Already waiting patches - fastest Paradox game that I stopped playing

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As someone who has been part of many betas I hate reading posts like these, you literally have no idea what bugs and issues that existed and were fixed/solved.

When someone says "how could they have missed this obvious thing?" 9 times out of 10 they didn't, it's a bug/issue that appears as a result of the most recent change to the release candidate.

Right now they'll be testing changes in relation to all the issues you are complaining about right now. Every single change has the opportunity to break something else, some of these things will be found some won't they do not the hundreds of thousands of testers to find every single issue in moments like the player base will.

Please stop accusing Paradox of not putting the work in, i'm tired of it.

Thank you for making this point. Games like these have so many moving parts that have to interact with each other perfectly in order to avoid bugs. Even 5 years of QA won't necessarily squash them all......& that is also coming from someone who has participated in both open & closed betas.
 
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Yea, but all handsome-trait men? The lipstick is tied to the trait, and it's congenital, so in the world of CK3, if you're deemed "handsome," then you're forced to wear lipstick regardless of culture, religion, etc. That can't be working as intended.
They're handsome, and they want to be fabulous as well. Makes sense.
 
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I said that a bug where the the AI basically doesn't build anything ever is not release version quality. Don't try to twist that into meaning that the presence of any bugs ever means that a product is basically an early release product.

In fact I specifically wrote "We all know that 100% freedom from bugs is a fantasy, but this level of bug should not exist in a release version."

Toning down the hyperbole is good advice. Might I suggest that I may not be the one who needs to hear that the most, though? ;)

Hyperbole is claiming AI leaders not building certain improvements is a serious bug. That is not a serious bug. CK2 (and EU4) had so many issues YEARS after release and dlc. Including being able to lose merchant republic status if your heir had a different government type, one paradox game had to relaunch everytime you went to the main menu, another would not stop properly on steam, and other bugs that effectively ended ironman games.

My biggest gripe is CK3 is actually that it is way too similar to CK2. Apart from Catholic heresays, AI whack-a-mole wars (which EU4 remains - by far - the worst game for), people are complaining about balance issues and crusade mechanics (which have always been ropey - CK2 had a winner take all mechanic).

But I can see why they didn't change too much now. If they tried anything to mess with core mechanics, there would be much more serious bugs than lipstick on the wrong ruler or too many Waldesians, the core player base would go crazy.
 
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Hyperbole is claiming AI leaders not building certain improvements is a serious bug.

Not building some improvements is not a serious bug, no. But the current AI behavior means that nearly all castles in the game will barely be upgraded from 867 to 1453. It is also not quite a bug as such, given that there is nothing wrong with the code. Rather it is a result of poor AI planning regarding investing in the future versus saving money for immediate concerns such as gifts and mercs. The EU4 AI has had the same sort of issues for basically that games entire existence, with the AI sometimes being too frugal and merc-happy and other times investing to a degree where the prevailing player strategy was to overwhelm them with mercs and taking all those shiny investments for themselves in short order.

I don't know if the AI can somehow be made reactive in this regard, where it looks at what its neighbors are doing and only gearing up for war if they are likely to attack or if there are targets it wants to attack due to claims or personality. As it stands, even a content coward duke will set aside a small fortune for hiring mercs at all times and just build a Scrooge McDuck style money pit to swim around in.

Interestingly, investing in holdings works fine for republic and theocratic vassals. Probably because they are not programmed to be as concerned with warfare for obvious reasons.
 
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There are too many bugs to buy your excuse. It isn't just a few things that are broken. I have put in 200 hours and I have never played a more broken Paradox game (I skipped Imperator thankfully). And the game is fundamentally broken in every way, not just bugs. Are you going to tell me the OP nature of dread and the talent trees are bugs? No, those are huge design oversights by Paradox. This game is trash in its current state.

Again you don't know how many bugs there were before and the game is not trash given the amount of people who are playing it happily. I never said Dread and talent trees were bugs, they are balance issues but work in the same way in that each change has to be tested and each change can effect and break something else.


For the last time I understand if a game has some bugs at release, doesn’t work with some technical configurations or if some obscure combination of various game elements is totally OP. After all like you said catching that would take a lot more time.

What I can’t unacceptably is fundamental mechanics being broken in a way that even a handful testers must have caught. I think too many people are willing to give Paradox a pass because “the game will get better with time”.
We are paying customers and we deserve better than to be play tester who have to catch glaringly obvious cracks in core mechanics in a supposedly finished product.

Which fundamental mechanic is broken that they should have known about before release that you know for a fact wasn't created in the release candidate?

The problem is that this is such a major issue that it's not really acceptable to release a product in this state. This is what you have to swallow if you choose to buy an early release game, but not a release version by an established software developer.

And I'm sorry, but I have to chuckle at your claim that it's somehow understandable that they might just have missed that the AI can barely build a building. That's patently absurd. We all know that 100% freedom from bugs is a fantasy, but this level of bug should not exist in a release version.

No, we don't, and that's on Paradox. They communicated a list of known issues and this was not on it. Only recently did one of their Community Ambassadors reply and tell us that they were aware that the AI needs some serious work, including the building issue.

It's really not given I've played some 250 years from the start and not noticed it. Most test games are short ones because with a limited number of testers it's not possible the number of games start to finish and look at literally every in the game as us the 50000 players can!

Seriously guys tell me, what's better delaying the game's release so that some players don't get as angry as you guys seem to be (and there will always been some whenever the game is released) or delaying the game and pissing off the other 90%?
 
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It actually is since the Lombards came from Scandinavia and took over parts of Italy. Genetics show this to be the case.
You're still talking about another people/historical period. Would you consider right to have England de jure part of the Empire of Italy because it was a Roman province?
 
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Hyperbole is claiming AI leaders not building certain improvements is a serious bug. That is not a serious bug.
Building buildings are basically the entire foundation of improving your realm and its armies, yet it's not a serious bug when the AI more or less fails to do so for an entire 600 year campaign?

Ok, thanks for sharing your opinion, man. :)
 
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It's really not given I've played some 250 years from the start and not noticed it. Most test games are short ones because with a limited number of testers it's not possible the number of games start to finish and look at literally every in the game as us the 50000 players can!
If a company's testing can't catch that a foundational mechanic of the game isn't working at all with the AI then they've got some issues with their processes. Especially when the company according to previous posters apparently has a history of reproducing the same darn bug for CK2 and literally every single DLC they released for it. Yet they don't even check it? The heck? :D


Seriously guys tell me, what's better delaying the game's release so that some players don't get as angry as you guys seem to be (and there will always been some whenever the game is released) or delaying the game and pissing off the other 90%?
What kind of false dilemma are you inventing here? What's better is ensuring that one of the most basic core mechanics of the game is functioning before releasing it.

We all know that it's a utopia to believe that games can be released 100% perfect and bug-free, especially one the scope of CK3. But I swear some people seem to be acting as if all bugs are equal. They're not. This is such a basic one that there is really no excuse for it to exist in the release version, especially when the company has a history of consistently experiencing it in products of the same franchise.
 
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I'm surprised nobody is mentioning the "endless wars" which you get dragged in to later on in the game.


Once levies and Men-at-arms reach a certain point multiple decade long conflicts become the norm...


As an example: I had a crusade called in on me and 40 years later of defending all my holdings and sieging down random counts all across europe + the papacy only brought me to 40% warscore in my favor :mad:

Is any part of the war target occupied? You should have ticking war score if you fully control the war target.
 
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Building buildings are basically the entire foundation of improving your realm and its armies, yet it's not a serious bug when the AI more or less fails to do so for an entire 600 year campaign?

Ok, thanks for sharing your opinion, man. :)

But I swear some people seem to be acting as if all bugs are equal.

The AI build in tribal holdings, for sure, and do build in other holdings, very quickly in fact. You are talking about a very specific form of buildings, and no it is not a critical bug in any way.

Minecraft, a game that has been out for years, have much more serious bugs (like bugs that cause complete crashes and can ruin saves).
 
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If anything, I'd say female-rulers need a big patch. I wouldn't say it is sexist female preference systems are close to unplayable, with daughters moving to other regions even if they marry lowborns, but it is annoying for overthrowing the patriarchy which is the kind of thing developers have clearly wanted to allow for since CK2.
 
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Hyperbole is claiming AI leaders not building certain improvements is a serious bug. That is not a serious bug. CK2 (and EU4) had so many issues YEARS after release and dlc. Including being able to lose merchant republic status if your heir had a different government type, one paradox game had to relaunch everytime you went to the main menu, another would not stop properly on steam, and other bugs that effectively ended ironman games.

My biggest gripe is CK3 is actually that it is way too similar to CK2. Apart from Catholic heresays, AI whack-a-mole wars (which EU4 remains - by far - the worst game for), people are complaining about balance issues and crusade mechanics (which have always been ropey - CK2 had a winner take all mechanic).

But I can see why they didn't change too much now. If they tried anything to mess with core mechanics, there would be much more serious bugs than lipstick on the wrong ruler or too many Waldesians, the core player base would go crazy.

It's rather funny how you brought up the topic of core mechanics just after you painted the picture of how CK3 is actually pretty much bug free and people are complaining about things that are balance issues instead. Because the the core gameplay loop of "expand your influence by acquiring new titles, expand your dynasty by having kids and then pass off your titles to your kids, preserving your dynasty" has bugs affecting each of its three elements.

Title inheritance gets broken the moment an individual title gets its own specific succession laws. Even when it matches realm succession laws 100%. And it's not even something the AI does itself, it just happens on its own. Meanwhile your children magically become not your children years after they were born because poorly coded events rewrite the real father value. And the AI does nothing to preserve its dynasty whenever it gets a female ruler or heir. Which means that the AI is so broken that it outright ignores the game over condition of Crusader Kings willy nilly. But hey, maybe those are "balance issues" too.

And that's in 1.03. The release version had also such wondrous stuff like titles of childless rulers passing to their mothers or their mother's children from her other marriage (even if they were much younger than proper dynasty siblings).
 
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I'd feel better about this if there was any communication with the devs. So far we've had one hotfix and a dev diary saying there won't be dev diaries.
 
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I'd feel better about this if there was any communication with the devs. So far we've had one hotfix and a dev diary saying there won't be dev diaries.
To be fair there was a Community Moderator Ambassador who wrote a reply on a thread (maybe it was this one, I can't remember) the other day saying that they are aware of the AI building issue and are looking into it. But I agree with the general sense of your comment, unless you happened to be reading that particular thread then you're still in the dark.

I do wish there'd be more communication with the player base, even if just to give us a sense of what issues they are working on, and an idea of if we can expect the next patch to be this month/this year/in an undetermined future.
 
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I kind of agree with the general sentiment of the thread. When the game came out I spent hours on one save, playing it slowly and patiently and taking the game in. I was playing it every time I could. But now I seem to start saves and end them after a short time because I notice something annoying, or it just starts to feel shallow.

I think if they fixed my balance problems I would love to play this game more, but there are just so many little things that are bothering me right now in the game and it's a shame because there is also so much that I like
 
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As someone who has been part of many betas I hate reading posts like these, you literally have no idea what bugs and issues that existed and were fixed/solved.

When someone says "how could they have missed this obvious thing?" 9 times out of 10 they didn't, it's a bug/issue that appears as a result of the most recent change to the release candidate.

Right now they'll be testing changes in relation to all the issues you are complaining about right now. Every single change has the opportunity to break something else, some of these things will be found some won't they do not the hundreds of thousands of testers to find every single issue in moments like the player base will.

Please stop accusing Paradox of not putting the work in, i'm tired of it.

That is an understandable sentiment, except that they undid fixes from CK2, like the AI seduction spamming. If this were the first game in a new series, and there were such annoying bugs, it would be more understandable, but it isn’t, so it isn’t.
 
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Unless you expect paradox to be hiring 50,000 testers what do you really expect them to do? They could test and test and test for 2 years to make sure there are no bugs.

Ah, yes. Shoving in a false dichotomy of releasing a game with no bugs at all (which, given how no one asked for that also makes this a straw man) and releasing the game with even the more serious bugs (which is what @PhilzuNeide considers their examples to be) still in is truly a masterpiece of argumentation.


The bug you bring up could easy be the result of a change to make sure the AI save some money for war or some other thing that isn't buildings. This could have been introduced in the release candidate after fixing an issue of the AI going bankrupt as soon as a war starts.

But the AI doesn't save money for war anyway. It merrily goes bankrupt during a war by using boats to travel just two provinces away.


It's super easy to miss that the AI isn't buying buildings if you don't have time to play 100 years to notice without checking the same AI counties over and over.

You know what's not super easy to miss though? AI not using matrilineal marriages. There are literally female rulers among the suggested ones. Including an unmarried and childless Matilda of Tuscany. Launch 1066 game as anyone else but Matilda and then observe her. Within a minute she'll marry patrilinealy with no regard for preserving her dynasty. Each time.

And, in doing so, The AI's flat out ignoring the game over condition of Crusader Kings. Which means the AI is completely botched. At which point your excuse of "but what if it was introduced only in the release candidate built" excuse no longer flies.

One person could figure that out in just a few minutes of testing. And what makes it even better is that CK3 has an inflated amount of female rulers thanks to knights (most of whom are landed characters) dropping like flies and even the 1.02's succession bug that made mothers the primary heirs of their children. Making it all the easier to spot the issue.


Again you don't know how many bugs there were before and the game is not trash given the amount of people who are playing it happily. I never said Dread and talent trees were bugs, they are balance issues but work in the same way in that each change has to be tested and each change can effect and break something else.

You don't know either, so why bring it up to put yourself on a pedestal? And the bugs extend to the core gameplay loop of CK3. That some people turn a blind eye to that doesn't negate their severity, nor excuse Paradox for releasing the game in that state.


Which fundamental mechanic is broken that they should have known about before release that you know for a fact wasn't created in the release candidate?

If a FUNDAMENTAL mechanic gets broken it doesn't matter if it was done so by a release candidate built. There's more than one release candidate built in each software release. Just slapping "lel release candidate" is no excuse for breaking fundamental mechanics. It's a reason to make another release candidate build in which it isn't.

Also, as was the case in the paragraph above, you don't know for a fact that such bugs weren't there for months either (it'd truly be a surprise coming from a company with such stellar history of QA) , so you sticking to that tangent like glue is utterly ineffective.


Seriously guys tell me, what's better delaying the game's release so that some players don't get as angry as you guys seem to be (and there will always been some whenever the game is released) or delaying the game and pissing off the other 90%?

Because out of all years of human history it's 2020 when people would have had oh, so much trouble being understanding about a game getting postponed. Just look at Cyberpunk 2077. Oh, wait, that's made by a company that actually deserves goodwill from the playerbase so maybe it's not the fairest of comparisons.

And yes, delaying a game's release when your AI is so busted it completely ignores the game's game over condition whenever it has a female character as a ruler or a heir is the better choice than releasing it in such a sorry state.
 
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That is an understandable sentiment, except that they undid fixes from CK2, like the AI seduction spamming. If this were the first game in a new series, and there were such annoying bugs, it would be more understandable, but it isn’t, so it isn’t.

Not only is it two different teams working on CK2 and CK3 there isn't an issue with rampant seduction it's an issue with an event that changes parentage which didn't exist in CK2 so couldn't have been foreseen in the same way.
 
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Not only is it two different teams working on CK2 and CK3 there isn't an issue with rampant seduction it's an issue with an event that changes parentage which didn't exist in CK2 so couldn't have been foreseen in the same way.
There is an issue with both rampant seduction and the genetic parent swap.
 
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