Heh, I wasn't saying they don't cost, just objecting to the 'none of the DLCs are ever on sale' considering most of my EU4/CK2/CK3 and Stellaris DLCs have been bought on sale at one point or another :-)
People joke about the spreadsheets, but every time my friends reference some paradox game I play they call it "that game where you just stare at a map"
No, Total War is Creative Assembly, though I do know there was like a CK3 mod that would give you the option to launch I think Attila whenever you engage enemy armies in combat
The one thing I’ll give CA over paradox in this one is at least in total war the dlc is only factions and said factions mechanics and you can still fight the dlc factions in your world even if you don’t own them. Meanwhile paradox straight up locks game mechanics behind dlc.
yes, but paradox basically improves a game over a decade while you still get many small improvements for free.
With TW Warhammer I had to buy 3 games. Paradox would habe made it one game with more dlc.
So with ca you get the last installment at a better deal compared to paradox. But with paradox you could have only bought the base game and got improvements for 10y
I will say that Stellaris was a very different game when it first launched. With every DLC Paradox released they also added to and changed the base game. Hell hyperlanes used to be one of three options for interstellar travel!
yeah that‘s my point. I bought Stellaris like a decade ago and basically got, what most other publishers would habe sold to me as Stellaris 2 and 3, for free
Although sometimes it can be better to release Stellaris 2 than create a new DLC for Stellaris. Like, some things are impossible to do in Cities Skylines, even with modding, that are basegame features in CS2
It's honestly what turned me away from Stellaris. I quite liked the base game and the improvements the first DLCs brought. At some point it went 'okay, we're changing half of the mechanics, go relearn them'. Fiiiine. Did that. Still ok. But then it happened again, and again, and I just don't have the time to re-learn the same game every two years.
If you bought it on Steam, you can revert the game version to whatever one you prefer. I believe it also applies to DLCs, as long as they were out when your preferred version was.
yes, but paradox basically improves a game over a decade while you still get many small improvements for free.
I was tempted to get a paradox game but the recent reviews on their steam page read like: "can't use the mechanic without DLC x while the NPCs do" or something along those lines. Having to buy 200€ worth of DLC to start playing a game or alternatively get a worse experience is a big no go for me.
Of course if you are a regular fan you will have no issues buying the updates over time and that's fine. But for a new player I can't find it acceptable.
TW WH 1, 2, and 3 total cost me <$25, which is an insane price for the amount of content and playtime in that game. Sales exist for a reason. All of the other factions? The game is workshop enabled and many mods exist that unlock them or just put in new factions that are basically the same thing.
creaminstaller official website was taken down but you can find the exe if you search on any of the relevant forums. you just need to copy the dlc folder from your juicy version to the basic legal version and then run cream. for paradox only, idk about other systems
Is this safe? Isn't it better to just go full pirate on these games then? Wouldn't want to risk my entire Steam library for some violation of code of conduct
its 101% safe. 1500 hours on ck3, 400 on hoi4 both with cream adding the dlc. i use it on real copies to use workshop. paradox games without workshop is worthless. you wont ever get a violation.
I tried playing the base Stellaris again recently having played it heavily when it first released and it's already a very different game without any DLC.
I love some of their games and think their business model sort of makes sense, even if they overdo it sometimes. Grand Strategy is too niche a genre to make high budget games in, especially when they really need tons of content to shine, so aggressive monetization ends up being a necessary evil.
I just wish some of their releases weren't a broken mess (looking at you Cities Skylines 2).
More than that, they can be quite consumer friendly (unlike CA). For exemple for multiplayer, you get all the content from the host dlcs. Wich mean you only need the base game to enjoy 100% of dlcs if you want to try it out with a friend that has all of them
I played a Payday game once. Was expecting to rob a bank, did everything the game told me to; went outside and got drop kicked by a literal ninja with some kind of taser weapon. Was that the third?
But there were masks given for participating irl events (like E3, or later they could give steam keys to people, there was Russian popular content creator for Payday 2 and he could start free giveaway for those masks by the end of his streams) or buying Overkill weapon pack as preorder
I mean, with that they're really just giving you options, for people to pick and choose over a wide variety of styles, as obviously not everybody is into the same type of guitar music.
Games like those, tho, aren't really intended for you to buy every last DLC and play with them at the same time. You're supposed to build your install like... well like Model Trains. You plan everything out, get your specific packs of the specific models with the specific livery you desire, build out your location with the specific models you want at the specific scale, etc. No model train builder has every last train that the model maker ever made set out on the same scene, at once.
Why? The base game is totally playable on its own. EU4 DLCs are not for new players, it's for the core player base with hundreds or thousands of hours.
I mean the game had updates and expansions for 11 years, that's going to add up. I don't feel like most of the DLC's are needed, just grab whatever one you're actually interested in.
I have vanilla Stellaris and it never clicked for me, but I really wish it would. Every time I see stellaris DLC on sale I feel the call but then think I shouldn’t until I can understand the basic game.
I probably have the wrong perspective for this, but when ATS launched, I expected at least majority of US as the base map of the game. Instead it's just 20% of US and the rest of it are DLCs?
Don't get me wrong it's a good game, but calling it American truck simulator and the base game map had California and a few more states isn't under my expectation of what the game is called. It ultimately makes the game feel like unfinished cashgrab.
I can appreciate having a cheap game with a "build your own experience" model with DLC, but it's hard to justify when the DLC is so costly. Last I remember, adding all the DLC to your cart would be over $1200.
There are 780 DLC, starting at no less than $10 USD. Realistically, you'd be into it for well over $10k to get it all.
However, that's not really the sales model. You'd get a few routes you care about, etc.
Similar to DCS or Microsoft Flight sim. I'm not going to spend $80 each on every different 737 that PMDG makes. I'm not going to buy every custom airport around the world.
You'll still spend more than the $80 that a AAA game costs up front, but that's sort of the nature of anything niche.
Remember that apart from DLCs on Steam, there were quite a few third party developers publishing additional routes, locomotives, liveries, sound packs and scenario packs. This whole ecosystem is absolutely crazy if you look from the outside.
But the way I played Train Simulator before it was even called "Classic" (1200 hours ticked) made DLC cost not that much of an issue.
Let's take London-Faversham High Speed (€21) with the Sheerness branch (€14). You really need two additional trains from the Marketplace to use this line to its full potential: Class 465 and Class 375 (€4 each). That's €43 for a single route and there are dozens of those, although train DLCs can be typically used across a few routes. That's a lot and that's way too much if you collect routes and play each of them a few times.
But I was driving HUDless and that meant learning each route by heart. I can close my eyes 12 years later and still visualise every curve between Sheerness and Newington. And some player-created scenarios are insanely good, so I would just play more and more of them. For me it was easily 30 hour for a route. Mix it with bundles and Steam sales and it was closer to €20 for 30 hours. Good value for a train nerd like me.
All things considered, DCS is treated by flight sim players as one of those "I only play this for one thing and nothing else" games.
If a person has a hotas and physical dash panel for the F-18E/F Super Hornet, they're not going to be buying the DLC modules for the Cessna 152 or the MD-11ER.
I heard it costs like $10-15K to buy every DLC in Train Simulator Classic. Not like you'd want to buy that much though, playing all DLCs could take 5000-10,000 hours to finish.
Remember when games used to have game of the year editions release a few years later with all dlc and standard price and those would also eventually go down to 90% off?
Man, I remember the days where I got to unlock roster characters through the incentive of playing the game. Granted, rosters got a lot bigger, but imo they don't justify the price of all the DLC.
No, that restriction was back in the time when The Sims 1 and 2 were sold on discs. Since Sims 3, you can install them in any order (including the disc version).
Even with Sims 1 and 2 you didn't have to buy the expansions in order, but you did have to install them in order, which meant if you initially skipped an expansion and picked it up later you had to uninstall the game so it could be installed in the right sequence.
It's free on steam too. I got curious to see how limited it is as just the base game, so I added it to my library, but I got lazy and end up never installing it
I think you mean Sims 4 went F2P, it wasn't just a temporary discount. The DLC also never goes on steep sales, they're still like 20 bucks a pop on sale, (40 is the full price lol)
I thought this as well until looking up Train Simulator after a few people posted it. Train Simulator wins hands down, assuming you total the price of all the DLC.
Cities Skylines (2015) the game literally costs almost 200 dollars with all DLC's, and the base game is literally barebones, unless you add like over 250 mods.🥀
I've never played the DLC but still have plenty of fun, so it's certainly not a barebones game. Of course there is the FOMO of seeing that huge list in the Steam store and thinking about what you might be missing, but once you get over that little hump you can enjoy a ton of great games for cheap.
I own all the dlc's and though it does give you a lot it really shouldn't have costed upwards of 200 dollars just to unlock all the real features outside of the bare bones game.
The modding community in C:S has a lot of dedication I reckon they could have made the DLC's better for free if they were in charge of it.
The dlc for Warhammer Total War is at least still in the game even if you don't own it.
Like instead of fighting a handful of enemy types on the campaign map you will be fighting dozens of different factions that each have a ton of unique units and unique heroes leading them.
I've been getting back into video games a little bit and was thinking of buying Hitman but I can't even tell what I'm looking at in the steam store. I can buy Hitman WoA, or WoA Part One, or WoA Deluxe Edition, or the Deluxe Edition DLC pack? I will just go sailing instead.
Good news is the ai still uses full content even if you haven't bought any of the dlc. You still enjoy the full dlc complete game when you inly buy and play the faction you like.
Yup. This was part of the Steam Summer Sale and I considered getting it. Then I realized there was no point in me paying $2.24 for the base game when there is over $200 of DLC.
Came here to say this. Wouldn't be so bad if they weren't charging so much for them. Here the base game is $34.99. They want another $29.99 for an expansion. That's ridiculous.
Same here, a while back everything up through Final Shape was on sale for like 11 bucks. At that price it's super easy to look past all the flaws and run around shooting stuff.
Bit niche of a guess, but it could be MANY different simracing games; thinking of ACC, AMS2, probably LMU and rfactor2. The way they are built is as live service as it gets in terms of content; the public wants to be drip fed new cars and tracks every 2/3 months otherwise the game is deemed as dead.
Train sims, farming sims, flying sims.. pretty much all those sims have a shitton of DLCs. There was a Train game where the DLCs combined cost over 16k.
5.0k
u/Deviant-Oreo Jul 17 '26
Paradox games, total war games,.