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Sleight of Hand

retired modder
On Probation
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Feb 14, 2012
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Just curious really. I'm not interested in paying for the new music and initially I wasn't too bothered about the Ruler Designer but it's only a few dollars and it says you can customize your portrait, coat of arms, dynasty name, traits, family and even replace an historical character.

So how exactly does it work, does it work properly/are there any bugs or known issues and is it worth getting?
 
First, there are bugs. The ability to change the portrait does not work properly; your appearance will change randomly throughout the game. Further, there seems to be some issues with changing ethnicity.

Second, the DLC works by taking an existing ruler and replacing them with someone completely new of your creation. You will create a new character, a new dynasty, a new coat of arms. Even if you give them the name of an existing dynasty, you will be creating a new one. You are not allowed to keep both the name of the character and dynasty the same (so no tweaking existing characters).

Paradox has not address any of the concerns we have raised about the DLC. I advise against getting it. Anything you want to do can be done through user-created utilities (changing portrait/coat of arms) or just simple coding (changing traits/stats).
 
First, there are bugs. The ability to change the portrait does not work properly; your appearance will change randomly throughout the game. Further, there seems to be some issues with changing ethnicity.

This is not a bug! The game regularly changes what you are wearing/the background in your portrait - generally when you change rank, get given a job by your liege (if you have one) or when a set period of time has passed (10 years IIRC). All the "visualise" function of the DLC does is let you see what you will look like with various positions/backgrounds. I haven't seen any ethnicity issues, but ethnicity is meant to be divorced from culture now.

Second, the DLC works by taking an existing ruler and replacing them with someone completely new of your creation. You will create a new character, a new dynasty, a new coat of arms. Even if you give them the name of an existing dynasty, you will be creating a new one. You are not allowed to keep both the name of the character and dynasty the same (so no tweaking existing characters).

Paradox has not address any of the concerns we have raised about the DLC. I advise against getting it. Anything you want to do can be done through user-created utilities (changing portrait/coat of arms) or just simple coding (changing traits/stats).

Can't argue with most of this, although I do find it easier to set up the basics with the DLC, and then edit from there.
 
This is not a bug! The game regularly changes what you are wearing/the background in your portrait - generally when you change rank, get given a job by your liege (if you have one) or when a set period of time has passed (10 years IIRC). All the "visualise" function of the DLC does is let you see what you will look like with various positions/backgrounds. I haven't seen any ethnicity issues, but ethnicity is meant to be divorced from culture now.

I'm not talking about outfits/background, anyone can see that changes all the time. I'm talking about hair. My king isn't telling me to shave my head and grow a goatee, is he?
 
I'm waiting to see if they support it further. I'd consider getting it if;

Minimally: You could at least make your character part of an existing dynasty / You could edit an historical character instead of starting from scratch.

Preferably: You could use it to edit a character as part of an ongoing save game.

Ideally: You could edit any character at start or in an ongoing game, without having to play as them, ie, turning it into a complete editor.

Realistically, I only expect the first of these items to happen, but it would be enough to tip the scales for me.
 
I might get the DLC for 2 reasons...

1. To get rid of that annoying huge button saying ''buy ruler designer dlc''

2. When it actualy properly works... untill then I'll just mod my own characters.
 
The bug I'm getting is with advisers they randomly quit and im left with half my realm upset that i fired them

My experience with this is to NOT appoint advisors on the very first day while the game is paused. If you let 10-20 days pass before appointing advisors, you do not get this problem at all. I think when you appoint them right away, they all quit and I've seen the same issue you've talked about.
 
It's not really quite the DLC I thought it was going to be, especially based on the Paradox sales pitch we were given. I used it once or twice, but frankly it's not really want I wanted; I wanted to edit the existing rulers. I'm hoping they'll listen to people's complaints and update it, though.
 
main problem with it is the initial random quitting of cousel members, and not being able to EDIT a character but having to create a new house, and last but not least the linking of age with stats. i get they dont want people with 20+ in evrything, but this is a darn sandbox game! why cant we be a young strong genius that rises above all his brothers and gains the throne through intrigue? would be hella fun to do so and give the DLC so much mor e worth and replay value. also, you can often not even equal random characters stats at the same age.
 
It's not really quite the DLC I thought it was going to be, especially based on the Paradox sales pitch we were given. I used it once or twice, but frankly it's not really want I wanted; I wanted to edit the existing rulers. I'm hoping they'll listen to people's complaints and update it, though.

I feel the same way. Johan's sales speech gave the impression that you could edit historical characters, but DLC turned out to be completely useless and not what I expected. And I still have to manually edit the save game files if I want to make changes to historical characters (which was the reason why I bought the ruler designer). So from my point of view it was waste of money and even the music DLCs offer more to the game than ruler designer.
 
Works fine for me. I like to create custom characters + custom houses and I can get the traits I want through a modded event. :D

But the primary reason I got the DLC is to make it viable for Paradox to continuously support this game.
 
main problem with it is the initial random quitting of cousel members, and not being able to EDIT a character but having to create a new house, and last but not least the linking of age with stats. i get they dont want people with 20+ in evrything, but this is a darn sandbox game! why cant we be a young strong genius that rises above all his brothers and gains the throne through intrigue? would be hella fun to do so and give the DLC so much mor e worth and replay value. also, you can often not even equal random characters stats at the same age.

You can, but you need to know which negative traits to take. Some of them (wounded and depressed) are only temporary, and can get removed by event in game, and so make reasonable choices if you need more points. Some of them have massive negative values, but don't affect stats too much - I'm guessing that these actually have bad events associated with them though, although they do give you a good starting set of stats.
 
I don't have the DLC, but I'm considering getting it (I actually spent my accumulated reserve of blue coins on more music :p).

I don't see the issue with not being able to edit historical characters. I thought the point of this DLC was to reinforce the RPG part of the game by letting you create your own character, with a number of points to spend like you would in a normal RPG and ability to make trade-offs. Editing historical characters seems a little bit like cheating. I get the point that it can be modded, but that is outside of the game. I mean, you can also make yourself the Khan-Emperor of the Mongols and the Grand Caliph of Persia through modding...but that's not really the same game anymore!