Before I begin, I just want to say that CK2 is a great game. A really great gem that PI obviously put a lot of work and heart into. I commend them on their achievements and I do not regret being one of the people who pre-ordered their game. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon them.
With that said, Crusader Kings II is a deeply, deeply flawed game if you acknowledge that it's supposed to be character based. There is absolutely nothing to do in this game other than conquer and prepare to conquer. "What about marriages, and um, plots!?" To what end? What exactly are marriages and plots for other than a means to paint one or more map modes with your colour of choice?
Despite CK2 being a heavily character focused game, I never feel any kind of personal attachment to any of the characters I encounter, whether they're the characters I'm controlling, or someone else. The characters in CK2 lack any personality at all. They all feel the same, and occasionally having an extra button to click on in events because of traits really doesn't fix this. A character based game should be a game that's heavy on story telling. Why even have unique, individualized characters if you can't come up with stories to involve them in? "Well, you're supposed to make them up in your head!" If I wanted to make up stories in my head, I wouldn't need CK2, as I would just use my head. Crusader Kings should have a strong RPGish element if it's going to continue being a "character-based" series. To be fair there are some mild sightings of some story based content in the game. Take for example the "Gates of Hell" line of events. This is a set of events that proceeds based on your choices. The problem is that it's very short, and very impersonal. It doesn't feel like my current character is really involved in these events anymore than he/she is involved in any other events.
Because there are no events or decisions to keep me occupied, what's left for me in this game is constant war mongering so I have some goal to strive for and just something to do in general. Letting the game run and just addressing the same handful of events simply isn't engaging and it's not a style of game play that's demanding my attention. What else can I do then other than conquer the world just because? There's no real character intrigue, no economy, and no substantive game play here that doesn't ultimately lead into a means to conquer everything.
CK2 has no trade. CK2 has no exploration. CK2 does have many mechanics which all seem to just help you blob over the map. I was reading some posts on the EU4 board yesterday from a Mr. Johan Andersson about how hard it is to blob in EU4. I read posts from him and other developers about trading, and relations, and all kinds of other ways in which you can play EU4 (as in actively participate in the game) without conquering the earth. I guess you could say that EU4 inspired me to make this topic. I look at CK2 now and just see so much wasted potential. I think to myself "why can't CK2 be a game where the player is always actively participating in ways that don't ultimately lead to super-blobbing?" I hope some members of the CK2 team read this and perhaps consider expanding the game in ways to improve the overall experience of the game regardless of what religion or type of lord your character is. Thanks.
At the risk of sounding negative (I started a couple of threads about things today...), I'd like to say I share in your view. Perhaps that's what has me wanting to make AARs. When you're new, it's kinda okay, but later it's just the blobbing mechanics. If you're like me and don't use assassinations as part of your succession engineering, this leaves you with hunting the courts of Europe for eldests sons who don't like their fathers (which is not that hard for a claimant, let alone pretender)... which makes me feel dirty. So today I discovered that female rulers are more manageable: after 35 you have a good chance and after 45 you have 100% that a female heir will stay heir. So you just set the character roster to women of your religion and arrange according to rank (because rulers can be independents in the rank of baron, while vassal kings aren't rulers...), then just check age. You can do the same while ticking Married: no, to try and see where you could perhaps send a gift (because the normal wedding rings button bridefinder doesn't take account of the Send Gift possibility).
BUT, you do have characters with traits, they have adventures, some live long, some get deposed, some get reinstated, a lot of them have quite interesting stories eventually, e.g. Godwinson Dukes of Murrays after I married my refugee Godwinson bastard chancellor to a character from there; they actually went down to counts and regained power some decades later... over the new dudes I was married with. I've recently seen Scotland cycle through almost every duke or count in the realm, including the MacBeths and an Irish dynasty, until returning to the Dunkelds. One of my own characters lost a duchy after epic independence fail (spent sixteen hundred gold on mercs and lost by a hair) and usurped it back within a couple of years from the king's own half-sister under absolute crown authority. In one offshots of the game, I gained independence as OPM duke and used mercs and holy wars to create a kingdom in Spain (it was freshly conquered, so small garrisons, and I had 10K mercs, so I just assaulted my way through... meanwhile my wife a Spanish countess being either a deposed queen or sole daughter and heir of the deposed king of Navarra was being sieged by some Moors). So you can have adventures but there is a tendency towards boredom and bland play.
The fact that the game doesn't recognise family ties or emotional factors nearly as much as it should isn't really helping, either, e.g. 25 years old Prince of England OPM count being the eldest son of the King of England and Jerusalem gets married to a 43 years old Lowborn woman by the AI, probably because there was no better at his own court. (In fact, the problem is more complex: firstborn porphyrogenete son and heir of the Basileus is considered to be of a lower rank that baron on the roster; on the other hand a duke's cousin and son of ex-duchess is of too low rank for regular marriage with a baroness's heiress.) Alliance rules don't really work, either (who gets an alliance and who doesn't, who can be called and who can't). Things being broken in this way do take away from the immersion. They probably don't matter so much in multiplayer and can create predictable rules for everybody and all, but...
So I've insisted that some overrides are needed for AI behaviour, more checks for things, more realistic behaviour (as opposed to gameplay optimised behaviour), less rock-paper-scissors "gameplay".
This said, dialogues tend to be superb, it's perhaps a pity they show up so rarely. Maybe a shorter MTTH could help.
In short, what I think we need is more things to do but less obviously rock-paper-scissors. Plus some incentive to do other things than just blobbing. Which is not just a matter of the game, as much as player mentality. The game is perfectly playable as a realm that stays within its borders and doesn't do much else than decking out until fully upgraded. It's only that your prestige will be low. Thinking of non-military ways of earning prestige (BTW, you do gain more prestige as an ally than as the main participant, which can lead to huge prestige without actually gaining land) other than the small passive accrual and the hunt/fair golden to prestige exchange could be a start (massive construction and upgrading, peaceful reign, a just rule, some "commission" on prestige gained by courtiers when arranging marriages for them), as well as piety without actual holy wars or crusades (or buying indulgences), and something to focus (an eye) on in terms of province improvements (the map is cute and I love how cities grow and spread, would be cool to see more of this type of visualisation, along perhaps with real icons for buildings and maybe several alternative castles/temples/cities on a random basis). AAR writers have something to do here, popularising alternative play styles and showing that the game can still be interesting, but some non-blobbing gameplay/character adjustments would be good to have.
VIP, I really loved the chars I played with (one game, specially, as the Duchess of Britanny, where I were a cruel psychopath, and married with my cousin, my older son, became a cruel psychopath too, just like mom, my husband was a coward intimidated and dominated by me, my next son, a kind nerd who fleed the country once his brother inherited and I think he managed to be a French bishop, a retarded girl, a infirm, inbred daughter which died with four, and the last daughter, who get naturally blind when she was 15, get depressed and suicided a few years later... I felt really attached to these chars, molded with inbred and the cruelty of the mother, I was attached to them, I found them believable, realistic, in their own way, loveable...) I have never had that feeling with CK2, I even forgot the name of the char I am playing half of the time. Only time I have loved my char, was a deppresive, shy, sociopath ruler king in the LI mod: just a medieval emo, I found it funny XD
