The issue with paradox’s game design philosophy is what makes their dlc heavy approach so much more problematic.
From a design point a mentality of “always more stuff and always room for more stuff” isn’t going to produce immediately compelling gameplay nor is it going to focus on stripping down fluff until that magic feeling of “the sum is greater than its parts” arises.
Paradox games are almost never more than a sum of their parts, and frequently customers are purposefully made to feel by paradox that their formerly complete game is lacking and needs the new dlc to actually be a coherent full experience.
From a design and profit standpoint, paradox is incapable of institutionally perceiving when a game design has justtt enough but not too much stuff for emergent and interesting gamestates to arise organically from the way stuff is put together (rather than from the mere presence of more stuff).
The issue with paradox’s game design philosophy is what makes their dlc heavy approach so much more problematic.
From a design point a mentality of “always more stuff and always room for more stuff” isn’t going to produce immediately compelling gameplay nor is it going to focus on stripping down fluff until that magic feeling of “the sum is greater than its parts” arises.
Paradox games are almost never more than a sum of their parts, and frequently customers are purposefully made to feel by paradox that their formerly complete game is lacking and needs the new dlc to actually be a coherent full experience.
From a design and profit standpoint, paradox is incapable of institutionally perceiving when a game design has justtt enough but not too much stuff for emergent and interesting gamestates to arise organically from the way stuff is put together (rather than from the mere presence of more stuff).