A lot of talk and visuals of war, not much on diplomacy or strategy, which worries me. That's where Paradox excels at, diplomacy above all, but this seems to be taking the worst parts of their...
A lot of talk and visuals of war, not much on diplomacy or strategy, which worries me. That's where Paradox excels at, diplomacy above all, but this seems to be taking the worst parts of their other games and forcing a 'destruction at at all costs' kind of approach from this video. Really hoping I am wrong.
Doesn't help they don't even mention Stellaris in the description just "Afterworld is in development at Paradox Development Studio, the creators of Crusader Kings III and Hearts of Iron IV."
Edit: Looking at the gameplay, looks to be that way :/ A smaller, more focused, world-building version of Stellaris would be incredible by them, but I guess I'll have to wait another twenty years.
Notably, CK3 and HOI are the only current mainline Paradox Development Studio games that are maintaining a Very Positive ranking on Steam. Stellaris has dropped to Mostly Positive because of...
Notably, CK3 and HOI are the only current mainline Paradox Development Studio games that are maintaining a Very Positive ranking on Steam. Stellaris has dropped to Mostly Positive because of recent DLC and generative AI usage, and Europa Universalis V, and Victoria are Mixed. They're just calling out their successes and trying to not focus on the failures.
It's could be good, but after their recent failures I'm definitely going to let the initial reviews over the first month post release help me decide whether to pick this up.
They've started to "lightly" use generative AI for species portraits and other visual assets, but the community consensus is that they're comparatively poor as compared to the previous visual...
They've started to "lightly" use generative AI for species portraits and other visual assets, but the community consensus is that they're comparatively poor as compared to the previous visual standard. Beyond that, the psionic and biological ascension rework DLC packs were considered to be very light on the content as compared to the technological ascension DLC which predated them. It put people in a situation where they looked at spending $45 to not actually improve their experience of two of the three ascension paths, and a lot of people were unhappy whether they shelled out the money or fell behind.
And then their latest DLC added an entirely nomadic civilization type, but balanced it very poorly for any situation where you weren't the nomad. In multiplayer, a nomad could be at war while keeping their country tucked inside a neutral third party's territory, and would be entirely invulnerable to attack unless the other party to the war could acquire access through the third party's territory. In single player if you weren't the nomad, there were insufficient mechanisms for ousting them when they were damaging your territory.
And so we're at a point where the last DLC to get a overall review higher than Mixed is from two years ago, and there's been $150 of DLC packs since then. People have settled into expecting that Stellaris DLC's mechanics are going to be underbaked, and the generative AI usage on the visual assets gives a visual reminder that they're cutting corners everywhere they can. And at that point, why would people care? Why keep coming back if your interest in and loyalty to this game over a full decade is going to be so poorly cared for?
Oh, that's tragic. I essentially fell off Stellaris after the big update away from the tile system (I still play the game on that update occasionally), but had hoped it was doing well. The use of...
Oh, that's tragic. I essentially fell off Stellaris after the big update away from the tile system (I still play the game on that update occasionally), but had hoped it was doing well.
The use of GenAI for art assets is a terrible thing to hear. It's funny with PDX DLC policies because I've historically defended them. I didn't mind paying 20, 30 bucks every so often to get an expansion into the game, given the sheer amount of hours I put into them. But that's dependent on feeling like that money is being respected.
I find Paradox a really interesting company to follow. I could be 100% wrong, but I don't think this game will do great. I don't think there's a huge crossover between Mad Max fans and GSG players. Imperator flopped, EU5 is sitting permanently under 4 in terms of numbers. Vicky 3 is better, but is still their worst performing mainline title. Their publishing arm had failure after failure (and I'm not commenting on quality, Tyranny is my favourite CRPG). What is actually happening over there??
I think there's two big trends: success leading to "professionalization"/corporatization, and staff turnover. Prior to becoming a publishing house, Paradox did pretty well sticking to the...
I think there's two big trends: success leading to "professionalization"/corporatization, and staff turnover. Prior to becoming a publishing house, Paradox did pretty well sticking to the historical lane: EU3 and most of EU4's tenure, and Crusader Kings 2, HoI3... they stayed pretty solidly in the "map painting" space, and did well. But they were a smaller studio making beloved niche games.
EU3 and CK2 did really well for them, and they were growing, enough that they divided into the publishing and developing firms and brought on an outside CEO. This trend of professionalization also led to more rigid publishing strategies, where each of the main properties were going to have yearly "seasons" and DLC packs you could prepurchase, so that there could be revenue on more predictable timelines. This (OF COURSE) led to things getting pushed out on the publisher's timelines rather than when they were done. They were promising things 9 months ahead of time to pre-sell the DLC and then having to push those out regardless.
The other side of the coin is that these games have been running for years, and staff turnover happens. The person who headlines a project can burn out, or their interests change, and then there's a new head designer running the show. Depending on how well their vision for maintaining this active experience meshes with the existing game and how skilled they are at running things, there can be shifting levels of quality and game direction.
To my mind, they're a victim of their own success, and the very specific way they've run things over the decades means they needed to forge an unknown path. To some degree they're still limping along, but I don't know how they get back on track. They could axe the publishing house and just do their own mainline stuff? They could scale back their ambitions and let games be finished sooner, being prepared to offer new things more regularly rather than sinking huge investments into games that maybe will or maybe won't actually have a decade long run? Having smaller base games that have the possibility of a longer life is a more sustainable play. If you get some smaller flops, you still have a couple of successful projects for now. But I dunno.
To turn it back to Afterworld: I'm glad to see them doing something new. Maybe it'll be great! Paradox knows 4X games better than most, so I'm interested to see what they come up with in a more classical 4X way.
Hate to sound negative, but not a fan so far. Of all possible projects, a game set in a Mad Max-like post apocalyptic USA is... I literally can't think of anything less interesting to me. While I...
Hate to sound negative, but not a fan so far. Of all possible projects, a game set in a Mad Max-like post apocalyptic USA is... I literally can't think of anything less interesting to me.
While I was looking forward to fantasy Stellaris, I like to think in open minded about new experiences. I'll probably give it a try if the reviews are incredible, but it's probably not a title I'll be following.
Here's Dev Diary #1, for the game director's thoughts on it. To me, the key bit is:
Here's Dev Diary #1, for the game director's thoughts on it. To me, the key bit is:
Design pillars and principles
With Afterworld we are trying to create a fresh and different GSG experience. Here are a couple of our guiding design pillars and principles:
Adapt to Survive - The player will need to adapt to what occurs in the world, and their carefully laid plans are prone to spin into something else (It's more Crusader Kings than Hearts of Iron in that sense).
Rediscovery - We are not inventing, we are rediscovering and scavenging a lost world. There should always be new things to explore, and your powerful discoveries can fundamentally alter the story of your playthrough. This is also about rediscovering the history and lore of the world!
Shape Your Society - The people of the tribe are your greatest resource. To shape and control them, you need to create a suitable society to fit their needs as well as your own. We want to let players create the societies of their dreams (or nightmares).
Accessible, with Growing Depth - Afterworld aims to be the easiest GSG to pick up and get immersed in, without sacrificing complexity or depth. We do this by tying many mechanics to exploration and discovery so that they get progressively unlocked for a deeper and deeper game without overwhelming you during the first 10 minutes.
Immersive and Tangible - In Afterworld, design immersion always trumps abstract mechanical design so we will lean towards simulation rather than “board game” rules. Concepts like "mana currencies" must make sense, feel natural, and optimally these costs are all real - for example resources, lives, bullets or days.
A lot of talk and visuals of war, not much on diplomacy or strategy, which worries me. That's where Paradox excels at, diplomacy above all, but this seems to be taking the worst parts of their other games and forcing a 'destruction at at all costs' kind of approach from this video. Really hoping I am wrong.
Doesn't help they don't even mention Stellaris in the description just "Afterworld is in development at Paradox Development Studio, the creators of Crusader Kings III and Hearts of Iron IV."
Edit: Looking at the gameplay, looks to be that way :/ A smaller, more focused, world-building version of Stellaris would be incredible by them, but I guess I'll have to wait another twenty years.
Notably, CK3 and HOI are the only current mainline Paradox Development Studio games that are maintaining a Very Positive ranking on Steam. Stellaris has dropped to Mostly Positive because of recent DLC and generative AI usage, and Europa Universalis V, and Victoria are Mixed. They're just calling out their successes and trying to not focus on the failures.
It's could be good, but after their recent failures I'm definitely going to let the initial reviews over the first month post release help me decide whether to pick this up.
I haven't been following Stellaris for a while now. What's happened?
They've started to "lightly" use generative AI for species portraits and other visual assets, but the community consensus is that they're comparatively poor as compared to the previous visual standard. Beyond that, the psionic and biological ascension rework DLC packs were considered to be very light on the content as compared to the technological ascension DLC which predated them. It put people in a situation where they looked at spending $45 to not actually improve their experience of two of the three ascension paths, and a lot of people were unhappy whether they shelled out the money or fell behind.
And then their latest DLC added an entirely nomadic civilization type, but balanced it very poorly for any situation where you weren't the nomad. In multiplayer, a nomad could be at war while keeping their country tucked inside a neutral third party's territory, and would be entirely invulnerable to attack unless the other party to the war could acquire access through the third party's territory. In single player if you weren't the nomad, there were insufficient mechanisms for ousting them when they were damaging your territory.
And so we're at a point where the last DLC to get a overall review higher than Mixed is from two years ago, and there's been $150 of DLC packs since then. People have settled into expecting that Stellaris DLC's mechanics are going to be underbaked, and the generative AI usage on the visual assets gives a visual reminder that they're cutting corners everywhere they can. And at that point, why would people care? Why keep coming back if your interest in and loyalty to this game over a full decade is going to be so poorly cared for?
Oh, that's tragic. I essentially fell off Stellaris after the big update away from the tile system (I still play the game on that update occasionally), but had hoped it was doing well.
The use of GenAI for art assets is a terrible thing to hear. It's funny with PDX DLC policies because I've historically defended them. I didn't mind paying 20, 30 bucks every so often to get an expansion into the game, given the sheer amount of hours I put into them. But that's dependent on feeling like that money is being respected.
I find Paradox a really interesting company to follow. I could be 100% wrong, but I don't think this game will do great. I don't think there's a huge crossover between Mad Max fans and GSG players. Imperator flopped, EU5 is sitting permanently under 4 in terms of numbers. Vicky 3 is better, but is still their worst performing mainline title. Their publishing arm had failure after failure (and I'm not commenting on quality, Tyranny is my favourite CRPG). What is actually happening over there??
I think there's two big trends: success leading to "professionalization"/corporatization, and staff turnover. Prior to becoming a publishing house, Paradox did pretty well sticking to the historical lane: EU3 and most of EU4's tenure, and Crusader Kings 2, HoI3... they stayed pretty solidly in the "map painting" space, and did well. But they were a smaller studio making beloved niche games.
EU3 and CK2 did really well for them, and they were growing, enough that they divided into the publishing and developing firms and brought on an outside CEO. This trend of professionalization also led to more rigid publishing strategies, where each of the main properties were going to have yearly "seasons" and DLC packs you could prepurchase, so that there could be revenue on more predictable timelines. This (OF COURSE) led to things getting pushed out on the publisher's timelines rather than when they were done. They were promising things 9 months ahead of time to pre-sell the DLC and then having to push those out regardless.
The other side of the coin is that these games have been running for years, and staff turnover happens. The person who headlines a project can burn out, or their interests change, and then there's a new head designer running the show. Depending on how well their vision for maintaining this active experience meshes with the existing game and how skilled they are at running things, there can be shifting levels of quality and game direction.
To my mind, they're a victim of their own success, and the very specific way they've run things over the decades means they needed to forge an unknown path. To some degree they're still limping along, but I don't know how they get back on track. They could axe the publishing house and just do their own mainline stuff? They could scale back their ambitions and let games be finished sooner, being prepared to offer new things more regularly rather than sinking huge investments into games that maybe will or maybe won't actually have a decade long run? Having smaller base games that have the possibility of a longer life is a more sustainable play. If you get some smaller flops, you still have a couple of successful projects for now. But I dunno.
To turn it back to Afterworld: I'm glad to see them doing something new. Maybe it'll be great! Paradox knows 4X games better than most, so I'm interested to see what they come up with in a more classical 4X way.
Hate to sound negative, but not a fan so far. Of all possible projects, a game set in a Mad Max-like post apocalyptic USA is... I literally can't think of anything less interesting to me.
While I was looking forward to fantasy Stellaris, I like to think in open minded about new experiences. I'll probably give it a try if the reviews are incredible, but it's probably not a title I'll be following.
Here's Dev Diary #1, for the game director's thoughts on it. To me, the key bit is: