Doomdark's Latest Interview

[iron0037]

Regina posted linked an interesting interview of Doomdark on the Paradox Development Studio forum (forum link, interview link). There are a lot of interesting comments for the CK2 crowd. Here's what I got out of it:

• They will be developing more character-driven games like CK2.
• They plan on covering other periods of history in future games (so 27 BC to 769 AD, perhaps the Bronze age?)
• Doomdark would like the game to expand across all of Asia (China DLC) but is constrained by the computational power of desktops.
• All those silly arguments that go "it's about the Crusades!" can stop:

the game is not primarily about the Crusades at all and I have never been happy with the name “Crusader Kings”, but it is far too late to rebrand it now

 

[Korashy]

Regina posted linked an interesting interview of Doomdark on the Paradox Development Studio forum (forum link, interview link). There are a lot of interesting comments for the CK2 crowd. Here's what I got out of it:

• They will be developing more character-driven games like CK2.
• They plan on covering other periods of history in future games (so 27 BC to 769 AD, perhaps the Bronze age?)
• Doomdark would like the game to expand across all of Asia (China DLC) but is constrained by the computational power of desktops.
• All those silly arguments that go "it's about the Crusades!" can stop:

It was originally about the crusades, until DLC made it not about the crusades anymore.

 

[iron0037]

All those silly arguments that go "it's about the Crusades!" can stop

It was originally about the crusades, until DLC made it not about the crusades anymore.

Or not.

The game's designer just said that it's "not primarily about the Crusades at all." What more do you want? :rofl:

 

[Korashy]

Or not.

The game's designer just said that it's "not primarily about the Crusades at all." What more do you want? :rofl:

Is not, and was not are two different things. Of course it no longer is, but saying that all the DLC we have now have been planned from the get go, is a bit too much.

Crusade pretty much triggered right of the bat in Vanilla and they were very much one of the core foci of the game.

Remember that in the beginning, Muslim, Republics weren't playable and Old Gods came out a long time after Vanilla.

 

[iron0037]

Is not, and was not are two different things. Of course it no longer is, but saying that all the DLC we have now have been planned from the get go, is a bit too much.

Crusade pretty much triggered right of the bat in Vanilla and they were very much one of the core foci of the game.

Remember that in the beginning, Muslim, Republics weren't playable and Old Gods came out a long time after Vanilla.

<Picard facepalm> Now we're going to have an argument over grammar and verb tenses. He said "I have never been happy with the name." He didn't say "I am not currently happy." The "never" statement covers all time. Thus the designer never viewed Crusades as a central to the game...sheesh...

 

[klopkr]

Is not, and was not are two different things. Of course it no longer is, but saying that all the DLC we have now have been planned from the get go, is a bit too much.

Crusade pretty much triggered right of the bat in Vanilla and they were very much one of the core foci of the game.

Remember that in the beginning, Muslim, Republics weren't playable and Old Gods came out a long time after Vanilla.

Your argument only holds true if we assume LoR was not a dlc originally planed for the game since it has nothing to do with crusades. Republic dlc doesn't have anything to do with crusades either in game. The kind part doesn't hold true for the republic dlc and only holds true for others if you consider emperors and non western rulers the same as kings.

You're grasping at straws here. Maybe you can argue ck1 was about crusading kings but definitly not ck2. It's just a brand name. You wouldn't say victoria 2 is supposed to only be about victoria would you? Or total war games being wrong because you can have peace.

 

[Rudolph]

[*]Doomdark would like the game to expand across all of Asia (China DLC) but is constrained by the computational power of desktops.

Or rather, it's constrained by their own engine and how characters are handled both alive and dead. Even overclocked 4770k and enough RAM can't handle the game fluently in its current state after a short period of time. Looking forward to seeing how Asia will be crammed into this.

 

[WeissRaben]

Or rather, it's constrained by their own engine and how characters are handled both alive and dead. Even overclocked 4770k and enough RAM can't handle the game fluently in its current state after a short period of time. Looking forward to seeing how Asia will be crammed into this.

I will quote myself.

Yeah, but I'm worried. RoI already killed performance on many machines, despite the continuous reassurance that everything would have worked out. If I were to choose between giving up support, bug fixing and mods by stopping at an older patch and shelling 700€ I don't have for a new pc, I would get a bit incensed.

 

[Grubnessul]

Don't forget Doomdark was not the original product lead/ uppergnome. Maybe he was never happy about the name, but the original focus was on the crusades.

TBH, I am slightly disappointed in the fact that the crusades have been pushed to the background/some far away corner and the game has lost its Europe centred focus (although the current borders do make sense).

I don't really care for adding all of Asia; Far Eastern History has never interested me much and I think you cannot really make a game focussed both on medieval Europe and it's contemporary China without losing a lot of details.

 

[apg]

the game is not primarily about the Crusades at all and I have never been happy with the name “Crusader Kings”, but it is far too late to rebrand it now

well this is stupid but then I suppose it does sort of explain why the crusades in the game are SOO boring and do not resemble anywhere near the 'character' that the crusades of medieval 2 total war have. You'd think if you name a game after the crusades then they would be some sort of center piece.

 

[apg]

Don't forget Doomdark was not the original product lead/ uppergnome. Maybe he was never happy about the name, but the original focus was on the crusades.

TBH, I am slightly disappointed in the fact that the crusades have been pushed to the background/some far away corner and the game has lost its Europe centred focus (although the current borders do make sense).

I don't really care for adding all of Asia; Far Eastern History has never interested me much and I think you cannot really make a game focussed both on medieval Europe and it's contemporary China without losing a lot of details.

absolutely agree. Any more DLC they do on asia is a definite no-buy for me. The game doesn't even properly resemble the indian 'feudal' systems let alone byzantine and the holy roman empire. So the notion of sticking in teh rest of Asia i find somewhat laughable.

 

[killerbee256]

I would love to include the entire Asian continent at least, and I could see that working from a design perspective (the game is not primarily about the Crusades at all and I have never been happy with the name “Crusader Kings”, but it is far too late to rebrand it now.) What currently prevents us from adding the Far East is rather RAM and CPU load. I would not rule it out completely though, because these things can probably be solved with some effort.

I must quote this every time an argument about a China dlc breaks out.

absolutely agree. Any more DLC they do on asia is a definite no-buy for me. The game doesn't even properly resemble the indian 'feudal' systems let alone byzantine and the holy roman empire. So the notion of sticking in teh rest of Asia i find somewhat laughable.

I disagree, franky I serious doubt you would stick to that if the dlc was made, sure you'll complain about China not being perfectly represented in your view, but I bet you would still buy the dlc on a steam sale. Also there is an edit function no need to double post.

 

[tywinzo]

[*]All those silly arguments that go "it's about the Crusades!" can stop:[/LIST]

They are free to change the name then. Until then, it is a completely valid argument. It is what they sold. That is what you'd expect. The fact that they now regret it and think it should have been done differently is an entirely different matter. For instance, I personally might not have gotten the game in the first place if it did not have that focus. And I personally do not care if an individual developer, whoever it is, thinks so. Or the even if the company officially thinks so - it changes nothing. Not sure why that would even be considered as a reason to free yourself from you have already given. Sell me a chair and I'll think of it is as a chair. Doesn't matter if you fantasisze about how it could and should have been a sofa.. I still appreciate a chair and never a sofa. If they make games about non-feudal times, or with entirely different focuses that is fine by me. I just won't buy them.

 

[Korashy]

The Crusades were actually fun in vanilla, since they were challenging, even when most of europe landed doomstacks, a victory was far from certain. Now that other religions are fleshed out there are better mechanics in the game.

Besides there was a Cruader Kings I, if they didn't want to design around the crusade when starting this game they could have named it something else/ coded things differently.

This was also their first game that heavily uses DLCs (every other game has 1-4 expansion packs), and I highly doubt that they knew in the beginning that it would proof a successful model for them, so it's safer to assume (in my opinion) that since the DLC model was working well that they just decided to support and develop the game way past what they usually deliver.

 

[Thure]

They are free to change the name then.

Eh... No. They can't. You can't rename a whole series of games. CK is known as CK. If they rename it and sell the next game as 'Throne Games' it wouldn't good, because the people wouldn't know it's a sequel to CK or even part of the CK2. For exemple... Do you think GTA could be renamed to FSP? Or rename Total War into 'War is War'? You are not free to change the name of a game that easy.

 

[Korashy]

Eh... No. They can't. You can't rename a whole series of games. CK is known as CK. If they rename it and sell the next game as 'Throne Games' it wouldn't good, because the people wouldn't know it's a sequel to CK or even part of the CK2. For exemple... Do you think GTA could be renamed to FSP? Or rename Total War into 'War is War'? You are not free to change the name of a game that easy.

Certainly not now, but they could have easily when they developed CK II. Ck1 was not anywhere near their flagship product or as popular. Now of course it's different.

 

[Tom013]

I personally never saw this game (Crusader Kings 2 not the series in general) as being about Crusades. It was about people, and those people lived during the start of the Crusades. The Crusades were a thing, sure, but even without the first DLC, there was far more going on with characters, their traits, their vassals (or their liege), their internal and local wars, than the periodic crusades that were sometimes big wars and sometimes wimpy little bellyflops of a pop-up-and-then-nothing.

Was the game really about those singular wars to all of you? I'm not saying anyone is wrong, but they never seemed more than a single component of something MUCH larger than even a large war of religion to me. Certainly, it's there in the name, but most of the reviews I read at the time (PC Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, amongst others) didn't even really mention "crusades" in their discussions beyond some brief allusion to wars and holy war -- a conspicuous absence given the name, but telling in a way.

 

[tywinzo]

Eh... No. They can't.

Eh, yes they can. They can just go ahead and make the announcement. Nothing is holding them back.

 

[omega20056]

I don't care about the China DLC arguments anymore. So long as CK2 keeps getting overhauled as it has been, I'll be happy.

 

[Anonymous01]

Eh, I wish the interviewer had delved more into the core shortcoming of this game: thousands of characters, but almost none of them do anything at all. They are almost literally there only to fill-in family trees. I was glad to read Doomdark was inspired by the sims, because that's exactly what this game needs: more consequential character interplay. And also palaces to decorate and wardrobes to wear. And live action coronations. Still don't understand why The Sims Medieval doesn't have a coronation action.