EU4 - Dev Diary - June 18th

[Wizzington]

Will this fix the massive oos issues in multiplayer?

If you have OOSes, please report them on the bug forums. As far as I know we've fixed the OOSes that have been reported and reproduced.

 

[Wizzington]

What about Patriarch Authority and Piety?
Getting ~20% PA in 230 years isn't fun(

Will be addressed in the next larger patch.

 

[Wizzington]

Yeah to be clear, there's basically nothing we can do with the RNW implementation as-is. No matter how we want to improve it, improving it more than marginally requires a total rework. We know exactly how we *want* to rework it, it's a matter of finding the time. If/when we do end up being able to do it, I'll do a whole DD on it at some point.

 

[Wizzington]

It would have been nice to see this level of openness about the quality of the random new world when CoP was released, rather than so many months later.

We have not done DDs like this at all before last week's, it's a new thing.

 

[Wizzington]

Is not popular because is unplayable. Give them fort 4 in Constantinople and you'll see a change

This is perhaps the silliest post I've seen on this forum, and I've seen a lot of silly posts on this forum.

 

[Dnote]

I would assume that most players aren't looking for a challenge, which is why they play as the powerful nations and most players also aren't engaged enough to bother coming on the forums, so we think what is written here is more popular than it really is. I really enjoy playing with custom nations, I like being able to select my NI to suit my goals, but also I've played so much since launch that it is nice to play in the same places, but with a different structure. My current game has me in south of France and northern Italy, I could've got there from one of the smaller nations, but because of the provinces my nation started with, France was a little weaker and the whole area was in a lot of turmoil for the first 200 years, which made playing in western Europe very different to how it normally goes.

As for the RNW, would gladly wait 10-15 minutes to get a more natural continent to explore. I love the idea of it, making exploration actually worth something, but as it currently is, just isn't really that fun to play with.

 

[Wizzington]

Hi Wiz, could you make one of your future dev diaries about creating / improving the AI? There's often a lot of complains about how the AI performs, especially after a major DLC like this. I think it would be interesting to know more about the process of improving the AI, why there are often problems after DLC releases and if there is something the players can do to help.

The fact that people complain about the AI is far from always an actual indicator of a problem. People always complain about the AI, and imagine it to be and do all sorts of things it isn't/doesn't.

That said, yes, a DD on AI is not a bad idea.

 

[Wizzington]

Wiz, if that's not too much to ask, could you briefly outline when the next patch is coming and what would be the scope of it? Gameplay checks and balances for the current patch?

Late june, bugfixing & balance

 

[Wizzington]

On the subject of explaining reasoning, would you also be willing to share why custom nations can't be placed adjacent to each other in save games? I know there must be a reason, yet it's also possibly the single-most frustrating feature for me.

MP. I plan to add an option to enable it.

 

[Wizzington]

I'm a bit confused by this. It's not that I disagree with it, it's just that I don't understand it - I can think of a few reasons for fixing newer stuff first, but none of them really strike me as coercive enough. It seems to me that fixing, say those high-altitude lakes (just as an example) should be done before adding more stuff that could bring about new problems. So, could you elaborate on why it's necessary to fix newer stuff before going back to older stuff? Or was this just in regard to the Hotjoin function?

I totally like the ongoing support and the expansions that you put together and can understand that there's only a finite number of work that can be done, but how do you decide whether something should be fixed before working on a new feature or if it can be ignored for the time being?

We have to release expansions every so often in order to continue to develop the game. I consider releasing fully working new features that do not grow the backlog more important than chipping away at old bugs, though we certainly do the latter as well. Bugs in new features having higher priority does not mean every new bug has higher prio than an old one, of course. An old CTD is far more important than a new typo.

 

[Wizzington]

Please say this will make CK2 next patch as well.

You'll have to yell at Groogy to port it over.

 

[Wizzington]

Regarding bugfixes and - which became apparent to me only today - the constant complaining about bugs still not being fixed:

Have you guys considered using an open tracker system, where forum users could create issues and where devs would update the issues' current status. You know, like, Bugzilla, JIRA, etc. I'm pretty sure you're already using software internally, but this would only serve to visualize that you guys are indeed working on the bugs reported, to sooth the naggers, to show the community that their reports are not being ignored.

To clarify, I am not saying you ignore reports. I'm saying that many community members have the feeling you do, because they're not intimate with bugfixing and code development and that an open tracker platform for the forum users would ensure some sort of assurance for the community and at the same time lessen the ever-on-going, unnerving, asking and nagging about bugs and bugfixes not introduced in patch xy. Of course those systems support duplicates, so while the system might be cluttered, it might be a better solution than a bug forum.

We use JIRA internally. Managing an external JIRA where any user can report issues would likely use more resources than the entire current development team.

 

[Wizzington]

Please scrap random new world. It's definitely not worth it to put more development into that. There are so many core parts of the gameplay that needs redesign. Naval gameplay for example.

So you're suggesting that we remove the main feature of an expansion that people paid money for.

I'm sure that would go over great.

 

[Wizzington]

Does this mean Prussia can finally have it's colour changed to glorious Prussian Blue?

That fight you'll have to take with Johan. It does mean that Brandenburg is now an interesting country in 1444 though.

 

[Wizzington]

Johan has said no on Prussian color change repeatedly, and he has the final say.

 

[Wizzington]

I really have to protest here. The AI has seriously issues with the new patch. Since 1.12 we have limited building choice. So it does not make sense to build a temple in an iron province but rather a manufactory. Each development you improve increase the cost. So it makes sens to specialize provinces to get the most of it together with building boni. So improving trade in iron provinces and manpower in grain provinces. However AI is improving manpower in iron provinces and production in grain provinces. And builds temples in both.
The AI prefer colonizing brasil over east america as england. Despite not profiting from the trade there. Small AI nations ignore during colonisation that colonies can get bigger than them and go independent. In many cases AI would have bigger colonial territories if they stopped colonialisation.

Saying that the AI is not a problem is something I can not agree with.

None of these things are major issues (and I question the sample size of 'AI prefers Brazil as England').

 

[Wizzington]

And Johan rules within an iron fist

I take the day-to-day design decisions and have increasingly taken over feature design now that Johan is spending a lot of time with HOI4, but he still has final say and there are certain matters (Prussia's color, Venice's flag) where that final say is quite final. Personally I don't care much about either of them.

 

[Wizzington]

I don't want to annoy you with that topic, but is there a way - a well formulated argument or a petition - to convince Johan to change his mind? Is there a known reasoning behind his refusal of Prussian Blue for Prussia? I know, you don't care, but we (the supporters of Prussian Blue, that is) truly do and would like to exhaust every possibility here.

He prefers the grey color. I don't know what possible argument you could present against that, nor do I care enough to think one up. Sorry.

 

[Wizzington]

You did get Memel changed.

Neither me nor Johan was ever actually opposed to changing Memel, we just thought it was funny to troll people who cared far too much about the shape of a province.

 

[Johan]

How do I send paradox metrics?

By accepting the eula when installing the game.