In a bid to increase how many players link their Paradox account to their game of Tyranny, Paradox is offering in-game rewards to those who play Tyranny while logged in.
In a post on their Steam page, Paradox stated:
Paradox Accounts
What’s this daily-reward thing?
You will receive one daily reward for playing logged in to a Paradox account on consecutive days. Here are the list of consumables that will be randomly distributed:
Healing Potion (Fine) - 50% HP
Healing Potion (Superior) - 100% HP
Potion of Revival - brings a fallen party member back from KO
Cairn's Leaf - +4 Armor, +20% Endurance defense
Oldwater - +10 Arcane Armor, +20% Magic defense
Potion of Elemental Barrier - +10 Shock/Fire/Frost Armor, +50 Defense vs. Paralyzed/Burning/Frozen
Dire Remedy - 120-pt Stasis Shield, +4% Max Health
Potion of Heroes - +2 to all Attributes
Scarlet Poison - Poisons enemies on Crit
Fatiguing Toxin - Weakens enemies on Crit
Potion of Invisibility
Skycap - +10 Lore, +10 Magic Skills, +4 Wits
While this might seem like a perfectly benign incentive to drive more user traffic to the Paradox web site, some players were less than impressed.
Some complained that random consumables would throw off the game’s balance or sense of immersion. Others feared that this was the first step on a slippery slope towards EA-tastic shenanigans like always being logged in and requiring an online connection in order to play. Still, others raised the spectre of mobile games, where ploys like this are common in order to drive user retention and microtransactions. According to these users, this might be an inkling that Tyranny, or Paradox, plans to move in that direction somehow, someday.
Others more reasonably pointed out that no one received a penalty for not being connected to their Paradox account and that there didn’t seem to be any intrinsic evil in encouraging people to create a Paradox account. On r/paradoxplaza, user Hargelid, a Paradox employee, posted:
“There are several other platforms/stores that have been growing in recent years (including consoles, mobile, other PC stores) which means that we want to be able to offer the same great service on these platforms as well. As we work with many different developers, our tech team is building and offering an API for online services so that we do not need to build a new backend for every game. The Paradox Account is used to "login" to the online services and retrieve your player data across all these platforms. An example is that it enabled us to offer cloud saves between the Steam, Android and iOS versions of Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet or using the same account for the forum, leaderboards and online functionality. Logging in should be a positive and added value experience, if you feel that is not the case, please feel free to send us your feedback in our forum, or in some other way you are comfortable with.”
So there’s an actual reason to encourage players to create Paradox accounts and link their games to them aside from the world’s tamest anti-piracy measure ever. Controversy over. Next!
