So Victoria 3 is out....

[manager2525]

If someone peaks on I:R steam page, you will find several posts "Better than Victoria 3".

Can't you see what is happening? It is a devious masterplan in action from the naysayers!!! They are dumbing negative reviews in Vic 3 while giving positive to Imperator. They are trying to get the Steam rating of Vic below that of Imperator so that they can say "see it even has worst reviews than Imperator"!!!

 

[Chaostrian]

Ok, I have to say I would find it extremely funny if the ratings at Imperator now went positive, just because everyone wrote that the game is better than vic 3 xDD

in the end you got a 70% positive rating and the other 30% are these typical "development stopped/game dead" reviews xD

 

[IsaacCAT]

15 new games for PDX as developer or as distributor? Because they might be counting games like Cities Skylines 2 which are made by third party.

As PDX the publishing company. They did not say how many were developed by PDS the GSG studio.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

That’s because they think about unique players, when they should be thinking about play time.

The most commonly used KPI to track a games overall health is MAU. That's not just for Paradox but pretty much any game being played. How long you play doesn't really matter, as long as you come back frequently.

The time and resources they are putting to create another completely new IP is more risky and more costly in terms of headcount that one and a half team developing two versions of one game.

CK3 & Vicky 3 both use the same Clausewitz engine, just one slightly newer than the other. The fact that they use the same engine means that engine improvements made for one title can be used by another. EU4, HOI4, Stellaris etc. were all branches of the engine meaning that there was very little space for improvements to carry over.

15 new games for PDX as developer or as distributor? Because they might be counting games like Cities Skylines 2 which are made by third party.

Paradox or PDX, which includes PDS (Paradox Development Studios) and PDI (Paradox Interactive), currently has 15 unannounced projects that are being worked on.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Thanks for the information.

The MAU metric has been very useful indeed but companies like PDX also have the time played per user in their games, being able to assess quality over quantity.

Maybe PDX is targeting more casual players for their new games to increase MAU. It is a difficult balance to please everyone. That’s the reason for two versions of the same game.

From the wiki about AU:
Active user is limited in examining pre-adoptionand post-adoption behaviours of users. Users commitment to a particular online product may also depend on trust and the alternatives quality.[54] Pre-adoption behaviour's effects on post-adoption behaviour, that is predicted by past research has suggested,[55] is found to have associations with factors such as habit, gender and some other socio-culturaldemographics.[56] Buchanan and Gillies (1990)[57] and Reichheld and Schefter (2000)[58]argues that post-adoption behaviours and continuous usage is "relatively more important than first-time or initial usage" as it shows "the degree of consumer loyalty", and that ultimately produces long term product value.

 

[lukaslunt]

The most commonly used KPI to track a games overall health is MAU. That's not just for Paradox but pretty much any game being played. How long you play doesn't really matter, as long as you come back frequently.

CK3 & Vicky 3 both use the same Clausewitz engine, just one slightly newer than the other. The fact that they use the same engine means that engine improvements made for one title can be used by another. EU4, HOI4, Stellaris etc. were all branches of the engine meaning that there was very little space for improvements to carry over.

Paradox or PDX, which includes PDS (Paradox Development Studios) and PDI (Paradox Interactive), currently has 15 unannounced projects that are being worked on.

What we expect above all is that the company stops avoiding us and offers us at least a patch on the problems (in particular the problem of crashes on the tags which greatly limits modding). And also that they tell us why they canceled the game without telling us, contrary to what they said at the time.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

And also that they tell us why they canceled the game without telling us, contrary to what they said at the time.

It is never announced when a title goes into legacy, that is normally a purely internal term. The fact that it has been acknowledged that I:R moved into legacy is quite out of the ordinary. For the rest Legacy mostly means that the game isn't actively developed anymore, there's nothing really special with that term.

It has been discussed before what happened surrounding I:R. People and Teams got moved around to help support projects that required the additional Manpower which you can now see in the different PDS Studios but any follow up talks regarding I:R fell through. It's been posted in the Megathread before. Why those talks fell through, well that's only something the folks that were part of those meetings would know.

 

[lukaslunt]

It is never announced when a title goes into legacy, that is normally a purely internal term. The fact that it has been acknowledged that I:R moved into legacy is quite out of the ordinary. For the rest Legacy mostly means that the game isn't actively developed anymore, there's nothing really special with that term.

It has been discussed before what happened surrounding I:R. People and Teams got moved around to help support projects that required the additional Manpower which you can now see in the different PDS Studios but any follow up talks regarding I:R fell through. It's been posted in the Megathread before. Why those talks fell through, well that's only something the folks that were part of those meetings would know.

Whether the game is legacy or not doesn't change the fact that its development has stopped and will never resume. And yet we were told that when a paradox game is stopped it is clearly announced. Obviously a lie. One more I would say. And yet despite the fact that we now know that the game will no longer be developed, no one has the courage to make a real announcement, or even come and talk to us. Afterwards, you can always play on words and tell us that we didn't understand.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

And yet despite the fact that we now know that the game will no longer be developed, no one has the courage to make a real announcement, or even come and talk to us.

We know it because a dev came and explained what was happening with the project. It might not be a big announcement but a official statement had been made.

will never resume

Not quite. While rare both Surviving Mars and the Shadowrun Trilogy are legacy titles that have had additional/new work done. It does require an external party to take up the reins which is even rarer when it comes to PDS titles.

In the end it doesn't really matter what I say though. At most I can help understand what happened a bit but it doesn't change the way it went or how people feel about it.

 

[RELee]

Nah we have the moral high ground and considering PDX recent track record, they should leave Imperator as it is if they cannot fix the bugs without breaking something else.

Let the Vic3 crowd rip what they sow. Already many started feeling that something is truly bad with the game.

Many of us in Imperator and CK2 forums have predicted that Vic3 will be a bad game compared to Vic2 as CK3 is to CK2.
And we see current track record with other games like EU4 which is completely destroyed to the point some of us are still on 1.29 patch.
The last good version of EU4.
That is why I have no hope for future PDX games.

Perhaps Prozac would help.

 

[lukaslunt]

We know it because a dev came and explained what was happening with the project. It might not be a big announcement but a official statement had been made.

Not quite. While rare both Surviving Mars and the Shadowrun Trilogy are legacy titles that have had additional/new work done. It does require an external party to take up the reins which is even rarer when it comes to PDS titles.

In the end it doesn't really matter what I say though. At most I can help understand what happened a bit but it doesn't change the way it went or how people feel about it.

It is not because a paradox person has put a message telling us that the game is a legacy that this message serves as an official statement.
-An official statement is a statement that is visible to the majority of people on the forum and this is not the case.

Afterwards you say that there were precedents, but these are games that do not come from paradox.

Anyway we were lied to and paradox it is and now behaves like any other studio, taking these players for simple consumers more than as players.

 

[Victor1234]

We know it because a dev came and explained what was happening with the project. It might not be a big announcement but a official statement had been made.

Not quite. While rare both Surviving Mars and the Shadowrun Trilogy are legacy titles that have had additional/new work done. It does require an external party to take up the reins which is even rarer when it comes to PDS titles.

In the end it doesn't really matter what I say though. At most I can help understand what happened a bit but it doesn't change the way it went or how people feel about it.

Out of curiosity and to maybe take the discussion in a more positive direction....does that mean if some other studio came to Paradox and said they wanted to continue work on Imperator by creating a new DLC for it, that Paradox would be ok with it? Obviously details would matter a lot, but just as a general idea.

I don't mean something like Darkest Hour/For the Glory/etc where it was a modding consortium of fans (Paradox seems to have soured on those), but something like The Guild 3, where publisher THQ was ok for Purple Lamp Studios to replace Golem Labs as the developer once the game was ready for release, to polish it up.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

Out of curiosity and to maybe take the discussion in a more positive direction....does that mean if some other studio came to Paradox and said they wanted to continue work on Imperator by creating a new DLC for it, that Paradox would be ok with it? Obviously details would matter a lot, but just as a general idea.

So things are probably different considering this is a PDS title but the closest example would be Surviving Mars. That is a game created by Haemimont Games and basically wrapped up back in 2019, but kept a consistent user base that was also actively advocating for continued support/dlc. In this case Paradox went out to find another studio that could take on the project.

I wouldn't expect anybody from the outside to approach Paradox with a pitch to continue the game, it would probably be something that came from PDX. I also think that this scenario is one of the several that were discussed with the stakeholders when deciding on how to proceed in regards to I:R. So while it could happen, it wouldn't be fair of me to dangle that possibility in front of people without saying that it seems like it would be extremely unlikely.

 

[Gurkhal]

Thank you @Triumph Jordi for clearing up some stuff. Its terrible to hear that Imperator is where it is but in the long run we all benefit more from hard truths than soft lies.

I hope that Paradox will return in some form or another to the ancient world in a game in the future but until then I'll play Imperator and mods for Crusader Kings, and other games, and cultivate my interest in this area of history.

 

[manager2525]

So things are probably different considering this is a PDS title but the closest example would be Surviving Mars. That is a game created by Haemimont Games and basically wrapped up back in 2019, but kept a consistent user base that was also actively advocating for continued support/dlc. In this case Paradox went out to find another studio that could take on the project.

I wouldn't expect anybody from the outside to approach Paradox with a pitch to continue the game, it would probably be something that came from PDX. I also think that this scenario is one of the several that were discussed with the stakeholders when deciding on how to proceed in regards to I:R. So while it could happen, it wouldn't be fair of me to dangle that possibility in front of people without saying that it seems like it would be extremely unlikely.

Nice to know, although it is seems very unlikely that we will get anything new for Imperator. It really is a shame because the game was really starting to improve a lot. The time period is very interesting imho and I believe that with a few more patches (and a fair bit more promotion) it would have turn around and become a "house classic".
Anyway at the moment we can only hope that at some point we will get one final bug fixing patch that will also address some modability issues.

 

[lukaslunt]

So things are probably different considering this is a PDS title but the closest example would be Surviving Mars. That is a game created by Haemimont Games and basically wrapped up back in 2019, but kept a consistent user base that was also actively advocating for continued support/dlc. In this case Paradox went out to find another studio that could take on the project.

I wouldn't expect anybody from the outside to approach Paradox with a pitch to continue the game, it would probably be something that came from PDX. I also think that this scenario is one of the several that were discussed with the stakeholders when deciding on how to proceed in regards to I:R. So while it could happen, it wouldn't be fair of me to dangle that possibility in front of people without saying that it seems like it would be extremely unlikely.

So I'm right and development will never come back. It's not worth beating around the bush (I don't know if it's said in English) and leaving a vague hope that in the end will never happen.
-Paradox lied to us by telling us that they would come back
-Paradox lied to us by telling us that if he stopped the game we would be informed (the intervention of PDX_pariah has nothing to do with an official announcement. and since then he has disappeared like all the others)
-Paradox lied to us by telling us that it was a lack of staff that stopped the project (when there is a lack of staff, we look for them, which has never been the case for imperator).

But we are still waiting for a paradox employee with real answers to come talk to us. For the moment they seem to keep their heads in the sand to avoid assuming their choice.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

Okay I'm not up for a back and forth so I'll make this one response and that will be it for what I have to say on the topic.

This is the part regarding Imperator: Rome from when the pause in development/PDS restructure was announced (link and link).

You might have noticed that Imperator: Rome isn’t assigned to any of the studios mentioned above. The reason for this is that on a regular basis we analyze the projects we have in development, where they are at, what they are trying to do and also what people and resources we have working on them. As part of this analysis we realized that there was a need to bring reinforcement for a couple of the projects at PDS, and given where Imperator was at in the run up to 2.0’s launch, we decided that after the launch of the update we would move people from Imperator to these other projects. Right now we’re working on plans to regrow the team for Imperator and continue development, but for the short term we needed to focus our efforts on these other projects.

I wanted to break the news now to manage everyone’s expectations: don’t expect much Imperator news at PDXCON, or any new content coming out in 2021. We’ll of course get back to everyone with news about it as long as we have something to share!

What is important here is that the decision to move people to new teams was made before 2.0 launched and that even at the time of this post conversations were ongoing in regards to the future of Imperator: Rome as also can be seen in the message quoted below. The announcement was mainly made because of fans wanting to know about I:R presence at PDXCON Remixed but is indicative of the fact that more was going on behind the scenes (link).

That is the reason we haven't said anything before now, even though the decision was made awhile ago. We were hoping we'd have the solution in place to the extent we could communicate some kind of time line to you all, but alas things have simply moved slower than we hoped. And it was important that we told you about this before PDXCON, as we have no desire for you to have misplaced expectations on the event, or the team, nor do we want the people that have moved to other projects to be caught between two different realities when they engage with you on here, social media or at the event.

Now the only sentence I can find in any of the official statements that would indicate more information would be this: We’ll of course get back to everyone with news about it as long as we have something to share! Personally I find this a very loose and vague statement, of course fans would expect a more clear/permanent statement. With what we know now though all this very much reads like a Legacy announcement, even if that wasn't quite the wording used. I completely understand that you feel angered/wronged/lied to in regards to how the end of I:R Development was handled and that's completely fair. But I don't think Paradox ever committed to anything, if they did I at least haven't been able to find it.

As for staff, Paradox has been continuously looking to hire more devs during the Covid times but they do want folks to eventually work on location which complicated things. I mean two of their flagship franchises have two studios working on them just for the additional support and getting content out on a regular schedule.

 

[moscal]

Imperator Rome have good position to future modernization. Better than EU4. And EU4 should be abonded, not I:R

 

[manager2525]

Imperator Rome have good position to future modernization. Better than EU4. And EU4 should be abonded, not I:R

This is soooo true imho.
Take a metaphor if you will. EUIV is like the loaded 100 year old man and I:R like a dirt poor kid both suffering from a form of deadly disease. Who should the doctors save if they don't have the means to save both? Yeah you guested it right. Why should we put any resources to a game that has soo much potential when in EUIV we could give additional mission trees to Aboriginals and a new formable in Antarctica for the penguin culture tags!!!!

 

[Triumph Jordi]

And EU4 should be abonded, not I:R

EU isn't developed by PDS anymore, Paradox Tinto is in control of development of the Europa Universalis brand since 2020