Very surprising. The game looked like it had a lot of potential and could’ve been the most popular sims alternative, but it’s suddenly been cancelled.
I guess no game is better than a shitty one, but can someone please make a modern sims game that’s not EA and their endless DLC crap.
Endless DLC is literally the paradox business model. I happen to find it an acceptable compromise for continuous development of the games I like, at least the way paradox does it, but lets not pretend like this was going to be different from a business model perspective.
My problem with endless DLC isn’t the cost, but the fragmented result of each ‘feature’ needing to stand separately and not interact with any other DLC feature. You end up with some really janky gameplay where nothing works intuitively and the stuff you can implement is all hurt by those limitations.
Not to mention the sheer code hell that all this results in with an exponential increase in possible install states to account for. Which the devs just give up on and the game becomes a little buggier with every new expansion.
Honestly think they should move to a sort of MMO model. Charge for the most recent expansions and older DLC eventually gets merged into the base game. Cuts down on complexity and most of your sales will happen in the first year anyway.
While PDX-published games may suffer from the decouplement of features between DLCs, at the very least PDS-developed games have a built-up expertise when it comes to managing this.
As for MMO model, it’s a hard sell because purchased things get made “free” for new comers. It’s one of the crux that EU4 faced when they rolled many DLC features into the base game.
Without endless dlc? Who do you think Paradox is???
Paradox’s current DLC model is pretty nice, tbh.
I mean, you say that, but a new player looking to get into Stellaris or CKII is looking at a $300 bill if they want all the content. In fact that’s what prevented me from getting into Stellaris, I own the base game, but when I discovered I’d need to shell out an additional several hundred dollars, even during a sale, for not only new species but just for base game mechanics, I stopped in my tracks.
Compare with Civilization, I own Civ V and Civ VI and all the released content for each, pretty sure I bought each of those for less than $20.
I did see an announcement earlier this year that they were folding some DLC into the base game for either CK3 or HoI4 because it was difficult to balance the game with all of the different DLC permutations possible. I think it would be smart of them to do this in general, maybe after a DLC is past a certain age, pull it into the base game.
Paradox DLC tends to have quite a bit of content in it though. Certainly more than EA tends to give you.
They’d charge you for your sims’ water bill if they could
I still have hope for Paralives
I’m keeping an eye on this but I really hate the anime blush on every character
Lol, I’m not sure I’d describe it as anime, but I understand what you mean. Personally I quite like the aesthetic of it. It makes them feel just the right amount of fake to me that I won’t feel bad deleting the pool ladder. I can totally see how it would bug you though. Hopefully it’ll be easy to mod out, or at least turn down.
No surprise. I was really shocked when I saw the videos they released a while ago. Game ran like shit and looked even worse.
Yup… It looked like a really bad attempt at photo realism in 2024. At this point you either need to use cartoon-like graphics or some sort or actually pull off the photo realism.
It was pretty obvious that game was never going to reach either of those marks.
I was definitely excited for the prospect of a Sim’s competitor, but this wasn’t going to be it… I think they did the right thing pulling the plug.
Probably because it would be the death of Sims is why it was canceled this way.
What in the actual fuck are you on about?
Wow people here don’t comprehend the third order calculation
Ea regularly buys out or pays off anyone who makes sim competitors.
Look it up.
In order to buy out Paradox, EA would have to make an offer for their entire existing share float, which would then have to be accepted by the shareholders. This means that they would almost certainly sell their stock at over market value (because why would they accept less?).
From their point of view, this would be a good thing. So why then would the shareholders allow this project to be cancelled if it was about to net them a huge payout, according to your theory?
Holy fuck I think the bots here cant fuckin read
