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Are you seriously not happy with "We are aware of the AI debt spiral issue. We're hoping to be able to address that problem in the next bug fix patch." ? =/
(Source: )

So the devs are too good to announce this on their own forums? I refunded CK3 as a result of the silence on here. (I know it's not necessarily the same team, but anything with the fossil logo is untrustworthy to me now.)

If the devs had delayed the release of Emperor until after this summer, I would have been excited and hyped at the moment. If they'd been attentive enough on the forums to apologise, explain no fix would be coming until September, and perhaps offer a refund then I would have been satisfied, and let them keep my money for Emperor and CK3 both.

But they made their choices, and I don't think these choices are excusable. Hopefully this mess gets fixed, CK3 launches in a state fit for 1.0, and all this gets forgotten as I enjoy both of those. I don't think I am unfair when I write that, as a frustrated customer I will believe it when I see it.
 
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Are you seriously not happy with "We are aware of the AI debt spiral issue. We're hoping to be able to address that problem in the next bug fix patch." ? =/
(Source: )

Note that this was a Twitter comment, not a post on the more widely seen official forum. If you are going to make a comment on this game altering issue, it should be posted where the customers are going to see it.

That said, do note that it says "we're hoping to be able to address that problem in the next bug fix patch.".

Not hot fix, the next bug fix patch.

Words matter, and that statement means there won't be a fix for months assuming the usual 6-12 months between patches. Without further clarification from PDS that is all we have to go on.
 
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If only there were some kind of official forums where something like this could be posted, instead of some third-party social media platform.
I wouldn't be too surprised if more people consume their tweets than read the official forums.
 
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I don't mind if it takes some time to fix (I prefer a real fix, not a hotfix that doesn't even truly fixes it and breaks 3 other things)

What I do mind about is when you politely point out something's wrong (and it's ignored for a long time), and then your posts merely stating the facts get removed/censored and labelled as "trolling" and the threads closed by the mods.

I think that just because some people inside a huge thread break rules once isn't a reason to just lock the topic and pretend it never happened.
 
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There are a few posted suggested code adjustments that have helped some of debt spiral slow down. Things like limiting the ability of the AI to buy down war weariness, lowering the priorities on constructing stupid buildings like coastal forts and ship yards, etc etc. They are Band-Aids for now, at least until we get a fix.
 
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If only there were some kind of official forums where something like this could be posted, instead of some third-party social media platform.
It was referenced and cross-posted numerous times. In the "Fix AI debt spiral" thread for example, as i mentioned before.
Even when i mentioned this in a previous post in this very thread, all you people now act like you've never seen this before. Jesus Christ.
 
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It was referenced and cross-posted numerous times. In the "Fix AI debt spiral" thread for example, as i mentioned before.
Even when i mentioned this in a previous post in this very thread, all you people now act like you've never seen this before. Jesus Christ.
Good for you. No, really, it's morally praiseworthy that you do this.

But your ability to communicate isn't the one that's lacking. It shouldn't be the responsibility of consumers to relay information from a third-party social media account (and yes, Facebook is a third-party platform) to Paradox's official forums. The fact that volunteers are willing to take up the slack doesn't absolve Paradox of their failure to adequately communicate, any more than the existence of Glavius AI makes Stellaris' abysmal AI and well-documented bugs okay.
 
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And I am sure you have seen, but this was/is a major thread on the forums - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...roken-for-weeks-and-its-gamebreaking.1402500/

35k views, over 400 responses. PDX must have seen this, and ought to do something, like acknowledge it, apologise and bring people back from holiday now to fix it now.

But they haven't, because they really just don't care. My advice is boycott the company, don't buy its products.


here we go again...

I got an idea... maybe write a DLC on steam and only rate the price versus the buggy content. I'm sure that hasn't been tried before... sorry for the cynism.

I'll actually add something of interest to the thread, questions and answers by Johan himself on the matter. from Johan himself on the matter.

source: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/eu4-game-testers.1398388/?prdxDevPosts=1

regarding QA and beta testing before release:

Johan:

"Now I am not making any excuses, but I just want to explain what testers actually do.

Testing a game and Playtesting a game is something that is rather different.

A lot of the time spent by fulltime employees, both at Paradox and and our testing partners involves pure testing.

These include the following and much more.

  • Going through design document and compaing to the game making sure everything follows the design.
  • Verifying that something the developer said was fixed is fixed.
  • Make sure save/load does not break when you do X.
  • Trying to reproduce crashes.
  • And a lot more technical "testing" tasks."

question: Can you explain what happened with the release?

answer of Johan:

"Yes.

As the game grows more and more complex with interlocking features and numbers, it is far easier to miss balance issues.

And the more permutations you have the harder it will get.

Lets say you have a development team of 10 people, they are "done" with all the development, and just have a polishing and wrapping up. Thats when you decide, we can sell this game, and set release dates in stone. That can be 2 weeks or 10 weeks in advance.

Then you need to wrap on balancing. If you are lucky, you have about 10 testers that can playtest everyday, and give balance feedback. Lets say they get two days per campaign, and then spend a day testing functionality while the developers rebalance.

How many nations and combinations do you cover in that amount of time? And then doing it all again when numbers change? With the addition of things like policies, mission trees and unique mechanics for lots of nations there are so many relatively common styles that can break the game easily.

And if something is deemed "this is maybe too easy"?

That is the hardest part.. Is it too easy due to experienced testers, or do we need to improve AI.

When you end up in this situation when its a few weeks before release, and you have to send a version to the press, and wrap up for outlets, then you just ship. You have no option"



question:

I think most people here would agree this isn't on Q/A (alone). Could you perhaps tell us about the process regarding releasing a new patch like you did on the forum with Imperator : Rome?

I'm curious what we could do as community to reduce the amount of bugs still in the game or things being out of balance. Are there things on developer side that would help to release a more "stable" built on release? Because this seems to be a bit of a pattern with PDS lately. Would you say getting more time to test the release build would work? More budget / focus on removing these issues. Getting earlier input from the community. etc etc.

Or is there simply too much pressure to release a new DLC at a set date? I know that once a date is set, the date needs to be followed for marketing purposes, but surely there are things that could be done?

answer of Johan:

"Most Gamedirectors would prefer using beta-patches regularly. The problem is when we release DLC it is just not possible. If we have committed to a date, its locked in."
 
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I don't mind if it takes some time to fix (I prefer a real fix, not a hotfix that doesn't even truly fixes it and breaks 3 other things)

What I do mind about is when you politely point out something's wrong (and it's ignored for a long time), and then your posts merely stating the facts get removed/censored and labelled as "trolling" and the threads closed by the mods.

I think that just because some people inside a huge thread break rules once isn't a reason to just lock the topic and pretend it never happened.
37k view , top thread, and a mod immediately jumped on it , obviously overjoyed by the opportunity to get rid of that evil thread , and closed it as soon ONE guy derailed it. That's not a little issue that should wait for a bug fix patch, but rather an hotfix as soon as possible.
 
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Anyone with a brain realises that releasing a major update before your entire team takes a vacation is terrible. One day paradox will start realising that their shitty attitude towards customers affects the bottom line. And if the mods hate this time of year every year for the same reason maybe they should pass on that feedback too. It's like someone up top lacks basic business common sense.

Your think after the drama of a pathetic imperator release they would reevaluate, but alas the same lousy business sense prevails.
 
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if they would ship after summer holiday, people will complain about them not being able to play new content in summer holiday.

if they would ship before, people will complain about bugs and them going on holiday.

if they ship at all, it *has* to be a bug free patch, preferably totally free.

Got to love people in threads like this acting as if they are speaking for the entire community... and not even knowing what the lead dev said on the matter.

oh well, i'll just let it pass, got enough triggered for one day.
 
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that one was cynism ;)

some folk keep on making demands of a bug free patch -or at least a fix within 3 days so to speak- *without* willingness to buy DLC, just cause they want it like that for free.

I find that immensely arrogant and unfair. But that is my opinion.
 
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that one was cynism ;)

some folk keep on making demands of a bug free patch -or at least a fix within 3 days so to speak- *without* willingness to buy DLC, just cause they want it like that for free.

I find that immensely arrogant and unfair. But that is my opinion.
Ok, my brain is abit fried in the current heat wave:D
 
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if they would ship after summer holiday, people will complain about them not being able to play new content in summer holiday.

if they would ship before, people will complain about bugs and them going on holiday.

if they ship at all, it *has* to be a bug free patch, preferably totally free.

Got to love people in threads like this acting as if they are speaking for the entire community... and not even knowing what the lead dev said on the matter.

oh well, i'll just let it pass, got enough triggered for one day.
If they would have published a product that worked well with no problems people would be happy, is that so hard to ask for?
 
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If they would have published a product that worked well with no problems people would be happy, is that so hard to ask for?
That would be great, but sadly is also unrealistic (complexity of the software and changes to some of the core systems, team changes with ddrjake leaving, covid-19 to name just a few reasons). What is realisitc, however, is communication. Not only that PDX promised to do so after the GC DLC debacle. Also they took 1.5 years to (at least partially) fix the "expel minorities" feature. So all the more it would be wise to communicate, that any AI fixes will not take nother 1.5 years this time.
 
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some folk keep on making demands of a bug free patch -or at least a fix within 3 days so to speak- *without* willingness to buy DLC, just cause they want it like that for free.

I find that immensely arrogant and unfair. But that is my opinion.

Why should the consumer reward bad behavior? It's not like this is the one bad patch that slipped through the cracks: there's been a consistent pattern of patches being released with easily-replicated bugs (remember when a new Stellaris patch dropped and the AI wasn't able to declare war? Or when being in a Federation made you unable to use most CBs? For an EUIV example, aren't reformed Inti countries still unable to raise autonomy because they don't have religious authority?) Remember: DDRJake once said that reviews weigh ounces while sales weigh pounds. If someone is dissatisfied with the current trend of releasing very obviously-broken patches, what better way to show that dissatisfaction than to stop buying more content?
 
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37k view , top thread, and a mod immediately jumped on it , obviously overjoyed by the opportunity to get rid of that evil thread , and closed it as soon ONE guy derailed it. That's not a little issue that should wait for a bug fix patch, but rather an hotfix as soon as possible.

That is incorrect, sir. If you had read the last few messages on that thread and the reason why the moderator closed it, you wouldn't hold this opinion. As he said, the thread was closed because it strayed too far from the reason it was started and by that point it was nothing but a place for people to vent their frustration and complain about PDX silence. Thing is, this wasn't the original purpose of said thread and nothing productive was coming out of it. Hence, close.

It was by no means an attempt to shut down discussion or censor their forum.
 
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here we go again...

I got an idea... maybe write a DLC on steam and only rate the price versus the buggy content. I'm sure that hasn't been tried before... sorry for the cynism.

I'll actually add something of interest to the thread, questions and answers by Johan himself on the matter. from Johan himself on the matter.

source: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/eu4-game-testers.1398388/?prdxDevPosts=1

regarding QA and beta testing before release:

Johan:

"Now I am not making any excuses, but I just want to explain what testers actually do.

Testing a game and Playtesting a game is something that is rather different.

A lot of the time spent by fulltime employees, both at Paradox and and our testing partners involves pure testing.

These include the following and much more.

  • Going through design document and compaing to the game making sure everything follows the design.
  • Verifying that something the developer said was fixed is fixed.
  • Make sure save/load does not break when you do X.
  • Trying to reproduce crashes.
  • And a lot more technical "testing" tasks."

question: Can you explain what happened with the release?

answer of Johan:

"Yes.

As the game grows more and more complex with interlocking features and numbers, it is far easier to miss balance issues.

And the more permutations you have the harder it will get.

Lets say you have a development team of 10 people, they are "done" with all the development, and just have a polishing and wrapping up. Thats when you decide, we can sell this game, and set release dates in stone. That can be 2 weeks or 10 weeks in advance.

Then you need to wrap on balancing. If you are lucky, you have about 10 testers that can playtest everyday, and give balance feedback. Lets say they get two days per campaign, and then spend a day testing functionality while the developers rebalance.

How many nations and combinations do you cover in that amount of time? And then doing it all again when numbers change? With the addition of things like policies, mission trees and unique mechanics for lots of nations there are so many relatively common styles that can break the game easily.

And if something is deemed "this is maybe too easy"?

That is the hardest part.. Is it too easy due to experienced testers, or do we need to improve AI.

When you end up in this situation when its a few weeks before release, and you have to send a version to the press, and wrap up for outlets, then you just ship. You have no option"



question:

I think most people here would agree this isn't on Q/A (alone). Could you perhaps tell us about the process regarding releasing a new patch like you did on the forum with Imperator : Rome?

I'm curious what we could do as community to reduce the amount of bugs still in the game or things being out of balance. Are there things on developer side that would help to release a more "stable" built on release? Because this seems to be a bit of a pattern with PDS lately. Would you say getting more time to test the release build would work? More budget / focus on removing these issues. Getting earlier input from the community. etc etc.

Or is there simply too much pressure to release a new DLC at a set date? I know that once a date is set, the date needs to be followed for marketing purposes, but surely there are things that could be done?

answer of Johan:

"Most Gamedirectors would prefer using beta-patches regularly. The problem is when we release DLC it is just not possible. If we have committed to a date, its locked in."

This is very enlightening and also raises a question. Why won't they incorporate old DLCs in their games? Some have been suggesting this for years as it would undoubtedly ease the QA process (and Johan just confirmed it), which would also makes customers happier as there would be less bugs and balance issues.

Now, I understand that this may not be economically a good idea, but I can't really simpatize with them on this issue because it is a hell entirely of their own making. They chose this business model, they championed it and they are yet to resolve the issues that it presents.
 
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Are you seriously not happy with "We are aware of the AI debt spiral issue. We're hoping to be able to address that problem in the next bug fix patch." ? =/

I am not.

First, they didn't bother to post it here, on their official forums.

Second, it gives no hint of a timeline, and makes no mention of the fact that they've left the game unplayable for months for anyone who likes a functional AI.

I'm not expecting them to cancel vacations, but I am expecting them to communicate with paying customers when there is a problem that is entirely their own fault.

It's the level of basic professionalism that I'd expect from a tiny indie developer, let alone a major corporation. And they're failing at it miserably.
 
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