There is no way we were promised a Q2 release, and Paradox have not gone back on any promises, and there has not been "further delays".
Johan was clear that Alpha submission was taking place in late March. A few people thought, and have repeated it in this thread, that this meant Alpha was finished and Beta was underway. This absolutely wasn't the case - probably the process was the Project Lead (Dan) was submitting his report, or however they do it, to the company executives showing how the features work, how they fit together etc. It's a business proposal - will you agree to invest NNN euros for the project to carry out Alpha and then Beta testing.
At first in a project you start with an idea, or concept. If that is accepted, then you usually move to proof of concept, not straight to implementation. That is where they had reached just before Easter. All the features designed and put together into a working prototype.
Something they could show some YouTube gamers, give them some hands on and talk about. They played around a year, and it was setup for Germany to be able to invade Poland in 1936 to see some combat.
But as important as that was for ongoing PR, someone with alot more knowledge of HOI3 and the expectations of the community, and knowledge of history, would have been assessing it. Did they have an air war model which actually worked, or did the Battle of Britain result in one side losing all of its planes in a couple of days? Did trade make sense without money? Did the (new?) combat model produce realistic outcomes? Was an Intel system with spies like HOI3 required? Did the logistics system make things for GER very difficult in North Africa, easy in Poland or the Low Countries? Was the decision to have individual ships instead of Destroyer Divisions workable, or a micro hell for the naval powers? Were the diplomatic processes able to stop most countries going to war most of the time before 1939, but not delay war until 1944? Did the exceptions for Spain and Japan feel not too forced? And alot more.
Did the concept of the game, work as a game? In other words, fun, replayability, accessibility for new players, challenge for hardcore, modability to engage the community long-term etc.
Remember not only did Dan set out to improve the use of AI control of armies/corps using battle plans, but quite the opposite with other major processes - removing the option of AI control of production for instance, and therefore trade. Did the trade model feel interesting/fun/challenging/realistic or just an absolute chore if you have to continuously browse through a list of countries selling a particular rare material, and offer to buy it, in order to keep your production up? Is there total frustration that many times country X is selling resource Y, but when it comes to the crunch always rejects offers from the player of country Z.
Here I'm not talking about balancing, but how often you have to go into the trade interface, how many buttons you have to press to make a trade, how is the information presented of what trades are available and what trades you already made?
And let's remind ourselves of an important game interface used IIRC in HOI2, as well as HOI3, which we have seen nothing of in screenshots of HOI4 - the little game log interface showing what has happened recently in case you missed a pop-up or have certain types disabled. What, if anything, has replaced this? And, if nothing, how does all of the information on what is going on get presented to the user? Seemingly the concept was that everything would be presented visually on the map, limiting written information. Could they prove that this works effectively when you are playing a country with interests across large sections of the globe, where you can't possibly be watching these all at the same time.
We knew there were changes to the battle plan interface and the National Goals replaced with the National Focus Trees. And we can see hints of other things from differences in screenshots. Such as one showing British Raj in India, and there is mention in this article by Dan, "Poland contains three different air zones at the moment." I'm sure there was only two in the original screenshots and discussions, so if the strategic air regions proved too big, then they have had alot of reworking of the map. And we know they only recently decided that they needed to include trucks as an equipment type to be able to better model the cost of creating/sustaining motorised units.
But we don't know what might have been changed in processes we had had no information about, such as trade, logistics, land combat, amphibious landings, para drops, etc. It was notable that Dan had to use the trade interface to get production working in a live stream, but he went out of his way not to show it. And, as far as I know, the devs have never spoken about it in the forum, or to the media. Other than to say, and get alot of flak about, not having money.
The lack of any big announcement over the last couple of weeks, since Dan came back from holidays, that the Alpha submission was accepted and therefore they could predict a potential release of Q3, and would begin the weekly DD's seemed to imply to me that things might not have gone well with the submission, but I tried to be optimistic. Johan's confirmation that Alpha has not yet been accepted, a month after being submitted, suggests something more than sitting in someone's in-tray waiting for a decision. But that at least one feature, process, model or interface has been rejected and sent back for further work on the design. Iteration, iteration, iteration.
But ultimately if the concept Dan and Johan had for the game doesn't fit together into something which is economically viable, then the game might be pulled completely by the people who pay the bills. The quality of recent Paradox releases is one thing, but the enormous sales that they have generated is another. Paradox don't want an HOI3 type broken release, but also nor must they want something which is bug-free but is actually a yawnfest, that the YouTubers recommend to give it a miss because it is too boring/tedious micro. It has to sell in large enough quantities to warrant the investment, or they are better off devoting the time of the developers to another project.
I hope not, and that they can resolve the issues, and design a great game. But until they say (not some little known website) 100% definitely they plan to release Q... then and only then, do we have grounds for complaint if they change that without informing us the reasons.
ATM all that Johan is saying is stop talking bull about a Q2 release. It was never going to happen even if the Alpha submission was accepted.
