Hi again!
Last week I asked about what you wanted to see in future Dev Diaries and I’ll answer one of the questions you asked in this week’s DD. What would I like to add/change in CK2?
I’ll start off telling you what I like with CK2.
What sets CK2 apart from me are the numerous stories it produces. When I play it at work (yeah, that’s something I try to do when I’m not too stressed out), I often feel the urge to tell people on the team what happened to my characters. Like when I’ve sent out my first born son to join the Varangian guard and he comes back a homosexual and suddenly I’m playing a Norse Viking, the King of Sweden who has a lover bodyguard. There are very few computer games that allow for that gaming experience.
The other component that I think makes most PDS games fantastic is multiplayer. Sure it’s not the smoothest multiplayer experience you can have, but it’s one of the most rewarding. Just the scope of battling through hours and hours of gameplay, forming and breaking alliances, planning, plotting, make it fantastic, be it in Sengoku, March of the Eagles, Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings. CK2 adds the personal touch and story building upon that. In our current office multiplayer, we had one player seducing two popes (pope and antipope), giving them and another player the lover’s pox while another player became emperor of the HRE (we were all playing inside it). The new emperor was unfit to rule and soon we had revolts eating us up from the inside and France wanting a piece of the cake from the outside. A faction to remove our emperor formed and soon Magnus ‘the cruel’ was no longer the emperor and I got the opportunity (read punishment) of trying to bring order to the realm. I struggled for a couple of months, trying to patch together something resembling an army of what was left and slowly beating back some of our enemies. Magnus ‘the cruel’ had other plans though and managed to ambush and capture me during my travels. I was immediately beheaded and a new emperor rose to the throne. Several years later we managed to catch and kill Magnus and restore order to the empire. About the same time Dirk ‘the devil’, a former rebel of the empire, became our new emperor.
To me this is great entertainment. It’s more than just the game.
What I really want more of in CK is stuff that make our characters more important and more alive. I don’t feel strongly for any particular part of the map, religion or government, I just want more interesting characters and more ways to interact with them and for them to interact with you. As a project lead I also have a burning desire to focus on quality making sure we deliver bug free product with great performance. Those are difficult goals for a game that was ambitious to start with and then has been extended for over 2½ years.

A little teaser info that will be discussed more in future DDs.

 

[Aleks S. I]

Personally I'm hoping to see some war mechanics fixes. The tactics and troop types are a nice layer of complexity with lots of potential, sadly the lack of control over troop types leads to so many + and - effects through the course of a battle that it boils down to "the bigger stack wins" except for when RNGesus is particularly vengeful. I recently saw the idea come up of having a province with no upgrades produce only light infantry (read: peasants with farm tools), while the various buildings could convert LI to the specialized troop types. If most troop buildings were mutually exclusive that would fix the "mixed armies leads to no actual effect from tactics" issue that presently plagues any attempts at strategic planning, and by the end of the game we could see things like a very archery specialized England facing off against a very cavalry specialized France.

I'd also like to see campaign character politics. Convincing nobles to flip sides with promises of lands, or convincing your vassals to raise their personal troops and join your armies, particularly if the war is focusing on taking lands that they are claiming or defending their lands. Perhaps having a high prestige & martial skill character in command of an army would cause a much larger army to form than if a low prestiege character is in command. (ex: a powerful emperor who has waged numerous successful wars in the past could rally a lot more peasants and minor nobles to join his army than a lowly baron who barely knows which end of a sword to hold)

Finally, some tweaks to manpower and combat losses. I find that too often after a war between two large powers regardless of who wins the damage to levies is so severe that even the winner is unable to wage another war for a decade or more. This doesn't really reflect the reality of warfare at the time, particularly in the first 3/4 of the game. Manpower was rarely the limiting factor in a Kingdom's or Empire's ability to wage war at this time, as the majority of soldiers didn't end up dying. By far the largest issue for commanders was feeding their armies and keeping their armies together on a long campaign (which blends nicely with the previous paragraph).

Also keep in mind that this is just me spitting out ideas off the top of my head. I'm by no means an expert in medieval warfare, this is just based off what little I do know about the period and about how levies worked combined with the issues that find the most irritating regarding in-game warfare.

 

[Happy Neyka]

Totally with you on this one - its characters, interaction between them and their personal life. I think more of this in the game the more interesting it is.

 

[Wookie501]

I'd like to have a map mode that just shows me floating heads for all the monarchs. And some kind of funeral system. So when a 'great man' dies nearby to you the game alerts you and you can go to their funeral to get support from the kingdom. It would help me remember characters and add a pretty simple set of events.

 

[WeissRaben]

I'm not making promises of any kind. Ck2 is a game with a long tail and I'm running projects on a tight schedule. It's all about priorities.
But in a perfect world in which I could do anything I wanted with the game, I'd probably put a couple of weeks into optimizing it and fix a few bugs rather than add more stuff.

With all due respect, maaaaybes and foot dragging don't work anymore. The vase is shattered on the ground, and it's either fixing it or picking a broom and throwing it in the trash. Stop selling DLC with grossly understated requirements, or have them actually work at more than one day per second 50 years into the game on machines that still run Vanilla like oil.

 

[Keizer Harm]

With all due respect, maaaaybes and foot dragging don't work anymore. The vase is shattered on the ground, and it's either fixing it or picking a broom and throwing it in the trash. Stop selling DLC with grossly understated requirements, or have them actually work at more than one day per second 50 years into the game on machines that still run Vanilla like oil.

I hope you realise that they have the hardest job in the world. There were quite a few pissed forumers because there were no DD's in the summer, and now they have produced some and there's people complaining that they are creating DLC's when they should be bugfixing and optimisation. It's only a very small team, you know.

 

[Will Steel]

With all due respect, maaaaybes and foot dragging don't work anymore. The vase is shattered on the ground, and it's either fixing it or picking a broom and throwing it in the trash. Stop selling DLC with grossly understated requirements, or have them actually work at more than one day per second 50 years into the game on machines that still run Vanilla like oil.

Oh wow, someone is royally pissed off at the fact that developers try to add features to the game, make it more enjoyable and a greatly better game in general.

 

[vyshan]

What i want is more historical stuff to deal with that people had to deal with. If you are in Italy for example dealing with the Guelph and Ghibellines and fighting rivalrys. I want more stuff to flesh out the various regions of the map with historical flavor. things relating to empires would be nice here, particularly the HRE; which I suppose works with both anti-blobbing and late game focus.

 

[WeissRaben]

Oh wow, someone is royally pissed off at the fact that developers try to add features to the game, make it more enjoyable and a greatly better game in general.

I am somewhat pissed at being unable to play the game I paid for, with the expansions I paid for, after being said I could play it, yes.

I hope you realise that they have the hardest job in the world. There were quite a few pissed forumers because there were no DD's in the summer, and now they have produced some and there's people complaining that they are creating DLC's when they should be bugfixing and optimisation. It's only a very small team, you know.

I know, I know. I would be okay with being stonewalled from further DLC, if this was said before the DLC is actually sold. "Guys, we can't keep up with the low-end band of the machines we said we supported; we'll release this one patch and move up the requirements" would be better than "we want to have a perfectly working game with great performance! But only, uh, if we get time to do it".

 

[Notthemama]

Soldiers died at a fairly horrifying rate in the Middle Ages. Not sure why you think otherwise. It wasn't always the battles, but disease and lack of supplies often decimated armies. Anyhow, I'm not sure it would improve the game to have players micromanaging supply routes.

 

[Sahraine]

I just want to play as Rollo...

 

[Robert II]

Oh wow, someone is royally pissed off at the fact that developers try to add features to the game, make it more enjoyable and a greatly better game in general.

I'd rather better performance and fixed old problems than any new features and problems.

 

[KhaineFH]

Oh wow, someone is royally pissed off at the fact that developers try to add features to the game, make it more enjoyable and a greatly better game in general.

With the performances you currently have, adding new features would be like giving a new fancy running gear to a man with a broken leg. New running shoes, high tech connected watch, etc... are great, as long as you can use them. In my little example, you should start by fixing his leg if you want to properly use this gear...

Another example would be a tank. If you keep increasing its armor and mount a bigger and heavier gun, while keeping the same original engine, the latter will be overburdened and the whole tank will broke down every 2km, thus be a total failure....

 

[anomanderus]

I feel like I was complaining about the lack of character interactions 3 years ago and then gave up when nothing was forthcoming

With the performances you currently have, adding new features would be like giving a new fancy running gear to a man with a broken leg. New running shoes, high tech connected watch, etc... are great, as long as you can use them. In my little example, you should start by fixing his leg if you want to properly use this gear...

Another example would be a tank. If you keep increasing its armor and mount a bigger and heavier gun, while keeping the same original engine, the latter will be overburdened and the whole tank will broke down every 2km, thus be a total failure....

Nonsense, we should clearly add China and Japan and Southeast Asia. More bloat is always a good thing.

 

[Leon_Aditzu]

I feel like I was complaining about the lack of character interactions 3 years ago and then gave up when nothing was forthcoming



Nonsense, we should clearly add China and Japan and Southeast Asia. More bloat is always a good thing.

Yes also naval battles, cadet dynasties, land republic, playable theocracies, barons, mayors and even lowborns(courtiers, mercenaries and rebel peasants), more economy and demography

 

[AchedTeacher]

White Flag? Interesting, may that be some kind of surrendering?

Or just literally running away from a lost battle, to know that when you go to that province you will not be able to engage that army.