HoI4 Dev Diary from the Product Manager

[Antimonum]

Yeah, you have no actual idea about how complicated coding and balance actually are, and thus you have imagined that building focus trees that make sense and don't accidentally wind up over/under powering a nation is quite simply easier than it actually is.

Do you actually believe they did not have already concept for Finland? Adding Finland and a small focus Tree for Bulgaria would have been no effort at all and would have completed the Theme of that dlc.
Plus the countries they released were buggy and unbalanced anyway. What is the difference if they make another 2. And if they cannot finish that in 6 months what are they - game developers or chopped liver?

 

[Pyro157]

Do you actually believe they did not have already concept for Finland? Adding Finland and a small focus Tree for Bulgaria would have been no effort at all and would have completed the Theme of that dlc.
Plus the countries they released were buggy and unfinished anyway. What is the difference if the make another 2. And if they cannot finish that in 6 months what are they - game developers or chopped liver?

With all due respect, you are have been very unreasonable so far and haven't clearly thought about the hard work the devs do in this argument. With this argument "I am sure the free updates are a lot of work but I am also sure the making of Focus trees is quite easy especially because they probably have rough idea what to be included in those focus trees", I'm afraid you've lost most of your credibility here.

Being friend with a modder, I understand that making, designing and programming a focus tree to run properly is extremely difficult. The graphics have to be obtained or made, which takes huge amounts of time, and events have to run properly, and even then most mod focus trees suffer from various bugs. It's the same situation for Paradox.

Also, you are starting to sound very entitled, which is not going to work in your favor if you want to win this argument. Remember, Paradox is working for the whole of the community, not just for you. Every game developing company works extremely hard and does a lot of work to get a game out, working after hours away from their families. Examples: Telltale. Bungie. Blizzard. Game developing or computer programming for that matter can be very exhausting, and I appreciate the efforts the devs have made so far. While I still have some small issues with the DLC policy, I'm confident to say that the game is far more fun that it was on initial release. Remember the times when the war with Japan never ended because no country would bother to invade? Those days are over now, thanks to the work the devs did. Yes, the AI still has problems, but those are long-term and can't be solved in an instant like what some people think.

I'm not going to argue with you further-I shall leave Axe and others with more patience to do so. I have said my point, and that is enough, and hope you seriously consider what you've said in this thread so far.

 

[Antimonum]

I'm not going to argue with you further-I shall leave Axe and others with more patience to do so. I have said my point, and that is enough, and hope you seriously consider what you've said in this thread so far.

Now who sounds entitled. I am not trying to impress or persuade anyone - it is kind of futile. What i am doing is am making a customer complaint about the way HOI IV game management is misleading us in the forum thread started by HOI IV management and also share my honest opinions about the game after my 881 hours of gameplay.

Beeing a friend of a modder does not bring a lot of inside into game design. My brother being a programmer himself was enraged by how the game looks 6 months after release (when we played together) and refused to play it anymore. He went so far to say he would never tolerate such lazy work in his own team. I was triing to convince him on the contrary - that the team is perfekt and experienced but my brother was relentless exactly because of his background in programming.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I was triing to convince him on the contrary - that the team is perfekt and experienced but my brother was relentless exactly because of his background in programming.

How many complex strategy game teams has your brother been part of?

Game development is alot tricker then most people think, even most programmers. I have myself been involved in a few software projects both inside and outside of game development, and even the most complex non game software I test in my day to day work is pretty simple compared to some games.

And Paradox games are some of the most complex due to how much inter-connectivity there is everywhere.

 

[Axe99]

Well, let me clarify my logic then. Imagine somebody does an incomplete and bad job (developers making DoD) and writes on the forums reasons for why the job is not complete (among others the reason is at least partly - they want to leave some of the work for another DLC, which sounds that they want to milk the people who continue to buy the flavour content as much as possible). Then Paradox reads the bad steam reviews and outraged forum posts and decides to enlighten us as to how game management works in order to manage consumer anger. The game manager then writes in this forum thread the reason for the incomplete job are the free updates (which sounds a lot better than desire to make as much DLC as possible) and makes vague promises for the ones that prepaid the season pass (like me). So leaving out the very information the developers gave months ago is the actual deception and lie.

This'll be my last response on this issue unless you bring new elements to the discussion, but in terms of you comment above:

• The devs when they made their comments early on made it clear that they were still in the planning stages and things could change (which happens often, with all projects, not just game development).
• The explanation of why which countries were in or out was not a post-Steam review thing, and took place in the DDs prior to DoDs release.
• As far as I'm aware, and can infer from its content, the dev diary was provided as a general insight into the nuts and bolts of how HoI4 was developed, not to manage consumer anger over DoD. The dev diaries were possibly motivated by forum discontent about a perceived lack of dev diaries, but this is a different issue altogether.
• As I've mentioned a number of times already, you and everyone else has a choice with DLC. Even if it was milking (which any objective assessment of the situation would be unlikely to conclude), you're only milked if you choose to be milked. If you don't like the price, be an aware and responsible consumer and wait until it's cheaper. I don't like the price of high-end label clothing. I don't complain my wardrobe isn't complete without it, and that Gucci or whatever counts as a high-end label these days is milking me, I ignore it and buy cheaper clothes .
• While there were bugs in DoD (as there are bugs in pretty much everything), content-wise we don't get to decide what is and isn't complete. The scope is set by the developers. You can arbitrarily label it incomplete if you like, but it's not your (or my) place to say.

I am sure the free updates are a lot of work but I am also sure the making of Focus trees is quite easy especially because they probably have rough idea what to be included in those focus trees. Even considering the QA testing for conflicts and bugs - another 2 focus trees to complete the theme of the DLC would have been no real effort.

Focus trees (and content in general) are not easy. Even if the developers in question were experts on the history of that nation in the 1930s and 1940s (which is not appropriate to assume - in the vast majority of cases substantial research must be undertaken) there's a lot of design and balancing work and, in the case of both DoD and TfV, the introduction of new mechanics (and the testing/coding that entails). @Archangel85 made a really good post a whiles back (sadly not in a DD thread, and 'sadly'* Archangel is far too active on the forums to make finding a months-old post something I'm keen to do right now) explaining that focus trees took weeks of work all up. The limited insight I have from modding (which still isn't enough to know the whole picture, but gives me a bit more insight), is more than enough to see that focus trees aren't 'easy' or 'quick' to add to the game.

The obvious counterpoint is to say "if it's no real effort, one could argue instead of being upset, one should put the focus trees one wants together oneself". See how you go with that, and once you've got them sorted come back and say whether it was 'no real effort' or not.

As always - you have a right to complain, but your complaints are far more likely to carry weight with the people your complaining to (and thus be more likely to push things in the direction you want) if their based on a solid understanding of how the game is put together, and the things we've been told in the past.

* This isn't sad at all, of course - the devs frequent posting on the forums to let us know how things are going is great, and something few non-Indie developers do.

 

[Alex_brunius]

@Archangel85 made a really good post a whiles back (sadly not in a DD thread, and 'sadly'* Archangel is far too active on the forums to make finding a months-old post something I'm keen to do right now) explaining that focus trees took weeks of work all up.

Challenge accepted!

Perhaps this is as good a spot to explain our process as any.

What @Black_Shade did was what we call the initial pitch. Its a very short document of a handful of bullet points, to see if it is even feasible to make an interesting focus tree, and if so, what the core events and narrative chains should be (a narrative chain is something like the German coup chain for South Africa, or each of the "warplan" lines for the USA). Obviously, historical events are center stage here, but we also like to include some interesting ahistorical alternatives (for China, approaching different countries for support against Japan is an obvious one, but perhaps the Nationalist Chinese would be willing to trade territory for Japanese help against the warlords?). This usually takes us about half an hour on wikipedia. This is just the first step, though.

After we have made an initial pitch (and @podcat thinks its cool enough to warrant further work - we have had countries fail this stage), we start the in-depth research. There we focus, obviously, on what happened historically and see if we can find any other hooks for ahistorical storylines (treaties proposed but not signed, politicians sidelined by internal struggles, tanks designed but not built). We also look at economic development, both to give some flavor to the industry branch and to add some new design companies (because usually, we don't just make a focus tree, we rework and flesh out the entire country). This takes about a week.

After we are done with that, we start drafting the tree. That means we try and look at how we are going to turn our storyline ideas into focus tree branches. Balance is an issue, of course, but also stuff like the historical timing - Germany should be in a position where they are about to declare war on Poland (that is, finishing the "Danzig or War" focus) in late summer 1939. This requires a lot of boring detail work - in what states are we going to put new industry? What technologies do we give research bonuses for and when? What new features are we going to add in the expansion, and how are we going to integrate them into the focus tree? Which wargoals does the focus give? Does this focus fire an event for another country or give you the reward directly? Is the reward interesting enough to make you want to pick the focus (we have not always succeeded here - Women in Aviation, I'm looking at you)? What focuses should be mutually exclusive to others? Under what conditions can the focus be picked? Can the player actually achieve these conditions before the focus becomes irrelevant due to events in other parts of the world (imagine if China approached France for help against Japan, but could only pick that focus by late 1940 - not much good it does then)? Does going down this focus chain lock you out of important stuff? We schedule about 2-3 work days for this.

Once we have a tree draft (and, once again, podcat has signed off on it), we start implementing. How long this takes obviously depends on how big the tree is, but these days we usually aim for 70 focuses (plus or minus 20). Scripting the basic layout of the tree (focus A leads to focus B and is mutually exclusive with focus C) usually takes about a day including localisation. After that, we start adding the effects, which usually takes about another day or two, not including event chains. These usually take another 2-3 days to script and write the text for.

After that, we are almost done! We just need to add icons (2-3 hours), write the descriptions (2-3 hours), script the AI weights (2 hours for basic, a day for advanced stuff where the AI considers the state of the world), do the historical AI focus list and set up the focus tree for the 39 start (1 hour).

All together, this process takes about two and a half weeks. Then we hand it to QA, who usually find about 20 previously unknown cases where the tree breaks completely (Should China be able to get Burma road supplies if India is not allied to Britain? Should China be allowed to ask for support against a democratic Japan from a democratic US? Should they be allowed to ask for support from a fascist US against a fascist Japan? Should they be allowed if both are fascist, but the US is not in a faction with Japan?) and usually also have opinions about balance and gameplay. Once these cases are accounted for, the tree is done (until it is released, and players find all the edge cases the QA didn't find). So, all in all, I would say about 3 weeks for a focus tree (estimates are, as usual, estimates and stuff happens).

So in short: Yes, we could design a focus tree in half an hour and implement it in an afternoon. We try not to.

 

[Axe99]

Challenge accepted!

And achieved . I humbly defer to your forum-fu, much stronger than mine, thanks for tracking down .

 

[Antimonum]

This'll be my last response on this issue unless you bring new elements to the discussion, but in terms of you comment above:

• As I've mentioned a number of times already, you and everyone else has a choice with DLC. Even if it was milking (which any objective assessment of the situation would be unlikely to conclude), you're only milked if you choose to be milked. If you don't like the price, be an aware and responsible consumer and wait until it's cheaper. I don't like the price of high-end label clothing. I don't complain my wardrobe isn't complete without it, and that Gucci or whatever counts as a high-end label these days is milking me, I ignore it and buy cheaper clothes .
• While there were bugs in DoD (as there are bugs in pretty much everything), content-wise we don't get to decide what is and isn't complete. The scope is set by the developers. You can arbitrarily label it incomplete if you like, but it's not your (or my) place to say.

Focus trees (and content in general) are not easy. Even if the developers in question were experts on the history of that nation in the 1930s and 1940s (which is not appropriate to assume - in the vast majority of cases substantial research must be undertaken) there's a lot of design and balancing work and, in the case of both DoD and TfV, the introduction of new mechanics (and the testing/coding that entails). @Archangel85 made a really good post a whiles back (sadly not in a DD thread, and 'sadly'* Archangel is far too active on the forums to make finding a months-old post something I'm keen to do right now) explaining that focus trees took weeks of work all up. The limited insight I have from modding (which still isn't enough to know the whole picture, but gives me a bit more insight), is more than enough to see that focus trees aren't 'easy' or 'quick' to add to the game.

The obvious counterpoint is to say "if it's no real effort, one could argue instead of being upset, one should put the focus trees one wants together oneself". See how you go with that, and once you've got them sorted come back and say whether it was 'no real effort' or not.

As always - you have a right to complain, but your complaints are far more likely to carry weight with the people your complaining to (and thus be more likely to push things in the direction you want) if their based on a solid understanding of how the game is put together, and the things we've been told in the past.

.The reason they suddenly decided to teach us about the virtue of game management for me is obvious PR-crysis management. Especially after the outrage of the season pass owners and the s**t storm on steam reviews. We decided to put our trust in Paradox and support them but got burnt for it. The scope of DoD was explained by the dev. as axis minors expansion and they did not cover the full scope as explained.

.Meanwhile answers like if you don`t like it don`t buy it do not mean a thing for the people who bought the season pass already like me.

.Gucci delivers the clothes you need though and does not make you wait for your pants to be designed in 6 years and do not make you walk outside on your tighty wighties like paradox dlc model does. The reason you are able to buy cheaper clothes than Gucci is that Gucci has a lot of competition in clothing. Paradox on the other side has no competition in grand strategy really. The fact that they are a monopoly of sorts is the reason they will never change their way of work unless the income is somehow impacted and wide spread discontent among long time users like myself and the following bad PR might just be the thing that impacts it.

. I have already modded a bit in focus trees without any former experience and it was easy as pie.

. The biggest mods like Kaiserreich have already working focus trees for almost all countries, some of them at great depth and honestly it is the only saving grace that makes playing the game possible right now.

 

[Randall C. Reed]

@Randall C. Reed

You do know there is an ongoing Beta test team made up of some from this forum community?

No, I did not. Where does one apply???

 

[Archangel85]

No, I did not. Where does one apply???

One applies through being active in the community and posting good bug reports (that means a good description of what is wrong, what should be happening, how to reproduce the bug, and a save game immediately before it happens).