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Greetings!

It’s a new year, and we thought it would be interesting to give all of you an update on the status of the team! There’s quite a few of us, and we hope you’ll enjoy this brief insight into who’s working on updates, fixes and exciting new content for your enjoyment!

My name is Carmille and I work as a Producer on CK3; I’ve been with the team for about one and a half years now. CK2 was one of my favorite games and the reason that I joined Paradox to begin with, so naturally I am feeling quite blessed to work on the project :)

Firstly, an announcement! It has been decided that Alexander Oltner (aka @rageair) will be stepping up as the new Game Director for the project! Alexander is the (now former) Design Lead for CK3, and has spent many years designing features for both CK2 and CK3. He started at the company in 2015 and, if you’ve tuned in to any of the pre-release streams or interviews, you surely know who he is already. Long-term fans might even recognize him as the lead designer behind Holy Fury for CK2, or perhaps you’ve seen him in one of the many past Dev Clashes. We have full confidence that Alex will be able to take up the reins and steer the project towards a bright future! The former Game Director, Henrik Fåhraeus (known on the forums as Doomdark), is ascending the ranks and will instead act as the Creative Director for many titles, CK3 included.

With that said, let's move on to the team itself!
You might think that with the release of the base game, the amount of people working on the project would be reduced. We’re actually doing the exact opposite, and are in the process of expanding the team instead! This will give us a lot more flexibility and freedom and should allow us to work on several different things at the same time.
Naturally, we need to train and onboard our new team members so it is not something we can start with straight away, but our hope is that you will see the effects within a not so distant future.

Now, how many are actually working on CK3 and what are they doing?

The team is made up of many different disciplines, working together to create amazing experiences! We’ll go into more details on each of them below.

Producer

We have four people working in Production (myself included). Our job is to help the team bring the design to life and into your hands. We do this by setting up (and iterating upon) processes and workflows, identifying deadlines and milestones, making plans to hit those dates while staying in good shape and ensuring that everybody knows what to do. We can often be seen grooming CK3s task and bug database and making sure everything is according to plan, up to date and representative of the current situation as well as spending a lot of time looking at numbers in spreadsheets.

Game Design

Our Game Designer is working very closely together with the Game Director. Their focus is split between what is currently being developed and nailing down the design for future expansions. They can very frequently be seen playing the game as it is being developed and make tweaks or highlight areas of concern so that the feature feels as great in the game as it looks on paper.

UX Design

Just like Game Design, our two UX Designers have their focus split between what is happening in the game right now and what is being designed for future expansions. UX Design and Game Design work closely together and make sure that new features are both fun and user friendly. They focus on interactions and user interface, although they can often be seen giving feedback on when something just doesn’t feel intuitive.

Content Design

Although the two previously mentioned design disciplines can sometimes be seen creating content for features as they are being developed, it's the Content Designers that create the vast majority of it. We have eight Content Designers working on CK3, and unlike the other two Design disciplines, they are almost entirely focused on working with what’s being developed in the game here and now. They pride themselves on creating historically plausible content, and will spend a lot of their time researching something before it is being put into the game. They are skilled scripters and writers and very passionate about ensuring that all features have a soul made out of supportive events, decisions, interactions, etc.

Code

There are seven Programmers and two Tech Leads working on CK3. The Tech Leads are responsible for the overall technical health and spend a lot of their time setting up (and iterating upon) processes and best practices for the project. They play a major part during all development stages and are constantly aware of the big picture and the challenges that could come with it.

Our Programmers are responsible for building the functionality and foundation of the features themselves. They work very closely together with the other disciplines on their features and can often be seen providing Code Support or in other ways using their skillset to make life easier for the non-coders. They will also keep an eye on performance and the overall stability of the game and jump upon an issue as soon as it appears.

Art Director

There is one Art Director working on CK3, and their responsibility is the overall artistic vision. They work closely together with the Game Director and Production, but also with all of the Artists in the team.

2D UI Art

We have three 2D Artists on the team and they can often be seen collaborating with Code and UX Design to bring the interfaces of new CK3 features to life after Code has provided their framework. They will also create icons and illustrations as well as investigate artistic improvements to the UIs that is not part of the UX design.

2D Concept Art

Our two Concept Artists help the game team by visualizing assets before they are to be created by a 3D Artist.

3D Character Art

Just as the name indicates, our three Character Artists work on anything related to our characters. This not only includes the characters itself, but also the clothing, headgears and hairstyles. In addition to that they are also responsible for creating the Units that are walking around the map. They can often be seen working closely together with Animation.

3D Environment Art

These Artists work mostly on the map itself. We have four of them and they can often be seen creating holdings, ships, siege weapons and other map assets. They are also painting the map as well as making sure that all the units, holdings and other buildings are located where it makes sense, both from a historical perspective and an artistic one.

Animation

There is one Animator working on the project and their main focus is on bringing our characters and units to life. They can be seen working on brand new poses and adding more variety to existing ones to make sure the characters show a wide range of different emotions and visually support different situations.

VFX

CK3 is not a very VFX heavy game, and because of this we do not have a VFX artist working with us full time, but only on demand.

QA

Our QA is the glue that keeps everything together. We have a core team of seven QA, but expand to a lot more once we are starting to wrap up and getting ready for a release. They can often be seen playing the game and testing the new features as they become ready, but it is important to note that this is not the only thing they do. They have a holistic view of quality and work closely together with all disciplines to make sure that the end product is as great as possible. Sometimes this is achieved through testing alone, but other times they can identify a need to redesign / introduce more content to a feature that feels a bit weak or perhaps a need to tweak a process or workflow within the Project itself.

Audio

The Audio team works on all PDS games, so we can’t really claim them for ourselves.
When they do work on CK3, they are often around two to three people and can be seen working on sound effects for our new features as well as composing music that fit the theme of the expansion.

Naturally, we don’t all work on the same features or fixes at the same time, that’d be very confusing! We’re divided into smaller groups, each focusing on their own set of features or content. Once a week we have a couple of hours set aside to make sure that everybody on the CK3 team has time to sit down and play the game and see for themselves how everything is being tied together.

The team is currently busy working on two things: one is big and the other is smaller. The smaller of these you'll be hearing more of in the coming weeks...
 
Edit: Screw this I'm starting it up. Go to https://onlinequestions.org/ and join event 6942069 and start asking questions or upvote the one you like! Devs please answer these questions and baby we've got a stew going! Contact me for the admin code to answer questions.

There's only one way to fix this. I demand that we start an AMA right now so we can talk to the new devs and squeeze infos out of them!

4y9e5o.jpg
 
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And you would know how?
From the post below from the Moderator that says that the thread will be pruned and warnings handed out.

The post you specifically replied to.

Alright then since there are quite a few of you that don't know how to behave I'm making this very clear:

If you don't have anything relevant to add to the thread don't reply.

This DD wasn't for everyone, we get that, but that doesn't mean it's fine to post trollish comments, make completely irrelevant posts and being a general nuisance. This thread will be pruned and warnings will be handed out. More will be handed out if this continues.

I really shouldn't have to explain this but clearly even more veteran members have lost touch with acceptable behavior.
 
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Alright then since there are quite a few of you that don't know how to behave I'm making this very clear:

If you don't have anything relevant to add to the thread don't reply.

This DD wasn't for everyone, we get that, but that doesn't mean it's fine to post trollish comments, make completely irrelevant posts and being a general nuisance. This thread will be pruned and warnings will be handed out. More will be handed out if this continues.

I really shouldn't have to explain this but clearly even more veteran members have lost touch with acceptable behavior.
I agree, this is not to be unpolite, but the forums here where people suggest ideas etc for you at Paradox to read and have good communication is full of people who try to bully their opinions through.

Im not saying majority, but I think some people with good ideas either give up, or drown in what you spotted as trollish behaviour.
I suggest Paradox hires more people to discipline the forum users to stay clean from trolling or other negative comments that are irrelevant, and try to promote a more civilized
discussion forum, where we can disagree if we like, but try to explain how, in a relevant matter.
More openess to ideas, and instead of bashing in some persons idea because you found x fault in his/her facts or suggestion, try explaining why it wont work and offer an alternate solution with the same purpose.

Anyway, this is from my experience reading peoples posts or even my own, many have strong feelings of how this game ought to be for their own personal taste, and some have a need to try to yell and fight their way through, thinking that convinces everyone.
 
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That's my point. The community mis-read a post. That created an imagined "next dev diary coming in January" view amongst some. When that imaginary January deadline wasn't met, that created an imaginary "They've delayed the dev diary and therefore it's going to be a big announcement". And here we are in this thread reading the "Paradox implied this was going to be a big announcement and have let us down" posts.
No. nobody misread anything padna they don told us we were getting a dev diary and dev diary's mean content news, and have meant content news for ever, in every paradox game that ever existed. So yeah 2 delays and no information consider us a little disappointed
 
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No. nobody misread anything padna they don told us we were getting a dev diary and dev diary means content news and has meant content news for ever in every paradox game that ever existed. So yeah 2 delays and no information consider us a little disappointed

The fact that you think there've been "2 delays" means that you misread the "mid-January at the earliest" post too (or you read someone repeat it and didn't check for yourself).
 
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The fact that you think there've been "2 delays" means that you misread the "mid-January at the earliest" post too (or you read someone repeat it and didn't check for yourself).
buddy mid January at the earliest translates to late January early February at the latest there's no reason to announce it that early if they didn't mean for it to be interpreted that way

"Oh yeah the new Xbox is coming in mid January at the earliest." *3 months later* "hey, so uh what's up with that new Xbox you were talking about?". "oh its coming soon mid February don't worry" *mid February comes* and they release to you a literal cardboard box with an X on it. that's what this felt like
 
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From the post below from the Moderator that says that the thread will be pruned and warnings handed out.

The post you specifically replied to.
To be frank I did not like how that mod talked down to the community like that especially people who have been here the most. I am new the forum so i dont know my way around if i missed something then I apologise.
 
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buddy mid January at the earliest translates to late January early February at the latest there's no reason to announce it that early if they didn't meant for it to be interpreted that way
The fact that they said at the earliest implies that they were aiming for that, but didn't think they would make it on time. If they knew it was going to be February, why not just say that instead of leaving us hanging.
 
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Why would they announce it so early otherwise? I'm just saying they shouldn't have even announced it if we were going to have to wait 2 more months

Because it was pre-Christmas and they wanted to let us know not to expect any dev diaries before the end of the year / during the Christmas break.
 
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Because it was pre-Christmas and they wanted to let us know not to expect any dev diaries before the end of the year / during the Christmas break.
Yeah and that's all well and good however all the other paradox titles got up and running real quick after the break was over so if they say mid January why would it be wrong to assume they might pop it out a little sooner than 2 months later is all I'm saying, like you realize imperator has gotten a literal update not just a dev diary but an actual update with content
 
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After rereading the OP, I'm coming more around to the idea that the whole post was a last minute scramble to add to a really weak Dev diary. I assume the original diary was literally just "were working on some new content that we can talk about in a few weeks" so they added a bunch of fluff about adding new staff to pad out the diary.
 
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