CK3 - Dev Diary #0 - The Vision

[Marcelo]

Glad to hear from you again, Doomdark, after so long. I wish you (we?) success with CK3

 

[Domaldel]

Greetings friends!

It’s my pleasure to finally be able to talk about what I’ve been working on ever since Stellaris came out (and before) - Crusader Kings III, of course! CK3 draws on the wisdom gained over CK2’s seven long years of expansions and patches - all the things we simply could not do in that game - and represents the natural evolution of Crusader Kings. Yes, CK3 is an evolution, not a revolution; it’s better across the board and does not alter the core CK experience. That said, we did not carry over everything from every expansion and update to CK2. Rather than trying to do full justice to the less appreciated systems, we decided to go deep rather than wide.

The main design goals with Crusader Kings III were:

• Character Focus: Crusader Kings is clearly and unequivocally about individual characters, unlike our other games. This makes CK most suited for memorable emergent stories, and we wanted to bring characters into all important gameplay mechanics (where possible.)
• Player Freedom and Progression: We want to cater to all player fantasies we can reasonably accommodate, allowing players to shape their ruler, heirs, dynasty and even religion to their liking - though there should of course be appropriate challenges to overcome.
• Player Stories: All events and scripted content should feel relevant, impactful and immersive in relation to the underlying simulation. That way, players will perceive and remember stories - their own stories, not the developers’ stories.
• Approachability: Crusader Kings III should be user friendly without compromising its general level of complexity and historical flavor. It’s nice if it’s easier to get into, but more than that, it should be clear what everything in the game is, what you might want to be doing, and how to go about it.

Now, you might say: “Cool, but I took the time to master CK2, bought all the expansions, and now it provides me an enormous breadth of options. Why should I buy CK3?”

That’s a fair question! As I mentioned earlier, we decided not to carry over all features from CK2, so if you play CK2 primarily for, say, the nomads or the merchant republics (the only faction types that were playable in CK2 but not in CK3), you might be disappointed. There are likely other features and content that will be missed by some players, but, in return, we believe that everyone will find the core gameplay far more fun and rewarding! To be clear, CK3 is a vastly bigger game than CK2 was on release.

I know this dev diary was short on details, but don’t despair - they will be revealed over the coming months!

Ok.
I find the overall intentions and design goals stated in the first dev diary a relief, in particular due to my concerns with the picture of the perk system you've displayed.
Regarding features missing at launch, I'm not concerned about that at all.
We all know that you guys are into this for the long haul.
However I urge you to reconsider the perk system displayed in one of the released screenshots as it in many ways runs counter to many of the stated goals in this dev diary.

See my thread for more details.

 

[Gundqr]

I like the vision! The only concern I have is the "moddability" of our religions. But, I understand that its too early to really discuss it, so we'll have to see how its shaping up. I want the ability to create our own heresies, but I don't think we should be able to mod the base of Christianity or Islam.

 

[fourworlds]

I like the vision! The only concern I have is the "moddability" of our religions. But, I understand that its too early to really discuss it, so we'll have to see how its shaping up. I want the ability to create our own heresies, but I don't think we should be able to mod the base of Christianity or Islam.

I saw on another thread discussing an interview with one of the devs that the way religions would work together: "Religions have degrees of relation. Abrahamic > Christian > Catholic". If this is true, I'm guessing that your customized religion would replace the "Catholic" but still be under the Christian umbrella. Would be cool as well if you could change it enough to create your own Abrahamic religion or something even more different. I'm sure we'll find out more about it though.

 

[DeinonychusTaco]

Happy to see these as priorities, but I am a little worried about "Approachability" being the primary design goal with "complexity" relegated to a note in the description of "Approachability". Yes, clausewitz games do tend to have some approachability problems, anyone who's tried to get their friends into PDX games can attest to that, but I think the right approach here is to recognize it's a balancing act between approachability and complexity, and that it's fundamentally impossible to design a deeply complex game with a both gradual and short learning curve. CK2 took me 100 hours of game time before I fully felt like I understood all the mechanics (it was my first PDX game, give me a break). If CK3 is going to be on the level of CK2, you're not going to be able to reduce that to 10 or 1 with some UI redesign, and established players of CK2 really hope you don't try or make any critical gameplay design decisions based solely on the tenet of "It'll be more approachable this way."

 

[Metz77]

Happy to see these as priorities, but I am a little worried about "Approachability" being the primary design goal with "complexity" relegated to a note in the description of "Approachability". Yes, clausewitz games do tend to have some approachability problems, anyone who's tried to get their friends into PDX games can attest to that, but I think the right approach here is to recognize it's a balancing act between approachability and complexity, and that it's fundamentally impossible to design a deeply complex game with a both gradual and short learning curve. CK2 took me 100 hours of game time before I fully felt like I understood all the mechanics (it was my first PDX game, give me a break). If CK3 is going to be on the level of CK2, you're not going to be able to reduce that to 10 or 1 with some UI redesign, and established players of CK2 really hope you don't try or make any critical gameplay design decisions based solely on the tenet of "It'll be more approachable this way."

From what they've said, making it more approachable mainly seems to be taking the tack of making it clearer what's important and guiding new players a bit more, instead of the usual Paradox tactic of having a useless tutorial that teaches you how to use an army and then throws you in with a "good luck!"

 

[Metz77]

What's funny is all the people who disagree with this statement, lmfao.

Yes. The game should be bigger than final CK2. Sorry that you guys are happy Ford Pinto owners.

Applauding a game that si bigger than CK2 at RELEASE is hilarious. That was barebones as fuck. That isn't how sequels work yet somehow paradox gets away with it all the time.

Sure, let's just give them eight more years to develop the game and still have you bitch about it when it comes out because there's no playable theocracies or whatever your pet issue is.

 

[Rhyagelle]

Have the devs said anything about a pre-order date yet? I'm really liking this talk about character/roleplay focus.

 

[Metz77]

My "pet issue" is having to rebuy a new DLC for Republics when I already bought that and they ALREADY MADE THAT CONTENT. I'm sure they are already reusing a TON of code. I'm sure the new Crusade mechanic in CK2 is a CK3 feature ported over as well.

Oh damn, sorry, I had no idea you had access to the new engine's code base. My bad.

It should be included, if they don't like how it works then release a dlc/update to change it. Not having nomads when the biggest even in the entire game is Genghis Khan? When all of the east like Russia constantly interacts with them? That's acceptable to you?

If it sucked and they want time to make it better before they introduce it? Yeah. I'd rather they spend time on the solid core of the game so they can build it later.

This isn't Mass Effect 2 or whatever. They're not making a small iteration of a story-driven game using mostly the same code from the first one with some graphical tweaks. They're rebuilding the whole thing from the ground up.

 

[Orinsul]

Everything about this looks so awesome! Especially the character focus! Thank you.

 

[Serenity84]

My "pet issue" is having to rebuy a new DLC for Republics when I already bought that and they ALREADY MADE THAT CONTENT. I'm sure they are already reusing a TON of code.

It's impossible to take you seriously. The republic stuff was hacked and mostly hard coded into the game. Which caused a lot of problems in the long run and won't be done like that again. Of all the mechanics where they may reuse some code, this is the last one that can copy anything from.

 

[EU3NOOB]

My "pet issue" is having to rebuy a new DLC for Republics when I already bought that and they ALREADY MADE THAT CONTENT.

How do you know it'll be DLC content? Could be part of a free patch.

All I'm saying is that at this stage we have very little hard facts. We should wait to hear what Paradox has to say on the matter.

It costs us nothing to give them the benefit of the doubt hear them out in the lead up to release.

 

[Orinsul]

I kinda feel Republics was one of the DLC that didn't work. and hope that republics in CK3 will work quite differently, not just be coastal, maybe have faction/party mechanics?

 

[Rakdar]

I am completely puzzled as to why you have cut out artifacts. It was one of the most immersive features and probably one of the simplest as well. This decision just doesn’t make any sense from my perspective and I do hope that it will be reviewed in the near future.

 

[LukeCreed13]

I am completely puzzled as to why you have cut out artifacts. It was one of the most immersive features and probably one of the simplest as well. This decision just doesn’t make any sense from my perspective and I do hope that it will be reviewed in the near future.

I think because they may be planning on adding them in the future, alongside lodges and societies. Only, I think that they want all of the special clothing and artifacts 3D, which is something I'll wait for patiently.

 

[Rakdar]

I think because they may be planning on adding them in the future, alongside lodges and societies. Only, I think that they want all of the special clothing and artifacts 3D, which is something I'll wait for patiently.

That could still be added via patches or DLC. There is no reason to take our the current inventory system other than money, which is why I am so perplexed.

 

[fourworlds]

That could still be added via patches or DLC. There is no reason to take our the current inventory system other than money, which is why I am so perplexed.

It seems you're assuming that the inventory system, if it would be added, would be part of a DLC. I think it's far more likely that it would be a free patch, probably accompanying a DLC and include items exclusive to the DLC, but the system itself being made free.

 

[Rakdar]

It seems you're assuming that the inventory system, if it would be added, would be part of a DLC. I think it's far more likely that it would be a free patch, probably accompanying a DLC and include items exclusive to the DLC, but the system itself being made free.

Then why not keep the current one, which works perfectly, and update via free patch later?

 

[fourworlds]

Then why not keep the current one, which works perfectly, and update via free patch later?

That I don't know. It might be that they have higher plans for it and don't want to lock it in with a half baked plan. It's possible that the idea for artifacts in CK2 was the best they could do, but they want to do it better in CK3. I'm sure we can ask them about it at some point during the DD's that will come out in the coming months. And I'm not saying this as someone who's like "Paradox can't do anything wrong!" Because I do agree that I'd rather have the artifact system. But they've included so many great features that they've fleshed out even more for CK3. I'm going to hear them out before accusing them of being greedy. And what I said I still agree with, that if it does come back, it will almost certainly be part of a free patch as it was for CK2.

 

[WaitForRain]

Not to try to piss people off, but how come any missing minor element from the base game is automatically grounds for assuming a conspiracy from PDX to rob us all blind? I mean, there's stuff I'm kinda sad appears missing (like MR's and dynamic plagues), sure, but some of the reactions I've seen have been decisively disproportionate.

I kinda wish there was a way that the CK3 team could address this.