Not saying AI is an afterthought, just that game design decisions are made primarily by Podcat, who does consider the AI as part of decisions. But the primary focus is the players experience. If a feature change makes the life harder for AI, it may be a calculated trade-off for an improved over all experience.
I bet you guys have lots of data to tell you about single player and multiplayer games. But for me and those that I have played Multiplayer with back in 1.1 and 1.2. Our biggest complaint was that the AI was too poor to handle the Major Nations and that we would have to fill Russia, UK, Germany, Japan, and Italy with human players in order to have an enjoyable experience. We only had 3-4 players at the time so we figured we would wait a bit and see what the patches could do for the AI.
My point, without writing a book is simply, the player experience is symbiotically dependent on the AI. If the AI is poor, all the features, depth, complexity, bling, is inevitably meaningless. The only people who can enjoy 1.3.3. single player are those that will play an Axis major, with heavy emphasis on Germany being the played nation. Those who play Multiplayer will enjoy it if they can fill the major nations with human players. Your data could probably give you more insight to this, but I imagine that the player experience as a whole (SP and MP) has suffered from 1.3.3. For example, I bet the amount of single player England / France / Russia games has seen a significant decline, simply because AI Germany / AI Axis doesn't offer much of a challenge right now, even max boosted.
I understand you, Podcat and the HOI4 team have tough jobs, and I'm rather sympathetic and empathetic to it. I can live with 1.3.3. remaining in it's current state. But what really disappointed me about this whole thing, was the lack of follow up / communication about it, and patronizing comments like "we care more than you guys probably" which comes off as self-centered arrogance at best. That is not to say you guys don't care, but that being paid to fix problems is quite different than paying to experience them. People who engage the community should be able to understand that. The handling of 1.3.3. from open beta to release has been pretty bad, we couldn't even get a simple response on whether or not you guys viewed it as a problem and if you were going to try to do a hotfix or not.
That also affects the player experience, and makes me regret pre-purchasing the Field Marshal edition of the game. Not because I do or don't enjoy HOI4, but because from a position of principle, I don't feel this is a behavior/position worth supporting. And I will definitely be considering it in all potential future purchases of Paradox titles.
This isn't directed at you. I'm making a general point about the "primary focus of players experience" being undermined by AI and by community engagement, or lack there of. Case in point, "
Observe Mode" is problematic for testing and PDS's official policy is that it should not be used. Yet not even the guidelines in the Bug Report Forum have been updated. Thus putting the burden of knowing about the observe mode issues on the players who want to test the game and help make it better. How do you think a player is going to feel after putting 20-30 hours of time testing / reporting something only to find out that issues with Observe Mode have been known since June 30th 2016, and there is no reasonably visible posting about it? Is that a positive or negative player experience? What possible reason is there to do nothing about it? Since that post there have been a few posts by players who were doing testing with it, how is a sticky post or two raising awareness of it too much to ask for the HOI4 team to do?
@BjornB can you do anything about making the observe mode issues more visible in the general and bug report forms please?
