Dear PDX, when are you going to start working on EU5?

[tip001]

After catching up with the latest "contentious" 1.26 patch details I thought I could put some extra gas on this fire with a request for information.

I fully enjoyed EU4 PDX, I clocked many thousands of hours on this game. Thank you. As far as I still play the game I revert to "trolling" it by selecting random nation and tech up to 32 at start and see the outcome. That can still be fun as a last resort But I am out of ideas now on any new approach of playing EU4. Again, thank you very much for all the creative ways EU4 could be played, amazing.

Apart from above I still like to view some epic players playing EU4 on streams and support them.

But it now gets on the edge of boredom. As far as I can see, since the Cossack DLC, no amazing new features were introduced to engage a new round of clocking a thousand hours. More specific, last patches the game even seams getting more dumb-ed down.

Let's stay positive however!
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION. PDX, when can we expect the new and shiny toy called EU5?

I will most certainly dump in a solid 100 EUR if required, without even seeing how it looks

PS: Before I posted this I googled "EU5" with no hits at all.

 

[Darth.]

Oh God not another EU5 thread.

 

[tip001]

Oh God not another EU5 thread.

LOL

 

[Damedius]

I doubt EU5 ever gets made.

EU4 makes them too much money. All they have to is put out a 2-3 DLC's a year and collect the money.

The only way EU5 gets made is if a competitor releases a better strategy game and people stop buying EU4 DLC.

 

[tip001]

I doubt EU5 ever gets made.

EU4 makes them too much money. All they have to is put out a 2-3 DLC's a year and collect the money.

The only way EU5 gets made is if a competitor releases a better strategy game and people stop buying EU4 DLC.

Thats a sad way to view their approach but I fully understand where you come from. We already clock 5 years of development on this single game. Let's keep hoping, at least the engine needs some rework at a certain point

 

[creativitypersonified]

Eu5 will begin being created once either:
1) Eu4 DLCs stop beibg profitable
2) Eu4 becomes so overloaded with content that adding more takes too much effort
Neither of these seems likely in the near future so no eu5 will be coming any time soon

 

[EquilinT]

i recommend big mods if you are bored.

 

[randomgamer71]

Yeah, they'll make EU5 when dlcs sales drop.

When that happen they'll make a eu4 remastered with all the dlcs (and HD 4k textures) and start the hype train for EU5.

 

[Nyrael]

Not for many, many more years. A new game won't be made until they reach the limit of what they can do with the current engine (which has been nearly reached with CK2 based on Henrik's words). But EU4 is still far from that and I imagine that the game's engine has been coded so that new mechanics can easily be added and old revamped. Johan's ideal is that there is never an EU5, but technically speaking a limit will be reached someday. But not anytime soon.
And until that limit is not reached... well, there is absolutely no reason to make a sequel as it won't add much new stuff, but will lose many things added by the DLC as you can't reprogram them all in time.

I doubt EU5 ever gets made.

EU4 makes them too much money. All they have to is put out a 2-3 DLC's a year and collect the money.

The only way EU5 gets made is if a competitor releases a better strategy game and people stop buying EU4 DLC.

PDS said that DLC will keep being released as long as people buy them.
Then those same people hear that PDS won't make a new game because the DLC make up for it.
And they sum those two things up and get the above, even though the two are NOT related. Because if the DLC are no longer profitable, then the sequel won't fare much better either, so there's no need to rush with it.

 

[WeissRaben]

Eeeeeh. Devs have declared that CK3 is going to happen, for the simple reason that you can't add stuff ad nauseam to a single, unchanged, probably obsolete base. I expect EU5 to fall in the same category of needing a blank slate to start adding anything else.

 

[fleetothemoon]

I think the continued attempts to expand and rework the current game content so that it is more fun/immersive, can be seen as a gradual progression towards paving the way for the next game of the series.

Remember how EU3 base game used to have an overpowered China, later reined back by arbitrary modifiers, and how Japan used to be portrayed as a unified country? Then they had Divine Wind in EU3 which split Japan into four countries to loosely portray the division at the time and also introduced factions for Ming? Of course, they received a lot of criticisms for this, especially on the former.

EU4 took those same ideas in EU3 Expansion and improved on it in its base game. This was just one example of this.

I think that if EU5 was ever to be introduced, the same would be the case and that it would be based on EU4 with all its DLCs.

 

[tip001]

I think the continued attempts to expand and rework the current game content so that it is more fun/immersive, can be seen as a gradual progression towards paving the way for the next game of the series.

Remember how EU3 base game used to have an overpowered China, later reined back by arbitrary modifiers, and how Japan used to be portrayed as a unified country? Then they had Divine Wind in EU3 which split Japan into four countries to loosely portray the division at the time and also introduced factions for Ming? Of course, they received a lot of criticisms for this, especially on the former.

EU4 took those same ideas in EU3 Expansion and improved on it in its base game. This was just one example of this.

I think that if EU5 was ever to be introduced, the same would be the case and that it would be based on EU4 with all its DLCs.

I agree with we you on the evolution part of the game and how that SHOULD be more or less inherited in the next game. However they sadly didn't do that with HOI3 to HOI4. So it is certainly not sure they will do it again as seen with EU3.
Besides the points I made above, which are pretty generic like "boredom" I have a couple of more specific issues why I think they should start on a next gen engine.

1) The AI is really (sry) pathetic. If a new engine could cater for a more artificial intelligent and mature AI that would be a serious improvement.
2) The code is already convoluted to an extent that PDX is not cleaning it up anymore (bugs and balancing) and only new stuff is added for DLC sales (so it seems). The event spam for instance is getting really annoying, especially when playing a Sunni tag. So they dont seem to be willing to streamline, balance and bugfix as much anymore as I hoped for for years now.
3) I also miss the really big changes as already stated above. A complete new mechanism for certain tech groups or cultures would be awesome and from my viewpoint long overdue.

 

[Nyrael]

I agree with we you on the evolution part of the game and how that SHOULD be more or less inherited in the next game. However they sadly didn't do that with HOI3 to HOI4. So it is certainly not sure they will do it again as seen with EU3.

Again, an incomparable situation: PDS considers numerous decisions made in HoI3's design to have been flawed. In extension, this meant that the sequel would be a more radically different game. In contrast, CK2 and EU4 are considered to be great games in design and success.

1) The AI is really (sry) pathetic. If a new engine could cater for a more artificial intelligent and mature AI that would be a serious improvement.

The AI is in absolutely no way related to the game engine. It is it's own program component and all that could be done for EU5 could be implemented in EU4 as easily.
As a matter of fact, the AI will suffer because they have to redo it, and there won't be enough time to test and balance it properly.

2) The code is already convoluted to an extent that PDX is not cleaning it up anymore (bugs and balancing) and only new stuff is added for DLC sales (so it seems). The event spam for instance is getting really annoying, especially when playing a Sunni tag. So they dont seem to be willing to streamline, balance and bugfix as much anymore as I hoped for for years now.

You can't guess a code's complexity from looking at a game. Only a Developer can give you an idea how complicated or well-done the code is.
Seeing as they still add major features and overhaul existing base features, the code is by no way inflexible as you claim. Additionally, fixing bugs and balancing is much easier to do than adding and overhauling features. So saying that code's complexity forbids them from doing simple changes and that they have to add new stuff makes no logical sense.

3) I also miss the really big changes as already stated above. A complete new mechanism for certain tech groups or cultures would be awesome and from my viewpoint long overdue.

Government Reforming is a damn big change.
New mission system is a big change.
The Islamic Schools are by no means a minor change.
Mandate mechanic is a big change.

In other words, they can still add all these big features. Do they want to do so is a different topic.

 

[Groogy]

Every time someone asks we plan in another DLC into our schedule delaying when we can work on EU5 by another half year.
Every time someone miss attributes something to be in the engine we delay it by a full year just out of spite.

 

[Lord Zsinj]

Somewhere between Now and Then......

 

[Maldazar]

Just by logic thinking you can be sure that it will be AT LEAST 5 more years, so just forget about it, go enjoy EU4 (or any other game you like) and come back in like 5 years and I imagine that there will be some information about it.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Every time someone asks we plan in another DLC into our schedule delaying when we can work on EU5 by another half year.
Every time someone miss attributes something to be in the engine we delay it by a full year just out of spite.

By that reckoning it'll be out before Vicky3 at least.

 

[Displayer]

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION. PDX, when can we expect the new and shiny toy called EU5?

I will most certainly dump in a solid 100 EUR if required, without even seeing how it looks

A whole 100 euros? Now they have to make it.

 

[tip001]

Every time someone asks we plan in another DLC into our schedule delaying when we can work on EU5 by another half year.
Every time someone miss attributes something to be in the engine we delay it by a full year just out of spite.

Nice to get a helpful answer from the game designer :O

1) May I ask what is wrong about me asking what your future strategy is regarding a potential EU5, looking at my current worries about the EU4 state?

2) So I understand the AI is not part of the Engine, even when we know the engine limits the number of commands given to AI coding sent at the same time?!. If we ignore that and assume the AI coding is completely self supporting I hope PDS sees possibilities for future improvement and inform us what steps are taken. Point is the current AI is objectively a big problem in the game and limits the player enjoyment.

More specific regarding AI:
A) What I hear from a number of your colleagues last couple of years is that they have problems with solving obvious AI issues because of restrictions in the coding. B) That they are unable to code a good balance for AI with regard to war-tactics as in different circumstances there are no different modes available for given tactics resulting in headless chickens most of the time.

More specific regarding features:
We both know there is a shitload of outstanding bugs and "easy" player enhancements (we still have to click 5 times to add a province to a vassal) asking for a solution but we seem not be able to do away with that backlog. Maybe PDS doesn't see this as an issue, I am curious how you see this.
Specifically from you, what is this out of bound increase in event spam. Its getting really annoying that event-features are stacked on top of each-other with every new DLC without seemingly deleting any. New features which spawn events, normally requires redesign of old ones not?

I was in above thread very positive about the EU4 game-play but recently it doesn't give me the joy anymore it used to give. I gave a couple of examples, if you and PDS can revive (as from my viewpoint) the EU4 game-experience, by all means do it. I will eat my words in that case I even suggested making big changes as done with Hordes long time ago.

This is just a snapshot of issues I see. I am sorry that I am a bit salty now but please be a tat more serious. Thank you.

 

[RELee]

Every time someone asks we plan in another DLC into our schedule delaying when we can work on EU5 by another half year.
Every time someone miss attributes something to be in the engine we delay it by a full year just out of spite.