A little concerned about my purchase

[Invader420]

First of all I want to start this by saying how much I do enjoy the game. I bought all the dlc and spent almost $120; I was able to get a few on sale. Anyway I’ve been gaming many years mostly matrix/slitherine war games. Maybe I should I have done more research on Paradox but I’m getting the impression from many players that this company has a long track record of not fixing bugs and you have to rely on mods to fix some of these issues. I’m worried I may have wasted my money on a product that will never be fixed while continuing to charge for new dlc.

I ‘m just wondering what other’s opinions are of Paradox and the current state of the game.

This is not to bash Paradox but honestly there's times I just want to give up gaming as hobby, I'm sick of companies not fixing things and you devote so much time, effort and money into these very deep strategy games and then you run into a bug that ruins the experience.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

Ehh... most of the issues which break playability or historicity (both, for some people) most aren't really "bugs" but rather design choices. Many aren't horribly fundamental either - for example supply, which used to be incredibly ahistorical and/or memey, is now only sort of ahistorical and/or memey and actually works pretty well when it comes to influencing combat.

Additionally, the two issues which make the game least fun to play are lag and AI peace conferences, which the mods Spot Optimization (But It Works) and Player Led Peace Conferences fix. I know you said it's annoying that you have to use mods but the way I see it, they aren't "necessary fixes to bugs" but rather alternate design philosophies.

To make long things short, given that I've gotten 1600+ hours of relative fun out of the game I'd say it's been well-worth the cost, and the design choices I dislike most are very easily overcome with mods.

 

[ngazi]

Control groups not working very well is a weird design choice.

 

[SRhistory]

After almost 1300 hours in the game and playing without mods I can say the game is more than playable. Yes some bugs but most of them most players will not see.
Next to this HOI4 tech/dev changed there way of working. As of this year /NSB dlc we see more frequently bug fixes which solves round 10 bugs every patch.

But on this forum you will always see a lot of people complaining. Reason is clear… communication is not that good on bug reports etc.

But I see improvement and 120 dollars spent when you play more then 1300 hours like me is very well spent.

HOI4 is one of my favorite WWII games and if HOI4 dev teams will solve the peace conference issues/ai issues it’s one of the best games around (solve as in improve… these part are more than playable/challenging!)

And mods well they make the game more fun for people and I believe are free /no cost so… if you believe you want the game doing it (a bit) different… just use a mod.

 

[pdstanbridge]

One thing I will say. It isn't perfect no, what is? There are bugs. But Paradox are usually very good at acknowledging/fixing them.

The game is best played SLOWLY. Do NOT rush. I can't express this enough. It's too easy to rush the strategy and go on an absolutely bonkers world conquest and be finished by 1942. But that is not fun. You will be rewarded by playing the slow game. Take it easy, focus. Enjoy! It's the best game I own.

 

[jacekgk]

I have something like 2,1k hours in the game: all achievements done, almost all formable nations (most of these, which were fun and doable), no mods - and still I like to waste a few hours from time to time In my opinion, this game is encridible playable, with tons of good stories - lots of these are memic now (like for example Lithuania annexing Poland via PP, Bulgaria cores all Balkans thanks spies, etc, Vojtech the Bear becomes king of Poland, etc), but it doesn't bother me.
Playing HOI4 teach me more about history of WWII then few years of education. Probably You will find people on this forum, who grumble on history accurancy (like: Pearl Harbor in June 1941, not in December), but for fun it doesn't matter in my opinion for me.
This game has a lots of possibilities and mechanics, but You don't need know everything to have fun. For example me: I have never touched aircraft carriers
There is some annoying bugs, of course, but I think, that most of game breakers are fixed fairly regularly. Probably the longest in the game are bugs resulting from focus trees in BftB, so keep Your mind on it.
Diplomacy and peace deals are the worst part of this game. Reworking these mechanics is part of road map from @Arheo and I could spend all the world moneys for get it quickly, but for now - be warned and make savescum before peace deals. It is very frustating, when Your beloved ally with almost no existing war score takes this one province, which You need for achievement or formable nation.

 

[Jays298]

According to steam I have 932 hours.

I'm not sure how much I paid, but piece by piece it was reasonable.

I think every Paradox title has a grand scope, and the further you get from the beginning, the more the game distorts into weirdness and just...not even a game anymore, just work.

A lot of features are promised but turn out to be less than great.

The AI, front line system, and map leave a lot to be improved upon.

And the entire production - logistics system is a maze of clicking that gets steadily worse year by year.

So basically we have a World War 2 era game that effectively ends in 1942, or at least for me becomes a clicking simulator after around that time.

 

[Invader420]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm absolutely addicted to this game so that's why I was a little concerned about bugs, I have over 300 hours into it already and I always play on the slowest speed. I would say I have a good strategy for Germany at least up to 1940, that's the farthest I've gotten after learning from some mistakes. I am using mods but none that actually change the way the game plays. So far I haven't ran into anything real game breaking. I do get the feeling how the AI plays depends on what you do as Germany, as much as possible I try to play historical and only deviating from that if I have to. I've restarted a number of games and the AI also responds with historical choices as long as I don't do anything too rash. I have read there are problems playing democratic Germany or communist France. For now I'll just play the playing game as close to history as I can and have fun.

By the way I don't know if it helps with the slow late game performance but so far I haven't experienced too bad yet. I have 32 gigs of ram, and a Geforce GTX 1070 with 8 gigs of video memory, maybe that will help.

 

[Putuna]

No the game is quite playable with very little gamebreaking/serious bugs. When a new DLC comes out is when there will usually be a serious bugs or two. This seems to just be the way the gaming industry works now and paradox to there credit usually fixes them within a week. I can only remember 1 time that wasn't the case tbh.

If you play historical and vanilla you will not encounter any game breaking bug. The bugs start when you get into the more whacky stuff with all the ways the countries can interact there bound to be some bugs.

There are some minor bugs such as certain doctrine techs not doing anything and certain advisors not working. Although you probably would never even notice.

 

[Ashitake]

And if not you have mods lke Black Ice, which makes the game much deeper and harders with the historical path.

 

[Corpse Fool]

Well, I imagine there is going to be a pretty heavy bias towards supporting the devs/game, on their official (heavily moderated) forum and from players that care enough to mention they've played thousands of hours and are still here. I also have more than a thousand hours, but my concern is I don't think we're really going to be able to hear both sides of this, why the players that only played 40 or less haven't played more. I'm going to focus more on bringing some of the issues I've had and seen talked about into this discussion.

There certainly are bugs. It's pretty easy to not meet most of them in your average game, but you can certainly find them if you know where you look. And once you know they're there, it is difficult for me pretend they don't exist. Like that spider that is blocking the door to my room (send help). Half the air advisors doing nothing, escort stats for bombers doing nothing but still being part of doctrines, laos (and others) having non-MTG hulls with MTG active, occitania (and others) having non-NSB tanks with NSB active, some weirdness with the targeting mechanics that can protect massive units from ever getting hit in combat, non-MTG ship stats being backwards in some cases. There's still the age-old overflow errors on stacks of 2 million+ equipment not just disappearing, but becoming negative equipment. Supply bugs out sometimes, certain regions getting 0 supply or infinite supply until you save/load the game and it corrects itself. Also some issues with the resource boost from hub+rail.

Turkish investments seems to have gotten fixed, which is good. They also finally decided to comment out the recon=1 on the ACATs to fix a bug with them, which is also good. Bugs certainly are getting fixed, but there is more than one old issue that loiters around. Equipment conversion which is a feature of the DoD DLC is in a pretty jank spot right now because of NSB, and the barb patch was hyped as having a 'less' binary armour/piercing system for land combat it never actually released with.

All of this hopefully inb4 a dev says they find it strange that players will sink thousands of hours and then claim the game is unplayable (can someone find that quote for me?). I have some concerns about that line of thought, but the game certainly is playable, it can even be fun. I have a different (larger) list of design decisions/quirks that I think are weird like pro.gamer.69 has mentioned, but that isn't really the point of this. I guess the question is how high your tolerance for bugs is before it ruins your experience. My tolerance seems to be lower than some.

 

[Fede92]

I have more than 1000 hours played. The game is very fun, even if there are bugs. With the last update it has improved a lot because logistics is better represented.
The worst aspects in my opinion are diplomacy, lack of depth in representing the internal front (stability and war support are way too static and not related to the war situation) and a too simplicistic technology system. But overall, the game is worth the cost.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

some weirdness with the targeting mechanics that can protect massive units from ever getting hit in combat

link?

 

[Corpse Fool]

link?

HoI 4 - [Steam][1.11.4.e26e][b22c] Target Array Ignores Oversized Targets If Valid Target Present

Description of issue [Steam][1.11.4.e26e][b22c] Target Array Ignores Oversized Targets If Valid Target Present Game Version 1.11.4 Enabled DLC Do you have mods enabled? No Description When presented with multiple targets of...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[valisk]

Two and a bit thousand played, I tend to be a binge player and go through droughts before inevitably coming back and doing so ever since the release of the original HoI, so probably to be fair myself its a little more than 2k hours squandered on HoI overall.
I've seen a fair few bugs, and reported them, and some were actually fixed, others I found work arounds for, I also at one point played Vicky, CKII, Vicky2, EU2, EU3, EU4, to death, even writing a long guide to all the nations of Victoria after going on a manic spree of trying to see which were playable or not, that became the basis in part for Rafiki's original Vicky Wiki.

So I'll just chip in, I didn't like HoI 4 on release, seemed very shallow vs HoI 2 & 3, but it improved as Paradox games always do. Nothing so far has been a total deal breaker for me, though the naval superiority bug did irritate a lot. There are plenty of things I think need improving on the historical accuracy part of HoI4, particularly around the Naval and Air aspects, but mods take care of that very nicely.

Overall it is now a great game, probably now my favourite of all Paradox games, and I do try to keep in mind that at least some of the design decisions appear to be based on trying to provide a realish, rather than an entirely accurate, path to and through the road to war and also to have some sort of reasonable balance in a multiplayer game.

 

[him_15]

As a player for both HOI4 and TTW3K, I would say HOI 4 is very well supported, and your money isn't wasted at all.

 

[Pz. Los]

First of all I want to start this by saying how much I do enjoy the game. I bought all the dlc and spent almost $120; I was able to get a few on sale. Anyway I’ve been gaming many years mostly matrix/slitherine war games. Maybe I should I have done more research on Paradox but I’m getting the impression from many players that this company has a long track record of not fixing bugs and you have to rely on mods to fix some of these issues. I’m worried I may have wasted my money on a product that will never be fixed while continuing to charge for new dlc.

I ‘m just wondering what other’s opinions are of Paradox and the current state of the game.

This is not to bash Paradox but honestly there's times I just want to give up gaming as hobby, I'm sick of companies not fixing things and you devote so much time, effort and money into these very deep strategy games and then you run into a bug that ruins the experience.

Bugs are inevitable but really, Paradox has bug report forums and legit employees who monitor AND respond to bug reports. Sometimes it takes awhile but they do fix bugs, even annoying cosmetic ones. The rocket bug as I called it, was there forever and would trip a never ending highlight alert on the plane industrial tab that you had rocket planes available that would never go away and they finally fixed it with a patch just before NSB. Glorious victory! Paradox puts out legit games and the scale is huge compared to Slitherine(also great games but smaller scale with much greater detail). I appreciate the historical context and strategy depth and SOME of the complaining might be justified but most is not. Putting a together a game this big is a huge undertaking and it’s easy to armchair QB things when you’re not the man in the arena. Notice solutions are often not forthcoming with the complaints. Old military maxim, don’t b!+ch if you don’t have a solution. I’d be singing a different tune probably if devs weren’t responsive, but again, they are. As to value, bought the old FM version of the game. Was supposed to get like two dlc and a flavor pack, think we got like 4-5 plus a flavor pack because Paradox felt like they weren’t giving us full value. Not the norm but I think that speaks volumes to how they operate. Empire of Sin was a rip for pre-order but Paradox was publisher only for that, not developer. I think they have some culpability but I blame Romero Games for simply ghosting us and running away with my $80 for a half finished game. Could have been really great, but I think there’s a lot of personnel conflict there but dunno. Advice is stick with the games that Paradox develops, specifically HOI, CK, EU, and Victoria. All are really solid with long development runs and lots of depth. Don’t pre-order, wait for sales.