The difference between Street Fighter (or any other video game) and tennis is that tennis has stayed basically the same for generations, so the professional competitors are all limited by their own lifespans in how long they can train. Video games, however, tend to stay on the scene for only a few years, maybe a decade at most, before being replaced by the next game. If you trained on a video game for as long as most pro physical athletes train for their games, then by the time you finished your training nobody at all would be playing your game.
That and also hadoukens.
CKII is generally compared to other strategy games like Civilization, where expansion DLC are accompanied by major changes to gameplay that aren’t patch back to the base game. So if you don’t get the expansion, you really will be missing out.
OK, I took a closer look at the Steam Store page for CKII and I do see what you mean now. But this is not obvious if you’re just looking at it on sale because it looks interesting and then you have just this giant list of DLC.
Even looking at it closer now it’s rather annoying. The actual expansion DLCs are all mixed in, I’m assuming those are mostly the ones at $9.99 or $14.99. But then there are $4.99 “Content packs” where the mouseover description is pretty useless, if I click into it it looks like those might be compilation packs of cosmetic reskins that you can buy individually for $1.99? But I could have sworn during the sale there was some type of “buy everything” option.
Maybe that’s all at least partially Steam’s fault for not having an interface that can really handle whatever Paradox is trying to do with it, but if I’m having to play a meta-game of “What DLC does what?” before I even buy the game, I’m probably less inclined to try it.
Yeah, the Steam interface sucks for determining which DLC does what. Check out the CKII wiki for the list of major expansions and what they add to the game:
http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Downloadable_content#Expansions
Overall, I’d say the biggest gamechanger added by an expansion that wasn’t included with a patch was the addition of retinues in Legacy of Rome.
As always, wait for the inevitable Steam sale if you do decide to pick it up.
How do you count games where you can get the DLC without paying for it? In Heroes of the Storm, for instance, you can acquire new heroes by buying them either with dollars, or with gold you earn within the game. As a result, I now have probably over a hundred dollars worth of heroes, despite never spending a cent on the game.
There is some content that can be gotten only by paying cash, but it’s all cosmetics. Everything that makes any difference to gameplay, you can (eventually) earn in-game.
I think a big difference between the CK2 DLC and typical AAA game DLC is that the CK2 stuff mostly just adds replayability, as opposed to adding stuff that you’ll be missing if you don’t buy it. You can almost view the core game as “catholic western European feudal dude simulator” and most of the gamplay DLCs as separate games unto themselves. Playing without any DLC’s you’re not really going to miss much on your first playthough, but adding DLC’s increases the amount of time you get out of the game enormously. I’m not someone who usually cracks much more than 50 hours or so even on a good game, but I’ve got weeks into CK2 and I don’t even have the last 4 big DLC’s yet.
(I do think some of the cosmetic DLC is cheezy, though. At the very least the portrait ones should be included with their respective gameplay DLCs.)
That’s not DLC; it’s f2p content. Very different model. Those heroes are part of the core gameplay experience.
I find this equally bizarre; How do you think the fighting game scene gets any new blood? If it were impossible to come back from other people having a headstart, then we would NEVER see any new names in the tournament lists, and yet we do, every year. And not all of those people started at minute one, day one of the game’s release.
Do you think that there is a some sort of monstrous difference between someone who has been playing a game for 9 years and someone who has been playing it for 8.5? Because that seems to be what you are suggesting, and I don’t think that is borne out by the evidence. We have people placing in tournaments now who weren’t even playing fighting games when SFIV Vanilla came out. We have kids who didn’t start playing until after SFIV going up against people who have been making a name in Street Fighter for decades.
Sure, having more matches is an advantage. But is the difference between 27,000 and 28,500 meaningful? What about the difference between 54,000 and 55,500? 100,000 and 101,500? Is that a “serious handicap”? How long has Nuckledu been playing? He’d have been like 13 when SFIV launched. He qualified for Capcom Pro Tour. And came in ahead of people like Justin Wong, Fuudo, and Bonchan. Heck, Fuudo transferred over from Virtua Fighter over a year after SFIV came out, and he won Evo in 2011. We are seeing this right now where people who’ve had SFV since early beta are already on pretty much even footing with people who picked it up day one. Where is the evidence that being a few months behind is a game breaker?
You were the one who posited that being 6 months behind was an advantage, and again I would like to know what your competitive experience is again, since your bizarre ideas would fly in the face of every single competitive gamer that I know.
You just shifted the goal posts by making your claim a few thousand matches versus a few thousand more matches, if you are months behind then you have ZERO matches when other players already have thousands of matches, but that is somehow a good thing, because Youtube…stream monster talk.
No, I am sorry, you have misunderstood what I said: I said, and I quote “In some ways, it is easier” not “it is an advantage”. “In some ways, it is easier” means “You can spend all your time learning to play instead of having to figure out optimal combos and basic setups” or similar such things. You’ve basically spent this entire discussion grossly exaggerating everything I said and then acting insulted when I tell you it’s dumb.
This is so far removed from what I actually said that it’s scarcely worth refuting, but to clarify a few things:
I didn’t talk about matchup numbers all, so there’s no way I have moved the goalposts regarding that discussion. All I have done is show that over the lifespan of a game, one-two months of matchups does not make up a significant advantage in match count.
You were the one who used the “six months” time frame. Who the heck needs to wait six months to tell if a game is a hash upon release? I said “a couple of months on a game with a reasonable life span”. “A couple” as in “One to two” - a reasonable amount of time to tell if a game is a technical train wreck or not, which is, after all, what we are discussing, right?
Look at it this way: Do you believe that there is a competitive difference between SFIV players who played in Japanese arcades, and SFIV players who didn’t? Certainly, they did for the first year or so. But after that? That is a difference of more than six months. But players who absolutely did not have that advantage have done very well. I am frustrated by your seeming disregard for the facts about who has placed well over the past several years and what advantages they did and did not have in terms of time.
That said, it should probably go without saying that if you’re actually getting paid to play these games, it’s your JOB to suck it up and deal with “day one problems” - but that’s irrelevant to the discussion of whether a person “should” or “should not” buy a game immediately upon release, because as far as I am concerned, if you are a pro gamer being paid to play these games, you don’t have a choice in the matter. I am not a paid professional gamer. Neither is the OP. I would be a little surprised if you were, but feel free to prove me wrong. I don’t think professional gamers are relevant to this discussion.
So to sum up: The reason what you think I am saying “flies in the face” of what every pro-gamer you know says, it’s because I’m NOT ACTUALLY SAYING THAT. You are raging against things that only you have actually said.
This is a super duper interesting conversation about competitive gameplaying. I bet it could be the basis for a whole separate thread!
If anybody is looking for DLC to tune CKII for balance, you’ll be looking a long time. The game is unbalanced by design. There’s no “win” condition, so that’s not really a problem.
Nope, I have never “acted insulted” because I am completely confident that you don’t know the first thing about what you are talking about in this thread, there is no reason for me to take whatever nonsense you say personally. The fact that I have repeatedly asked you directly what your competitive fighting game experience is, and you’ve been nothing but cagey about it only proves my suspicion right: You’re a stream monster who hasn’t actually played at anything resembling a high level. You are the fighting game equivalent of a schlub on the couch talking about how stupid it is for boxers to jump rope when they could spend their time better sparring since that’s all they do. Your posts demonstrate that you don’t understand how players train to be competitive fighting game players, despite your sad attempt to name-drop players for credibility (which doesn’t actually reinforce anything you said, which I will get to later.)
It is perfectly okay to be a casual fan/player, most players by definition are. But your postings about how competitive play works are just utter nonsense.
Time spent in competitive play is functionally the same thing as matches played, especially at the beginning of the game. The beginning of the games are horse-races of discovery since orthodox play is not settled yet, in fact many players SPECIALIZE in innovating these strategies which later become orthodoxy or the counters for their playstyles become more well known. Your “chill out, join the game when you want it’s all on youtube” argument would rob these innovative players of their ability to place well at these early tournaments.
Nope, that isn’t all you’ve done. Also, again, not a single competitive player I know would not be part of a game for the first two months by choice, you are the one out there on your own with that idea that it is no big deal.
Actually that was Martini Enfield:
And besides which, you don’t even think six months waiting a game out is a big deal, we have a quote button you know:
I’m not sure what you mean by “is a hash”, but competitive play and waiting to find out if the game is good and a worthy purchase have nothing to do with each other.
Nope, that isn’t what we’re discussing, and the fact that you don’t understand the difference is just one of the tells that you don’t really have the competitive mentality. Which is no great crime, but you shouldn’t fake the funk. Competitive players are not spending the first few months of the game trying to tell if the games are technical train wrecks, they’re trying to figure out how to win, as quickly and efficiently as possible…which changes over time but even years down the line they are playing with the same mentality.
The “So what” would be those players had a significant edge in practice time and tournament placements during that year when others never had a chance at a piece of that pie.
I know all the facts about who is winning majors. As I said it is mostly big, recognizeable names that have adjusted to the new games using their fundamentals, who have spent countless thousands of hours on many different fighting games that they can apply their knowledge to new games. There are also new players who do well, and I have never said that there aren’t. All of those new players…gasp!..who have placed tops at major tournaments…gasp!..have ALSO SPENT THOUSANDS OF HOURS IN THEIR GAME. There is no way around this. Talent/Skill+time/experience is what is producing winners.
Then you shouldn’t have taken issue with my posts, since that was entirely my point, however replace “getting paid to play these games” with “actively competing”, since only a tiny sliver of high level players get paid at all with sponsorships instead of just tournament winnings. I have had tournament winnings at major tournaments but it was a very modest amount (only a fool plays fighting games for the money).
It’s bizarre you finally say something correct.
My original point in this thread was quite simple. As a competitive gamer, you do not get the luxury to wait for Capcom’s stupid patches, everyone else is practicing without you. The game works, it is lacking any and all creature comforts (that mostly affect CASUAL players, competitive players just need versus mode and training mode. I can’t even remember the last time I have played against the CPU in any fighting game, since it is completely irrelevant to competitive play).
Since I never even once commented on whether casuals should buy a game or not on this thread, and I have only ever been talking about competitive gamers, I don’t really get why you’re even comparing apples to oranges this entire post.
Whoops I can’t respond to your name dropping of certain players since it actually supported my point and not yours since you have edited that part out.