The Ruler Designer DLC -- is it worth getting and are there any bugs with it?

[Olaus Petrus]

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!

It depends. If you give your historical ruler best possible stats and abilities, then sure it's cheating. But if you just change him to homosexual kinslayer who is excommunicated then I would say that it's not cheating.

Personally all I wanted was to play as Christian version of Alp Arslan of Seljuk Turks or Nestorian Khan of the Golden Horde, but ruler designer doesn't even give you option to make your own custom Seljuk or Mongol leaders, because it doesn't allow you to edit NPCs to make them playable. Editing the game files to make those characters playable isn't very difficult, but I was hoping a way to do it in-game.

[Sleight of Hand]

Yeah being able to play as one of the Ilkhans if you made them Nestorian would be amazing.

[Alexander Seil]

It depends. If you give your historical ruler best possible stats and abilities, then sure it's cheating. But if you just change him to homosexual kinslayer who is excommunicated then I would say that it's not cheating.

Personally all I wanted was to play as Christian version of Alp Arslan of Seljuk Turks or Nestorian Khan of the Golden Horde, but ruler designer doesn't even give you option to make your own custom Seljuk or Mongol leaders, because it doesn't allow you to edit NPCs to make them playable. Editing the game files to make those characters playable isn't very difficult, but I was hoping a way to do it in-game.

But that requires a difficult design decision. How do you balance editing historical characters? You can't use age as "points," since it would be possible for all kinds of weirdness to occur if you end up being older than your parents or something.

I don't think anything's wrong with the DLC. Except maybe marketing. They should be clear that it's a character creation feature, like most RPGs have, not an editor as such.

[sevensided]

am I the only one not able to change hair's colour? I can click on the hair colour button but i don't see any effect on the character's portrait.

Hair Color depends on the ethnicity you have chosen. Some do not have choices.

That said, if you do not like editing save files, but want to make your own custom dynasty, then its great. The only bug I've experienced is the 'first-day-council-appointees-quit' bug, but I just wait a game week and that's fine. I have NOT run into DominusNovus's bug. I've always gotten the look I put out.

Not being able to replace non-christian characters is annoying, as I want to make a Prussian that starts in Prussia.

[aybarsalp]

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.

haha bought for the same reasons last night. that annoying huge button didn't go though. now it says i have to buy the 2 dollar music dlc. frankly i bought the dlc yesterday after a long time of deciding process in the hopes that it will be updated in the direction of what the many users have been writing about.

[Olaus Petrus]

But that requires a difficult design decision. How do you balance editing historical characters? You can't use age as "points," since it would be possible for all kinds of weirdness to occur if you end up being older than your parents or something.

I don't think anything's wrong with the DLC. Except maybe marketing. They should be clear that it's a character creation feature, like most RPGs have, not an editor as such.

In the advertisement video they edited stats of William the Conqueror, so I would say that marketing was bit misleading. While it works as character creation tool it's not what I paid for.

[Lord Xia]

It was a very bait and switch marketing plan with the DLC, I just hope not intentionally. I like Paradox games a lot, but what the DLC was marketed as and what it actually are are very different things. Has any devs made any comments about that? I think they should. I would like to think they had every intention of making it an editor, but changed it for some reason.

[Alexander Seil]

Meh, you can edit historical ones with notepad. It's completely trivial. I frankly like the concept of "rolling my own" with a system to balance it (i.e., like I would in a normal RPG) much more than the notion of paying $5 to endow Batu Khan with a pornstache. I think I'll get this for my next game.

Though, as a compromise solution, perhaps they should add editing of historical characters as an option, since the tool is already in place.

[Prinz Wilhelm]

It was a very bait and switch marketing plan with the DLC, I just hope not intentionally. I like Paradox games a lot, but what the DLC was marketed as and what it actually are are very different things. Has any devs made any comments about that? I think they should. I would like to think they had every intention of making it an editor, but changed it for some reason.

Of course it's intentional. They don't release stuff that isn't finished unless they want to. They ripped us off, and left us here without any comments or response to our complaints. Nice job Paradox.

[Alexander Seil]

Don't you think you're all overreacting just a tiny little bit? This thing costs $5 and has real value even if the advertisting was a bit misleading.

I personally don't expect the CEO of Starbucks to offer me a personal apology if the barista making my $3 cup of coffee accidentally puts milk in it.

(And Starbucks doesn't hand you a patch...err, a slice of coffeecake, just for ordering that cup of coffee. Unlike Paradox.)

[Lord Xia]

I like the DLC, and I am fine with what it provides for the cost. But, it wasn't what was advertised. I would just like to know why. A Dev post saying something like, "We intended to make the Ruler DLC to be able to be used as a ruler editor, but we couldn't find a viable solution to balancing being able to modify traits and stats of historical characters who have a wide range of stats, family, and education with balancing the creation of all new rulers. And we didn't want to just have it be able to create superpowered rulers, because we find that game design option actually limits replay-ability and over-all fun, and having to make meaningful choices of what traits to have makes the creations more meaningful and varied." I don't know if their thought process was like that at all, I am just very curious as to what it was and I know that some of their customers feel a bit cheated, and thats never good for them to feel that way, and I think those feelings are valid.

[Alerias]

Don't you think you're all overreacting just a tiny little bit? This thing costs $5 and has real value even if the advertisting was a bit misleading.

I personally don't expect the CEO of Starbucks to offer me a personal apology if the barista making my $3 cup of coffee accidentally puts milk in it.

(And Starbucks doesn't hand you a patch...err, a slice of coffeecake, just for ordering that cup of coffee. Unlike Paradox.)

We expect more value from digital goods, quite simply. DLC needs to be pretty darn good to be considered worth the money. This is horse armor-level. But I expect Paradox will learn from their mistakes and deliver more in the future, after all, it was their first piece of 'real' DLC. Theres a learning curve.

And the day I'll pay 3$ for a coffee they better spike it with Irish whiskey.

[Prinz Wilhelm]

Don't you think you're all overreacting just a tiny little bit? This thing costs $5 and has real value even if the advertisting was a bit misleading.

I personally don't expect the CEO of Starbucks to offer me a personal apology if the barista making my $3 cup of coffee accidentally puts milk in it.

(And Starbucks doesn't hand you a patch...err, a slice of coffeecake, just for ordering that cup of coffee. Unlike Paradox.)

It's like ordering coffee and getting tea. Sure, tea is nice but it's not what was on the menu, was it?

[InnocentIII]

I like it. I wish it did more, but it's been fun as is. I also expected a way to edit existing people. I can see them offering an RPG spending function for stats etc, but for single-player games I'd like that as an option. Over 400 years starting with Uber-Count isn't really unbalancing, and if it is, well, so is having an "easy" setting. It is a nice addition to the game though.

I'd really like a way to incorporate self-designed CoAs, which from the description of how to do it sounds like a chore (and I've had no troubling modding stats or creating a culture & dynasty). I thought the CoA designer was fairly minimal. It does the trick, but there's no way to make anything I feel attached to. I'm just trading one generic CoA for another.

I wanted one with dueling banjos.

[Alexander Seil]

We expect more value from digital goods, quite simply. DLC needs to be pretty darn good to be considered worth the money. This is horse armor-level. But I expect Paradox will learn from their mistakes and deliver more in the future, after all, it was their first piece of 'real' DLC. Theres a learning curve.

And the day I'll pay 3$ for a coffee they better spike it with Irish whiskey.

Irish whiskey? Where I'm at, $5 buys you a PBR and an angry glance from the bartender for not leaving a tip...YMMV, for obvious cost of living reasons, but I doubt anyone here lives in Rwanda on a dollar a day, so arguing over value of a $5 piece of anything is a gratuitous waste of time (in which I'm engaging self-consciously). Especially considering that Paradox provides a ton of content with patches, for this game at least, that even they would package into an expansion pack and sell to you were this HoI3. Just saying.

That said, I agree fully with Lord Xia. Paradox PR needs to stay on top of things like this.

EDIT: Besides, this stuff can be purchased with leftover bluecoins from buying other Paradox stuff on Gamersgate...which means that's it not really $5 for the average person purchasing it. I got my Songs of the Holy Land for free (I wouldn't mind buying them; frankly, the music in CK2 is the best of recent releases). Victims of Steam are excluded from this, sadly.

[DominusNovus]

It's like ordering coffee and getting tea. Sure, tea is nice but it's not what was on the menu, was it?

And when that happens, what do you do? You go up to the cashier, tell them you ordered coffee, and they take care of the issue for you.

[Alerias]

Irish whiskey? Where I'm at, $5 buys you a PBR and an angry glance from the bartender for not leaving a tip...

Thats crazy. Most I've ever paid for a large coffee was 2$ and -I- rolled my eyes at the owner. OTOH I have no idea what a 'PBR' is so I guess I'm probably not in your league of Cafés

I dont consider 5$ chump change. Its an eight of the cost of the full game, and Ive already spent 200 hours playing Ck2. I dont exactly expect THAT level of value (20 cents per hour of fun is unusual) but if I feel ripped off, somethings wrong. I felt ripped off by Bethesda's Horse Armor and I've waited ever since to see what people thought of DLC before even entertaining the notion of buying it, which I dont regret one bit.

Currently I'm entertaining the notion of buying this, once they improve it enough so that I can use it to edit historical characters without breaking their dynasty trees. And even then I may just wait for a price point drop because notepad++ works too.

How much I value my 5 bucks is ultimately up to me. I'm open to buying, but if you want me to be "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" over DLC, you damn better well "WOW" me.

[ram22469]

I don't understand why one shouldn't be able to make a superpowered young ruler, or edit a historical ruler to make them have great stats, and have that be cheating. I mean, if you feel giving yourself a great young ruler with great traits is cheating, then don't do it. The whole age changes with stats is a bit silly. I should be able to set the age and all the stats and traits for a created character, and for a character in a game already in progress or a historical ruler, only to set the traits and stats, which of course would not cause a problem if it didn't affect age (which should not be editable in that case). Let one play as they choose to, and if they feel it's cheating, they shouldn't do it. The people buying the DLC are probably in large part on this forum and therefore most likely know how to edit the files anyway, better just to make it simple to accomplish in-game.

[DominusNovus]

Thats crazy. Most I've ever paid for a large coffee was 2$ and -I- rolled my eyes at the owner. OTOH I have no idea what a 'PBR' is so I guess I'm probably not in your league of Cafés

Pabst Blue Ribbon.

[Ashlantean]

If you want to customise a ruler and a dynasty, it's worthwhile. I liked being able to tinker with my starting ruler and it's been great to watch my own custom dynasty slowly permeate throughout Europe.

This is horse armor-level.

If the Ruler Designer is horse armour-level, then horse armour was a lot more useful than I remember it being!