1-Stop using customers as QA, 2-dev clashes as balancing reference and 3-missions as power-creeping

[Negoveio]

1st point: You know what i'm talking about. This was one of the worst dlc launches. Features OF THE 4 MAIN NATIONS are completely broken, the imperial authority by nation joining was a terrible decision, doesn't work at all, easily exploitable. You're better off letting shadow kingdom happening so italy can rejoin and net you a free reform. Development for muscovy on steppes. AI in massive debt. Performance taking a significant hit. The list is long.
Where is your time and money being spent? This policy of letting the customers test your product has become an industry standard, but the few of you who still believe in pdx are surely being let down by this. You have good developers, this is a managerial problem that needs to be addressed. If the team has to go in overdrive 3 weeks after launch, sending hotfix after hotfix, why not playtest it a little better and make the consumer believe buying your games on launch is an actual deal? Because as it is, we all learned not to bother with updating our games on launch. What was your response? Increase pricing a couple years ago and make us pay the actual price when on sale.

2nd point:
I'm not particularly fond of the game after 1.26 and the massively bad choices in design to prevent blobbing and toughen up culture/religion conversions. I'm not particularly fond of the varied money sinks you've implemented instead of reworking trade power. I'm not fond of the idea groups various nerfs which make your choice more cookie-cutter than ever if you're not in need of colonists or diplorep. Most idea groups are a bunch of generalist garbage with one core idea making them worth it (looking at you espionage, admin, economic, innovative). End tags. Blob-prevention, in a game where it's easier than ever to simply crush the AI with its bad decisions and have no peers 50 years into the game. Make a rules panel pre-game if you so wish. But PLEASE, you're breaking the game even for multiplayer people at this point.

3: We still remember Rule Britannia and how it made england the most powerful SP nation for a while because no one had that much value in missions. Now you're having to buff every single nation with custom missions to avoid backpedalling on RB and frankly it speeds up the game to such a violent pace you're basically forced to play a major with custom missions* not to be left behind.

Sincerely,
A disgruntled peasant stuck on 1.25
Edit: one angry typo

 

[Chazb5046]

Could not agree more. Never buying on launch again, steam sales for me.

FYI the “balance” mod fixes all these problems. It’s like how EU4 should have been. It is quite easily the best mod I’ve ever used for EU4.

 

[Delpheus]

Could not agree more. Never buying on launch again, steam sales for me.

FYI the “balance” mod fixes all these problems. It’s like how EU4 should have been. It is quite easily the best mod I’ve ever used for EU4.

What balance mod is it?

 

[Froonk]

I am fond of varied missions with a mix of historical and alt-history routes, especially with chains that leads in events or adds flavour. The new mission trees have those but they definitely need to keep power creep in check. Austrian missions about emperorship, their historical PUs and developing vienna and even the potential of colonisation of spice islands via low countries are all fun history and alt-history stuff. However clearly the PU over Poland or so many claims in India and China is just random and unnecesary, They need to reign in their missions, let alt history flow but be reasonable in its scope.

 

[Waverider900]

Could not agree more. Never buying on launch again, steam sales for me.

FYI the “balance” mod fixes all these problems. It’s like how EU4 should have been. It is quite easily the best mod I’ve ever used for EU4.

I'm also curious about what mod this is. Never really played EU with mods, but I'm interested in looking into it.

 

[Kuantum]

I just watched a YouTube video mocking PDX development, I didn't find it funny, I find it sad... It's sad to watch PDX becoming a target of parody. The QA is spot on, we are now paying full price to beta test their products.

My opinion is that you can't change core mechanics in a 7 year old game which relies so much on the AI component to be immersive and enjoyable... It's too much, it's layer upon layer of variables, modifiers, decisions.. I can only imagine the flow of control for the AI behaviour... sigh.

 

[EarlKonrad]

I am fond of varied missions with a mix of historical and alt-history routes, especially with chains that leads in events or adds flavour. The new mission trees have those but they definitely need to keep power creep in check. Austrian missions about emperorship, their historical PUs and developing vienna and even the potential of colonisation of spice islands via low countries are all fun history and alt-history stuff. However clearly the PU over Poland or so many claims in India and China is just random and unnecesary, They need to reign in their missions, let alt history flow but be reasonable in its scope.

I don't know about the rest for the claims on India are somewhat Historical. They have a Trade Company in India.

 

[Chazb5046]

What balance mod is it?

this one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2087736384&searchtext=Balance

I cannot be emphatic enough about this mod. You know every complaint about the game (pre emporer at least) ? It fixes most of em. No more Siberia marching (mostly). It makes choosing idea groups an actual choice. Just take it slowly. The decisions you make without even thinking in vanilla are actually worth something with this mod.

I hope you try it and like it it’s so good

 

[Chazb5046]

I'm also curious about what mod this is. Never really played EU with mods, but I'm interested in looking into it.

this one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2087736384&searchtext=Balance

I cannot be emphatic enough about this mod. You know every complaint about the game (pre emporer at least) ? It fixes most of em. No more Siberia marching (mostly). It makes choosing idea groups an actual choice. Just take it slowly. The decisions you make without even thinking in vanilla are actually worth something with this mod.

I hope you try it and like it it’s so good

 

[grommile]

I hope you try it and like it it’s so good

I won't, because I don't want to revert to State Cap and concrete assignment of estate land.

Call me when it gets updated to 1.30.

 

[StefanFan]

1st point: You know what i'm talking about. This was one of the worst dlc launches. Features OF THE 4 MAIN NATIONS are completely broken, the imperial authority by nation joining was a terrible decision, doesn't work at all, easily exploitable. You're better off letting shadow kingdom happening so italy can rejoin and net you a free reform. Development for muscovy on steppes. AI in massive debt. Performance taking a significant hit. The list is long.
Where is your time and money being spent? This policy of letting the customers test your product has become an industry standard, but the few of you who still believe in pdx are surely being let down by this. You have good developers, this is a managerial problem that needs to be addressed. If the team has to go in overdrive 3 weeks after launch, sending hotfix after hotfix, why not playtest it a little better and make the consumer believe buying your games on launch is an actual deal? Because as it is, we all learned not to bother with updating our games on launch. What was your response? Increase pricing a couple years ago and make us pay the actual price when on sale.

2nd point:
I'm not particularly fond of the game after 1.26 and the massively bad choices in design to prevent blobbing and toughen up culture/religion conversions. I'm not particularly fond of the varied money sinks you've implemented instead of reworking trade power. I'm not fond of the idea groups various nerfs which make your choice more cookie-cutter than ever if you're not in need of colonists or diplorep. Most idea groups are a bunch of generalist garbage with one core idea making them worth it (looking at you espionage, admin, economic, innovative). End tags. Blob-prevention, in a game where it's easier than ever to simply crush the AI with its bad decisions and have no peers 50 years into the game. Make a rules panel pre-game if you so wish. But PLEASE, you're breaking the game even for multiplayer people at this point.

3: We still remember Rule Britannia and how it made england the most powerful SP nation for a while because no one had that much value in missions. Now you're having to buff every single nation with custom missions to avoid backpedalling on RB and frankly it speeds up the game to such a violent pace you're basically forced to play a major with custom missions* not to be left behind.

Sincerely,
A disgruntled peasant stuck on 1.25
Edit: one angry typo

I wonder if the developers aren't punished financially for the loss of sales. Because I doubt that a negatively reviewed DLC sells as good as an Overwhelmingly good one. I try to find excuses but I really can't.

It's not a common business practice to release a faulty product then go on holiday. Once the product is tagged as bad, chances are slim to zero to rebrand it and sell it as a good product, so your sales will hurt, you don't need to be a genius to know that.

You have a very small window of opportunity to fix it after release if you want to maximize profit. It seems to me PDX loves shooters? They obviously love shooting themselves in the foot.

 

[grommile]

I wonder if the developers aren't punished financially for the loss of sales.

I wouldn't be too surprised if they're on fixed salaries with any bonus scheme being company-wide based on overall results.

 

[TheDeadeye]

I wouldn't be too surprised if they're on fixed salaries with any bonus scheme being company-wide based on overall results.

Of course are they on fixed salaries. Wouldn’t be surprised if in Sweden there are next to no non unionized jobs even around. If their salary (and thus livelihood) depended on sales, I guess we’d see much higher quality and more responsiveness from them and a bigger urgency to fix things instead of planning a month long vacation and the next one around the corner in 3 months

 

[grommile]

Wouldn’t be surprised if in Sweden there are next to no non unionized jobs even around.

The numbers I can quickly see show that about one third of Swedish workers are not members of a trade union.

(twenty-five years ago, it was only about one seventh.)

 

[Xdevo]

PDS just had a report about the developer's unionization recently, so they've only been unionized in the last few months.

 

[Badesumofu]

PDS unionised a few months ago. This is unambiguously a good thing.

 

[Don Fluffles]

i will try to look at your points one by one, and question some of them, or defend the other side.

1st point: You know what i'm talking about. This was one of the worst dlc launches. Features OF THE 4 MAIN NATIONS are completely broken, the imperial authority by nation joining was a terrible decision, doesn't work at all, easily exploitable. You're better off letting shadow kingdom happening so italy can rejoin and net you a free reform. Development for muscovy on steppes. AI in massive debt. Performance taking a significant hit. The list is long.

And as far as i'm aware, they fixed a lot of things on your list pretty much immediately. Nations in Italy can't rejoin within a certain timeframe, it even rarely happens nowadays, that some AI Nation decides to join. The steppe dev also got nerfed. The AI problem is still there, but i assume that it is a long-term project no one can fix immediately.
(Which is really sad and sucks the fun out of the game right now.)

2nd point:
I'm not particularly fond of the game after 1.26 and the massively bad choices in design to prevent blobbing and toughen up culture/religion conversions. I'm not particularly fond of the varied money sinks you've implemented instead of reworking trade power. I'm not fond of the idea groups various nerfs which make your choice more cookie-cutter than ever if you're not in need of colonists or diplorep. Most idea groups are a bunch of generalist garbage with one core idea making them worth it (looking at you espionage, admin, economic, innovative). End tags.

Look, i also think some aspects of the game deserve a rework (kinda looking at cavalry here), buuut i think we have to agree that some people have different angles on that. Even more, they can't rework everything at once, look at the dmg the merc rework and building overhaul did to the AI.

3: We still remember Rule Britannia and how it made england the most powerful SP nation for a while because no one had that much value in missions. Now you're having to buff every single nation with custom missions to avoid backpedalling on RB and frankly it speeds up the game to such a violent pace you're basically forced to play a major with custom missions* not to be left behind.

I agree there's powercreep and that it's really sad for the Nations that got left out or haven't gotten an updated mission tree yet. But playing as someone with a extensive, tailored mission tree is fun, in my opinion. So at least in my eyes it was the correct decision to not retract the british missions, and instead give extensive mission trees to other nations as well, to balance it out again.
In MP it becomes a little, trickier, i agree that there is a small problem there. Still, fairness in a MP game is somewhat relative anyways, and it's up the the people in the Lobby to find a good balance. That hasn't changed.


So, all in all, i find it completely understandable and okay that you're not happy with every design decision PDX made the last year(s). I even agree on a couple points with you completely. Still, if the AI gets a good fix, i think it will be a great game again, and hope that you will find some fun in it as well. A great game with some ways to make it even better, of course. Nothing's perfect. But still perfectly good enough to have some fun with it.

 

[Ninaran]

PDX games have been on "always installed" mode for about five years for me now. That included EU4, CK2, HOI4, Victoria 2, with Stellaris a sometimes and Imperator.. well.

But, no more. EU4 is still on to finish a last multiplayer campaign (where everyone lost their drive to play the game apart from one who's played nothing but Castile for 800 hours so he'll keep playing nothing but Castile, no matter what), but after that..

It's a big shame, but most PDX games have just turned really bad (in my opinion), except for CK2 for some reason. That game has had it the best. But if I see another post about the Umayyad Caliphate or something like that in HOI4, I swear I'll have an aneurysm.

I'm just one voice, one disgruntled customer, you've got plenty new ones and you don't care about critics, only sales numbers, I know. Gotta get it out of my system though. I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

 

[Deliberus]

PDX games have been on "always installed" mode for about five years for me now. That included EU4, CK2, HOI4, Victoria 2, with Stellaris a sometimes and Imperator.. well.

But, no more. EU4 is still on to finish a last multiplayer campaign (where everyone lost their drive to play the game apart from one who's played nothing but Castile for 800 hours so he'll keep playing nothing but Castile, no matter what), but after that..

It's a big shame, but most PDX games have just turned really bad (in my opinion), except for CK2 for some reason. That game has had it the best. But if I see another post about the Umayyad Caliphate or something like that in HOI4, I swear I'll have an aneurysm.

I'm just one voice, one disgruntled customer, you've got plenty new ones and you don't care about critics, only sales numbers, I know. Gotta get it out of my system though. I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

I'm not too surprised to be honest. What's happening over at PDX atm is what almost every other studio I followed happened back in the 7th generation. Minimalism and streamlining continues to plague this industry.

I had my first start with HOI4 and I enjoyed it very much but as I played all their games back to HOI3 I kinda feel sorry for the long time fans. Just like Bioware, Freejam and many others before PDX.

Their past games are by no means great, UI is trash, mechanics unexplained, crap tutorial I'm sure everyone knows by now. But instead of removing the humps in the road to make the core gameplay better they opted to switch focuses entirely, one that doesn't have/has very little humps in the road to begin with...

 

[love sweden]

I emphasize the second point alot. Balancing a singleplayer game around the multiplayer is stupid and should never be done. Most if not all bad design decisions simply came out of a developer being grumpy about losing to something in MP. This is why Tariffs ceased to be a game mechanic due to Jake finding that someone made too much money from it.