I think a well-written tutorial would be a massive help to new players. HOI3's sorry excuse for a tutorial was pretty much a bad joke (literally), doing nothing more than pointing out the various major menu screens and then leaving you with a "bad painting" and no clue where to even begin. We didn't even get to see the bad painting.
Complexity beneath the hood is essential, and can be achieved without burdening the player with tons of information being thrown in your face, yet available if you're willing to dig for it. The tool tips were a huge help, although they quickly ran into issues where the game changed with frequent patches, but a few of the tool tips didn't, leading to misinformation and confusion. The manual wasn't updated regularly to reflect the patches and expansions, leading to incomplete or wrong information. Several of the espionage functions, for instance, do not do what they claim to, such as "Sabotage Production" having no effect on Production, but reducing the repair rate. It's also far from clear that supporting rebels only functions if there are active revolts, so it's a 100% waste of Leadership to use until war breaks out and there are revolts in occupied territory (because revolts NEVER happen in core territory, even with Revolt Risk at well over 20%). When the tips or manual don't tell you stuff like that, it's difficult to figure out what you're doing wrong.
The OOB was confusing and annoying, because there was no need to have the full OOB on the map, and because it became a chore to maintain command ranges between all of the various HQ levels, ESPECIALLY before the lines of command were made visible in a later expansion. In my opinion, Corps HQs should still be on the map to provide incentives for keeping Corps together (and possibly to serve as supply hubs for its subordinate divisions), but the AI wasn't programmed to maintain Corps cohesion (or to distinguish one type of division from another), making it just another player advantage over the limited AI. At the other end of the spectrum, HOI4 was released with no OOB, making it difficult to track down individual units. It felt highly unrealistic NOT to have any structure, and that structure was later added in the patches and expansions, as a result of popular demand.
Basically, there's a significant difference between a complex game and a complicated one: complexity is needed to simulate realistic interactions and relationships, so the game mechanics can function intuitively, otherwise the game is either too "simplistic", or can become unintuitive and "complicated". When it does what you expect, it's easy to learn the complexities; when things don't make sense and need to be learned through trial and error (lots of the latter) or constant referral to the documentation (far worse if the documentation is wrong), then it's complicated and hard to learn. HOI3 had too much of the latter, while HOI4 took away a lot of the complexity in order to reduce the learning curve, which unfortunately made for a less realistic game.
The popularity of several "complex" mods indicates that there is a market for complex games, even deeper than HOI3, but it NEEDS to be kept accessible to the more casual player in order to sell.
Complexity beneath the hood is essential, and can be achieved without burdening the player with tons of information being thrown in your face, yet available if you're willing to dig for it. The tool tips were a huge help, although they quickly ran into issues where the game changed with frequent patches, but a few of the tool tips didn't, leading to misinformation and confusion. The manual wasn't updated regularly to reflect the patches and expansions, leading to incomplete or wrong information. Several of the espionage functions, for instance, do not do what they claim to, such as "Sabotage Production" having no effect on Production, but reducing the repair rate. It's also far from clear that supporting rebels only functions if there are active revolts, so it's a 100% waste of Leadership to use until war breaks out and there are revolts in occupied territory (because revolts NEVER happen in core territory, even with Revolt Risk at well over 20%). When the tips or manual don't tell you stuff like that, it's difficult to figure out what you're doing wrong.
The OOB was confusing and annoying, because there was no need to have the full OOB on the map, and because it became a chore to maintain command ranges between all of the various HQ levels, ESPECIALLY before the lines of command were made visible in a later expansion. In my opinion, Corps HQs should still be on the map to provide incentives for keeping Corps together (and possibly to serve as supply hubs for its subordinate divisions), but the AI wasn't programmed to maintain Corps cohesion (or to distinguish one type of division from another), making it just another player advantage over the limited AI. At the other end of the spectrum, HOI4 was released with no OOB, making it difficult to track down individual units. It felt highly unrealistic NOT to have any structure, and that structure was later added in the patches and expansions, as a result of popular demand.
Basically, there's a significant difference between a complex game and a complicated one: complexity is needed to simulate realistic interactions and relationships, so the game mechanics can function intuitively, otherwise the game is either too "simplistic", or can become unintuitive and "complicated". When it does what you expect, it's easy to learn the complexities; when things don't make sense and need to be learned through trial and error (lots of the latter) or constant referral to the documentation (far worse if the documentation is wrong), then it's complicated and hard to learn. HOI3 had too much of the latter, while HOI4 took away a lot of the complexity in order to reduce the learning curve, which unfortunately made for a less realistic game.
The popularity of several "complex" mods indicates that there is a market for complex games, even deeper than HOI3, but it NEEDS to be kept accessible to the more casual player in order to sell.
- 5
- 3
- 1
