Why is it that many people are angry right before the release of a new DLC?

[Dalos]

People need to remember that Johan had to step in to the Emperor project mid update after Jake "left" the company. I would guess they had a lot to fix and little time to do it before the release date. Not an excuse but that is likely why some features are problematic.

I am interested to see the upcoming patch info since Leviathan is completely under Johan's control. Hopefully a lot of old issues Jake refused to address will be fixed, as much as the engine will allow.

In my opinion, a noticeable decline started when Jake showed up so no wonder he's not my favorite game designer... But at first, it was covered by great map changes done by Trin Trangula.

I don't know whether it's entirely his fault but as a customer, I really don't care.

There are quite a few features in Leviathan that look like they were added just to be added (tall changes for example) so I'm skeptical, unfortunately... It has probably something to do with relocation to Tinto but yet again... As a customer who is asked to pay full expansion price, I don't care, these are expenses that should be covered by the company, not me.


That said I will surely give it another try as I really loved this game and there are still places I want to try.

 

[petertju]

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You are right that on paper people who are dissatisfied with the game are the ones who are more likely to speak out; but to say that only the minority is dissatisfied with where the game is going is a hard sell. For YEARS those forums were known for being filled with people who were.. seemingly unnaturally appreciative of the game; this has been slowly changing since only last 1-2 years and to claim that it's a "standard" and that they are "a minority" is frankly disrespectful and untrue.


And to be clear: I have no position in this myself, most of the things that people both appreciate and dislike about EU4 don't exactly affect me so I have no stakes in this debacle on whether or not the last few updates were good or bad. At the same time though I'm not a big fan of undervaluing someone's opinion on false grounds that "they are a minority"

This.

I remember a few years ago, there was a guy Ixal or sth like that. He was always negative and angry about dev diaries and what was happening. He used to be an unicorn. Forum-goers have become a lot more negative over the past few years.

though tbh, I don't believe that this change is the fault of Jake or Johan. It's just the game that is slowly collapsing under the new content. Though in the latest few dev diaries at least they have been honest about the limitations that they are facing. We just shouldn't expect massive mechanical reworks anymore.

 

[Romanix90]

I agree, but stuff like bugs don't directly increase revenue, they indirectly do. Look at cyberpunk or Warcraft 3 reforged.

Warcraft 3 Reforged was released as a broken product. It takes special level of skill to unfinish all ready finished game, lie to the players and costumers, false advertising use, like the one with new and improved cinematic cutscenes, the game itself was a trash. I dodged bullet for not preordering that game. I do own Starcraft 2 and that game is amaizing even today. As for bugs in EU4 i did notice some of them. In Emperor for example i encountered vey few of them. Most of them are fixed by now from my understanding.

 

[EarlKonrad]

This.

I remember a few years ago, there was a guy Ixal or sth like that. He was always negative and angry about dev diaries and what was happening. He used to be an unicorn. Forum-goers have become a lot more negative over the past few years.

though tbh, I don't believe that this change is the fault of Jake or Johan. It's just the game that is slowly collapsing under the new content. Though in the latest few dev diaries at least they have been honest about the limitations that they are facing. We just shouldn't expect massive mechanical reworks anymore.

Johan has always been good at being transparent, even if what he has to say won't make people happy. He is also relatively active in this forum (pretty much the only dev on the team that is) which is great and instantly got people's hope high for Emperor. And even after Emperor's release we got a lot of Dev activity in the form of questionnaires, threads asking for feedback about bugs, Johan doing a public announcement when they messed up the new multiplayer release, etc.

I just find it unfortunate that there isn't more of this type of dev-player interaction here in the forum.

 

[Jernau_]

Gaming forums have sadly been taken over by the "the sky is falling" type of gamers. Its a trend you see in pretty much all gaming forums.

Just look at the amount of people whining about the cost of games, when AAA games cost the same now as they did in the 1980's.

Reddit is actually one of the few good arenas left to talk about games as you cant keep bumping negative threads forever so you get a bigger variety in posts and a more positive and healthy vibe in the forum.

 

[Guibou]

I stopped updating the game at 1.29.6 and do not intend to go any further.

(...) while AI are in 10k debt in 1550 lmao.

Might be a good idea to get 1.30.4 if that's your issue.

Back on topic. The forum is the vocal minority of an already niche game. Even people that hate continually, love the game. We have EU4 close to our heart and know what it could be ! We don't always have the good ''how'' but we are continually challenged by the perseived lack of feedback from the dev and the direction the developpement is going.

Check the dev diaries after emperor release for exemple. Many forumers made topics about bugs/anoyance with solutions. The dev came out saying 1.30 would be a ''backlog'' fix to alot of issuess. But the direction wanted something else and it got postpone until they could add mechanics that have to be paid for. 1 year later, we have a DLC adding more to the game but not entirely fixing the flaws of it.

From the dev point of view they are doing what they think is good/doable but every time they talk here they are met with a (sometime rightfully) wall of negativity. So they don't communicate much. But forumers still pass their messages and ideas, and they don't know if they are acknowledged by them.

The dev are trying to go one way, the direction asked them to go another, the players want something else. And whenever an interaction happen, there's negativity. Less interactions leads to more negativity. If i was in the EU4 team i would quit reading the forums after 1 post. Some messages are really mean towards them and i know i can't substain that. Kudos to Johan who still got the gut to keep doing it, even if we can read sometime his desperation.

 

[EarlKonrad]

I have noticed continuous criticism since at least Golden Century. Is it really deserved? Is it a tradition already? I myself was quite critical of some features implemented by Emperor DLC, particularly HRE and Catholicism changes. Is the EU4 public moanful? Do we like to complain too much?

Can't speak for anyone else but me. When I started playing EU IV is was all roses and sunshine for the first 500 hours or so, then I started diving deep into the game's mechanics, how the AI behaves and the DDs (at around this time I decided to read all of the DDs, even the pre-release ones). It was around the time of Dharma that I started losing faith as there were numerous we documented bugs that went unfixed, the AI was sttrugling more and more to play the game with any semblance of competency, many systems were, frankly, abysmal in the design (MoH; terr core), and it felt like the Devs simply didn't care about the game and were only interested in adding new stuff because they just had to. I felt that way with Dharma, Rule the Waves, Gold Century, Emperor and now Leviathan. When I look at the feature list all I can think is why do I need any of this in the game? These features aren't compelling enough for me to pay for them (mind you I have everything up to Emperor, even the silly music and art packs). Worse yet, no patch always fix the numerous bugs that, to this day, exist in the game and only keeps adding more bugs.

Ultimately it is a question of trust. It has been 5 years since I started playing EU IV and not much has changed, frankly. If in 5 years they can't fix debt, AI not knowing how to wage war and not using the new mechanics that keep getting introduced, why should I trust that the next patch/DLC will be different?

 

[Miganto]

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You are right that on paper people who are dissatisfied with the game are the ones who are more likely to speak out; but to say that only the minority is dissatisfied with where the game is going is a hard sell. For YEARS those forums were known for being filled with people who were.. seemingly unnaturally appreciative of the game; this has been slowly changing since only last 1-2 years and to claim that it's a "standard" and that they are "a minority" is frankly disrespectful and untrue.


And to be clear: I have no position in this myself, most of the things that people both appreciate and dislike about EU4 don't exactly affect me so I have no stakes in this debacle on whether or not the last few updates were good or bad. At the same time though I'm not a big fan of undervaluing someone's opinion on false grounds that "they are a minority"

My view was meant to be more generic for most games and games forums out there - it's a fact for most forums on any topic, the loudest people are those that complain because it's human nature to stand up to complain about something that is wrong, rather than stand up to say 'hello chaps, today I wanted to tell you that I still enjoy the game'. The problem (let's say debt spiral) hasn't gone away, and so you can justifiably come back once a week and mention it, as well as in 'that topic about trade' because it's in some way related to money and therefore the debt spiral is also ok to mention here too. No-one comes back weekly to re-praise the same game they are still enjoying, so that's why the forums become the way they are - it's completely natural and there's no issue with it, other than the sad fact those that enjoy the game give up coming on the forums just to see/hear the same problems being mentioned and be put down for being up Paradox's arse for daring to say they enjoy the game and don't think 'topic xyz' is entirely justified for 'insert facts here'.

I just checked 50 negative reviews of emperor and 42 of them mentioned debt spiraling. It's people that go and down vote an entire dlc for a single problem that isn't actually about the expansion/dlc. This is backing up what i'm talking about.

I am not saying there aren't problems, or that what they are saying isn't justified, I am saying it's human nature / society today to complain about something you don't like much more than to say what you do like (without being prompted) - the stats there again only show a few hundred people out of thousands playing the game - it's still a small sample and i'm surprised how many are still positive.

Finally - a lot of DLC's were downvoted after the first few purely for being 'another dlc cash grab' - £x for a dlc was considered too much by some people and so it was downvoted due to cost, not content. Noone was up-voting the game purely because they were ok with buying it for the price, so again, people that have an issue are more likely to downvote/voice their complaint than someone is to upvote/voice their support of something if not prompted, and so the numbers are skewed and a small sample size to start with.

p.s - 'undervaluing their opinion based on the false grounds they are of the minority' ??? I literally said in what you quoted that their negativity may be justified and i'm saying it again here - The value of their opinion is identical to the value of the opinion of those that are content with the game.

 

[Jernau_]

My view was meant to be more generic for most games and games forums out there - it's a fact for most forums on any topic, the loudest people are those that complain because it's human nature to stand up to complain about something that is wrong, rather than stand up to say 'hello chaps, today I wanted to tell you that I still enjoy the game'

I just checked 50 negative reviews of emperor and 42 of them mentioned debt spiraling. It's people that go and down vote it for a single problem that isn't actually about the expansion/dlc. This is backing up what i'm talking about.

I am not saying there aren't problems, or that what they are saying isn't justified, I am saying it's human nature / society today to complain about something you don't like much more than to say what you do like (without being prompted) - the stats there again only show a few hundred people out of thousands playing the game - it's still a small sample and i'm surprised how many are still positive.

All DLC player reviews also suffer from the "DLC's are bad because DLC's cost money" crowd.

 

[holyvigil]

I have noticed continuous criticism since at least Golden Century. Is it really deserved? Is it a tradition already? I myself was quite critical of some features implemented by Emperor DLC, particularly HRE and Catholicism changes. Is the EU4 public moanful? Do we like to complain too much?

I don't think its uniquely moanful or that the group complains an odd amount. At least to my comparisons of other forums for games I've played that come out with bi annual updates like WoW, Eve, or BDO.

I think what Republic of Mercury said is a big part of it but I also think something that hasn't mentioned yet is that some people hold out hope that their special issue is still in a dev diary somewhere. When a release date is announced and they find out the special issue (or special direction of the game) that they've been coddling isn't getting addressed they finally go ballistic.

I think country buffs/flavor is a good example of this. For Emperor it was lack of changes to Spain and Portugal that made people go crazy. In MoH it was Ming. In the Russian Immersion pack it was the not Russian Slavic states.

 

[gigau]

Johan has always been good at being transparent, even if what he has to say won't make people happy. He is also relatively active in this forum (pretty much the only dev on the team that is) which is great and instantly got people's hope high for Emperor. And even after Emperor's release we got a lot of Dev activity in the form of questionnaires, threads asking for feedback about bugs, Johan doing a public announcement when they messed up the new multiplayer release, etc.

I just find it unfortunate that there isn't more of this type of dev-player interaction here in the forum.

There are a couple of things to bear in mind... Johan was there at the start, literally, two decades ago. He was there when the forum had a few thousand members.

The EU team is now Paradox Tinto, who, for the most part, started a few months back. Give them some time to get their feet under them.

Additionally, as you said, Johan will come and be transparent even if players aren't happy... if he disagrees strongly with the vocal players, he'll brush it off. Not all devs, or even not all people, can do the same. Especially when one sees how some aggressive some feedback can be.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I have noticed continuous criticism since at least Golden Century. Is it really deserved? Is it a tradition already? I myself was quite critical of some features implemented by Emperor DLC, particularly HRE and Catholicism changes. Is the EU4 public moanful? Do we like to complain too much?

There are longstanding patterns dating back to 6+ years ago. Different things annoy different people, but since they're all recurring it will tend to result in complaints near DLC.

Common recurrences:

• Nerfing even esoteric exploits rather than issues with the game that affect everybody.
• UI lies to the player, and tends to add ways it does so rather than reduce them.
• UI also has serious QoL issues. Some of these are attempted to fixed with paid DLC. Which doesn't work. This problem overshadows the times where the UI has legit been improved, because it's still so bad.
• New mechanics interact badly with AI's understanding of using them.
• Above compounded by the fact that the AI was made worse, deliberately, and many of us haven't forgotten that.
• There is a practically permanent tug of war between those who want the game to reflect history more, and those who just want it sound mechanically (even at the expense of history). Game limits mean devs can never please both...but some DLC/patch choices actually manage to break both history and mechanic and upset both at the same time.
• Accompanying patch notes/balance changes make no sense sometimes, to the detriment of gameplay. Consider how heavy-handed religious has been nerfed. It's never been restored to its pre nerf state...when it was widely acknowledged to be inferior to humanist even then. Pdox idea usage data also did not reflect any apparent need to nerf the group...in fact nobody ever demonstrated that. Not only do players remember changes like this, they also look at future changes with more scrutiny.
• Generally, patches change a lot of things at once. This happens at a rate higher than bugfixing, and quality of releases often suffers.

The people complaining tend to be experienced players who like the game, but don't like its myriad flaws. No time brings those flaws to the fore like a new DLC release. It tends to temper excitement a bit, though a lot of people still play.

 

[EarlKonrad]

There are a couple of things to bear in mind... Johan was there at the start, literally, two decades ago. He was there when the forum had a few thousand members.

The EU team is now Paradox Tinto, who, for the most part, started a few months back. Give them some time to get their feet under them.

Additionally, as you said, Johan will come and be transparent even if players aren't happy... if he disagrees strongly with the vocal players, he'll brush it off. Not all devs, or even not all people, can do the same. Especially when one sees how some aggressive some feedback can be.

Thank you for the clarification.

 

[RogerJerk]

I enjoy the game and try not to be too negative on these forums... but it just seems like a total lack of effort recently. Johan is usually posting about the impossibility of making meaningful changes to the game. The game gets more bugs and exploits with every patch, and few of them ever get fixed.

Money from peace deals is still broken! After almost a year! Outraged macro relations are still broken. The AI deletes all of its troops on day 1 or as soon as they end a war. Countries lose war after war and continue to take DOTF.

A lot of the things that people complain about are frustrating because they used to work! And the fact that they no longer work would have been evident with any amount of playtesting. The only two options are a lack of QA or a lack of care. I get that the game is a behemoth, and that it's hard to modify anything without changing something elsewhere, but come on. People have paid hundreds of dollars for your game.

Hearing Groogy say that they can't "just conjure up content" and that they "didn't have enough time" on stream yesterday just assures me that this will be another disappointing DLC. Why would I bother opening up my wallet?

 

[cristofolmc]

If anything EU4's community is the most content of all. The amount of rubbish they take with a smile is amazing. Devs don't get away with nowhere nearly as much with other titles.

But everyone has its limits and the game's weaknesses have been so obvious since Golden Century people's patience is running out, I guess.

 

[Miganto]

Rough idea of player numbers, retention, growth etc. Us forum'ers are a distinct minority, it's a fact, please stop believing it isn't.

Europa Universalis IV - Steam Charts

An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers, seeing what's been played the most.

steamcharts.com

 

[gronak]

There's been a direct correlation between the growth in EU4's popularity and an increase in toxicity on both these forums and on reddit. I imagine with lockdowns and people sitting in their house, a lot have fixated on things they don't like which only increases their rage.


But at the same time, the 'main part' (the subject, e.g colonisation/trade, etc) of their posts have been fair - but it's what they say around the topic that makes it toxic. Insults to the devs have skyrocketed the past few years. Peoples wording when disagreeing with each other too is more openly hostile, creating a toxic environment. This is a trend I have noticed across different game forums/subreddits too, so I hope it is just the temporary impact lockdowns have had on people, rather than it being the gaming culture evolving into being toxic, entitled, children.

 

[scriptkiddy]

Rough idea of player numbers, retention, growth etc. Us forum'ers are a distinct minority, it's a fact, please stop believing it isn't.

Europa Universalis IV - Steam Charts

An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers, seeing what's been played the most.

steamcharts.com

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Wouldn’t buy if these were shares.

Though wouldn’t sell either. Yet.

 

[RogerJerk]

Rough idea of player numbers, retention, growth etc. Us forum'ers are a distinct minority, it's a fact, please stop believing it isn't.

Europa Universalis IV - Steam Charts

An ongoing analysis of Steam's player numbers, seeing what's been played the most.

steamcharts.com

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I'm not pretending like Paradox isn't here to make money... but is the idea that you can't both make money and satisfy the people that are dedicated enough to post here?

Look at the peak and drop after the emperor DLC was released. Would the current line be higher if 1.30 hadn't broken frequently used game mechanics?

Loot boxes make a ton of money too.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't think the industry has a good way of estimating expected value of individual patch prioritizations/mechanic changes. Each thing probably contributes positively or negatively to sales, but it's not trivial to attribute how much individual components impacts the overall.