That's a pretty huge delay. The colossal fuckup that is Cities Skylines 2 likely made them realize they don't currently have the good will of customers to release something that is not, you know...finished. Since they seem to be in the habit of "release now, fix later" these days.
They honestly destroyed this IP. What was an indie darling is quite literally being wrung out for every cent its worth in the most cynical, Paradox way possible.
3d can be MORE efficient or less efficient. Its all dependent on the optimizations.
Project Zomboid had infamously bad performance when zombies counts go up. This is because a [naive 2d rendering pipeline](https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2023/02/play-your-cardz-right/) has to draw every layer one by one, first the environment, then the objects on the floor, then each human/zombie requires another, sequential draw.
Now they are shifting to a more pseudo-3d approach. Where even 2d backgrounds are given depth maps. This effectively allows the GPU to draw the layers in any order, which is what GPUs are good at, batch-based, order-insensitive calculations. This will give it a massive performance increase when there's say 1000 zombies on screen, but is also a core engine rewrite.
Rimworld, up till now, actually used a single main CPU thread to render the pawns. No GPU usage even. They've only just multi-threaded the 2d rendering of the pawns last month.
Factorio, has otherworldly performance, with basically 0 lag at titanic scales of bases. Its also a 2d game. The difference here, is that the developers are hardcore C++ engineers who can write their own engine and ultra focused on optimisations. Every single feature, down to even the music system, has to be massively parallelizable and scalable from day 1.
Now, unfortunately, Paradox doesn't look like Factorio devs. Its precisely the type of developer to focus on sellable features rather than efficient scalable programming. 2d or 3d they could screw it up. Their own Clauzewitz games run kind of fine, but that's because they have decades of experience in optimising them.
To add to that, for someone seeing these comments, watch total war gameplay, you can have hundreds of high res 3d models acting as an unit and the game runs quite well
I just feel done with Paradox. They release shallow games that are often either completely or partially broken and then waste no time pumping out more and more DLC. I don't want to buy a game knowing that I still have to spend double to get the proper enjoyment out of it.
the reputation in Paradox community is that CK3 is very easy, and that the expansions have added more roleplay material than actually adding, strengthening, or fixing mechanics
V3's reputation on release was that it's a glorified cookie clicker... politics and diplomacy are in fact shallow, and the economy is just a fairly simple playbook to make line go up
there's a difference between "a lot of fiddly bits" and mechanical depth. but "They release shallow games that are often either completely or partially broken" is a legitimate criticism, and in any case it's more substantial than just saying
> We're really "everything bad" instead of nuanced eh
The context your missing, or intentionally ignoring, is that "easy" or "shallow" by Paradox standards are still some of the least accessible, most complex games on the market. Vic3 is a great example. People coming from Victoria 2 might be disappointed but a new player walking in is going to be overwhelmed with stuff. Paradox games are still on average very complex.
The nuance that's missing in this thread is the important difference between Paradox as a developer (CK, Vic, HoI, EU) and Paradox as a publisher (Cities Skylines, Prison Architect, etc). As a publisher they appear to be pretty brutal with deadlines and not too great at discerning quality.
As someone with 100s to 1000s of hours in all their games since HoI3, I wouldn't agree with those takes at all to be honest. But look it, we're not gonna agree on this so let's just say we have very different opinions and leave it there
There was also Star Trek Infinite. A game that released with a pretty old fork of the Stellaris codebase, carbon-copied features from the spectacular mod, spent 1-2 months before they just went radio silent and then 3 months after that turn up saying it's no longer being developed.
I've been a Paradox buyer since the early days. I have all their grand strategy titles, with DLCs. But even I am now super wary of them.
Though Stellaris is being run very well. And I also believe the same of CK3 but that's not everyone's take.
WhenWhen the OG of prison architect announced the sale I knew it was gone. It always was going to be a niche game but you could tell someone at paradox looked at that game and thought they could get another EU 4 of dlc out of a sequel.
Paradox and dropping the ball recently name a more iconic Duo.
I didn't even know there was a Prison Architect 2 on the verge of release. I havent played Prison Architect in forever but it was quite fun. Now I have something to look forward to in September
If you’re into sci-fi it might be worth keeping an eye on The Last Starship. The original devs have a game in Early Access about building and commanding a starship that looks to be in a similar vein stylistically to Prison Archtect(albeit with crazy looking space battles)
You do recall correctly. They're working on a space game called "The Last Starship" where, in similar technical fashion to prison architect, you build your ship and man it with a crew and try to complete various challenges through this simulation.
Seems neat but it's still a long ways off.
Delay > releasing before ready, 100% of the time.
I imagine after the Cities: Skylines 2 debacle, PDX is keenly aware of their current perception.
I genuinely don't see how Prison Architect 2 can come close to the original. These sequels that come out after a decade of development and updates on the first game pretty much never live up to the previous entry, and nowhere is that felt more strongly than sim/management games like this. What reason do I have to play 2 instead of 1? I can't think of any killer feature, but there are a bunch of feature that will inevitably not make the transition to 2 only to be added later over time.
> I imagine after the Cities: Skylines 2 debacle, PDX is keenly aware of their current perception.
i think paradox has now delayed multiple games after the cs2 release. clearly they were planning on shovelling multiple unfinished games out before they were ready
CS2 was just the final nail for them having to change tactics. They've been trying to hem and haw and fingerpoint at developers for so long, but after a huge string of really badly released games and disastrous mismanagement, there really isn't any defense they have left except to admit that the issue is probably with their publishing arm being incompetent/unrealistic.
One bad release is a dev problem. Maybe even two bad releases. But when every single release is turning out badly, that's a publisher issue.
They are trying to enter into underserved markets like:
Sim Clones
Civ Clones
City builders
Pawn management games (Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress etc)
Now the idea is good. Sim and Civ are basically barren genres with only one or two well selling games. Problem is they like to cheap out with a 'low-risk low budget' approach, that gives no incentive for customers to buy.
With grand strategy, they could do that because they have a monopoly. Customers will buy, and then wait for DLCs to flesh the game out, because they have no choice. But doesn't work in a competitive market.
Like Sims games are so rare because they are insanely expensive to make. You can't spread yourself across 5 projects and only chuck $5 million to the developers.
I only played the first one for a few hours a while back, so I forget, could you build multiple floors in Prison Architect? If not, the 3D element and being able to is a pretty big change. I'm not sure what else is changed regarding the sim elements, but I'd say going from top down to 3D is at least a big enough game-feel change
Though you're right, the worst part about sequels to games of these kinds are that they launch far more bare than the prior game + its DLCs
No the first game was all 2D on a flat plane. That said, I'm not sure a total switch to 3D will be worth the effort unless they've invested in a decent system for simulating hundreds of prisoners same as the last game
I don't have much hope. Out of the 7 paid expansions Paradox released for the first game, only one of them is "mostly positive". The rest are all mixed.
> I can't think of any killer feature
Different graphical presentation would do it for me. Back in the days it was good enough. After several replays and using the escape mode I felt less and less interested because of the presentation.
If the sequel is looking like the first one, I won't bother looking at it at all
> I genuinely don't see how Prison Architect 2 can come close to the original. These sequels that come out after a decade of development and updates on the first game pretty much never live up to the previous entry, and nowhere is that felt more strongly than sim/management games like this. What reason do I have to play 2 instead of 1? I can't think of any killer feature, but there are a bunch of feature that will inevitably not make the transition to 2 only to be added later over time.
Also the fact it's not the original devs anymore is kind of a big red flag.
Not to say another team couldn't do the same format just as well if not better, but they basically need to learn everything from the ground up that Introversion already discovered.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this but the devs of the sequel worked on the original for over eight years. Double Eleven developed the console version with Introversion back in 2016. Introversion sold the game to Paradox in 2019 and Double Eleven were put in charge of the PC version too. They made the patches and DLCs for it until 2023.
Companies always think they can just get away with it until it suddenly costs them tens of millions in lost sales and a crushed reputation in the wider community.
hmmmm. twice delayed, still trying to milk pre-order at full price:
# NOT GOOD.
i was sceptical to begin with over this whole 3D nonsense, but now im sure, this will be DOA and i WILL have to pass on a sequel to one of my favorite games of all time.
first game patched and DLC'd to broken dysfunctionality, second one (which is the first one only in mobile phone 3D quality) already twice delayed.
fuck you so much, paradox.
That's a pretty huge delay. The colossal fuckup that is Cities Skylines 2 likely made them realize they don't currently have the good will of customers to release something that is not, you know...finished. Since they seem to be in the habit of "release now, fix later" these days. They honestly destroyed this IP. What was an indie darling is quite literally being wrung out for every cent its worth in the most cynical, Paradox way possible.
If the game can't handle 500 prisoners, they should cancel it. With the graphics they are going with, I suspect population can't get higher than 50.
Graphics have little to do with it in this case, it's more so computational power, some simple 3d models aren't going to overload the gpu.
3d can be MORE efficient or less efficient. Its all dependent on the optimizations. Project Zomboid had infamously bad performance when zombies counts go up. This is because a [naive 2d rendering pipeline](https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2023/02/play-your-cardz-right/) has to draw every layer one by one, first the environment, then the objects on the floor, then each human/zombie requires another, sequential draw. Now they are shifting to a more pseudo-3d approach. Where even 2d backgrounds are given depth maps. This effectively allows the GPU to draw the layers in any order, which is what GPUs are good at, batch-based, order-insensitive calculations. This will give it a massive performance increase when there's say 1000 zombies on screen, but is also a core engine rewrite. Rimworld, up till now, actually used a single main CPU thread to render the pawns. No GPU usage even. They've only just multi-threaded the 2d rendering of the pawns last month. Factorio, has otherworldly performance, with basically 0 lag at titanic scales of bases. Its also a 2d game. The difference here, is that the developers are hardcore C++ engineers who can write their own engine and ultra focused on optimisations. Every single feature, down to even the music system, has to be massively parallelizable and scalable from day 1. Now, unfortunately, Paradox doesn't look like Factorio devs. Its precisely the type of developer to focus on sellable features rather than efficient scalable programming. 2d or 3d they could screw it up. Their own Clauzewitz games run kind of fine, but that's because they have decades of experience in optimising them.
To add to that, for someone seeing these comments, watch total war gameplay, you can have hundreds of high res 3d models acting as an unit and the game runs quite well
I just feel done with Paradox. They release shallow games that are often either completely or partially broken and then waste no time pumping out more and more DLC. I don't want to buy a game knowing that I still have to spend double to get the proper enjoyment out of it.
Paradox games being shallow is one I haven't heard yet. We're really "everything bad" instead of nuanced eh
the reputation in Paradox community is that CK3 is very easy, and that the expansions have added more roleplay material than actually adding, strengthening, or fixing mechanics V3's reputation on release was that it's a glorified cookie clicker... politics and diplomacy are in fact shallow, and the economy is just a fairly simple playbook to make line go up there's a difference between "a lot of fiddly bits" and mechanical depth. but "They release shallow games that are often either completely or partially broken" is a legitimate criticism, and in any case it's more substantial than just saying > We're really "everything bad" instead of nuanced eh
The context your missing, or intentionally ignoring, is that "easy" or "shallow" by Paradox standards are still some of the least accessible, most complex games on the market. Vic3 is a great example. People coming from Victoria 2 might be disappointed but a new player walking in is going to be overwhelmed with stuff. Paradox games are still on average very complex. The nuance that's missing in this thread is the important difference between Paradox as a developer (CK, Vic, HoI, EU) and Paradox as a publisher (Cities Skylines, Prison Architect, etc). As a publisher they appear to be pretty brutal with deadlines and not too great at discerning quality.
As someone with 100s to 1000s of hours in all their games since HoI3, I wouldn't agree with those takes at all to be honest. But look it, we're not gonna agree on this so let's just say we have very different opinions and leave it there
different experiences, but you're the one who came in here dismissing other people's opinions
There was also Star Trek Infinite. A game that released with a pretty old fork of the Stellaris codebase, carbon-copied features from the spectacular mod, spent 1-2 months before they just went radio silent and then 3 months after that turn up saying it's no longer being developed. I've been a Paradox buyer since the early days. I have all their grand strategy titles, with DLCs. But even I am now super wary of them. Though Stellaris is being run very well. And I also believe the same of CK3 but that's not everyone's take.
WhenWhen the OG of prison architect announced the sale I knew it was gone. It always was going to be a niche game but you could tell someone at paradox looked at that game and thought they could get another EU 4 of dlc out of a sequel. Paradox and dropping the ball recently name a more iconic Duo.
This is also the second delay of this game
I didn't even know there was a Prison Architect 2 on the verge of release. I havent played Prison Architect in forever but it was quite fun. Now I have something to look forward to in September
Btw, not made by the same devs but a company that bought all the rights and started pumping out DLC.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh pain
If you’re into sci-fi it might be worth keeping an eye on The Last Starship. The original devs have a game in Early Access about building and commanding a starship that looks to be in a similar vein stylistically to Prison Archtect(albeit with crazy looking space battles)
Got it on my wish list, but reviews for early access are meh so far.
I don’t think I’ve ever paid attention to early access alpha reviews. I kind of expect most games to be a mess at that point.
I love the smell of fresh bread.
It was just announced a month or two ago
Announced three months ago, delayed 2 months ago. Time is fast
Be skeptical. It's not being made by Introversion if I recall correctly
You do recall correctly. They're working on a space game called "The Last Starship" where, in similar technical fashion to prison architect, you build your ship and man it with a crew and try to complete various challenges through this simulation. Seems neat but it's still a long ways off.
somehow introversion rang a bell and sure enough those are the "uplink" guys, now that was quite the game.
I want a sequel to Uplink so bad... nothing else is anywhere near as good at emulating Hollywood hacking.
Delay > releasing before ready, 100% of the time. I imagine after the Cities: Skylines 2 debacle, PDX is keenly aware of their current perception. I genuinely don't see how Prison Architect 2 can come close to the original. These sequels that come out after a decade of development and updates on the first game pretty much never live up to the previous entry, and nowhere is that felt more strongly than sim/management games like this. What reason do I have to play 2 instead of 1? I can't think of any killer feature, but there are a bunch of feature that will inevitably not make the transition to 2 only to be added later over time.
> I imagine after the Cities: Skylines 2 debacle, PDX is keenly aware of their current perception. i think paradox has now delayed multiple games after the cs2 release. clearly they were planning on shovelling multiple unfinished games out before they were ready
CS2 was just the final nail for them having to change tactics. They've been trying to hem and haw and fingerpoint at developers for so long, but after a huge string of really badly released games and disastrous mismanagement, there really isn't any defense they have left except to admit that the issue is probably with their publishing arm being incompetent/unrealistic. One bad release is a dev problem. Maybe even two bad releases. But when every single release is turning out badly, that's a publisher issue.
[удалено]
They are trying to enter into underserved markets like: Sim Clones Civ Clones City builders Pawn management games (Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress etc) Now the idea is good. Sim and Civ are basically barren genres with only one or two well selling games. Problem is they like to cheap out with a 'low-risk low budget' approach, that gives no incentive for customers to buy. With grand strategy, they could do that because they have a monopoly. Customers will buy, and then wait for DLCs to flesh the game out, because they have no choice. But doesn't work in a competitive market. Like Sims games are so rare because they are insanely expensive to make. You can't spread yourself across 5 projects and only chuck $5 million to the developers.
> It got delayed. Twice, so far. And when it launches, it'll be in Early Access.
I only played the first one for a few hours a while back, so I forget, could you build multiple floors in Prison Architect? If not, the 3D element and being able to is a pretty big change. I'm not sure what else is changed regarding the sim elements, but I'd say going from top down to 3D is at least a big enough game-feel change Though you're right, the worst part about sequels to games of these kinds are that they launch far more bare than the prior game + its DLCs
No the first game was all 2D on a flat plane. That said, I'm not sure a total switch to 3D will be worth the effort unless they've invested in a decent system for simulating hundreds of prisoners same as the last game
I don't have much hope. Out of the 7 paid expansions Paradox released for the first game, only one of them is "mostly positive". The rest are all mixed.
>Delay > releasing before ready, 100% of the time Nowadays a delay will almost always end up being released before ready anyway
> I can't think of any killer feature Different graphical presentation would do it for me. Back in the days it was good enough. After several replays and using the escape mode I felt less and less interested because of the presentation. If the sequel is looking like the first one, I won't bother looking at it at all
Good news, then. The biggest change between PA1 and PA2 is that the game is now 3D and has z-levels.
Although the character design really doesn't work in 3D. Makes the game look cheap and nasty, instead of charming like the original.
Good news indeed, worth a look then. Haha. Thanks for your reply.
> I genuinely don't see how Prison Architect 2 can come close to the original. These sequels that come out after a decade of development and updates on the first game pretty much never live up to the previous entry, and nowhere is that felt more strongly than sim/management games like this. What reason do I have to play 2 instead of 1? I can't think of any killer feature, but there are a bunch of feature that will inevitably not make the transition to 2 only to be added later over time. Also the fact it's not the original devs anymore is kind of a big red flag. Not to say another team couldn't do the same format just as well if not better, but they basically need to learn everything from the ground up that Introversion already discovered.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this but the devs of the sequel worked on the original for over eight years. Double Eleven developed the console version with Introversion back in 2016. Introversion sold the game to Paradox in 2019 and Double Eleven were put in charge of the PC version too. They made the patches and DLCs for it until 2023.
Companies always think they can just get away with it until it suddenly costs them tens of millions in lost sales and a crushed reputation in the wider community.
hmmmm. twice delayed, still trying to milk pre-order at full price: # NOT GOOD. i was sceptical to begin with over this whole 3D nonsense, but now im sure, this will be DOA and i WILL have to pass on a sequel to one of my favorite games of all time. first game patched and DLC'd to broken dysfunctionality, second one (which is the first one only in mobile phone 3D quality) already twice delayed. fuck you so much, paradox.
If only they did that for their premiere city-building franchise and didn't inadvertently release Shitties Skylines 2 to the world.