Competitive HoI4 - Why is Paradox still sleeping on this?

[GreatStuff]

So I just watched a few of the "Commanders in Conflict" videos on Speed5's YouTube channel. In the videos you see well-known Paradox YouTubers duking it out on a mod that massively reduces the scale of the war to a single theater, resulting in a fast-paced and entertaining game session often lasting shorter than a single game of DoTa/LoL.

Granted, it is super early in development, not perfectly balanced, and doesn't involve the whole conflict on a "grand strategy" scale, but it does use all of the game's mechanics to produce fun and thrilling content that anyone can watch. All of this without cutting any footage or spending hours following a full-blown multiplayer session.

My question to the devs is - why are you not taking advantage of this opportunity? For me, these videos are proof that HoI4 has all the ingredients to be a valid eSport, and this could propel the game to a new level of popularity.

All we need is a mode for multiplayer with scenarios/"maps" such as the ones in these videos, maybe even a 3vs3 one for a Germany vs Soviets slugfest. You can then add a ranking system and some mechanics for better micromanagement, and that's all there's to it.

Sure, it's easier said than done, but I believe this has the potential to open HoI4 to an entirely new audience and make existing players more engaged and willing to continue spending their time and money on Hearts of Iron. In essence, this would be a win-win for everyone involved.

I'd appreciate it if fellow players share their opinions on this as well.

 

[marcelo r. r.]

in hoi2 theres "scenarios", i don't remind how worked to script it, if was a list of valid states, or a delimitator path array, or both.

 

[LeanLeaf]

Hoi4 is more thought out like a "singleplayer scenario" game than "multiplayer competitive". You can play it competitive too, I had a lot of fun playing with friends & randoms online, but playing esports competitive Hoi4 is just impossible.

Too many problems:
- Very unbalanced focus trees (since at its core is a "singleplayer scenario" game than "multiplayer competitive")
- Lots of bugs, like so many bugs, if you stretch the game to the maximum like you would do in Esports, there's a very high change that a match would be ruined because of a weird bug.
- Lots of exploits. I don't know whether Hearts of Iron 4 has more bugs or expolits, but it definetly has a lot of both.

It's very difficult to make an esports game out of a game that is originally thought out as a singleplayer experience.

TommyKay played a mod that made Hearts of Iron 4 as competitive as possible. And the game still summed up to naval invade as much as possible to get the best general traits even if you fail, "exploit it as much as possible to make level 10 generals, tanks with 4000 breakthrough".

Competitive Hearts of Iron 4 is just a competition to see who can expoit the game the best.

I think even Crusader Kings 3 has a better chance to be a competitive game. Since at least there are less bugs and there's no unique "focus tree" for each nation so the nations are more quote unquote 'balanced'.

It would be awesome to have competitive Hearts of Iron 4, but I think it's really really impossible.

 

[GreatStuff]

@LeanLeaf - You have some fair points, yet from my impression, the mod you can see in the first video only has two sides (Axis and Allies), and each side's respective focus tree is unified across scenarios, likely for balancing reasons. I saw players getting certain techs, divisions, and factories through the focus tree, meaning that they might not have the total freedom to alter division sizes or level up generals/field marshals to the values that you mentioned.

There are limitations preventing certain exploits, and while this might be cutting off a part of the whole experience, I still think it provides fun gameplay that many can enjoy. Of course, it's far from perfect and not immune from bugs and exploits, but it could be an opportunity for the devs to discover and fix these. From what I understood, the players invited to the tournament gave a lot of feedback to the mod developers so they can provide more balanced gameplay. This is still in early stage and could only get better if it attracts a wider audience.

 

[Ilyasviel]

So I just watched a few of the "Commanders in Conflict" videos on Speed5's YouTube channel. In the videos you see well-known Paradox YouTubers duking it out on a mod that massively reduces the scale of the war to a single theater, resulting in a fast-paced and entertaining game session often lasting shorter than a single game of DoTa/LoL.

This is seriously one of the least entertaining things I've ever seen.

 

[coffeelingfine]

Eww Esports

 

[Eruth]

So I just watched a few of the "Commanders in Conflict" videos on Speed5's YouTube channel. In the videos you see well-known Paradox YouTubers duking it out on a mod that massively reduces the scale of the war to a single theater, resulting in a fast-paced and entertaining game session often lasting shorter than a single game of DoTa/LoL.

Granted, it is super early in development, not perfectly balanced, and doesn't involve the whole conflict on a "grand strategy" scale, but it does use all of the game's mechanics to produce fun and thrilling content that anyone can watch. All of this without cutting any footage or spending hours following a full-blown multiplayer session.

My question to the devs is - why are you not taking advantage of this opportunity? For me, these videos are proof that HoI4 has all the ingredients to be a valid eSport, and this could propel the game to a new level of popularity.

All we need is a mode for multiplayer with scenarios/"maps" such as the ones in these videos, maybe even a 3vs3 one for a Germany vs Soviets slugfest. You can then add a ranking system and some mechanics for better micromanagement, and that's all there's to it.

Sure, it's easier said than done, but I believe this has the potential to open HoI4 to an entirely new audience and make existing players more engaged and willing to continue spending their time and money on Hearts of Iron. In essence, this would be a win-win for everyone involved.

I'd appreciate it if fellow players share their opinions on this as well.

This seems like the exact use case for mods. It’s not something that benefits a significant part of the community and it’s something that the people who do want it likely have very specific opinions about and want finer control and customization over.
Also, with the way that the engine & scripting works and the major causes of lag, you will be able to achieve much better performance by altering the game files through a mod than by simply selecting a mode during play.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This is seriously one of the least entertaining things I've ever seen.

mod like this should be absolutely excellent for helping someone learning to practice micro, or of players to compete in that aspect. it leaves out a ton of hoi 4's design space though, and i doubt it would attract a sufficient following to function as an esport.

for example, some versions of bomberman games are as balanced as you can reasonably be, and designed around a pvp mode. they can even be very fun to play. but despite this, nobody's pulling 1M cash prizes for being great at bomberman, to my knowledge.

pdox games do have a fairly large following, but it's not lol or fortnite etc. chopping that into a fraction of the player base via a mod that makes the game look completely different to the original design won't make the prospective player base larger.

thus, the mod does not strike me as good for esports. it seems like a great tool for other purposes though.

 

[Gran Strategist]

While I understand some players like PvP aspects of games, there was a discussion recently with some officialy replies as the to figures and that playerbase was very small, being in single percentages and many of them only engaged in friendly cooperative games, not competitive PvP games.

(to paraphrase) My question to those players is - why do you always think games have to focus on PvP? For me the success of single player and predominantly single player games like this show proof that well designed games like these that know their player base don't have to have a large multiplayer community to be successful and having devs divide their attention on something the majority of the player base is not engaged in would reduce the experience for the majority of players and thus the level of popularity.

 

[MinhowMinhow]

Please no, eSports ruins games. HoI4 is a SP game, with an option to MP. Turning it into a eSport would make it bad, because they would all remove the fun of game to focus on competitiveness.

 

[Want0n]

I've been watching CiC on Speed5 and it appears to be at least somewhat Paradox related? The involvement of cKnoor is a big giveaway. Appreciate it doesn't appeal to everyone but I'm genuinely puzzled at the lack of promotion on these forums.

Seems like a win-win for both parties from what I can see. I've enjoyed CiC a lot, particularly it being something I can watch even when delicate ears are in the room, unlike much other HoI4 MP output.

 

[the_diss]

CiC on Speed5 and it appears to be at least somewhat Paradox related?

Paradox is part owner of Speed5 AFAIK. So they are definitely not sleeping on this.