Developer Diary 3 – Design Philosophy

[jamhaw]

I just thought of something that I would really like in relation to the flavour events, I believe I have seen some of these made for the original Victoria (they were never in the game itself of course and I am not entirely sure who made them or why) anyway I think that having flavour events for monarchs ascending the throne would be very nice. It would tell you who your king is which would help improve immersion in my opionion. Obviously these types of events would only be triggered if some sort of monarchy ran the nation.

 

[Autonomous]

Are you sure not reading the whole post and focusing on just a part of it is the right way to argue people?

EDIT: Forget I said anything. I'm too tired for this.

 

[sbr]

I'll tell you what I would like to see, since we are discussing a design philosophy, and that's the things that folks have been complaining about for years.

A tutorial and a demo. (Idea came to me in a vision, just right after I answered the question in the demo thread.)

The tutorial can be short, I would think. Just enough to get a player barely started down the path, but at least have one. The players can figure out the game. Heck, if we all managed to figure out the first Vicky, I have not doubt we can handle the second version.

I don't know where I'm get this "we" stuff. I needed tons of help before I managed to actually play a game through.o

The demo would also have to be short, of course, but at least give the players a taste of what they are purchasing.

This is for those cynics amongst us who are expecting the worse. Me? I'm pre-ordering if given an opportunity that I can use. I've promised myself that I owe it to the CK crowd. Plus, I wouldn't mind a CK 2 my self.

If I'm going over territory already covered, my apologies. Don't remember anybody from PI saying anything definite, though.

I think a reasonable Tutorial is a necessity. I myself play through the tutorial in any game that offers one. Obviously everyone here learned to play Vicky without one but that doesn't mean they should have to again.

And no tutorial would be better than something similar to the HOI3 one.

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

I just thought of something that I would really like in relation to the flavour events, I believe I have seen some of these made for the original Victoria (they were never in the game itself of course and I am not entirely sure who made them or why) anyway I think that having flavour events for monarchs ascending the throne would be very nice. It would tell you who your king is which would help improve immersion in my opionion. Obviously these types of events would only be triggered if some sort of monarchy ran the nation.

But what if dear old Vicky never became dear old Vicky, having died in the sacking of London in 1837? Which is ultimately why I support the direction Paradox is going. You cannot script a historical game - you'll lose either the history or the game before long. They've been attempting to create the perfect historical grand strategy game - one that takes the historical conditions and characters, and then lets you play puppet master with them. What they've been trying to do is set up all the motivations and consequences, and let you play a game in them, responding as you see fit but with the consequences to bear in mind. In fairness they're not there yet, which is why people are complaining about sandboxes. But they've taken the right path, which if you flick over to the db folder and take a peek you'll be able to see for yourself.

That said, it's interesting how responses have largely been about events. I guess getting the topic out of the way now is a good move, because it was inevitably going to be debated, but the rest deserves attention too. I for one like what I'm hearing about POPs, and the much needed interface work. It definitely sounds like the right sort of noises are being made.

 

[Alerias]

But we've seen that our fans here do not want hardcoded events, so we cater to the community.

Maybe the market at large does not really like it - because they dont have enough knowledge of history to appreciate it - but fans here certainly DO enjoy hardcoded events. Weve heard since EU3 that it was not the case, but yet the forums are aflame every time we hear that yet another game will have only generic events.

HOI3 is an example of where that leads. The number of events, compared to Doomsday, is simply ridiculously low...

Im sure if you made an actual poll of this, youd see that over 75% would like historical events. All we want is to be able to change them if we radically alter history, but if we more or less follow its course, we want the historical events to happen. Id be extremely surprised to be proven wrong.

More importantly we want detailed event descriptions. If we get the "Meiji Restoration", we dont want an event that says "You have modernized and brought a progressive dynasty to power and your country will benefit, hurrah!". We want the same flavor and quantity of text we had in Victoria 1 and EU2. Just my two cents.

 

[Gorgo Primus]

Please put it to a poll Johan.

I'm positive that 75% plus WANT events. They may not want events handled with lazy/loose triggers, but we WANT events.

Events are what made Victoria so amazing and different from the normal mash of RTS.

 

[Karlburg]

Please put it to a poll Johan.

I'm positive that 75% plus WANT events. They may not want events handled with lazy/loose triggers, but we WANT events.

Events are what made Victoria so amazing and different from the normal mash of RTS.

Amazing Opium war for no real reason, or uniting Germany without lifting a finger, yep, big accomplishments should require little more than pushing a few buttons on the event window, rather than real in-game play.

 

[EUnderhill]

Maybe the market at large does not really like it - because they dont have enough knowledge of history to appreciate it - but fans here certainly DO enjoy hardcoded events. Weve heard since EU3 that it was not the case, but yet the forums are aflame every time we hear that yet another game will have only generic events.

HOI3 is an example of where that leads. The number of events, compared to Doomsday, is simply ridiculously low...

Im sure if you made an actual poll of this, youd see that over 75% would like historical events. All we want is to be able to change them if we radically alter history, but if we more or less follow its course, we want the historical events to happen. Id be extremely surprised to be proven wrong.

More importantly we want detailed event descriptions. If we get the "Meiji Restoration", we dont want an event that says "You have modernized and brought a progressive dynasty to power and your country will benefit, hurrah!". We want the same flavor and quantity of text we had in Victoria 1 and EU2. Just my two cents.

I thought the people here appreciated and knew enough history that we could get the generic event and put it in its proper context without the need for text boxes.

 

[Calantyr]

Please put it to a poll Johan.

I'm positive that 75% plus WANT events. They may not want events handled with lazy/loose triggers, but we WANT events.

Events are what made Victoria so amazing and different from the normal mash of RTS.

Speak for yourself. I was attracted to Vicky by the period setting and the depth of gameplay, sadly let down by being strong-armed into certain choices regardless of how the game progressed after the start date.

Having certain events happen NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS DURING THE GAME is not good gameplay. It is nothing but bad design. Sales figures for previous Paradox titles seems to support this, if I recall correctly.

Besides there's nothing to stop you modding it in yourself if you prefer. Magna Mundi, case in point.

 

[Alerias]

Sales figures for previous Paradox titles seems to support this, if I recall correctly.

Sales figures from previous games show mainly that Paradox has a company has gained popularity over time and that therefore its new products are doing better than its old ones. Good games breed successful successors. Furthermore, theres alot more to Paradox games than events. EU3 is a better game than EU2 DESPITE the lack of historical events, not BECAUSE of it, and if I had to keep one over the other for all time, Id take EU3. But Id pay a thousand bucks for a hybrid with historical events and all the new features done exactly the way I want

Mind you, maybe my hybrid already exists as a mod. I havent exactly tried Magna Mundi and all that jazz. The fact that such mods CAN exist, though, allow me to largely forgive Paradox for cutting corners. IMO choosing to go with minimal history is largely a design choice based on simplicity and ease of development. Its still forgivable if the rest of the game is AAA, which is my expectation for Vicky 2.

 

[Orinsul]

Its not a question of either everything happens no matter what or nothing specific happens historically, there is a compromise and i would have thought anyone with even an ounce of common sense would see that but it seems no-one is taking even a second to think about it.
Have the historical thing happen if the historical situtation exists. Should France be in a similar situation as it was when Louis Napoleon attempted his coup let his coup happen, should it be an entirely different state and situation then it shouldnt.
If the world in the game at that moment hasnt diverged from history in a way incompatible with that historic event then they event shouldnt happen but if the conditions are still close to the books then it should, if nothing major has happened then the road ought to still continue.

I would like the AI to be such that should the player be a country of no importance and do nothing then the game would unfold just as it did in history, but should the player do anything major to upset that road, burn down the wrong bridge or switch around the sign post, then the world should go however it makes sense too. It shouldnt be either Sandbox OR History, it should be both. Victoria is Making HISTORY not start somewhere vaguely history, throw havoc to the wind and let anything the hell happen. Compromise! Take the middle path that has the best of both extremes dont stand around shouting at each other on which of the extremes should be followed.

 

[unmerged(71032)]

Tad long comment on the role of events...

Paradox concept of relying less on the events and more on the core mechanics is very reasonable. In the end, systematic improvement of the core mechanics leads to the game that regulates itself, instead of "railroading" (as for "manually pushing AI/players in certain direction"). With better and better core mechanics, theoretically its possible to drop events or limit them to generic ones (like it was in vanilla EU3).

Such approach got one hidden issue though. With generic rules same for all the countries, playing all the countries gets uniformed. When all countries follow the same rules (instead of getting "out of the blue" inheritance of Bohemia, for example), there is not much difference in playing any of them - except from their size and maybe location, determining how hard game is, or if certain options (like colonization) are viable or not. Immersion is gone - every country follows the same mechanics, so they all look the same.

Note, that Paradox (thanks to those forums as well) attempted to counter this uniformity in various ways - first by adding decisions and missions. While decision/mission system is not really country unique in its core couple of countries gets unique decisions/missions that go a long way for the immersion building, while not breaking "universal game mechanics" principle.

Additional layer of such diversification was added with big diferences in game mechanics in playing various political systems (Vic:Rev and Rome:VV). Again, we have a situation where core game mechanics is the same for everyone, but in certain parts, game mechanics radically differ depending on player strategy choice.

That's why I have a feeling that to large extend both sides here are missing the point.

People that are pro-events are NOT supporting them because they want to be "railroaded" - they support them, because they feel without such events, game doesn't feel like set in historical bonduaries of the era, thus turning into Civ-like generic "empire builder".

People that are "free gameplay" supporters are missing the point that without extremely detailed core game mechanics, sandbox enviroment is unable to cover all the historical situations, thus replacing "dynamic alternative history" concept with "completly chaotic enviroment" reality.

In the end Paradox, after initial strong swing in "free gameplay" direction, is trying to keep both groups somehow satisfied - and it seems the trend continues in Vicky 2, with keeping "flavour events" (which I assume mean nation specific ones as well) and differing gameplay more depending on your social structure and political system.

We can argue on the priorities we give to free gameplay vs. historical uniqueness - I know I'm closer to MM mod game experience (note it's not even close to "railroad" you get in EU2 mods) then free play of generic EU3... but that's personal preference - and I'm not even sure it's dominant among the players.

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

But just how do you tell what constitutes "doing nothing" and which bridge is the wrong one? There are so many variables that scripted events just don't work in the face of a player determined to work the system in their favour. They simply can't handle every possible path, or take into account every consideration that might have some bearing. As a consequence, you're either left hanging without a script or you're booted back on to it at every other turn.

Plain old Vicky showed what happened when the scripted event approach was applied in lite form. There were a few nice chains, but if you had departed from script they had nothing to do with the rest of the game. It was all about knowing how to fire event x at time y so you could get result z, and not about the actual context of the events or any kind of historical sense. HoI2 had a particularly good example of this in the form of the anschluss of everybody exploit. It just doesn't work. Claim it was historical flavour all you want, but the events were crude tools to say the least.

Now sure, you could try adding events for different possibilities, fix up triggers, that sort of thing. VIP is that end of the scale, a great example of how to make a good simulator that can be enjoyable if you stick to the script. It has many alternative largely realistic paths, but if you try something else it will pull out the 2x4 and lay the smack down. It's a nice mod, but it gets frustrating have an event fire to tell you that there's peace in the British empire each time you want to... extend that peace to your neighbours, shall we say? The gameplay side of things suffers, in that it railroads you into a few well defined paths. If I wanted to play a choose your own adventure game, I'd be at the library.

Events don't work if you want any real sort of choice, there are too many possibilities, and I don't want to watch a simulator. It's the old butterfly effect problem, except you have to remember there are millions of butterflies in the world. You simply can't have a separate event, trigger or flag for each one. What you can do is have a system responding to certain conditions appropriately, whether it's happening in Toronto or Tokyo. The current generation of Paradox games aren't there yet, but they're on the right track.

Edit: I also agree with Alojzy

 

[Gorgo Primus]

For those of you in the free gameplay camp, take a look at HOI3's system of 'anything goes' and compare it to HOI2 and tell me its a better WW2 game with a straight face.

Now tell me how you think Victoria 2 will end up if it follows the same path.

"Year 1842: CSA has annexed Germany." anyone?

 

[King]

Please put it to a poll Johan.

I'm positive that 75% plus WANT events. They may not want events handled with lazy/loose triggers, but we WANT events.

Events are what made Victoria so amazing and different from the normal mash of RTS.

Sales figures do not lie, Polls only tell us about people who post here.

 

[leggbros]

All of those who are proponents of the no events system might actually have a point but unfortunately, it is literally impossible for any paradox game based on Clauswitz to be historical. There has never been a game of EU3 that has turned out as history has, there has never been a Rome game that has ended historically, there has never even been a HOI3 game that looked like the real world in 1948. This is because the engine is incapable of recreating history. All of these games are missing dynamics that allow the game to unfold the same way it did in real life. In order to make a game that claims to be historical, at least some of the games should end the same way history has, until the day that happens (which I doubt very much will come with V2), powerful historical events are needed. And stop saying that events are arbitrary, they happen if triggers are met if something radical happens to change the game, they don't fire. If I am allied to France and Russia and at war with Austria as Germany there will never be an event that removes my alliances with my BFFs and makes me DoW them. Stop with the strawman arguments! Some of us have any knowledge of history because of paradox games btw so please don't assume everyone who plays these games has a PhD in history. Oh and at the beginning, I was talking about vanilla, but even with mods it is mostly impossible.

there will never be events checking on a "day of month" trigger for multiple reasons.

And those reasons are? I have a hard time coming up with one...

EDIT: Gorgo was much more succinct with his post

 

[King]

Well this discussion went as expected. So let me say it straight events, decisions, what ever fill a particular niche in the game. They are there to do the things the game engine cannot do. Take Victoria for example we cannot think of a good and codable game mechanic that can allow Germany to form. So we fall back on a decision, where if you fufill the right conditions you can form Germany. Events also have thier place to inject a bit of randomness into a game. Due to the random nature of events you can play the same country exactly the same way and get a slightly (or even radically) different game).

Lots of historical steering events, in my opinion, is a sign of poor game mechanics. The more props you need to put in the game the weaker your game mechanics are. You are also locked into a vicious circle, you game mechanics are weak, so you devote time to events, meaning you are devoting even less time to game mechanics, so you need to devote more time to events.

 

[unmerged(71032)]

Lots of historical steering events, in my opinion, is a sign of poor game mechanics. The more props you need to put in the game the weaker your game mechanics are. You are also locked into a vicious circle, you game mechanics are weak, so you devote time to events, meaning you are devoting even less time to game mechanics, so you need to devote more time to events.

See, but that's the main difference between devs and pro-event players. You see events mainly in terms of mechanics (and the flawed one), players see historical events mainly as the thing that helps making game believable representation of the era.

It's good that so called flavour events are in - hopefully huge mayority of the countries (not just couple of mayor ones) will have decent pack of them. Such events are mainly for "feeling of the era" - information that someone wrote famous books (requirements should include not just date, but also cultural tech and such), that Eiffel Tower was built, that Coca Cola was invented, are all important for players to identify the game among the throng of "empire builders" (all with perfect, uniformed game mechanics - but without good historical background).

Now, historical events that have extreme effects (like wars between mayor powers) - that's different story and I'm fairly sure it would be much better if "Great Game" between GB and Russia or Civil War in USA was naturally starting thanks to the game mechanics (proper AI priorities setup or social tensions). Nevertheless, if they happen AND for some reason they go fairly historical, there is no reason to not add some flavour events again related to them (for example Emancipation Proclamation as decision or Russian geographic discoveries if they decide push diplomatically in the Central Asia). It would be again great help for adding "flavor" to the game.

 

[Sarmatia1871]

For those of you in the free gameplay camp, take a look at HOI3's system of 'anything goes' and compare it to HOI2 and tell me its a better WW2 game with a straight face.

This is true, but there is a big difference in settings here: a World War II game with a short timeframe does really need quite a rigid event-structure so that something like World War II happens the way that people expect it.

Meanwhile a game with a longer timescale like CK, EU or Victoria is much better suited to a non-deterministic event system, as the focus is more on general trends and big processes rather than a single situation.

 

[unmerged(148774)]

I see nothing wrong with decisions and events that fire when certain conditions are met. Sounds good to me.

I do hope that nations will at least act partly historically. For example, I'd like to see France have a tendency or preference if you will to colonize Indochina. Now they don't necessarily have to every game but I would like it to be more likely than not. Having nations nudged in that way is fine to me.

As another example, (not sure if this is an event or not in Vicky - methinks it isn't) Russia doesn't have to sell Alaska to America every game being another example. Perhaps if Russia was in reasonably good shape financially they wouldn't feel the need to. If Russia was in financially rough shape then they would be more likely to take the cash and run.

That way, the opportunity for a nation to act historically would be there. The nation would weigh the options and choose the correct one.

If I want a scenario where Russia always sells Alaska to the USA I'll look for it in a realistic history mod.

Looking forward to the game anyway. It sounds better and better. I'll be buying a few copies for friends as well as for myself. I'm putting aside money now.