Can you stop with ridiculous meme focuses?

[TalyonUngol]

And I don't really think that's totally true. It sells more, but doing good content probably sells more too. Mods' popularity proves that there's a large playerbase that wants good content. I can go to r/vexillology or r/imaginarymaps, which have nothing to do with HoI, and in every post you can find someone who knows Huey Long and the American Union State or the Ordensstaat Burgund and the Burgundian System. Even the hammer and torch of syndicalism in Kaiserreich has become the unofficial symbol of syndicalism in some political subreddits! HoI mods are popular. And it's not like KR and TNO communities don't have memes, but they are outside the game, not inside. Inside the game there is good content.

Meme content is simply easier and cheaper to develop and release. PDX is going the easy way to make more money.
However, many players, myself included, aren't buying BftB. Why? I don't play vanilla, why should I care about a DLC of minors that adds no new mechanics? Isn't PDX losing sales there?


Why do they have to fit anywhere? PDX seems to have a very unflexible release model. Simply develop Belgium and release it in the next update as soon as it's ready. You only think updates have to feature a specific region because PDX has created that frame. Kaiserreich released in the same update South Africa and the United Baltic Duchy, which have absolutely no relation. The latest update featured National France and the Ottoman Empire, that have zero relation again apart from the name of the update "Leaving for Syria", which is the name of a French song. They are in the same geographical region but gameplay-wise, they have no contact.


I completely disagree when the Continuation War (and other missing historical wars) aren't there but absurd ahistorical content like Al Andalus and Polynesia is. You said Finland isn't that important for the game, and Al Andalus is?

I guess we'll keep on disagreeing.

And that's fine that we'll keep on disagreeing. We're not personally attacking each other so its a healthy debate.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that the HIstorical side of the community is very small in comparison to the ones who enjoy the alt-history. If PDX suddenly does a massive change in how they operate with their DLC's and updates, I don't think Hoi4 would have done as well and I dont think it would have been updated as much and supported for these many years. Its been... what... 5 years at least of continuous support? Im impressed with that. Where as if they just focused on updates for historical? I don't think it would have been supported this long. Maybe two or three years at most.

 

[Vlad123]

So let me explain:
1) PDX is a non-profit company so it must make a turnover. I think we all know this, right?
2) Having established point 1) PDX has realized that memes sell a lot, very much compared to fixing the game and from BfB has started to put these "country packs" by paying outsiders, but it seems they don't want to increase the number of employees anyway. Hoi4 (and they often complain that they are few).
3) The PDX problem is that making hoi4 a game from "the second world war well done" to "Sanbox in WW2 where you can also do World conquest with tannutuva" puts you in a field of competition where, other companies with much more experience once they get the hang of it they'll play "strategic sanbox war games" too and while casual gamers (who are like "grasshoppers / crickets" who jump from game to game quite often) will go away, PDX will have lost its "core" of trusted players that had been created up to that moment. Many companies have failed because they betrayed their initial players and wanted to compete in "areas that did not compete with them" because if you are good in one area (the deep strategic GSG) do not go and start other strands that are already "saturated with competition. "and where if you invent something, others will copy it and 99% will be more successful than you ...

 

[TalyonUngol]

So let me explain:
1) PDX is a non-profit company so it must make a turnover. I think we all know this, right?
2) Having established point 1) PDX has realized that memes sell a lot, very much compared to fixing the game and from BfB has started to put these "country packs" by paying outsiders, but it seems they don't want to increase the number of employees anyway. Hoi4 (and they often complain that they are few).
3) The PDX problem is that making hoi4 a game from "the second world war well done" to "Sanbox in WW2 where you can also do World conquest with tannutuva" puts you in a field of competition where, other companies with much more experience once they get the hang of it they'll play "strategic sanbox war games" too and while casual gamers (who are like "grasshoppers / crickets" who jump from game to game quite often) will go away, PDX will have lost its "core" of trusted players that had been created up to that moment. Many companies have failed because they betrayed their initial players and wanted to compete in "areas that did not compete with them" because if you are good in one area (the deep strategic GSG) do not go and start other strands that are already "saturated with competition. "and where if you invent something, others will copy it and 99% will be more successful than you ...

Well so far. There isn't any other game, that im aware of, that is anything like what Hoi4 is right now.

 

[Vlad123]

Well so far. There isn't any other game, that im aware of, that is anything like what Hoi4 is right now.

Yes, but the competitors, remember, when they seem to be blind and dumb, they are not blind and dumb ... PDX has always settled on "no one plays games like me", or rather, "no one plays BEAUTIFUL games like me" start to transform the other games (EU5 etc) into memes a competitor sooner or later, it will come out ...

 

[TalyonUngol]

Yes, but the competitors, remember, when they seem to be blind and dumb, they are not blind and dumb ... PDX has always settled on "no one plays games like me", or rather, "no one plays BEAUTIFUL games like me" start to transform the other games (EU5 etc) into memes a competitor sooner or later, it will come out ...

We'll see. I think that the way Hoi4 has been going, they found their sweet spot in terms of business, player count/fanbase and what not.

 

[Gefallener_Held]

Or to get down...uufff yes... HOI4 is becomed Fortnite GSG WW2 edition

It's a bad place to be if you're only focusing on sales. You can hate on the traditional historical/forum people all you want, but it's that passion that made Paradox what it is today. If you want to start doing more meme stuff and chasing sales, there are tons of other cheap game companies out there you'll wind up competing with, and eventually your core fanbase will be gone when you need them.

This guy gets it.

 

[Áurum]

Its been... what... 5 years at least of continuous support? Im impressed with that. Where as if they just focused on updates for historical? I don't think it would have been supported this long. Maybe two or three years at most.

Nobody is saying devs should not do alt-history and only update for historical, we are saying devs should do good updates.

Well so far. There isn't any other game, that im aware of, that is anything like what Hoi4 is right now.

Until there is. PDX should know well, they have Cities Skylines.

 

[Nawolith]

PDX devs didn't do any better with the part of the DLC they did themselves.

I've read your reply a few times now, and I can't really make out what your message is. Are you saying, that giving the content part to freelancers didn't help paradox with keeping resources for the (next) expansion? I'd surely was less work for them, since the freelancers used already existing mechanics.

 

[Nawolith]

Nobody is saying devs should not do alt-history and only update for historical, we are saying devs should do good updates.

Well, you are not saying that. Bt I've read through this entire thread, and there have been multiple comments like "they should focus on historical stuff instead of alt-history" or "what is that ridiculous alt-history doing in my HoI?!".

So people in this thread did ask to do less or stop alt-history all together. And I think we can all agree, that we want food updates. But "good" seems do be hard to define, as each individual has their own ideas what's good, and what isn't.

 

[Gefallener_Held]

I thought of a new benchmark concerning alt history as modelled after history versus stuff that does not belong. People who are not familiar with his work should out Mark Felton's youtube channels. It is what the history channel ought to have been times a thousand. Anyway, imagine winning an afternoon with the guy, coffee or beer or whatever where you get to hang out with him, sponsored by Paradox or whatever so that hearts of iron has to come up. Consider what someone like that or Military History Visualized would say, how they react when discussing things like Sealion, getting Spain in the Axis, China running Japan off the continent, versus such as those decried by people in our camp: communist Japan, a revived Ottoman Empire taking Vienna, etc. One group might interest him, might intrigue him as somehting he might also enjoy. The other would probably cause him to laugh in your face.

 

[Vlad123]

Well, you are not saying that. Bt I've read through this entire thread, and there have been multiple comments like "they should focus on historical stuff instead of alt-history" or "what is that ridiculous alt-history doing in my HoI?!".

So people in this thread did ask to do less or stop alt-history all together. And I think we can all agree, that we want food updates. But "good" seems do be hard to define, as each individual has their own ideas what's good, and what isn't.

One thing everyone agrees on: Bug fixes and functions that are balanced. Obviously, as I have said 10,000 times: if PDX focuses on one thing it cannot do the other, or you have to take more time to do it! This is what some people don't want to understand.

 

[Husein]

Well, you are not saying that. Bt I've read through this entire thread, and there have been multiple comments like "they should focus on historical stuff instead of alt-history" or "what is that ridiculous alt-history doing in my HoI?!".

So people in this thread did ask to do less or stop alt-history all together. And I think we can all agree, that we want food updates. But "good" seems do be hard to define, as each individual has their own ideas what's good, and what isn't.

I never asked for that, I don't want them to stop alt history, I like Alt History and I play the entire game to make it and not repeat the OTL. What people are asking for is plausible alt History. That is all

 

[Darrenb209]

I never asked for that, I don't want them to stop alt history, I like Alt History and I play the entire game to make it and not repeat the OTL. What people are asking for is plausible alt History. That is all

The problem with this is that there's no such thing as plausible alt-history, unless you limit all your alt-history changes to one specific moment.

What I mean is that if you pick a specific moment, there's what happened and the plausible other things that could have happened. The problem is that the moment you take a step off our path and onto another, what is plausible changes.

And as real world history shows, nothing is truly impossible. Implausible, yes, impossible no. And that distinction leads into the problem. That something is implausible at say, our world 1st January 1936 and stayed that way until the end date of the game doesn't mean that a change made in 1st January 1936 couldn't then lead into another change, leading into another change eventually reaching something originally considered so implausible as to be impossible.

It's a distinction that very few people, even those who enjoy alternate history settings, not just focuses in this game, actually understand.

You see, people have this bad habit of seeing a POD and assuming that everything around that POD remains static or of assuming that everything that occurs will be in direct reaction to that POD. What would actually happen is that the POD happens, people react to the POD, people react to people reacting to the POD and in the end the world you end up with could be entirely alien even just from one person deciding to make one decision. Albeit that's an extreme example that requires the decision to be made by the right man in the wrong place. Or the wrong man in the right place..


At the end of the day, when it comes to alt-history "plausibility" all you can do is try and convince as many people as you can that the situation is plausible which can actually require you to write something implausible because people's common perception of history is what decides plausibility, not actual history and not whether there is a long chain of connected events leading there.

...For the record, POD means point of divergence/difference

 

[pierrel99]

One thing everyone agrees on: Bug fixes and functions that are balanced. Obviously, as I have said 10,000 times: if PDX focuses on one thing it cannot do the other, or you have to take more time to do it! This is what some people don't want to understand.

Different people work on different things. It's not like they're just going to fire or repurpose the guy who writes the focus trees. Especially not when focus trees are one of the core systems of the game. The biggest issue I have with this thread is why do so many people think that less meme focuses means the game will suddenly have less bugs and better overall updates? It makes no sense. All of Paradox's games have major issues. It's not something that's exclusive to HOI. You could stop making meme focuses and the game would still be just as buggy as it is now.

 

[Louella]

You're grasping at straws with that one.

well, that can only be like, your opinion, dude.

You initially said that historical mode lacked replayability, and that the "alt-history" focus trees add replayability. Then you asked me to show how historical mode has any replayability, without player action.

my initial opinion is at the top of page 8 of this thread. A lot of the alt-history focus trees end up with a non-aligned ideology, and don't then have any real strategy to them. Non-aligned AI countries just tend to continue on, and don't tend to provoke other AI countries. Fascist or Communist AI countries will provoke each other.
And while all this is going on, modelling of history is neglected.

Take the Spanish Civil War, for example. If you're playing the UK, you don't get to affect it in any way. Whereas historically, the UK was involved quite a bit in various things surrounding the war. France has a national focus that unlocks decisions that would allow the UK to do something related to the SCW, but I don't know what they are, because AI France either never gets around to it, or doesn't have the political power to take those decisions, so when playing as the UK, those things may as well not exist. And because of world tension limits and other rules, as the UK, you can't send volunteers or lend lease, so basically you just have to let the SCW unfold in whatever way it will that game.

So, the game isn't letting me play the alt-history of "What if the UK intervened in the Spanish Civil War ?". I can put Oswald Mosley in power, or have Edward VIII and queen-consort Wallis, or have Queen Elizabeth and her corgis, or have a Communist Great Britain.
But I can't see what would have happened if the UK intervened in the Spanish Civil War.

Same with Finland and the Winter War. As the UK, you don't get to affect that either. The Soviets will either steamroller Finland or trigger the white peace event, before any lend-lease would arrive, and you can't send volunteers either, because by that point you're already at war with Germany.

So, the game doesn't let you do a lot of things that could have gone either way historically, but does let you do some rather absurd things.

 

[Husein]

The problem with this is that there's no such thing as plausible alt-history, unless you limit all your alt-history changes to one specific moment.

What I mean is that if you pick a specific moment, there's what happened and the plausible other things that could have happened. The problem is that the moment you take a step off our path and onto another, what is plausible changes.

And as real world history shows, nothing is truly impossible. Implausible, yes, impossible no. And that distinction leads into the problem. That something is implausible at say, our world 1st January 1936 and stayed that way until the end date of the game doesn't mean that a change made in 1st January 1936 couldn't then lead into another change, leading into another change eventually reaching something originally considered so implausible as to be impossible.

It's a distinction that very few people, even those who enjoy alternate history settings, not just focuses in this game, actually understand.

You see, people have this bad habit of seeing a POD and assuming that everything around that POD remains static or of assuming that everything that occurs will be in direct reaction to that POD. What would actually happen is that the POD happens, people react to the POD, people react to people reacting to the POD and in the end the world you end up with could be entirely alien even just from one person deciding to make one decision. Albeit that's an extreme example that requires the decision to be made by the right man in the wrong place. Or the wrong man in the right place..


At the end of the day, when it comes to alt-history "plausibility" all you can do is try and convince as many people as you can that the situation is plausible which can actually require you to write something implausible because people's common perception of history is what decides plausibility, not actual history and not whether there is a long chain of connected events leading there.

...For the record, POD means point of divergence/difference

What is plausible is what is realistically possible to alter in real world history if a certain event portrayed in the game or trough player action happened. Tell me in your opinion rank of 0 to 100 in plausibility, how plausible is it for Britain to conquer US and make Wallis a Queen there anywhere from 1936 to 1945?

How plausible in your mind, on the same scale is for Turkey to conquer Austria in the same time period, and coup Germany?

How plausible is it, same scale, for Germany to stockpile more oil and take Caucasus, thus cutting Soviets off from 90% of their oil and refiniery capabilities, thus crippling them and enabling Germany to force them to sue for peace or push harder?

How plausible is it to Nuke Berlin or London, or Paris, or Moscow as pne of the majors?

I mean if all these things are the same to you in plausibility then there's no need to discuss, we have a fundamental diference of oppinion that no discussion will ever change.

 

[Darrenb209]

What is plausible is what is realistically possible to alter in real world history if a certain event portrayed in the game or trough player action happened. Tell me in your opinion rank of 0 to 100 in plausibility, how plausible is it for Britain to conquer US and make Wallis a Queen there anywhere from 1936 to 1945?

How plausible in your mind, on the same scale is for Turkey to conquer Austria in the same time period, and coup Germany?

How plausible is it, same scale, for Germany to stockpile more oil and take Caucasus, thus cutting Soviets off from 90% of their oil and refiniery capabilities, thus crippling them and enabling Germany to force them to sue for peace or push harder?

How plausible is it to Nuke Berlin or London, or Paris, or Moscow as pne of the majors?

I mean if all these things are the same to you in plausibility then there's no need to discuss, we have a fundamental diference of oppinion that no discussion will ever change.

The problem with all of these is that you are assuming they all happen in a vacuum.

To use the Britain conquering the US example, straight off our world with one change? It's so implausible as to be effectively impossible.

With a half-decade or more of changes? Significantly less so.

Or in other words, Britain turning around in 36 and conquering the US is effectively impossible. Britain turning around and conquering the US in the 40s after the US has underwent a half-decade or more of instability and possible civil war or incredibly violent red scare with the aid of an ally or two? Not that implausible.

Holding it is another matter entirely, being fair although Hoi4 really, really doesn't model that aspect of the game well in general.

That's also the ultimate problem with the focus trees, the game doesn't handle interactions between focus trees well if at all. In a perfect world, there'd be enough focuses and enough interactions to theoretically do anything but what you could specifically do would be limited by the paths that everyone else chose to walk with that still leaving you plenty of options. So while there'd be a lot of ahistorical options, you'd be limited to what could plausibly occur in the particular run you are playing.

What I mean by that is that at any given moment you would have access to every focus that, at the specific given moment, is plausible even if they were incredibly implausible a year prior.

Every single change you listed there are all incredibly implausible with one or two minor changes, even a major power that didn't get nukes OTL gaining them. However, with an entire world of changes going on for years? It's a different matter. They are all equally plausible and implausible beyond specific moments because once you start the changes rolling, they aren't going to conform to how our world did.

If Turkey starts rearming and making Ottoman noises, everyone around them will react to that and to the people reacting to that. If Germany starts stockpiling more oil earlier or manages to gain more oil somehow, everyone will react to that and react to the people reacting to that.

If Germany starts showing signs of gaining nukes, then the countries around them will react to that via sabotage and spywork.

Every single possibility is equally plausible and implausible once you go past a very short period of time because the world doesn't just react to you. You're never making one change by making a singular change, you're making an entire world of changes and every single day that passes, those changes echo on and the world gets more different as more and more choices are made in reaction to each other and in reaction to you and you making choices in reaction to them.

 

[CrasherZZ]

How plausible is it, same scale, for Germany to stockpile more oil and take Caucasus, thus cutting Soviets off from 90% of their oil and refiniery capabilities, thus crippling them and enabling Germany to force them to sue for peace or push harder?

How plausible is it to Nuke Berlin or London, or Paris, or Moscow as pne of the majors?

Nuking Berlin, London, Paris, or Moscow is not that implausible. If WW2 had lasted another year or two, or the Comintern went to war with the Allies after 1945, it's actually conceivable. A more intelligent and patient strategy by Germany could have resulted in them taking the Caucasus. Highly unlikely but not impossible.

Drawing the lines between impossible and implausible and unlikely is not that simple and clear cut.

 

[Husein]

The problem with all of these is that you are assuming they all happen in a vacuum.

To use the Britain conquering the US example, straight off our world with one change? It's so implausible as to be effectively impossible.

With a half-decade or more of changes? Significantly less so.

Or in other words, Britain turning around in 36 and conquering the US is effectively impossible. Britain turning around and conquering the US in the 40s after the US has underwent a half-decade or more of instability and possible civil war or incredibly violent red scare with the aid of an ally or two? Not that implausible.

Holding it is another matter entirely, being fair although Hoi4 really, really doesn't model that aspect of the game well in general.

That's also the ultimate problem with the focus trees, the game doesn't handle interactions between focus trees well if at all. In a perfect world, there'd be enough focuses and enough interactions to theoretically do anything but what you could specifically do would be limited by the paths that everyone else chose to walk with that still leaving you plenty of options. So while there'd be a lot of ahistorical options, you'd be limited to what could plausibly occur in the particular run you are playing.

What I mean by that is that at any given moment you would have access to every focus that, at the specific given moment, is plausible even if they were incredibly implausible a year prior.

Every single change you listed there are all incredibly implausible with one or two minor changes, even a major power that didn't get nukes OTL gaining them. However, with an entire world of changes going on for years? It's a different matter. They are all equally plausible and implausible beyond specific moments because once you start the changes rolling, they aren't going to conform to how our world did.

If Turkey starts rearming and making Ottoman noises, everyone around them will react to that and to the people reacting to that. If Germany starts stockpiling more oil earlier or manages to gain more oil somehow, everyone will react to that and react to the people reacting to that.

If Germany starts showing signs of gaining nukes, then the countries around them will react to that via sabotage and spywork.

Every single possibility is equally plausible and implausible once you go past a very short period of time because the world doesn't just react to you. You're never making one change by making a singular change, you're making an entire world of changes and every single day that passes, those changes echo on and the world gets more different as more and more choices are made in reaction to each other and in reaction to you and you making choices in reaction to them.

My point exactly. Which is how the design should go instead of just saying fuck it and going all out on the insane and impossible

 

[TalyonUngol]

well, that can only be like, your opinion, dude.

You initially said that historical mode lacked replayability, and that the "alt-history" focus trees add replayability. Then you asked me to show how historical mode has any replayability, without player action.

my initial opinion is at the top of page 8 of this thread. A lot of the alt-history focus trees end up with a non-aligned ideology, and don't then have any real strategy to them. Non-aligned AI countries just tend to continue on, and don't tend to provoke other AI countries. Fascist or Communist AI countries will provoke each other.
And while all this is going on, modelling of history is neglected.

Take the Spanish Civil War, for example. If you're playing the UK, you don't get to affect it in any way. Whereas historically, the UK was involved quite a bit in various things surrounding the war. France has a national focus that unlocks decisions that would allow the UK to do something related to the SCW, but I don't know what they are, because AI France either never gets around to it, or doesn't have the political power to take those decisions, so when playing as the UK, those things may as well not exist. And because of world tension limits and other rules, as the UK, you can't send volunteers or lend lease, so basically you just have to let the SCW unfold in whatever way it will that game.

So, the game isn't letting me play the alt-history of "What if the UK intervened in the Spanish Civil War ?". I can put Oswald Mosley in power, or have Edward VIII and queen-consort Wallis, or have Queen Elizabeth and her corgis, or have a Communist Great Britain.
But I can't see what would have happened if the UK intervened in the Spanish Civil War.

Same with Finland and the Winter War. As the UK, you don't get to affect that either. The Soviets will either steamroller Finland or trigger the white peace event, before any lend-lease would arrive, and you can't send volunteers either, because by that point you're already at war with Germany.

So, the game doesn't let you do a lot of things that could have gone either way historically, but does let you do some rather absurd things.

So... you want them to put in a bazillion different what if's? Thats what im taking from this "I cant intervene in the spanish civil war."

Well shit, by that logic. Neither can Netherlands or the Dutch East Indies!