I think everyone will agree this DLC is pretty toxic.

At first, I read "tuxoids". XD

Will Stellaris beats the number of DLC releases of Train Simulator ? :p

I guess it’s fitting that the patch released alongside the Toxoid Species Pack (that I have not bought) added advertisement into my game. Yes, that’s right, advertisement in a game I already paid for.

Way to go Paradox, at least if your objective is to see customers go away.

Paradox’s toxoid policy has stopped me from buying their games a long time ago. Imho, the only sensible way to buy their games is to 1) wait until the game is really complete, and 2) wait until the complete collection is given a discount that makes its price acceptable, which generally happens only when the next installment has been released.

Just for fun, I tested how much it would cost to buy the full game while benefiting from that amazing “up to 75%” discount, not taking the soundtrack and other non-gameplay elements (game and DLC choices screenshot attached).

Total “discounted” price : 107.31 €
Toxoids Species Pack : 9.99 €
Grand Total : 117.30 €

Complicated. A game in 19 pieces.

While I have reasons to be unhappy with some of Paradox moves, the DLC model is not one of them.

By not buying any expansion before it reaches the -50% discount, one would not end up paying an unreasonable amount of money compared to the game content and maintenance by Paradox. It would be even cheaper if one would refrain from buying expansions until they had a taste of the content from all previous ones.

Stellaris and almost all of its DLC (minus the last two major ones, and the new species pack) did not cost me more than some big AAA game would have (and this cost has been spread over several years). And I have much more fun with it than I would have with any AAA out there.

I do oppose unfair DLC schemes. But I think the Stellaris one is fair.

The price of 107.31 € I mentioned includes all DLCs (last one excluded), with an effective 49% discount, so that means you consider 107.31 € a reasonable price for this game. While I personally have my doubts, why not after all, one could consider the price is in adequation with the content provided, in the end it’s a matter of personal taste…

I tend to consider the DLC model as a problem, since (to me at least) more than anything else, it looks like a technique to divide a game in small chunks to trick people into paying much more than they would normally have accepted to do. This additionally poses at least two problems :

1) You’re never sure to have the complete game
2) If you don’t have the complete game, you may run into problems with updates possibly designed with the complete game in mind, that would introduce bugs/inconsistencies in your incomplete game

Considering Paradox more specifically, they seem to have software development methods that don’t look very professional. I still remember EU3, the game that made me discover their practices, and was uncomfortable with the way the Clausewitz game engine worked :

1) Most if not all game parameters were floating point values, sometimes yielding to unfortunate round-downs that had in-game consequences. I remember people complaining in the forum, e.g. about legitimacy taking much more time to go up than it should
2) When saving the game, the parameters were reduced in precision, truncating all values, i.e. saving the game had an impact on the game itself

I understand that using floating point values is easier to implement some concepts, but easier doesn’t mean better here… and I’m pretty sure Paradox still works the same, quick programming without much afterthought, which explains why a Paradox game is rarely truly playable at launch, and why they often go from bug, to bug, to bug, with resource-hogging, unoptimized software.

The game would not exist. Period. After six years of continuous work it's just a lot of stuff. I strongly doubt a commercial project that would simply aim to do Stellaris as it is now (completely saving all the time and energy spent on iteratively refining where we have been in between) would be feasible for such a niche product at "normal" price.
An really dedicated open source project might do it (NetHack comes to mind) but I see no one in this niche so I don't mind paying someone who does fill the niche.

Some people need to have that mythological "finished" game. Here, I'd say the journey is more important than the final destination. Stellaris is clearly in a much better place than when I first played it, but neither do I regret the time I spent back then. If you need the "finished" game feeling, then maybe this is not for you and probably never will be.

I have no clue about EU3, but I have never seen complaining about any floating point issues in Stellaris. Whatever it was, it seems to be an issue of the past. After all, dealing with it is not exactly rocket science.

Correct. Some people seem to be fundamentally incapable of understanding that the DLC is optional (which is why it's DLC), and the game is fine without any of it.

I obviously would not have bought Stellaris if the only option was to pay more than 100€ ;)

I started with the base game only for 16€, and played it for over 6 months before deciding that I like it enough to pay for some extra content and bought three expansions for a total of 13€. And I kept going on, adding content only in small batches when I felt that I was willing to expand the game content at a reasonable cost.

Unless I miscalculated, I spent a total of 96€ over 4 years. No regret, what I got from this game and its expansions is worth it.