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Bamilus -> RE: Victoria 2 demo (8/22/2010 7:14:42 AM)
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BASB, you're not alone.
I left PI because of the way they treat people on their forums. The developers and moderators are arrogant and they are very draconian. I've supported them since 2002 and have bought at least 15 of their games, but still they banned me over the smallest thing (long story but basically a moderator gave me an infraction for something so minor and ridiculous that I argued with him and he banned me).
Not to mention that to download mods or get tech support you have to register a serial key to your forum account. No big deal, right? Well, you can't unregister the key and if your account gets banned then you no longer have access to mods or tech support. And you can't re-use that key on a non-banned account. Regardless of why you get banned I think it is absolutely ridiculous that they can deny a paying customer the right to download mods or get tech support.
And for those unfamiliar with PI games.....PI games need mods to survive. What I mean is that PI games in their vanilla form usually contain the gameplay mechanics but not a lot of meat and definitely very little fluff. Very little is fleshed out because PI has a huge modding community and they know the modders will implement the actual "meat" of the game (in the form of new countries, events, units, scripts, etc). This system works out pretty well but as you can see from the above paragraph it is a huge blow for a paying customer to all of the sudden lose access to mods because the vanilla versions of PI games are garbage (unlike most Matrix Games that are usually near perfect in their vanilla forms, like WiTP).
Also, even if you have the CD keys for the expansions registered, you still can't download mods because it requires the base game CD key (even for expansion mods). Makes no sense.
I'm aware that most mod downloads aren't hosted on the forums but the fact remains that without a CD key you can't download the sizeable minority of mods that are forum attachments nor can you post in the mod forum.
It sounds lame but honestly I've repurchased three or four PI titles because I've put hundreds of hours into them and I wanted to be able to continue to download new and updated mods.
With the rate of bannings on the PI forums (everyday) and the fact that the reason for the ban is never publically listed and you can't see the users old posts through their profile, I am sure PI is making a pretty penny off of suckers like me who are forced to rebuy the games we love to get new CD keys to register.
As for Victoria 2:
I'm a big fan of the first Victoria. This game has a lot of polish and honestly, even though there are some bugs (annoying rebels, promotion system) it is still very playable at this stage. I am not giving Paradox a free ride, I tore into HoI3 for it's hideous release and stupid patches and to this day refuse to play it. V2 is different, however.
I usually agree with Out of Eight reviews but I totally disagree with his 5/8. This game is very polished and many modders are working close to 24/7 to fix the promotion system. I am positive that in a few weeks (hopefully with the release of 1.2 and the further development of mods) that the game will be completely playable all the way until to the end date. It already is technically fully playable now but you get some late game world economy and pop promotion issues. Regardless this is the most solid PI release in a long time. I'd say 6 or 7/8 right now and it will easily be an 8/8 within 6 months (especially if the VIP2 mod gets released).
And to whoever asked....V2 has no DRM. I don't know of any Paradox games that do.
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I really want to say that I will never buy a PI title again, but I know that isn't true. I've played too many thousands of hours on their games. I wish I could just say screw you to them like they have to their loyal paying customers but it's hard to stop playing the type of games you grew up with.
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