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EU4 - Development Diary - 4th of December 2018

Good day all and welcome to another EUIV Dev diary. We're wrapping up with Golden Century ready for it's launch next week, so there's not much meat to today's diary, but we are going to reveal the 10 new achievements, which will bring the total number to a staggering 295. I've heard that anyone who completes all of them gets their wishes granted, but I cannot comment to its authenticity.


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Trophy Hunter - Capture an enemy flagship

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You get a new home, and you get a new home - Expel 5 different minorities to your colonies

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Why is the Rûm gone!? - As Asturias, establish an Order in Rum

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The League of Mayapan - Starting as Huastec, form Maya

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Yarr Harr a Pirate’s life for me - Choose to play as New Providence and conquer all of Caribbeans.

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Forever Golden - Complete the Spanish Mission Tree

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Spanish Fly - Starting as Offaly, secure a Personal Union over an Iberian nation.

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Where Am I? - As a New World native with Random New World active, explore the entire New World.

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Basque in Glory - Starting as Navarra, ensure that most of Iberia is Basque culture before the Age of Absolutism

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An Unlikely Candidate - Starting as Mzab, Touggourt or Djerid, reform Al-Andalus


These Achievements will be available for hunters from Golden Century's release on 11th December. While some shouldn't cause sleepless nights for most players, best of luck to those who try their hand at Basque in Glory. Navarra's start is full of danger, but also massive opportunity.


Now, stepping aside from today's topic of Achievements, I'd like to take a moment to address some of the feedback we've been getting during the dev diaries for Golden Century. There have been plenty of concerns raised, indeed very fair ones, regarding Golden Century and the 1.28 Spain Update not matching up with expectations, not having community input taken into account and development generally not being in line with what the community is wanting. There are many other points that have been raised, but I want to draw light to these.

These are very fair points to bring up, and one comment in particular resonated with me, and that is that our plans and what we are developing are often shared so late in development with the community that feedback and suggestions they want to give can't or won't be able to be integrated. This has lead to a lot of people voicing suggestions for features or changes and getting very understandably frustrated when what is delivered does not take it into account.

So after Golden Century launches, we're going to talk a lot more about future plans and what we have in store for EU4 in 2019, sharing our vision of what we want to do with the game and what we want to bring to you, the player. I'll be talking about this at length in the Development Diary following Golden Century, so on the 18th December. Fittingly, it will be the last Dev Diary of 2018, before we take off for Christmas Break. Our ambition is to get our community a lot more linked in with what we are planning, and can give their feedback and suggestions accordingly and within plenty of time to implement. We have also been asked for how exactly we use suggestions from the forums and how to write a good suggestion thread, which is a great idea, and will be part of said 18th Dec Dev diary.

So while the feedback especially last week makes for some humbling reading for us, it's still important, and this is one of the things we're doing about it. There are far more plans in the pipeline, but, well, for that tune in on the 18th.

As for next week, we'll be having an early DD on the 10th, with Patchnotes. See you then!
 
They really aren't.
But they should.

I keep seeing Portugal reduced to one or 2 provinces in Europe, even getting beaten by Morroco.
And Spain getting totally smashed by France in my games.

Either I am unlucky to see such a cruel fate for both nations, or I am playing another game different than the one Nocchi575 is playing.
 
I mentioned this in a previous thread and I thought it could be worth repeating. We do listen to feedback, but we may not be able to act on it as fast as you could wish. Also, as correctly pointed out in this thread, we can't try to please everyone. We always try to balance our vision with the wishes of the community, and sometimes we do it well, sometimes we do it not so well.
And even though your feedback isn't showing any impact immediately, it can very well be shaping future updates and changes.
 
I mentioned this in a previous thread and I thought it could be worth repeating. We do listen to feedback, but we may not be able to act on it as fast as you could wish. Also, as correctly pointed out in this thread, we can't try to please everyone. We always try to balance our vision with the wishes of the community, and sometimes we do it well, sometimes we do it not so well.
And even though your feedback isn't showing any impact immediately, it can very well be shaping future updates and changes.
Does this mean iberia will be addressed again in the near future?
 
It will be an interesting read for certain. It may become the new reference point for further discussion regarding DLC.
 
I mentioned this in a previous thread and I thought it could be worth repeating. We do listen to feedback, but we may not be able to act on it as fast as you could wish. Also, as correctly pointed out in this thread, we can't try to please everyone. We always try to balance our vision with the wishes of the community, and sometimes we do it well, sometimes we do it not so well.
And even though your feedback isn't showing any impact immediately, it can very well be shaping future updates and changes.

BjornB, it's really nice to answer and all, but you got to know that you're not really saying anything right? Some posters asked very specific questions, why don't you just answer them? Those cookie-cutter replies are starting to feel a bit insulting, to be honest.
 
Does this mean iberia will be addressed again in the near future?

We will talk more about the future after we release Golden Century. I think we've proven that we are willing to go in and add/adjust things in older Immersion Packs at a later stage. This doesn't mean that we will be able to do it "in a near future" (a very relative term). But it can't be ruled out that it may happen sooner or later.

A lot of saying nothing really. But I really can't promise anything.
 
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BjornB, it's really nice to answer and all, but you got to know that you're not really saying anything right? Some posters asked very specific questions, why don't you just answer them? Those cookie-cutter replies are starting to feel a bit insulting, to be honest.

Because I will not promise anything that isn't set in stone. Once something is as close to certain it can be, it will be revealed in a Dev Diary or other form of announcement. And with my post I just addressed how we deal with feedback. I'm not promising any changes to what Golden Century is.
 
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I mentioned this in a previous thread and I thought it could be worth repeating. We do listen to feedback, but we may not be able to act on it as fast as you could wish. Also, as correctly pointed out in this thread, we can't try to please everyone. We always try to balance our vision with the wishes of the community, and sometimes we do it well, sometimes we do it not so well.
And even though your feedback isn't showing any impact immediately, it can very well be shaping future updates and changes.

If serious guarantees of that are given I would be happy to purchase the DLC, but from what I've been reading in the forum, similar promises were made before.

And speaking of the Lleida mistake, it was corrected within the timespan of the first DD's 11 pages. This was the last correction made in the DLC so far. So the hinted behavior seems to be that Paradox has time and consensus to fix some problems, but not others.

But to stay focused on this DD, I can understand not fixing some things like Achievements. They do require art drawing and careful picking.
 
If serious guarantees of that are given I would be happy to purchase the DLC, but from what I've been reading in the forum, similar promises were made before.

And speaking of the Lleida mistake, it was corrected within the timespan of the first DD's 11 pages. This was the last correction made in the DLC so far. So the hinted behavior seems to be that Paradox has time and consensus to fix some problems, but not others.

I can guarantee that previous feedback plays a role in future design work. Not all of it, and maybe not the particular parts that you favor. Those are the promises I can make.
 
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Wait it's a naval doctrine???
So a DLC that requires more DLCs???

We added some Naval Doctrines in 1.28, they will only require you to own Rule Britannia (not Golden Century)

Does the immersion pack update comes with a free patch aswell or will it be just bugfixing?

Indeed. Golden Century will be accompanied by the 1.28 Spain Update, which contains the map changes, National Idea changes etc, and is completely free.

Where are the Golden Century unit renders? Granada's tier 1 looked so good, I need to see more!

Indeed I too am waiting on receiving the renders. In the mean time, here's a shot I put together of the Granadan units just for you.

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The parenthetical is the important part there. I can think of no compelling reason to believe that the forums are actually representative of the playerbase as a whole, and several reasons to believe otherwise.

By all accounts, EU4 is still doing extremely well in terms of sales and concurrent players. To me, this suggests that the bigger disconnect isn't between PDS and the players, but between the forums and the larger playerbase, who seem to be enjoying the direction the game is going.

I somewhat agree. Paradox took this direction because it's highly profitable. They understood that the majority of consumers enjoys new shiny toys regardless of quality, and the forum represents only a tiny bit of the market, although in my opinion, a more educated and passionate one, but not actually that important in terms of market share.

But I was, somehow, expecting this to be a high quality DLC. I mean, Portugal and Spain are literally the beginning of a "Europa Universalis". Instead, we got pirates and, what is now the trademark of EU IV, a confusion of buttons with different names in different places, that we click every 20 years and do basically the same.

It's a disappointment but they do what they want with their games, the only thing i can do is not to buy them.
 
Because I will not promise anything that isn't set in stone. Once something is as close to certain it can be, it will be revealed in a Dev Diary or other form of announcement. And with my post I just addressed how we deal with feedback. I'm not promising any changes to what Golden Century is.

Again BjornB thank you for answering, it's not something I would expect from any other companies, but I've been craving quality in EU4 for a while and all I get is words, so I'll wait for some concrete actions before I buy the most recent and future DLCs :) Hope you understand!
 
BjornB, it's really nice to answer and all, but you got to know that you're not really saying anything right? Some posters asked very specific questions, why don't you just answer them? Those cookie-cutter replies are starting to feel a bit insulting, to be honest.
Thank you for proving my point of how Paradox really cannot win anything by a prompt reaction to negative feedback.
1. If they say nothing --> complaints about no feedback, "Paradox doesn't care"
2. If they answer, but do not promise anything specific --> complaints that they are not really saying anything, "Those cookie-cutter replies are insulting"
3. If they promise specific changes, the immediate complainant may be satisfied, but then they have promised something that hasn't been thought through, and run the danger of either having to implement an ill-considered change just because they promised to do it, or they have to break that promise, causing another shitstorm.
 
Thank you for proving my point of how Paradox really cannot win anything by a prompt reaction to negative feedback.
1. If they say nothing --> complaints about no feedback, "Paradox doesn't care"
2. If they answer, but do not promise anything specific --> complaints that they are not really saying anything, "Those cookie-cutter replies are insulting"
3. If they promise specific changes, the immediate complainant may be satisfied, but then they have promised something that hasn't been thought through, and run the danger of either having to implement an ill-considered change just because they promised to do it, or they have to break that promise, causing another shitstorm.

Just give me quality and you will not hear a peep from me :) If you think Golden Century is a quality DLC, I think we will fundamentally disagree.
 
Thank you for proving my point of how Paradox really cannot win anything by a prompt reaction to negative feedback.
1. If they say nothing --> complaints about no feedback, "Paradox doesn't care"
2. If they answer, but do not promise anything specific --> complaints that they are not really saying anything, "Those cookie-cutter replies are insulting"
3. If they promise specific changes, the immediate complainant may be satisfied, but then they have promised something that hasn't been thought through, and run the danger of either having to implement an ill-considered change just because they promised to do it, or they have to break that promise, causing another shitstorm.

The last Development Diary had a 20% approval rate (500 Disagrees total versus 100 agrees and helfpul total) even though it wasn't by far the most problematic. This is totally unheard of in Paradox forums, from what Reddit statistic compilations have shown. It's clear that the Golden Century DLC has a huge problem that needs careful dissecting and addressing the forum posters, who try the hardest to communicate the issues, is the first step.

And the fact that this DD hasn't been similarly bombarded shows that the effort they made to at least recognize there was a feedback problem at the end of it was worth it.
 
I'm disappointed that Asturias gets an achievement while Portugal doesn't get a new one. Asturias shouldn't even be a releasable, its cores should have been given to Leon.