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Friday Fun Thread for October 21, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Victoria 3 is coming out in a few days, and I've been conflicted about getting it. For those who aren't familiar, it's a Paradox Interactive game on the Victorian Era, running between 1836-1936, and similar in style to their many other strategy game offerings. I've always thought Victoria 2 was a fantastic game, especially for focusing so much on people, trade and the economy over warfare and painting the map your color. But in the last decade or so Paradox has changed their business model to a more DLC-focused model; while Hearts of Iron 3 released three expansion packs over the next few years and then was done, HOI4 has six now six years after it was released, and with no sign of stopping. Steam lists a total price for all the content of about $185. Stellaris is at $235 or so, while Europa Universalis 4, released in 2013, has a list longer than my screen can display in one go and is $230 while on a 50% off sale. This is all without the base game.

While I'm sympathetic to the fact that a company has to make money, and they are keeping their base game at about $50 and still updating the games, I'm also reaching the end of my rope with them. Their DLCs tend to be just not that great or interesting, they break mods or split the mod community, they result in this incredible buy-in problem and it oftentimes seems to be an excuse to release badly done content and fix it later. I've tried to stop supporting them, at least somewhat, and so I'm behind on DLCs in some games or have others without any. At this point though, I don't know if I should get Victoria 3 on release at all, as as I try to temper my excitement with the knowledge that it will almost certainly be a buggy and unfinished launch with many more dollars to spend in the coming years. But I'm curious to hear from others too; is anyone else as interested in it? Does it seem worth it?

In my experience the base game by itself is usually just fine: there is no need to buy DLC unless you really want it. I play a lot of Stellaris, and after several years I've only bought two DLCs. The game works just fine without the rest: it worked just fine without those two, really. Same thing for CKII, which I haven't bought any DLC for: it's still fun. If you're a skinflint like me, just don't buy them.

But definitely wait a few months to buy it, you know it's going to be buggy as all get out on release.