I am going to defend Paradox a bit, bear with me here, I am not exactly a fanboy, I have not bought the last few DLC/Xpansions for EU4, and I am not fond of the most of their other games, though I am looking forward to Rome 2.They are not the monsters that EA and Activision happen to be with annual releases and DLC to boot. Let me make a case for EU4 since that is the game I am most familiar with. Note I am not a fan boy, EU and Rome are the only series I play, and I have not bought the last few EU4 dlc/expansions because I don't like the direction the game has taken.Paradox has 3 dlc types and then XPacs, which nowadays can be called large DLCs maybe.Type 1 is art, unit models and portraits, I've only bought them when they were 75% off, which happens frequently. I normally play zoomed so far out my units may as well be stickmen.Type 2 is music, for EU4 they have this particularly jarring one that is like heavy metal, but most of the times they are just decent music coded for the game. However, on their own forums you can find guides how to put your own music in there, and also there are Workshop music as well that still allow you to Ironman (the game mode where you get achievements). In my EU4 I have the music from Rome, EU1, EU2 and EU3, and a few workshop ones.Type 3 is less frequent, but Event packs, like American Dream and Women in History.The first 2 are typically $2.99 or so at launch and don't affect the game and I don't even own all of them.Type 3 does affect the game, but not majorly, I am not going to play the US, ahem, and the Women in History one is pretty cool, I do not remember what it cost, I kind of think that one was free.They do DLC now instead of X-Pacs, and they are on like 4 cycle.13 over 5.5 years. Is that a lot? These mostly cost about 20-25$ per piece. I play at a patch that's after Art of War and includes El Dorado, 1.132 or something like that. As I said I have stopped buying them.Well, shit that's $60-$70 bucks per year and the content, I think if you bundled 3 or four of them together you could call them an ExPac, I think there were 4 expansions for EU3.I imagine they will be done soon and heading on to other projects, sales come up a lot, but normally two or three sales until the latest DLC goes on sale. I think I came to the conclusion that this is a bit bullshitty here.I assume what is happening is that they were told to keep working on the game (as they have historically with all their titles), and bundle everything they have after 4 months into a DLC and they kind of charge some notional value depending on what they think players will pay for it.This is fairly obvious because if you watch their streams, and I still do, they will make comments like, oh we wanted to do this, but couldn't get it ready in time for Dharma, or whatever. Well, then, delay it? But they can't, it will either be in a patch or next DLC.On the other hand, they patch the games a lot, and even if you don't buy the latest DLC you still get a lot of the content for free, and your game stays up to date. I don't know if you can multiplayer an up to date non DLC player with an up to date DLC player though. I don't care, I don't multiplayer.I don't want to see this work for 4 months, bundle it and dump it on players as DLC work itself into their RPG titles, either. Take a thumbs up, I now think they have problematic DLC practices.
