Yeah, I truly lament the ruination of the Company of Heroes series. The newest installment, CoH3, is so atrociously soulless, greedy and straight-up broken that it's basically almost mocking the playerbase.
Similar things are happening with the Men of War franchise (a similar but more realistic game).... enshittification is happening everywhere, and nothing is becoming better.
>I hate SaaS with a passion, but it provides a financial incentive to continue improving an already great product
In theory but every game I liked initially that went down that route turned to garbage. Destiny and Overwatch come to mind. The game aesthetics and world deteriorate as stupider and stupider cosmetics flood the game. Less and less time is spent in great content and more on increasingly IAP abusing events that qualify less and less as games.
Would be interested to hear a counter example but I think there is good reason no gamer gets excited hearing a game is gonna be SAAS/“live service”
Imho, the problem is vertically integrated publishing behemoths.
For them, SaaS is much more about "Maximizing profit from this game, to fund other games (or generate shareholder returns)" than "Providing a sustainable business model to continue developing this game".
Consequently, you get maintenance teams whose primary KPI is maximizing revenue, versus improving a game.
I don't know if that's true. Sins of a Solar Empire just got better with all of it's expansions. Same goes with most paradox games (although, they'll nickel and dime you for it).
It's the blockbuster games that seem to have this problem as they always seem to dilute the game mechanics down for more cinematic experiences as time goes on. It's what happened to CoH, it's what happened with Dawn of War, it's what happened with Civilization (people will variously say 3, 4 or 5 was the peak; few list 6 as it) and it might happen with the Sins sequel.
Afaik, Paradox is still small enough / left alone enough by its parent to have avoided the shenanigans. We'll see what happens if they keep growing.
I also think by virtue of being niche and specific, Paradox incentivizes dev teams to stay true to the spirit of their game. I.e. no one is making a detailed 4X game because they want to sell CoD numbers. They do it because they honestly love 4X games.
For Stellaris, one of Paradox’s space 4x games, they have a team dedicated to maintenance and a separate team for DLCs. The result are large free updates that improve/rework on the mechanics which compliment the DLCs keeping the games fresh for years.
Usually the base paradox games feel like they’re “missing” major features which makes some DLCs necessary for a more full experience, but by the time that happens the base game is heavily discounted so base+dlc=full price of a new game.
Just felt like I have to add onto the paradox comment since I enjoy their major updates + dlc approach. Whenever I buy one of their games, I know I’ll probably come back to the game for at least 5 years.
> but by the time that happens the base game is heavily discounted so base+dlc=full price of a new game.
That is in no way true. Even now, there isn't any way for you to get EU4 (a much older game than Stellaris) and all of it's DLC for less than 60usd. Even in some super sale. At least, I've never seen it.
For your own example, the lowest the Stellaris ultimate bundle has ever been is ~117usd, which was when there was far fewer DLC in it:
It's a common meme that a Paradox game will cost you 300-400usd, for a reason. I'm not knocking their economic model, people pay for it without much complaint. However, it is objectively more expensive for the consumer than a single full game.
>Usually the base paradox games feel like they’re “missing” major features which makes some DLCs necessary for a more full experience, but by the time that happens the base game is heavily discounted so base+dlc=full price of a new game.
As someone who recently played a bunch of HOI4, this is not true. Even during a summer sale, game plus DLCs that fix the "new" ways they changed the game is often multiple hundred dollars.
They don't do this out of the goodness of their heart, they do this because it's insanely profitable to make a single game and then charge $12 for every adjustment and additional mechanic over the next ten years.
It's somewhat defensible for them, because I don't need the Japan DLC for HOI4 if I don't give a shit about playing as japan, but it's still the equivalent when Civ 5 charged ten dollars to add religion back to the game and fix the dumb health mechanic that allowed you to kill any unit with ten spearmen.
> Yeah, I truly lament the ruination of the Company of Heroes series.
The original CoH felt like such a well balanced and interesting game!
I have to say that oddly enough Iron Harvest has a similar feel to it, gameplay wise, even if the setting is different.
Then, you already mentioned Men of War, there's also Call to Arms, both of which still seem decent in my mind.
Where available, community made mods can be a nice touch! The community for those isn't too large, though, given the somewhat niche genre. There are also some free RTS games like Beyond All Reason (though it's more similar to Total Annihilation), or some others made in the Spring engine: https://springrts.com/wiki/Games
Very few WW2 themed ones, though. I'd also mention Steel Division, the first game of which had great balance, but the second game in the series feels almost too large scale for me (like Wargame, less about micro with individual units).
Similar things are happening with the Men of War franchise (a similar but more realistic game).... enshittification is happening everywhere, and nothing is becoming better.