the only one doing what I do though, and I'm sure they know this as well. You don't need the expansions and everything, and they even include parts of it for free usually, but some mods will require them or it would just enhance the experience I already payed $100+ for, so I like to use them, but just can't justify the price for the 5 PDX games in active development plus the other studios games with the same model, like Cities: Skylines.
Two words: Cities Skylines. Their DLC has been overpriced hot garbage for a while.