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Greetings!

It’s a new year, and we thought it would be interesting to give all of you an update on the status of the team! There’s quite a few of us, and we hope you’ll enjoy this brief insight into who’s working on updates, fixes and exciting new content for your enjoyment!

My name is Carmille and I work as a Producer on CK3; I’ve been with the team for about one and a half years now. CK2 was one of my favorite games and the reason that I joined Paradox to begin with, so naturally I am feeling quite blessed to work on the project :)

Firstly, an announcement! It has been decided that Alexander Oltner (aka @rageair) will be stepping up as the new Game Director for the project! Alexander is the (now former) Design Lead for CK3, and has spent many years designing features for both CK2 and CK3. He started at the company in 2015 and, if you’ve tuned in to any of the pre-release streams or interviews, you surely know who he is already. Long-term fans might even recognize him as the lead designer behind Holy Fury for CK2, or perhaps you’ve seen him in one of the many past Dev Clashes. We have full confidence that Alex will be able to take up the reins and steer the project towards a bright future! The former Game Director, Henrik Fåhraeus (known on the forums as Doomdark), is ascending the ranks and will instead act as the Creative Director for many titles, CK3 included.

With that said, let's move on to the team itself!
You might think that with the release of the base game, the amount of people working on the project would be reduced. We’re actually doing the exact opposite, and are in the process of expanding the team instead! This will give us a lot more flexibility and freedom and should allow us to work on several different things at the same time.
Naturally, we need to train and onboard our new team members so it is not something we can start with straight away, but our hope is that you will see the effects within a not so distant future.

Now, how many are actually working on CK3 and what are they doing?

The team is made up of many different disciplines, working together to create amazing experiences! We’ll go into more details on each of them below.

Producer

We have four people working in Production (myself included). Our job is to help the team bring the design to life and into your hands. We do this by setting up (and iterating upon) processes and workflows, identifying deadlines and milestones, making plans to hit those dates while staying in good shape and ensuring that everybody knows what to do. We can often be seen grooming CK3s task and bug database and making sure everything is according to plan, up to date and representative of the current situation as well as spending a lot of time looking at numbers in spreadsheets.

Game Design

Our Game Designer is working very closely together with the Game Director. Their focus is split between what is currently being developed and nailing down the design for future expansions. They can very frequently be seen playing the game as it is being developed and make tweaks or highlight areas of concern so that the feature feels as great in the game as it looks on paper.

UX Design

Just like Game Design, our two UX Designers have their focus split between what is happening in the game right now and what is being designed for future expansions. UX Design and Game Design work closely together and make sure that new features are both fun and user friendly. They focus on interactions and user interface, although they can often be seen giving feedback on when something just doesn’t feel intuitive.

Content Design

Although the two previously mentioned design disciplines can sometimes be seen creating content for features as they are being developed, it's the Content Designers that create the vast majority of it. We have eight Content Designers working on CK3, and unlike the other two Design disciplines, they are almost entirely focused on working with what’s being developed in the game here and now. They pride themselves on creating historically plausible content, and will spend a lot of their time researching something before it is being put into the game. They are skilled scripters and writers and very passionate about ensuring that all features have a soul made out of supportive events, decisions, interactions, etc.

Code

There are seven Programmers and two Tech Leads working on CK3. The Tech Leads are responsible for the overall technical health and spend a lot of their time setting up (and iterating upon) processes and best practices for the project. They play a major part during all development stages and are constantly aware of the big picture and the challenges that could come with it.

Our Programmers are responsible for building the functionality and foundation of the features themselves. They work very closely together with the other disciplines on their features and can often be seen providing Code Support or in other ways using their skillset to make life easier for the non-coders. They will also keep an eye on performance and the overall stability of the game and jump upon an issue as soon as it appears.

Art Director

There is one Art Director working on CK3, and their responsibility is the overall artistic vision. They work closely together with the Game Director and Production, but also with all of the Artists in the team.

2D UI Art

We have three 2D Artists on the team and they can often be seen collaborating with Code and UX Design to bring the interfaces of new CK3 features to life after Code has provided their framework. They will also create icons and illustrations as well as investigate artistic improvements to the UIs that is not part of the UX design.

2D Concept Art

Our two Concept Artists help the game team by visualizing assets before they are to be created by a 3D Artist.

3D Character Art

Just as the name indicates, our three Character Artists work on anything related to our characters. This not only includes the characters itself, but also the clothing, headgears and hairstyles. In addition to that they are also responsible for creating the Units that are walking around the map. They can often be seen working closely together with Animation.

3D Environment Art

These Artists work mostly on the map itself. We have four of them and they can often be seen creating holdings, ships, siege weapons and other map assets. They are also painting the map as well as making sure that all the units, holdings and other buildings are located where it makes sense, both from a historical perspective and an artistic one.

Animation

There is one Animator working on the project and their main focus is on bringing our characters and units to life. They can be seen working on brand new poses and adding more variety to existing ones to make sure the characters show a wide range of different emotions and visually support different situations.

VFX

CK3 is not a very VFX heavy game, and because of this we do not have a VFX artist working with us full time, but only on demand.

QA

Our QA is the glue that keeps everything together. We have a core team of seven QA, but expand to a lot more once we are starting to wrap up and getting ready for a release. They can often be seen playing the game and testing the new features as they become ready, but it is important to note that this is not the only thing they do. They have a holistic view of quality and work closely together with all disciplines to make sure that the end product is as great as possible. Sometimes this is achieved through testing alone, but other times they can identify a need to redesign / introduce more content to a feature that feels a bit weak or perhaps a need to tweak a process or workflow within the Project itself.

Audio

The Audio team works on all PDS games, so we can’t really claim them for ourselves.
When they do work on CK3, they are often around two to three people and can be seen working on sound effects for our new features as well as composing music that fit the theme of the expansion.

Naturally, we don’t all work on the same features or fixes at the same time, that’d be very confusing! We’re divided into smaller groups, each focusing on their own set of features or content. Once a week we have a couple of hours set aside to make sure that everybody on the CK3 team has time to sit down and play the game and see for themselves how everything is being tied together.

The team is currently busy working on two things: one is big and the other is smaller. The smaller of these you'll be hearing more of in the coming weeks...
 
Hi Devs! I just wanna say I'm a big fan of you ever since 2016 and keep up all your good work. I'm really excited and have great faith in you for coming up with the next greatest addition to the game.
 
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I love 21st century capitalism, where you have in production 4 producers that don't produce but manage...
Film producers don't make films either.

That's what the actors, directors, camera crew, Foley artists, etc. are there for.
 
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With this DD I can feel ourselves getting closer to the hollow fanbase of a particular Ring tittle, eternally starved for news.

On more related news while it was implied in the DD I think most of us misunderstood the bringing of new people into the fold, considering the healthy team that was before. It looked like the workflow was stagnant these months with little done and that's the reason why new people were brought in. Instead we should be getting the impression that the success of the game and the desire to fast forward the updates is why the team was expanded.

This simple mistake I attribute it to a lack of communication with the delays and the previous hypetrain DD and a lack of a clear roadmap with at least some quarterly goals that will let us constrain our expectations
 
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I did the same thing with Creative Assembly after the Rome 2 debacle in 2013/2014. I haven't bought one of their products since.
The difference is that Creative Assembly released the Empire Edition of Rome 2 for free, while Paradox would have cut it into multiple DLCs and demanded payment for each of them.

Anyway, congratulations to the new team member on their employment I suppose, but I hope future dev diaries are more substantial about the future of the game.
 
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With all due consideration, this is kind of empty. I find it reassuring that you field a consistent team and I agree it was something good to be communicated. However, what was interesting me the most, as a paying customer, was the result of this team's work. Until further notice I feel scammed.
 
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Anyway, congratulations to the new team member on their employment I suppose, but I hope future dev diaries are more substantial about the future of the game.
I don't know why but your comment reminded me of this:

 
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I think I've figured it out:

The upcoming expansion is about peasant rebellions!

And this dev diary was carefully crafted to "get us in the mood", so to speak.

PDX, you guys are geniuses.
 
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The main problem I think most people actually have is that we have been waiting for half a year without much communication from the dev team. Then Dec 15 comes around with a dev diary (without content which I think no one had a problem with) that stated there "won’t be a Dev Diary until Mid-January at the very earliest". Now, I can read and I realize you don't literally say that there will be one in mid-Jan, but it does create the expectation that we will hear something then, but nothing was said. Then at the end of Jan, two weeks later, we are told that there will be a dev diary in mid-Feb. Now, I think at this point, a half year after release, after hearing nothing about content for that same period, people had high expectations, especially since a lot of us have already paid for it through the royal edition. Instead, contrary to these expectations, we get a dev diary about the team, which is nice, but seems misplaced.

The devs could have been a bit more transparent. In mid-Jan, they could have said that there wouldn't be a dev diary that day and said when they would do one. Even better would have been to tell us when they realized there wouldn't be one then. The devs could have told us that the first dev diary would not contain updates about future content. It would be great to know when we can expect information about content. Finally, at the end of this diary you do tell us that we can expect some in the coming weeks. When does it start though? Is it every week starting now or will we get the first bit of info weeks from now?

Now here is what I personally think would be amazing to see: Weekly or bi-weekly dev diaries. These DDs can contain pretty much anything the devs can share. For example, I would like to hear about general development philosophy; what are things you would like to improve about the game in the short-term or in a semi-distant future. FAQs; replying to a number of questions or suggestions from the community and your thoughts about them. Showcase some bugs that you guys are working on or tweaks you are making to the game. Obviously, any actual new content would be the most welcome, but I think these other things would be well received as well, and would allow us to be in engaged with the progress you are making.

I'm not complaining that we don't have a dlc already. I want you to take all the time you need to make the content we will enjoy. It's the transparency and community engagement that has been lacking thus far. The game is great, and we want it to be keep getting better.
 
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I dont overly care who makes it so long as it is made and have no interest in who the dev team actually are.
I think the community became toxic (me included- well sarcastic at least) due to lack of information and openness as discussed here and then PDX came in very heavy handed.
As someone who has supported PDX for years (look at my titles) I am extremely disappointed by this turn of events. If i was treated this way as a customer face to face I would be demanding a meeting with a manager or CEO.
Even if this is a corporately owned internet forum which we are technically allowed to use i find the customer relations lacking.
I am sad to watch a series and developer that I have followed turn on its own fan base and then blame them.
I have said my peace if this is deemed trolling then so be it.
 
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Oh, he is here and working diligently.

This year will see some super interesting things and changes to the way we handle news and Community. This downtime was definitely to help the teams sort out how to launch and handle this new project.

While I am a bit more silent on here for posting, I read through almost every thread daily and we compile weekly Feedback/Suggestions/Bug Reports/Feature Requests from the Forums and other social sources.

It would be really appreciated if you didn't just read them, but actually engaging - maybe just making a comment that it has been noted/read or something. At least that way it wouldn't seem like talking to a wall of silence with only my fellow community members to break it.

With that said, I'm quite bored and disappointing by this post. I think it would've been nice to see a kind of road map - much like what Total War do. They create a road map with most of it being obscured and then slowly reveal it. The lack of communication from you guys is quite bad and it just goes to reinforce that PDX is bad at engaging with its community and to take feedback.

@Ursus Mursus
And CA dlc policy is similar to Paradox.

No its not. CA - has a policy where they sell factions, but the base game is the same regardless of you buying it. That means that if new mechanics are introduced to a bunch of factions then you too will gain access to the QoL improvements. The reason is that the game you play is the same as those with the DLC's. The only difference is that while you can see the new factions on the map, you can't play them until you buy the DLC.

PDX DLC policy is very different. If you do not buy the DLC's then your base game is radically different somebody who did buy it. That is also why the Host determine which DLC's would be used - because otherwise the game would simply be completely dysfunctional in MP. There are loads of mechanics which are exclusive to DLC - QoL improvements too. Just take the diplomacy interface which neatly allows you to see who would accept alliance proposals etc - that is a DLC feature, even if it is a QoL improvement. You can't disinherit an heir either.

So, as you can see, CA sells factions, but the base game remains the same even if you don't buy the DLC's. PDX sells DLC's that alter the base game, and so if your friend play without DLC's then you will have radically different games and opportunities.

Lastly, I also find CA's DLC policy much more generous. Half their DLC factions are free and the rest is at least within a decent enough price range. Had that been Paradox, then we'd probably have to buy both the music, maybe missions and certainly the skin packs as separate products.
 
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It would be really appreciated if you didn't just read them, but actually engaging - maybe just making a comment that it has been noted/read or something. At least that way it wouldn't seem like talking to a wall of silence with only my fellow community members to break it.

We do indeed have Moderators, but also Ambassadors that are constantly replying to posts and handling discussions.

However, there is not much for a Community Manager to say when the thread consists of "I am bored, this sucks, and you suck." So we usually refrain from entirely unproductive posts and stick closer to making sure the Community is heard and Feedback/Suggestions are delivered to the right hands to help shape the process for the future.

That being said, being around gathering data and watching posts gives me a pretty decent idea of how to work with our team to make sure their tone and messages are clear and concise. :)
 
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We do indeed have Moderators, but also Ambassadors that are constantly replying to posts and handling discussions.

However, there is not much for a Community Manager to say when the thread consists of "I am bored, this sucks, and you suck." So we usually refrain from entirely unproductive posts and stick closer to making sure the Community is heard and Feedback/Suggestions are delivered to the right hands to help shape the process for the future.

That being said, being around gathering data and watching posts gives me a pretty decent idea of how to work with our team to make sure their tone and messages are clear and concise. :)

Naturally, there are some posts where people have a tendency to vent frustration rather than actually comment anything productive. I completely understand that you refrain from diving into those. That said, this forum has some true jewels of proposals and ideas. Paradox is very lucky that it has a dedicated community that wants to help improve the game.

In my experience your ambassadors and community managers don't actually engage with those posts either. And to reiterate, you don't have to commit to anything or promise that it will be implemented. A mere "Interesting idea" - or ask questions as to what the author or commentators would think about X, Y, Z in relation to that post would be nice. Anyways, have a good evening :)

Even just a type of sticker - like the thumbs up or "agree" but with a Paradox logo would go a long way.
 
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We do indeed have Moderators, but also Ambassadors that are constantly replying to posts and handling discussions.

However, there is not much for a Community Manager to say when the thread consists of "I am bored, this sucks, and you suck." So we usually refrain from entirely unproductive posts and stick closer to making sure the Community is heard and Feedback/Suggestions are delivered to the right hands to help shape the process for the future.

That being said, being around gathering data and watching posts gives me a pretty decent idea of how to work with our team to make sure their tone and messages are clear and concise. :)

Hi Pariah, firstly this is aimed as constructive not a critique or attack. I want to echo what Secuter has said in many ways as in yes you have these people in place but i do not feel that they listen to us. Yes of course the CM is there to ban stick people and they shouldnt have to put up with "you suck posts" but if i worked for PDX i would be asking my community why they were being so toxic. Why not msg some of the people who were being toxic and ask them why find out the issues?
I think people have complained in other places that it feels (not is but feels) like PDX want and echo chamber here where we all clap when told to. Its not a good feeling as someone who has been listened to in the past and has played your games for 10+ years to be told to basically "play nice or dont play" At the end of the day we pay your wages. I do not feel that anyone listens to us and the tour de force from PDX on Dev Diary day just goes to show the extent of the poor community / corporate communication. I haven't made this post for likes or hates or to spark up a debate in here. Ive just posted it as I feel you guys need to listen (or pretend to at least) some more :) With respect not hate a 10+ PDX vet - Nexus.
 
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Hi Pariah, firstly this is aimed as constructive not a critique or attack. I want to echo what Secuter has said in many ways as in yes you have these people in place but i do not feel that they listen to us. Yes of course the CM is there to ban stick people and they shouldnt have to put up with "you suck posts" but if i worked for PDX i would be asking my community why they were being so toxic. Why not msg some of the people who were being toxic and ask them why find out the issues?
I think people have complained in other places that it feels (not is but feels) like PDX want and echo chamber here where we all clap when told to. Its not a good feeling as someone who has been listened to in the past and has played your games for 10+ years to be told to basically "play nice or dont play" At the end of the day we pay your wages. I do not feel that anyone listens to us and the tour de force from PDX on Dev Diary day just goes to show the extent of the poor community / corporate communication. I haven't made this post for likes or hates or to spark up a debate in here. Ive just posted it as I feel you guys need to listen (or pretend to at least) some more :) With respect not hate a 10+ PDX vet - Nexus.
I feel that these kinds of posts are being written by people who are invested in Paradox's success, and it would be a terrible mistake to dismiss (the large numbers of) them without listening.
 
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The difference is that Creative Assembly released the Empire Edition of Rome 2 for free, while Paradox would have cut it into multiple DLCs and demanded payment for each of them.

Anyway, congratulations to the new team member on their employment I suppose, but I hope future dev diaries are more substantial about the future of the game.

True, but that's just (mostly) fixing their huge and utter clusterf*** of a launch product. I still don't like many of their choices and it's still only best when modded. Altogether I think Paradox has avoided that with CK3 for sure. They just need to be a bit clearer on their goals and giving feedback to bug reports.
 
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Hello! I want to thank you for your work and suggest such changes:

1. Change the characteristics and names for professional troops depending on the nation. For example, in Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain), the rulers should be given knight cavalry instead of heavy cavalry, and instead of light cavalry - I don't know what to call them, let them be squires. Other nations have these troops with lower characteristics or none at all. The Eastern Slavs and Scandinavians have access to stronger heavy infantry (such as the brutal Varangians))), the British have stronger archers, the Arabs have faster and stronger light cavalry, and the Byzantines have legionaries.

2. Add a solution to the Western European rulers: to hold a jousting tournament, where the winner receives some kind of bun, piety, money, and also increases the relationship with the woman who will declare her lady of the heart. That, in turn, also receives piety or fame.

3. For nomadic tribes, remove fortresses, temples, and cities, replacing them with "nomads", and add a decision (or religious dogma, something like human sacrifice) about raids on sedentary neighbors in order to obtain money and slaves.

4. Add the purpose of the war: "To make a tributary" - that is, without losing independence, the ruler must pay tribute every year.

5. During raids-an opportunity for the victims to agree on the termination of the raid, paying off with gold.

***AI actions in the game are extremely monotonous. I wanted his actions to be more active in relation to the player and other characters:

6. When blackmail lustful AI could demand to sleep with him (in addition to the basic conditions)

7. AI men should actively try to seduce beautiful and pretty women. In case of failure - do not give up trying to do it again and try to eliminate competitors on the way to the bed or the heart of a woman

8. A woman's refusal to marry, from courtship, or break off an engagement is a reason for war. Also a reason for war for pious religions - if the bride is not a virgin.

9. Love - it can flare up in AI suddenly. This is a strong feeling that makes you act recklessly - give expensive gifts, be jealous, declare wars, kill, challenge to a duel. A special kind of love is passion. In this case, the AI becomes mad and uses all means to achieve its goal - spreading dirty rumors, using bribery, blackmail

10. Wedding and the first wedding night - a feast for which feudal lords gather. Ends on the wedding night.

11. When blackmailing an AI or player, they may require another character to do something against a third character or try to seduce them. For example, you Can force a woman to seduce her Liege Lord, then blackmail him with it.

* translation of Google, sorry )))
 
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