EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of September 2021

[Silian Rail]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

Patch will break them anyway.

 

[Tullaris]

Some people are hysterical about adding new provinces. Who cares about new provinces? The only reason you launch the game is new provinces? Please.

 

[AirikrStrife]

New content while much of the previous issues raised by the community go on unaddressed. This is reprehensible behaviour on Paradox's part.
Well at least you have the newest shiny globohomo virtue signalling logo, so I guess great progress is made in small steps. Perhaps you should replace the platypus with 3 huge letters of B L M in that order for the extra impact.
Oh and forget about the core playerbase, I mean it's 2021, you can just milk the normies for some extra cash.

they are working on the bugs and reworking concentrate development etc, they said that in last dev diary, and this content pack is designed by content designers, coders are busy ith all those concerns they need to adress, they don't need to write about that in every dd

 

[izadirad1]

I for one was hoping for a Africa and South America map rework. If I had to pick South America since the tags are so few compared to the tribes in North America. Even Australia feels more fleshed out now. Not counting The Inca lands since that region is well fleshed out. If not new provinces maybe some new tags.

 

[Kapi96]

It's great that Africa is getting some attention.

However it's not so great that the blatantly OP mechanics from the previous pay to win DLC haven't been addressed yet...

 

[Xetfield]

Some people are hysterical about adding new provinces. Who cares about new provinces? The only reason you launch the game is new provinces? Please.

For me they were literally the most exciting part of every patch, and I don't think I'm alone in that regard

 

[SotH_ThomasReed]

I think the first thing most people want to be fixed is NA natives. If they were just tweaked to have reform mechanics like Mesoamerica it would be fine. More interesting to play, and not uncolonizable.

Second, make concentrate dev less gamey. National unrest from concentrating, scaled by capital dev could do it.

Third, I may be going out on a limb here, but I feel that difficult starts should be difficult, and thus, more rewarding to play. As it is, minors with new content can be ridiculously OP now.

I am glad that we may see Xhosa now. A formable Bantu empire could be fun.

And some minor points. Please change back strait blockading, its annoying to have a huge navy, but still see your enemies traipsing across the sea of Ireland while your blockading fleet watches.

And why on earth does "Debase Currency" not affect inflation?

 

[MrSnert]

For me they were literally the most exciting part of every patch, and I don't think I'm alone in that regard

Agreed. New provinces and tags are an incredibly easy and simple way to create new dynamics in a region, and are usually enough for me to create new interest in the game.

 

[Tomray94]

I often find myself on the opposite side of community outrage on most matters, because I understand that the devs have a lot on their plate. This time, I agree with most complaints here.

Causing an unstoppable economic crisis in Europe, regardless of how rare it will be, is just terrible from any standpoint. Deciding to not add any more provinces when sizable numbers of people have been demanding South American flavor for the past 2 years, at the very least, is a clear example against the idea that you "listen to the community". When Leviathan was being worked on, I understood that it was already enough work to add flavor to South-East Asia and, later on, North America, so South America could be worked on later, but now we have pretty much confirmed that it won't change in any real way.

At the end of the day, you are a company and we are all potential consumers. I understand that. But it is very unfortunate that the first PDX game I was ever able to really get into and the one that seemed so amazing to me (especially since the Dharma government reworks and all subsequent additions to that system) is now having subpar releases, extra bugs and un-fixed problems.

I mean, there is a real feeling of abandonment to the additions of the last 2 years. To provide an example, if you conquer all the provinces of modern Greece with a culturally Greek nation, you will retain some Turkish names there (like Siroz), whereas a culturally Italian state (like Florentine-led Athens) can take them and have Italian versions of the actual Greek name. This has been the situation since the release of Emperor, I know for a fact that it has been reported to the forum, nobody has been able to go back and fix a few lines of localization in 2 years? things are just dropped in, seemingly without been checked on again or better integrated to the game structures.

This game went from my favorite PDX title to a relatively short stop in my mega-campaigns and I suspect it will become even worse in the coming months, since it will get sandwiched between CK3 and VIC3 (while now it can still compete against a complete VIC2 with its first 14 DLC). This is not a matter of me comparing newer technology with older one, it is also not up-to-par with the CK2, Stellaris, or even HOI4 DLC quality.

Anyways, I will never imply that you are not working hard. Maybe the studio is still swamped with work and understaffed, I cannot say, but I believe that this is it for me, Emperor is probably the last expansion I'll get for this game.

 

[delusonalism_]

don't think the gold privilege is too strong. looks like it has some reasonable barriers to access so you won't be getting it right off the bat and later on-30 absolutism is absolutely brutal. compared to using all the mana privileges which costs the same amount of absolutism, the reward you get is much better as long as you have a reasonably diversified economy by age of absolutism.

the economy crash event just looks silly though. maybe could be reworked for mali to have something more subtle like bonus trade power to reflect an influx of their currency. could even limit it to places where mali gold actually went similar to the english white sea company event

 

[Darsara]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

So you promise no updates or patches in the future will break people save games? That sounds very hard to pull off. What about changes that don't break the game, but make things weird to reload after adding?

 

[BIGBOSS333]

Some people are hysterical about adding new provinces. Who cares about new provinces? The only reason you launch the game is new provinces? Please.

Wanting more content is a pretty reasonable thing I think.

 

[Frostcreep]

This thread is in danger of veering into the realms of nasty. If you don't like something, that's OK but we will not stand for direct attacks against the developers involved. Consider yourselves warned.

Regarding the concerns here, you're right, we got the Production Efficiency wrong, it should have been Goods Produced, there are thousands of modifiers in the game and sometimes we get them wrong. it's been noted and will be fixed - let's move on.

Also, bear in mind that the numbers here are not final, part of the reason we do these developer diaries is to get feedback from the community, we're listening, we're taking notes.

Please keep continued discourse polite.

The issue isn't that the devs got the modifier wrong when creating the content, the issue is that there clearly was a poor effort done to even test if the design worked before deciding to publish it in a dev diary. Checking if a modifier or effect works as expected should be a basic test done when testing out the content in game, the fact that the internal testing is this lazy before publishing the work in a dev diary is what is shameful.

The fact that even this most basic level of internal testing for consistency of designed content does not seem to exist is what is worrying when it comes to the development process.

 

[PrussicAcid]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

I won't buy a content/immersion pack if it's not accompanied by map changes when the map in various areas of the world (From Africa to Central Asia, and South America) is itself immersion breaking..

Savegames may be broken because of new provinces, but remember that Leviathan broke the game itself with mission trees and disasters like the malian one presented here. In fact, most of the new mission trees were broken. Please take a deep look at them before to put the whole thing on Steam. What's gonna hapen for people that won't purchase this pack? The same thing that hapenned for people who played Majapahit without Leviathan?

Moreover:

EU4’s director would change “a lot of things” about all the strategy game’s DLC

The bones of a decade has included some misses

www.pcgamesn.com

Talking about the seven year journey Europa Universalis 4 has been on, Johan Andersson, director of the sequel, and co-designer on the very first EU, has a list of features he’d do-over, given the opportunity. “I would have not done the new mission system, because it’s a hell to balance, and set up, and I don’t think it’s entirely great for gameplay,” he says.

I have to agree with you @Johan . So why continue with this kind of mission trees which are a hell to balance while leaving the map aside?
My guess is it's because one is free, and the other isn't... Hope I'm wrong.

 

[Bshepp]

I don't know if religions are counted as mechanic and they won't do that in coming patches

I don't think they were talking about religion mechanics. I think they meant things like pillage capital and concentrate development

 

[Sete]

So Mali can just drop a ton of gold and destroy a country? Why cant I cut the Spice Trade going trough the red sea, and destroy a country?

 

[MordredViking]

The issue isn't that the devs got the modifier wrong when creating the content, the issue is that there clearly was a poor effort done to even test if the design worked before deciding to publish it in a dev diary. Checking if a modifier or effect works as expected should be a basic test done when testing out the content in game, the fact that the internal testing is this lazy before publishing the work in a dev diary is what is shameful.

The fact that even this most basic level of internal testing for consistency of designed content does not seem to exist is what is worrying when it comes to the development process.

Have to disagree with you there, this is incredibly early in development. Having some wrong modifiers and grammar issues is equivalent to placeholder art. So long as they are spotted and reported, then there is plenty of time to get them fixed.

Remember, this was literally the first dev diary on the Africa content.

 

[Displacement]

I really like this. The missions are challenging but historically grounded, focused on increasing Mali's sway in its neighborhood with just a few big stretch goals that are actually flavorful and related to Mali's unique strengths as a country.

One suggestion would be to reduce the gold mine inflation reduction to something high but not 100%, like 80%. That way it feels grounded in reality, "Mali is really good at managing inflation due to gold supply" rather than "inflation due to gold literally doesn't exist."

 

[Gulsen]

Have to disagree with you there, this is incredibly early in development. Having some wrong modifiers and grammar issues is equivalent to placeholder art. So long as they are spotted and reported, then there is plenty of time to get them fixed.

Remember, this was literally the first dev diary on the Africa content.

Wrong modifiers, grammar issues and placeholder art, that reminds me of something, oh yeah the Leviathan release, I hate to repeat myself but Leviathan is the reason why people need to INSIST on those things RIGHT NOW, not next month, not 3 days before release and certainly not after release.

 

[Displacement]

Wrong modifiers, grammar issues and placeholder art, that reminds me of something, oh yeah the Leviathan release, I hate to repeat myself but Leviathan is the reason why people need to INSIST on those things RIGHT NOW, not next month, not 3 days before release and certainly not after release.

could you just go ahead and replace every comment with "I am very angry at the EU4 devs and I don't trust them to do a good job"? Because whether I agree with that or not, it makes sense as a statement. While what you've actually said here is just nonsense. None of these things affect how the game *runs* which is all anyone cares about at this stage in a development cycle.
1. Make it barely work
2. Make it work well
3. Make it look nice

The content team for any game will be working since before step 1 even begins, but they don't put art assets or localization in the game until at least halfway through step 2 because that just gets in the way of the developers doing the crunchy stuff.

This whole argument is just fundamentally ignorant of how game design works. If polish is missing at release, yell your head off. If polish is missing a month before release, say "wow I'm starting to worry this won't be ready in time, I hope they fix this before it launches." If polish is missing in literally the first dev diary of a new patch cycle, that's literally what you should expect.