DDRJake as a Dev?

[DarkCruor]

I challenge your very notion of "balance". In your future examples, you talk about things like "win war button", but that's a matter of making the game have meaningful decisions, not "balance". You can not and never will "balance" a French start with a Ternate start, it's impossible. The frustration here comes when you make mechanics changes that make Ternate weaker or mechanics that have no historic basis just to protect nations like France extra.

Your patches have systematically deviated further from balance, because they strengthen powerful nations and nerf weak ones.

I agree that balance much worse than say CoP patch or so but they have not been boosting powerful nations at all. In fact I think they are weaker than ever. Since the new patch at least one of the triumvirate of France, Ottomans, and Muscovy gets destroyed in every single one of my games (with lucky nations, etc) with little or no input from me. While England is much stronger than the last few patches (as in they don't collapse in the first 50 years because of religious instability + War of Roses or just get outright conquered by Scotland or even Connaught in one of my games), Austria didn't really change, and Spain was buffed because the Aragon-Portugal alliance destroying them doesn't happen as often. Portugal is still Portugal.

In RotW Aztecs got buffed into Natives CoP tier strength. China destroys itself (which is a problem in itself) and Timurids either collapse or is a glass cannon when the Europeans arrive and try to take parts of India only to not because on paper Tims are strong. Now the Europeans never get into the Hinterland of North America (Brazil though is another story) because they are too scared of the 50k army natives can make because of Federations.

They have hardly been buffed. I think everything has just been nerfed which is a completely different issue than one side being nerfed more or whatnot.

 

[Peachrocks]

I challenge your very notion of "balance". In your future examples, you talk about things like "win war button", but that's a matter of making the game have meaningful decisions, not "balance". You can not and never will "balance" a French start with a Ternate start, it's impossible. The frustration here comes when you make mechanics changes that make Ternate weaker or mechanics that have no historic basis just to protect nations like France extra.

Your patches have systematically deviated further from balance, because they strengthen powerful nations and nerf weak ones.



If it was so low on your priorities and such an unimportant mechanic, why did you spend resources to alter it? If your goal was "balance", why did you trash a feature that allowed smaller nations to stay solvent when fighting large ones? Why did you remove an alternative option to "carpet siege every war"? Wasn't the goal to have more meaningful decisions and strategy, rather than "one strategy" (carpet siege)? Yet, changes like this and your "length of war and +30 coalition" war enthusiasm modifiers push the game towards exactly one strategy: carpet siege.

It also goes against the "disincentivize total war" Johan talked about in another thread. If you were honest, you would realize that the current looting model is both less situational and offers less meaningful decisions than the previous one. Right now, you *always* loot. Previously, you looted when you could and expected more meaningful returns than the potential cost of losing the unit. In areas like Ming you could loot a ton, in areas like Aztec you could loot basically nothing. Now? It's not even a mechanic that drives decisions. Where's the "balance" there?

Hey, you know I totally support you, but make another thread for this. I mean sure, the iron was hot here which is why we spent so long 'off topic' but at the risk of burning the eyes of the poor people who don't like whining/rational conversation, let's move elsewhere.

Besides Wiz basically said that the change reduces the amount of strategy whether it's the type he believes people want or not.

 

[net.split]

But the old looting system wasn't an interesting choice either. It was something you did if you knew about it and were in the right part of the world to do so and didn't otherwise. You didn't have to defend against the AI doing it, and pulling it off against an AI is comparatively trivial to even having the knowledge to do it at all.

At the very least the new system might create some motivation to siege provinces in a different order, or to siege provinces you otherwise didn't need / weren't interested in (for hordes in particular; my Haixi run last night was swimming in cash despite having no real monthly income).

 

[Pornek]

Thanks for sharing some thoughts on your design decisions Wiz and good luck Jake.

 

[radiatoren]

Good luck sir Jake! You have certainly got what it takes, to improve the QA and poke the developers a bit. Here's to hoping you get enough wiggle room to do that!

 

[Arrianus]

DDRJake is now part of the EU4 QA team.

Huzza! and congrats to both him and P'dox

 

[Ultrix Prime]

The old looting system had the following issues:
- It was extremely powerful, you could repeatedly 'farm' large countries like Ming for crazy amounts of money.
- It was very poorly understood and explained, most players didn't know how to use it at all (lots of players didn't even know it existed).
- It was very difficult to defend against because all units move at the same speed.
- The AI could not use it (and believe me, if I *had* coded the AI to use it the system would be universally loathed as your entire country would be getting looted in every single war).
- It was a micro-heavy system, and we have been moving away from micro-heavy systems in general.

Calling it historical/realistic is complete bunk, if you think a thousand men stealing the entire tax income of China every six months is historical or realistic then you need to reconsider the meaning of those words.

Possibly the best response I've seen from PI in quite a while. Very logical. I'm sure many (the usual culprits) will argue every letter written, but who cares (my ignore list just keeps growing)

Thus, it would be nice and probably less argumentative goo would be thrown on each and every word, if this sort of bullet pointed explanation could be done as a read only posting for the changes to number of idea groups in a category as well.

I don't want to see a debate about why PI makes changes. I just want to know the why and understand it. So if you could do this sort of thing, perhaps as additions to your dev diaries as minor updates and some how simply eliminate the endless whining debates to other threads, it would be quite wonderful to simply go to such a thread or announcement or w/e and read the answers.

It would greatly improve PI's messaging to do this, imo. Some of us are more interested in understanding than arguing. So cutting straight to the chase like this gem without having to dig around would be nice.

And congratulations to DDRJake.

One hopes he will still do youtubes for me to fall asleep to in his low murmuring "dulcet" tones

 

[bbqftw]

I personally think that looting was overpowered but could have been nerfed (by increasing the length of the looted modifier) without essentially removing it from the game.

- It was a micro-heavy system, and we have been moving away from micro-heavy systems in general.

have you considered removing flanking from the game? Due to how the computer force-deploys units there's substantial micro involved in cutting inf to get the highest chance of a stackwipe against an enemy force.

 

[forrseti]

Congratz DDRJake.. expecting a new conquest with Semien.

 

[chrnno]

have you considered removing flanking from the game? Due to how the computer force-deploys units there's substantial micro involved in cutting inf to get the highest chance of a stackwipe against an enemy force.

Hum might be misunderstanding you but I seem to recall seeing the auto-deploy against a smaller army putting cavalry on the spots where it can flank but infantry can't regardless of how many extra infantry you have*.

*So getting something like(random numbers) IIIIIICCCIIIIIIIIICCCIIIIIII

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

If there is no balance, you will quickly discover a single winning tactic for everything and the strategy goes out the window.

I am very sorry to say it but that is ridiculous and for example HOI III TFH proves it as there is no unique winning strategy in that game; the gameplay is very rich, there are lots of viable winning strategies and I am not talking about exploits I am talking about pure strategizing by knowing the game mechanics very well. What you are doing to EU IV with your “balancing” is to force players to play the only way you think the game should be played. I still enjoy this game a lot but with each patch the game becomes simpler because you remove gameplay options. On top of that (again I am very sorry to say it) nearly all changes make most if not all decisions a no-brainer like never going above 100% OE, always use papal influence to raise stability unless it is already at +3 but even then is most likely better to waste it (...) than for example to try to get a theologian if you are not a blob (for the price the chances of getting a level 1 theologian are ridiculously low therefore not worth it) , never have vassals unless you're big enough to keep they’re LD down or their benefits clearly outweigh the risks (ex: extend coring range in the same continent, go ahead and nerf that too because the hopeless AI can´t plan such a move). Unfortunately I could go on and on.

There I fixed it for you:

The old looting system had the following issues:
- It was extremely powerful, the AI could not use it because it is a lot of work to code it properly therefore just like many other mechanics we removed it simply because the players are not allowed to have an unfair advantage on my watch.

 

[oblio-]

Your patches have systematically deviated further from balance, because they strengthen powerful nations and nerf weak ones.

I think this sells games. Casuals playing majors do not get frustrated by what is, compared to 99% of games, a very complex game. Meanwhile forum freaks with thousands of hours played are challenged more by harder starts.
Win-win for Paradox marketing.
They probably mean balance between similar nations (i.e. France versus Austria).

 

[Yugoslavs]

Balance is integral to fun in a strategy game. If there is no balance, you will quickly discover a single winning tactic for everything and the strategy goes out the window.

This is simply implausible argument.

After 600 hours, 90 achievements including (Norwegian wood, Gothic invasion, Great khan and others) i really can not say that there were one single winning tactic. Every start was different and required new approach.

Removing looting completely without even considering to somehow improve it (fix it) was very bad decision.

 

[tjdracz]

Winning strategy = Doomstacks and carpet siege

 

[TheMeInTeam]

- It was extremely powerful, you could repeatedly 'farm' large countries like Ming for crazy amounts of money.

A large number of WAD features offer more utility for a majority of starts than looting could possibly have achieved. Ming is an exceptional case by definition, but looting Ming is still less powerful than allying France or BYZ allying Poland and letting PLC solo Ottomans. Looting being powerful alone isn't enough to nerf it in the face of it being an offset against nations that carry such an advantage in their raw income in the first place.

Or to put it more simply, could you get more money by looting France or Castile, or by playing as them? The answer is the latter, so mechanics that offset that advantage were useful. This is even true in spades for Ming, if one can cast off its shackles. But the biggest problem here isn't the strength of looting now vs before, but the difference in strategy. You could have just nerfed the income from looting straight up and achieved making it weaker, or made it so that looting only happens on month tick, or any other number of arbitrary constraints that would have made it massively more difficult to execute (not that it needed to be) without completely wiping a non-direct combat consideration from the game.

- It was very poorly understood and explained, most players didn't know how to use it at all (lots of players didn't even know it existed).

I'm glad you're realizing this is an issue in the game. If you scrapped every mechanic this was true for, however, EU IV wouldn't function. It wouldn't even be possible to open the peace deal menu. The UI not explaining mechanic functionality is a different issue from the strength, balance, or desirability of the mechanic itself. Looting *could* have been well understood, if players had a means of knowing the rules of the game they play. I notice you have made some strides in the UI lately and that is appreciated, but let's not throw mechanics out with bathwater.

- The AI could not use it (and believe me, if I *had* coded the AI to use it the system would be universally loathed as your entire country would be getting looted in every single war).

Challenge accepted. This is the same AI that will walk 30-50 stacks without generals near my 60 stacks with generals in the current game. Unless I'm trying to fight it on speed 4, what you describe is a recipe for an AI getting massacred repeatedly by blind runs into enemy territory getting intercepted. I don't believe for a second the AI in its present state could dream of reliably looting an experienced player with the old model, even *before* sorties existed. This is the same AI that lands 8 stacks on nations with active forces of 40+ and gets wiped too. Free war score.

- It was a micro-heavy system, and we have been moving away from micro-heavy systems in general.

Again, there are ways to retain the tactical consideration of the mechanic while making it less micro intensive.

Also, sorry about doing this in this thread but this is where the devs commented on it. Congrats to DDRJake!

 

[sumo0]

This is how the interview went:
Paradox: Hello DDRjake. please sit down.
DDRjake: Hello paradox, and thank you.
*DDRjake sit down*
paradox: You're hired!

 

[oblio-]

This is how the interview went:
Paradox: Hello DDRjake. please sit down.
DDRjake: Hello paradox, and thank you.
*DDRjake sit down*
paradox: You're hired!

More like:

Paradox: Hello DDRJake, please sit down.
DDRKJake: Hello Paradox, and thank you.
DDRJake sits down.
Paradox: Do you know all those exploits you've found after we made a release?
DDRJake: Yes.
Paradox: Do you know that you've embarrassed our development team after every patch and the QA guys were always crying in a corner just before the release date for every patch after 1.0?
DDRJake: Yea...
Paradox: You're hired! Now you only get to talk about game exploits during our closed doors multiplayer sessions!

 

[LordNeidhart]

More like:

Paradox: Hello DDRJake, please sit down.
DDRKJake: Hello Paradox, and thank you.
DDRJake sits down.
Paradox: Do you know all those exploits you've found after we made a release?
DDRJake: Yes.
Paradox: Do you know that you've embarrassed our development team after every patch and the QA guys were always crying in a corner just before the release date for every patch after 1.0?
DDRJake: Yea...
Paradox: You're hired! Now you only get to talk about game exploits during our closed doors multiplayer sessions!

Let me correct that for you

Paradox: Hello DDRJake, please sit down.
DDRKJake: Hello Paradox, and thank you.
DDRJake slowly circles around the chair, crouches beneath it and knocks on it lightly in order to estimate its building material; measures the relative length of its legs and the height-to-width ratio of each one; he then does a couple quick mental calculations, grabs a paper clip from the table, completely disassembles the chair with it, pulls out a soldering iron and various titanium metal plates, solders them together with the wooden parts in an unrecognizable but quite sturdy shape; he then walks out of the room whistling a quiet tune, coming back thirty minutes later carrying a gas tank, two car batteries, various assorted metal parts and a live duck. Sits the duck on the desk, where it proceeds to happily quack while looking at the confused interviewer. DDRJake then whips out the soldering iron again and proceeds to attach more and more metal parts to the structure, which within fifteen more minutes is roughly the size and shape of a small baby elephant, before grabbing and attaching the car batteries and soldering the gas tank to the backside [or at least what looks like the backside] of the contraption. He then carefully picks up the duck who's in the process of quacking veiled threats against the Paradox staff, hooks him up to a series of metal cables and a funny-looking tin-sheathed helmet, saddles his legs over the messy-looking metal pile and reclines against a smooth sheath of orthopedic metal solded to the exact angle of his spine
Paradox: I-I'm sorry, what is this?
DDRJake: Oh nothing to worry about. You were saying?
Paradox: W-Well, we were discussing the terms of your employment. I trust everything is to your liking?
DDRJake: Oh yes, thank you.
Paradox: That's... good.
DDRJake: Anyway, I better start working on my desk. Thank you again for hiring me!
DDRJake then waves at the interviewer, pulls a crude-looking lever, and then braces against the metal casing as the metal pile quickly springs to life, lifts itself off the ground on two short, stubby legs, and slowly stumbles out of the room with the rumbling of its motor parts slowly fading in the distance, interrupted only by the occasional echo of a happy quack.

 

[Brodacious]

Yes.

 

[Solaire95]

Congrats Jake! Wish you the best of luck!