EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of September 2021

[Weyird]

As a South African, I am excited for this update. Although as many others pointed out, I think those gold-mine abilities are too over-the-top and would encourage you to rethink them a bit. Listen to player feedback and all that.

 

[Leopard248]

is this an out of season april fool's joke?

 

[bokorthedust]

I guess the Paradox CEO resigned just in time so she wouldn't have on her resume the fallout from Mali firing the event and the stonks going negative BRRR.

 

[Demony]

I think there is currently a lack of vision in the development of EU4. Tinto is fearful of changing the map or adding new mechanics because of the potential bugs that there would be, and the consequential backlash. We can only guess why this happens as we don't know the inner workings of Paradox nor Tinto, but clearly there's a problem of project management with EU4. And I don't think that feeding us with content packs will bring back the people that stopped playing after Leviathan and Emperor, or even that it will be enough to keep EU4 community alive.

 

[Pro-Shooto]

Can't wait for Ethiopia

 

[sprites]

crashing the economy... that will be fun to watch if someone manage to pull it off in MP

 

[FleetingRain]

I think there is currently a lack of vision in the development of EU4. Tinto is fearful of changing the map or adding new mechanics because of the potential bugs that there would be

I understand fear of new mechanics, but map? Map is the least prone to bugs tbh, it just really breaks old saves at worst.

And the more I think about the DD, the worse it gets. New provinces breaking old saves is bad, but a mission purposefully created to crash the AI economy is fine? Are we going to pay to make the AI bankrupt?

 

[nextLVL]

Guys, don't repeat Leviathan's launch with unbalanced features! The dev issue isn't even fixed yet! The Controlled Gold Mines if not brought down considerably will be just broken OP and the meme mission event of dunking on all of Europe is also broken. It basically kicks out of commission a big part of the most powerful countries and is pointless because as someone already mentioned that having such a sum of money in single player already means you won. For MP it will most probably lead to Mali being banned or dog piled.

 

[AntiSocials]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

Wrong decision, South America is SEVERLY lacking

 

[nextLVL]

If you go bankrupt for not choosing Europe then the mission tree is bad. We haven't played it yet, nor seen it all. So we can't comment what will happen.

I think you did not understand what he meant. He meant that most European major powers build their income in the mid and late game on trade that is often generated with profits from Asian and American trade nodes. Basically, if you want to be relevant in a EU4 game you build a trade empire and you inevitably expand into other continents. From a game design perspective randomly wreaking someone's carefully constructed empire is just bad design. It is just frustrating and imbalanced. Also, it is obvious they got the idea from the tales of Mansa Musa and his wreaking of the Egyptian economy by accident with his large gold donations during his pilgrimage to Mecca. They then decided to reinterpret it into an alternate history scenario and that's ok, but the scope and impact is way to large. It could be more limited to maybe one's rival and with a reduced factor for inflation, not the crazy number shown here.

 

[MordredViking]

Thank you all for your comments so far. I know several of you have expressed concern about how Paradox have listened to community feedback from Dev Diaries in the past and with due respect, that was before my time. My process is to let the thread build for a day or two so that all perspectives (and timezones) can be represented. I then create a detailed summary of the salient points raised, create a report and send to the developers. I do the same on a weekly basis around general sentiment here, on Twitter, Discord and Facebook - my goal is to keep the dev's as well informed as I possibly can, and have been doing this since Leviathan (I joined the team 2 weeks prior to its release).

I am not trying to sound defensive here, but more to hopefully show that processes have changed - Leviathan was a wake up call and we are reacting to it as such.

So far, the big talking points I have seen raised here are;
- Discontent regarding the freeze on map changes
- Concern about the impact of the final mission for Mali (it goes too far and is too severe).
- Highlighted privilege is too powerful - especially combined with virtually unlimited gold mine development and no depletion
- Goods Produced, not Production Efficiency modifier
- Want more bugs fixed / balance changes first
- People want Scandinavia / South America (this was already heard loud and clear from our Twitter poll)

Now I know this is not each and every point raised, nor is this everyone's opinion - that would be impossible to represent. Instead these are points we can take to the developers and say "this is where we want to see action". This is also not my final report I will be sending to the developers (I tend to go into more detail), I just wanted to let you all know that you are being heard.

We welcome your critiques, but please keep it polite.

 

[nextLVL]

Thank you all for your comments so far. I know several of you have expressed concern about how Paradox have listened to community feedback from Dev Diaries in the past and with due respect, that was before my time. My process is to let the thread build for a day or two so that all perspectives (and timezones) can be represented. I then create a detailed summary of the salient points raised, create a report and send to the developers. I do the same on a weekly basis around general sentiment here, on Twitter, Discord and Facebook - my goal is to keep the dev's as well informed as I possibly can, and have been doing this since Leviathan (I joined the team 2 weeks prior to its release).

I am not trying to sound defensive here, but more to hopefully show that processes have changed - Leviathan was a wake up call and we are reacting to it as such.

So far, the big talking points I have seen raised here are;
- Discontent regarding the freeze on map changes
- Concern about the impact of the final mission for Mali (it goes too far and is too severe).
- Highlighted privilege is too powerful - especially combined with virtually unlimited gold mine development and no depletion
- Goods Produced, not Production Efficiency modifier
- Want more bugs fixed / balance changes first
- People want Scandinavia / South America (this was already heard loud and clear from our Twitter poll)

Now I know this is not each and every point raised, nor is this everyone's opinion - that would be impossible to represent. Instead these are points we can take to the developers and say "this is where we want to see action". This is also not my final report I will be sending to the developers (I tend to go into more detail), I just wanted to let you all know that you are being heard.

We welcome your critiques, but please keep it polite.

I think you have it well covered. If this will be heard by the right people and acted upon then I am hopeful for this Content Pack and EU4 at large. I know the community is quite passionate and can be heated when discussing their beloved game and the team of devs and support around them equally has an emotional attachment to their work. We must all remember that we the players and devs both love this game and the forum is the place where good arguments for the game's improvement need to be debated.

I must admit I found some of the sarcastic jokes in this thread funny, but to a certain degree the sum of them can be demoralizing for the devs and the community to a certain degree. We will all gain from a healthy dialogue.

 

[currylambchop]

Republics and North America are still broken and yall are seriously working on a Mali mission tree

 

[Thorum]

Serious question : why do you even bother reading the DD if it's only to write a wall of complaints ?

I think it was a really interesting DD with a few cool ideas on an until now very underdevelopped nation, exactly what I expect and want to still happen with EU4.
I even understand why Johan is adverse to changing an apparantly bug-prone part of the code at this time (though I agree with a lot here that at lesat af few impassable terrains should still be added).
Next time I'll just read the first post, the comments used to be interesting about the history of the places under discussion and stuff like that, how they would interact with others, how it could be bettered, ...
not complaints about pet projects or 500 repeats of the same potential exploit for some detail that's still being devellopped

 

[currylambchop]

Serious question : why do you even bother reading the DD if it's only to write a wall of complaints ?

I think it was a really interesting DD with a few cool ideas on an until now very underdevelopped nation, exactly what I expect and want to still happen with EU4.
I even understand why Johan is adverse to changing an apparantly bug-prone part of the code at this time (though I agree with a lot here that there should be one last round of impassable terrains added).
Next time I'll just read the first post, the comments used to be interesting about the history of the places under discussion and stuff like that, not complaints about pet projects or 500 repeats of the same detail that's still being devellopped

I was expecting a DD that would give us actually useful information like when bug fixes would come out.

 

[Zurku]

I am excited! Perhaps do some general overhauls for making africans more viable in general?

 

[wkscrombie]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

Wow. There goes my desire to redownload the game. Guess it really is dead now.

 

[Rawme]

Didn't Christopher Columbus mention in his diaries that he saw people in the New World that dressed similarly to the people from Granada?
Also, may I recommend a mission tree for the Mamluks, as well? Maybe a tree focused on restoring the Caliphate, similar to the tree of restoring the Roman Empire?

 

[wkscrombie]

This... ain't it chief.

This is obviously a poor excuse to halt development, and everyone can see it. It's also insulting to a degree that I can't fully explain without some very, very bad words, especially after the rework to tribes only affecting North America while South America was completely forgotten.

After the monumental changes that leviathan made in North America we were promised that Africa and South America would be reworked in the future. Where is that comitment? Sub-Saharan Africa has been some FOUR (or more, I don't really remember) years without major updates, while South America has been mindbogling ridiculous since El Dorado, more than SIX years ( and for the record, the Incas aren't the only ones in South America).

Honestly, I think this is it for me in relation to EU4. I was hoping that the next update would rework South America so I could return to the game, but this is just ridiculous at this point.

Here's hope for a future EU5, where thre's a good representations of places outside the anglosphere.

Not to mention the third of North America west of the Rockies being almost entirely ignored. Ugh. This is depressing.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

I want to point out that this effect is still in balancing phase, and that it has only 10% of the effect for player countries and their subjects. While I like to add rewards which make you feel good, I don't want them to be an auto-win against other players. Of course you can argue that it is an auto-win against the AI, but it must be considered that you have to be a economical behemoth already to get this mission done. Also, it is very satisfying to see the pop-ups coming over the year of AI trade countries declaring bankruptcy.

I really don't agree with the logic of making the effects softer on the player than on the A.I
The player already has a magnitude of inherent advantages over the A.I... adding artificial advantages is just an overkill. Singleplayer is already too easy as it is.

If the mission is too damaging to a player to warrant such a double-standard then it's probably too strong in the first place and should probably be rebalanced.


Im thrilled to see Subsaharan Africa finally get it's due content thought.