About Leviathan

[johnty5]

Feels like a typo, i belive that he meant "start"

It's either a typo or it's an announcement of EU5.

If it's not a typo, the post essentially says "We've expanded the EU dev team but aren't going to releasing any new EU4 content" - which wouldn't make sense unless the expanded team was making EU5.

EDIT:
Johan's subsequent posts have clarified what he meant. Seems that legacy bug fixes were originally going to be done once EU4 expansions were over, but are now being brought forward and will be done immediately.

 

[LSF]

I have the feeling that the engine and the code are at the end. If you fix one bug, 5 new ones open up. For 5 years you can't get back to the main menu without restarting. The game is from 2013, so 8 years old. Isn't it better to do the most necessary bug fixes and then work on a decent successor instead of riding a dead horse for years?

Not only bugfixes but also a final touch on some relatively neglected regions.

 

[Speru]

I think that this is a really respectful statement. I (as many others) love the games of Paradox, especially EU IV and I will buy Leviathan just to support you and your team. It would be nice to see a general roadmap, like what are the future plans for EU IV etc., but in general, keep up the good work (yes sometimes shit happens but its honorable that you admit that and try to improve)

 

[Obeliskkai]

Not only bugfixes but also a final touch on some relatively neglected regions.

Who is left besides West Africa by the way?

They could probably do a free content patch to upgrade the last region or two if there aren't too many left.

 

[WishPig]

Sorry I'm not entirely sure what's being said here due to what I assume are a few typos.

Am I correct in the reading that for the rest of the year the focus will be on getting smaller patches out faster that focus on bugfixes rather than the previous plan which was to release expansions?

 

[Koopa]

not a native speeker but i understood it as "stop for the moment" like in pause until all is fixed and add content after that.

 

[Egodeus]

Hi Johan, thank you for updating us with the plans that you and the team are making for EU4.

I have only one question; you mention the plan to fix all legacy bugs before stopping development on EU4 expansions, but then mention the bright future for EU4 with the Tinto team. While these aren't mutually exclusive, they confused me a bit. My reading of the intent is to say that there is unlikely to be further expansions this year, instead focussing on the legacy bugs, but after those are considered to be "in hand" there might be the chance for the team, now full of bug fixing experience and EU4 experience in general, to take a crack at an expansion? Am I reading too much into it, or is this the kind of long term idea you might have in mind.

Thank you for your time,
A EU4 fan.

He said a bright future for Europa Universalis, not Europa Universalis 4, there is a difference there.

As in Victoria 3 confirmed! (No, seriously, I hope this means what he's hinting at, that EU5 is in the works to fix issues that are impossible to work with in the current framework given by EU4.)

 

[Tsukia]

I've been looking at these forums daily wondering what the response would be. I'm happy the decision was made to give several updates (bugfixes) instead of one big one. This wasn't the best release but I have high hopes for this team nonetheless.

 

[elessar9]

A brief, but welcome, post acknowledging the major deficiencies around the Leviathan release.

I wish you and the Tinto team all the best of luck, and cross all relevant body parts that you can deliver on the promises.

 

[Johan]

Very big of you to own the mistakes. It's good to see that longstanding issues are being worked on now and that the new patch is receiving it's due diligence.
I hope you won't be held responsible by the company.


@Johan how do you feel on developing more content for EU4 after most bugs have been fixed? Do you think the code makes it possible to keep adding new mechanics to the game or would it be easier to move on to EU5 with a sort of fresh slate? I imagine the code could be difficult to work with at this point.

Working on a new game would undoubtedly be easier.

 

[LSF]

Who is left besides West Africa by the way?

They could probably do a free content patch to upgrade the last region or two if there aren't too many left.

South America is in far worse state than any part of Africa...

 

[Johan]

"We had originally planned to fix all legacy bugs before we stop developing further expansions for EU4". So we don't get any new DLC anymore?

To clarify. My original plan was that after we eventually stop doing expansions we would take a decent amount of time and fix as many bugs as we could. We are changing up a fair bit now, and focusing on reducing the bugs for a fair bit of time now.

 

[DeltaPX]

There has been a very weird bug in the game for a long time where if a nation is spawned into the game through a bugged event and that nation has no religion, every other nation in the world will discover seemingly random provinces around the world on a month tick. Tags spawning in with no religion seems very random at times but is most noticable with the "The Duke of Alençon" event which will release Alencon as a no-religion vassal of France (if France choses to release them, that is).

Alencon is clearly marked to be catholic when it comes into existance in the files but it still happens for some reason. This bug can also happen with other events and is more likely to come up in overhaul mods which add a lot of nations and related events but above is the most noticeable case for it to happen in vanilla.
Would be nice if you could fix this as well.

 

[Johan]

not a native speeker but i understood it as "stop for the moment" like in pause until all is fixed and add content after that.

that was my intent.

 

[Alyssea]

I should have delayed the start of the development of Leviathan until we had all the resources that were needed, and they had time to properly onboard on the project. We should have announced a break in the development of EU4 after the Emperor release, until we had a team ready to start designing and working early in 2021.

That's a start, but also maybe don't have a patch/expansion that is completely unfocused and tries to do everything at once? We would've been happy with just a South-East Asia expansion, you know...

 

[Twoflower]

Who is left besides West Africa by the way?

They could probably do a free content patch to upgrade the last region or two if there aren't too many left.

Scandinavia is very much barebones!
And I would be very surprised if Paradox stopped developing the game while leaving their home region like that

And btw, the statement is very much appreciated. With 1.31.2, I got back into playing the game quite a lot, and I am looking forward to many more hours enjoying EU4.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

don't ever forget most people are on your side

 

[leefnmajors]

I believe what he is trying to say was they were always planning to fix the bugs before the end of EU4's dev life, but after Leviathan's release they're planning to push up the time table and instead of trying to address bugs alongside new content releases they will be halting new content while trying to bring EU4 up to par.

It sounds like this isn't the end of EU4's development, but rather no more new content until the major bugs/balance is addressed.

EDIT: Mmm, so Johan posted while I was posting and said as much.

 

[Diamond2323]

Mister Johan, I have played all of the games you've helped develop (HOI3, CK2, Stellaris, EU4 expansions) and even while some of them have had very rocky launches (HOI3 comes to mind instantly), I still had fun after a few patches and some of these games remain my favourites of all time.

I trust in your ability to make a good game, and I know you have a great fiery passion in your soul for PDX and game development. You are a legend of the grand strategy genre: I believe this is nothing more than a speed bump towards better and better things in the future. <3

 

[fleetothemoon]

"We had originally planned to fix all legacy bugs before we stop developing further expansions for EU4". So we don't get any new DLC anymore?

It's a bit of a confusing sentence structure, but it seems like Johan is trying to say that they always planned to fix the bugs before DLC development stopped, but now they are going to do this quicker.

I'm not sure that necessarily infers we are reaching the end of DLC production for EU4, but it could be. If EU4 is going to have a similar DLC development duration as CK2, then it already peaked this.

This is not a bad thing though, since at around that time, we can be expecting EU5 or something else shiny. Hopefully, by the time development ends, they will fix more of the bugs than they had for CK2.