Hoi4 Dev Diary - Telemetry and data

[Exarca]

About Infantry Equipment 3:
-Unfinished tech-tree, most of the tech tree brands end between 1943-1945
-Bad trade system, unless you close the economy a lot of resources go the drain cause you can't buy your own excess, so you can't asign a lot of factories to more resource expensive equipment.

 

[Herr B.]

This data DD is deliberately aimed at average play.

As long as you don't build the game around it...

 

[TitanMethos]

Another plausible explanation for so few people using the auto designer could simply be that the button is incredibly tiny, and not very intuitive.

Personally I think the auto designer is a great idea, both for new players and when you just want get something decent/semi-historical out instead of getting into the nitty gritty.

Possibly, but everyone I've talked to just don't care to use it period, because they like designing stuff themselves, and tweaking their designs as needed. Which is a good thing if you ask me. It shows they mechanics that go into Tank and Naval stats mean something, and that, while metas still exist, they are not absolute when it comes to designing.

Taking the time to reprogram the auto-designer just seems like wasted effort to me when there could be much better solution of just "let a play load a base-template they created in a past game, then have them edit it from there."

 

[GrafKeks]

How precisely is the data taken? I can almost feel it's not random sampling.

What is the data used for? Especially since favourite country is for example not an independent variable isn't it?

 

[billcorr]

Another plausible explanation for so few people using the auto designer could simply be that the button is incredibly tiny, and not very intuitive.

What?

There's an auto-designer button?

?

Thanks much for pointing that out.

I'm serious (not being sarcastic).

I've been playing this game for 1000s of hours and did not realize that there is an auto designer button.


(I agree with the statement, "so few people using the auto designer could simply be that the button is incredibly tiny, and not very intuitive." )

 

[Shneemaster]

I believe (at least for the Naval Designer, I haven't really looked at the Tank Designer) the auto-design button just creates whatever the AI would in that situation, checking the files in the ai_equipment folder. So if you work on improving the AI's ship and tank designs, it should have the effect of also improving the auto design button.

 

[AppoX]

I've used the auto designer for ships and tanks quite a bit, probably more so than I bothered to design stuff myself. But then again I am a pretty casual HoI4 player, don't really know the meta for designing ships and tanks so I don't even know if my designs were better than the auto design stuff.

 

[Forster]

Interesting data, for sure.

However, I wouldn't read much into it. From the first graph alone (the difficulty), it is easy to see that a sizeable amount of data comes from inexperienced or occasional players, who have no idea of what's even going on. All of the data below that support this claim, especially the division design.

I would honestly prefer it, if you would filter out all data from "easy" or "very easy" campains. Then perhaps we could see how the hivemind has reacted to the NSB changes.

This is what I don't like about the super hardcore players. They think the game is only for them and any info about it should concentrate on their likes/dislikes. The vast majority of players are not about hard or very hard, they are not bean counters and want to play for fun. I have been playing Paradox games since EUI and HOI is my favorite game. I play to enjoy myself, not spend my effort on min/max or struggle on higher difficulty, normal is good enough for me. I gave to admit I would llike to chase acchievements, but I am too laxs and can't be bothered by ironman. If they presented a subset for Herrr B in the data, fine, but don't sneer at the majority of players that don't follow in his footsteps.

As to data collection, it is my understanding that they are not collecting any personally identifiable information about the players, so why should I care. It is a tool to help make decisions about the game and that can't be bad. Also, if I understand correctly, EU has very strict laws about collection and use of personal information.

 

[BeauNiddle]

I actually find it creepy and don't like this type of detailed monitoring of gameplay at all. I'm a relatively private person and don't like the thought that everything I do in the game is being monitored and reported. However, I am open minded and may be over-reacting. So I would be interested in what other people think about this - Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable with this kind of detailed monitoring?

It's perfectly normal and helps them to understand how the game is being used and hopefully to focus on things that help the player base (maybe even better tutorials!)

The data is usually aggregated so it's not like people are sitting there looking at your exact play style and judging you.

With achievements in game the tracking gets broadcast to everybody. (or am I the only person who looks at achievement percentages to see where most players drop out the game?)

 

[Xipz]

Having never really looked at the dev diaries, then gotta say. This was actually very interesting

 

[ItThatAltersSanity]

I actually find it creepy and don't like this type of detailed monitoring of gameplay at all. I'm a relatively private person and don't like the thought that everything I do in the game is being monitored and reported. However, I am open minded and may be over-reacting. So I would be interested in what other people think about this - Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable with this kind of detailed monitoring?

I disagree with the interpretation that this is detailed monitoring. Everything that everyone-in-aggregate does is being monitored. Everything that any individual player is doing is unknowable by law-enforced design. It'd be another matter if the playerbase was so tiny that you could pin point individuals with certain filters, but HoI has sufficient statistics that my privacy concerns are not triggered.

It's like a journalist aboard helicopter flying over a crowd. They don't focus on any one face, they only make observations about what the crowd as a whole is up to.

 

[billcorr]

I believe (at least for the Naval Designer, I haven't really looked at the Tank Designer) the auto-design button just creates whatever the AI would in that situation, checking the files in the ai_equipment folder. So if you work on improving the AI's ship and tank designs, it should have the effect of also improving the auto design button.

(Warning: attempt at humor)

I've not seen this "auto-designer" you speak of.

You know, according to a Gallup poll in America, 40% of people explain certain sightings as being alien aircraft. You know, little green men in flying saucers.

Spoiler: Gallup Poll 40% attribute certain sightings to aliens

This discussion about, "oh yeah. I've seen the the automatic designer. I've even used it."

Hmmm.

Some folks also claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrials (the First Episode of the popular documentary, "South Park" explores this phenomenon).

I'm not saying that the auto-design button does not exist.

I'm just saying that I've personally never experienced the auto-design button.

 

[Herr B.]

This is what I don't like about the super hardcore players. They think the game is only for them and any info about it should concentrate on their likes/dislikes. The vast majority of players are not about hard or very hard, they are not bean counters and want to play for fun. I have been playing Paradox games since EUI and HOI is my favorite game. I play to enjoy myself, not spend my effort on min/max or struggle on higher difficulty, normal is good enough for me. I gave to admit I would llike to chase acchievements, but I am too laxs and can't be bothered by ironman. If they presented a subset for Herrr B in the data, fine, but don't sneer at the majority of players that don't follow in his footsteps.

As to data collection, it is my understanding that they are not collecting any personally identifiable information about the players, so why should I care. It is a tool to help make decisions about the game and that can't be bad. Also, if I understand correctly, EU has very strict laws about collection and use of personal information.

Time to clear up some misconceptions.

First off all, I'm not a super hardcore player, at least not in my understanding. Most of my games are played on regular, only on Germany or the Soviets I consider switching to hard. Most of the time it doesn't matter, because I'm playing a total overhaul mod, invalidating any comparison.

Second, it was not my intention to tailor the game around the hard cores players. I surely want a complex game, but that is a very different thing from a hard game. My main concern with the game (and with any PDX game) is historic plausibility, and that's it.

Third, yes, the EU has strict laws on collecting personal information. I am, in fact, an EU citizen and support this idea very much. But if you read my first post carefully, I didn't write to filter out "players" on easy or very easy, but "campains". Which is obviously possible as Paradox already collects data about the difficulty of the campain. The reason for that is not arrogance, but the simple acceptance of the fact, that HOI4 (like every PDX game) has a learning curve. No master just fell from heaven, this is the most normal thing in the world. But to answer a question like "what is my favourite / most used division template" I first and foremost need to know how to design one in the first place. To say that 9inf is the most commonly used is not an information at all, for me at least, because that just means, that a sizeable amount of playes don't know how to change a template.

 

[Iskulya]

Not surprised to see that only 4% of soviet players pick the right opposition: it's still buggy, broken, and in need of serious balance tweaks.. as is the left opposition. Seriously, the whole Soviet tree still feels like a beta.

The amount of serious bugs and balance issues across the focus trees keeps growing and growing with each new DLC. There seriously needs to be polishing done

 

[Arheo]

I actually find it creepy and don't like this type of detailed monitoring of gameplay at all. I'm a relatively private person and don't like the thought that everything I do in the game is being monitored and reported. However, I am open minded and may be over-reacting. So I would be interested in what other people think about this - Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable with this kind of detailed monitoring?

This topic is usually at the forefront when we talk data, and it is understandably something that people tend to be suspicious of - often for good reason. I'll avoid weighing in on what I feel is right or wrong, but I'll point out some facts so that if the discussion continues, we're all on the same page:

• Telemetry data is aggregated - while we can of course look at certain subsets, those subsets are limited by what data we collect
• Telemetry data is anonymized - we collect no personally identifiable information on our users*
• We use this data to inform what we do. This can range from what we focus an expansion on, to detailed tank module balance. If something sticks out in the aggregated data, there is usually a reason.
• We do not use this data to market things to you in the same way that, for example, [your legally distinct social media website] might suddenly display a bunch of adverts relating to [your legally distinct brand of hard boiled eggs] simply because you mentioned how much you wanted an egg within speaking distance of [your legally distinct brand of mobile telephone]. (Because of the point above, we could not do this even if we wanted to. Which we do not. It's a line I have no intention of crossing.)

*For non-EU fans, it might be interesting to know that the regulations around this are very strict here. We do not treat our users within and without the EU any differently.

 

[blahmaster6k]

I wouldn't jump to conclusions on this. 21% of people just use 9-0 pure infantry, the starting template for many nations. To me that says many players find division design uninteresting/unimportant and ignore the system. It works out because 18w is at least decent in most terrains, but I don't think it's some great achievement that there's no meta division on top. I'd be interested to see the division type breakdown by difficulty in single player. SP vs MP would be an interesting comparison as well.

Yeah, this was my impression as well. Seeing that the most popular template in the game is the default template for the most popular countries tells me that about 20% of players either don't know how or don't care enough about changing their templates. 6 infantry is also up there on the list, which I think is Italy, the UK, and France's colonial garrison template, as well as China's main template.

I don't know if this data is gathered (and I'm guessing it would be illegal since it would require identifying specific players), but it would be interesting to see how many hours the average player has spent in the game. How many of the campaigns are by players who just installed the game and are trying it out without knowing what they're doing vs how many players have played more than one game, vs how many players have played many campaigns and are starting to understand the game.

In some games you can look at achievement stats on Steam to see how many people get the "you played the game once" achievements but in HoI4 so many people play with mods or without ironman, and the most hardcore min-maxers mostly play multiplayer so you can't really rely on achievement stats to get an educated guess.

 

[SRhistory]

To be honest, Me and my freinds dont play the new dlc anymore, and we wont buy the new dlcs once they come out because we hate the new supply system, it doesnt work for us and it if frustrating if you cant use it. At the moment we just play on 10.5 again and we dont really miss the new focous trees and tank designer

It’s a pitty to read this. Yes version 1.11.7 still got a lot of issues. But the supply system (which got some “strange” things which some people call a bug… I say… the supply flow is strange/need some love) is very nice and more than playable if you know how. You can’t put 40w tanks or inf at the front and expect to have a perfect supply. But if you do it right ( 18/20/21/27 W for example) and built up you railway to level 3 ( for example) then you would be more than fine and NSB is really a very fun dlc with the best challenge I had since I begon playing hoi4.

to my believe you and your friends need to learn more on the supply system and there are some good YouTubes out there! Go and see and have fun!

For pdx/dev team: thanks for the overview. Really interesting but I miss info on ironman mode yes/no, using cheat codes and modding.

to my believe not a lot of people play on ironman mode and to my believe a big amount of players use a mod (to overcome many thing) or adjust the game via cheat code.

would be interesting to see these info.

 

[Idle America]

and for those of you that like playing minors the PRC seems to be the country to go for.

That might have been the eighty trillion games I played trying to get the Mao achievement, only for AI and factions to ruin it for me.

Please also let me know why you really like nuking Paris in the comments below.

Again, achievements. This is one I've never gotten close to, because the factions make the game unplayable before the USA can even join the war.

Now that we're getting Dev Diaries again, it's safe to assume another update/DLC is in the works... which means it's once again time for me to spam my suggested faction fix every week!

 

[SRhistory]

Yeah, this was my impression as well. Seeing that the most popular template in the game is the default template for the most popular countries tells me that about 20% of players either don't know how or don't care enough about changing their templates. 6 infantry is also up there on the list, which I think is Italy, the UK, and France's colonial garrison template, as well as China's main template.

The default template would just work fine. But if many people use those default templates they are really missing how easy a game on normal ironman mode would be if you just “design” your template a bit.

I don’t have “for every terrain a different template” but I change my template and got about 4 or 5 to choose from (depending my material resource like guns,art etc) and I am not a min/max person. Templates are just a part of the fun .

 

[eastcoastceojam]

This telemetry data is great- thanks for sharing. I'm probably dreaming, but I'd love to see a simplified version of this in my Career Profile. Things like:

• What are my most played nations? What are my least played nations?
• Which factions have I joined most often? Axis, Allies, Comintern, Co-Prosperity Sphere, or make my own?
• How often have I played as a Democratic, Communist, Monarchist, etc?
• When I play the USSR, what % of the time have I gone Center, Left, Right, or Tsarist?
• What are my top division templates, as well as specific to each nation?

Probably not worth the time to code this up, but I would find the Career Profile a lot more interesting if it had this kind of personalized details.