all the purpose of dev diaries is to show off in progress stuff so we can get feedback from the fans - you guys. I feel like people have started expecting something more like a release feature highlight and that is not what they are or should be.
Thanks
@podcat for reminding that.
Obviously extreme reactions are not something desirable. Disagreements and philosophical differences can and should be expressed politely. Devs does not owe us to show DD content after all.
That being said, I'm already known to be very critical about some gameplay philosophy behind the game development. I'm even doing a mod (
ULTRA) with the goal to make the game historicaly balanced, accurate and fun. Devs and lots of players keep saying that too much realism is "not fun", I want to prove them wrong and that History is more epic than any fantasy story can be.
In my opinion, fantasist national focus path break game immersion, even by there mere presence on the focus tree screen.
Also, as I already told last week,
Focus Trees are overated. And on this, I don't think devs are in fault since they only aims to please that part of the player base wanting ever more of that mediocre (personal opinion) feature.
I'm heartbroken everytime I've to mod out content devs have taken time and efforts to implement, but just too fantasist or innacurate to be kept in a mod labbelled as "Historical".
Wanting a proof of this? I think images is better than a long discourse.
This is reactions from the excellent
Railroad DD.
And thoses from the last one, the least we can say is to be disputed and controversial.
This go straight into the very point of my thread about focus trees being overated, and actual gameplay feature making the game more immersive and accurate being more desired (at least by forum users).
I know that their is a wide array of the player base (forums are not representative of player base) wanting ever more and ever more fantasist focus trees (and I feel that Austria-Hungary Empire restauration focus tree was the Pandora box there...), and thoses are a good share of customers, that's why I'm ready to swallow as much fantasist focus trees as possible, as long as features as important as railroads are being implemented.
Honnestly, I don't think the compromise is that bad : Grognards like me gets features and powerfull modding tools to tailor the game we want, while map painters, memers and people wanting to make their home/heart country "great again" also gets what they want.
To be honnest, I would like one little request to improve the compromise between the two distinct part of the community : give a gamerule at start to completely hide fantasist alt-history focus branchs (and, if possible, rework innacuracies in historical branchs). Believe me, it will greatly help not losing immersion each time we look at the focus tree.
Also, I can understand people getting less and less patient about missing key features while ever more fantasist content is shown.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of HOI4 major design flaws I consider the most important (very personal but with a logical sense)
- Too abstracted economy, with snowballing industry and on top of that, invocated buildings from thin air due to national focuses witchcraft. (I've no hope to be fixed ever, so the n°1 reason I'm modding the game)
- No direct link between industrial output and available population (same as above)
- Resources abstractions failing to represent how strategic resources were important (same as above)
- Unbalanced industry with minors being completely OP "to be playable". (could be fixed by implementing features allowing to buy weapons instead of producing them)
- Absence of range stats for ships (Why remove it in the naval overhaul along MTG, just why?)
- Absence of altitude stat for planes (Hopefully may b ealong the next DLC after Barbarossa)
- Absence of light/heavy attack split for planes (Hopefully may be along the next DLC after Barbarossa)
- Absence of organic mechanisms limiting standing army size (Hopefully solved with Barbarossa)
- Carrier planes can't train when affected to carriers (perhaps the biggest thing affecting AI, making it a pushover on naval)
- Various defines not working properly
- AI still attacking recklessly in whole front instead of concentrating forces/firepower
- Barebone diplomatic interractions and flawled peace conference
- Width system making weird divisions design being meta (hopefully corrected with Barbarossa)
- Binary armor/piercing system for land combat while the same system is way better with ships (hopefully corrected with Barbarossa)
- Underexploited doctrines/tactics system
- No pilots manpower pool separated from the rest (Pilots were so much precious IRL, hope it will be in when overhauling air war)
- No officers pool separated from the rest (explain greatly both German early performances and Soviet purges impact, hope it will be along Barbarossa patch)
And I may forgetting many things.
So maybe it would be great to communicate a bit more on the roadmap to improve actual features and a bit less (relatively speaking) about focus trees? Focus trees are one single feature among so much more! I would like the same effort to be done for research trees, for equipment, for industry, for logistic, for combats... etc
And let's be honnest about the economic model of the game : focus trees are big DLC sellers, so I understand how it is important to highlight them, while organic features cannot be too much locked under paywall (and it is not desirable).
But while being ready to accept thoses sacrifices to historical immersion for the sake of a more complete game, I would realy like the dev to make some concessions to the customers not being fan of fantasist alt-history. Frankly nothing big : a bit more communication on roadmap and gameplay features would be enough to reconcialiate people being disapointed
Thnaks you for reading