EU4 - How do you play - August 2015 Edition

[Johan]

32.71% of all games run with at least one mod enabled
25.67% of all games are Ironman.
10.72% of all games run, have at least 3 mods enabled.
12.48% of all games are multiplayer games.

So what mods are most popular?

1. extended timeline --- 6.71%
2. eu4 russian localisation lite --- 5.26%
3. bigger diplomacy view --- 3.59%
4. tbarw extra: transparent political mapmode --- 3.47%
5. thick borders and recolored water ver. 1.3 --- 2.85%
6. eu4 rus provinces --- 2.39%
7. bigger peace view --- 2.16%
8. mapmodebuttons --- 2.12%
9. graphical map improvements --- 2.05%
10. eu4 rus font bold --- 1.88%

Other famous mods are..
#23 - commonwealthball 0.12 --- 1.03%
#85 - veritas et fortitudo - 2.0.3 --- 0.19%
#107 - meiou and taxes v1.19 --- 0.14%

 

[Wizzington]

It should probably be noted that neither VeF or MEIOU had been updated to 1.12 (VeF still isn't, MEIOU for 1.12 came out last week). This is something we've seen consistently throughout EU4 development, though: graphical and language mods consistently top the lists of popular mods, while gameplay/total conversion mods are very lucky if they push 1%.

 

[Wizzington]

Considering how much the playerbase has been widened 1% is still huge though. Not as dominant as mods were with EU3's more niche base but still a lot. The percentages would have somewhat more meaning if we knew the total number of games started though, I think, so that we'd know roughly how many games that 1% corresponds to.

There was no value judgement in my post, just an interesting difference between CK2 (where total conversion/gameplay mods absolutely dominate) and EU4.

 

[Wizzington]

I think that's because CK2 really lends more to personal storytelling than EU4.

I think that is one reason, yes. There's also factors like CK2 lending itself very well to some highly popular settings like A Song of Fire and Ice. Regardless it is interesting/useful data for us.

 

[Dnote]

I actually think that is really high, over 30% of games have a mod enabled. Modding and the use of it is generally very niche, but it is hard to call 30% niche.

 

[Wizzington]

It tends to hover between 30-50%, so overall mod usage is quite high yes.

 

[Johan]

Can you clarify a little thing, Wiz, please? Are the mods percentages taken from the total games or from just the modded games?

Total games

 

[Wizzington]

Johann/Wiz, since the stats show that people like both mods and iroman mode, what about the "copper-man" mode that will allow to play mods on ironman settings (basically ironman without achievements)? This is a long time request supported by the stats you just gave and would make a lot of people happy.

This is in the works.

 

[Johan]

I guess it is lower in reality, because you don't need an internet connection to play without ironman, so stats are not recorded. The main reason why I don't often play ironman is because I can't rely on a stable internet connection.

Perhaps by 0.01%

 

[Johan]

Interesting guess. How did you arrive at that number?

The amount of people who patch the game and then never play it while being online is abysmally small.. 0.01% is a huge overestimation.

 

[Dnote]

It's primarily a Steam game, most users will be connected when playing it.

For myself, I don't play Ironman because I don't care about achievements and feel it is unnecessary to play in that mode if I'm not after them.

 

[Wizzington]

The most popular mods aren't surprising.

Compared to EU3, I imagine that EU4 has fewer overhaul/conversion mods because of attrition. Whenever the game updates, these mods need to update as well, and since they are so much larger, the developers of those mods might get tired of updating and eventually abandon their mod.

Not sure how CK2 factors into this. CK2 having so many enduring overhaul mods is surprising. It's also a larger modding community, so there might be a social dynamic that makes it viable to constantly update a mod despite the work involved.

Either that or the CK2 modding community has some tool that makes it super easy to update a mod after a patch.

This was a very interesting thread. Thanks for sharing!

CK2 updates just as often, and these numbers were true in early EU4 patchea as well, so attrition being the cause for the difference is unlikely.

 

[Wizzington]

I am very surprised that 25% of games are Ironman. As the highest global achievement percentage is the secure a royal marriage, and that is only at 16%. And any achievement which you would get if you played for a hundred or so years are under 5%. So I would have thought the current amount of Ironman players would be around that.
I guess that means that so many players quit so quickly?

Total user base != active user base in August. More people play EU4 than ever, but there are still people who own the game and do not play it.

 

[Johan]

Not sure how CK2 factors into this. CK2 having so many enduring overhaul mods is surprising. It's also a larger modding community, so there might be a social dynamic that makes it viable to constantly update a mod despite the work involved.

I don't understand it entirely either..

The active playerbase for EU4 is far bigger than CK2 as well.

 

[Wizzington]

I'd have guessed the changing of patches rendering mods often temporarily incompatible in EU bleeds into their popularity, but then isn't that also an issue with CK2? Sometimes it's hard to (accurately) pin causality on these tendencies because there's so much noise.

1.11 had around 50% mod usage. Considering they used to just crash instead of being force-disabled, I doubt the force-disabling impacts numbers.

 

[Wizzington]

It might just be the games themselves.

A medieval game opens the door for mods with medieval settings. We have Elder Scrolls, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, and others whereas there aren't many popular Renaissance settings and none nearly as popular as the aforementioned three.

With that logic alone, Victoria 2 should have had a huge modding community given the popularity of steampunk, so there's probably another dynamic. Most likely, it's that CK2 is more "personal" since you play as a character instead of a country. People are probably more interested in mods that allow their characters to do different things than they are about mods that add historical flavor to specific countries.

As somebody who studies organizational psychology, my best guess is that CK2 lends itself to a larger modding community which in turn creates an atmosphere that encourages modders to work on and continuously update their projects. After all, nobody wants to work on a mod if there's nobody else doing the same?

Is there a similar thread in the CK2 forum by any chance?

What are you basing the 'larger modding community' on, exactly?

 

[Wizzington]

I wasn't thinking in terms of the disabling, but rather just in terms of "how frequently does this work, and how long do I have to wait after a patch to use it again". If CK2 is faster than EU IV in terms of new patch --> overhaul mod is playable turnaround, that could at least partially explain the difference. If it isn't, then that's probably not a significant factor.

I would say it's not, with possibly the exception of patch 1.12. Porting mods to new CK2 versions tends to be more work due to the larger size of the databases. Patch 1.12 changing a lot of things and patch 1.13 partially integrating bigger diplo view probably both are part of the reason for the dip from 1.11.

 

[neondt]

re: Why CK2 has more and more popular overhaul mods

What are you basing the 'larger modding community' on, exactly?

I think he's right to say that CK2 has a larger modding community. Which isn't quite the same thing as saying that there are more people modding CK2 and EUIV (I have no idea whether that's the case, and I don't think it matters). I think this can be at least partially attributed to Steam Workshop.

CK2 was released without Workshop support, and continued without it for a long time. The best way to get mods was to go to the modding subforum here. The best way to get your own mods out there was to post them on that same subforum. This created a big community of modders and mod users that encouraged collaboration and discussion. This was (and to some extent remains) an ideal place for large overhaul projects to develop, and so we got amazing mods like Elder Kings and Game of Thrones which would not have been possible without the community that fostered them. CK2 now has Workshop support, but the community that grew on the forums stuck around, and the mods that it created continue to thrive.

EUIV by contrast was released with Workshop support. The easiest way to get mods, and the most visible place to display mods, is the Workshop. The Workshop does not foster any sense of community among modders or players. Individual modders upload and update their work, and players might occasionally leave a comment. That's not a community. Our modding subforum isn't and never has been particularly active and the community is very small. Only a few big collaborative projects exist, and new ones almost never spring up. And yet the game has a huge playerbase of which nearly a third use mods. This suggests to me that the reason for the lack of big projects is the lack of collaboration among modders and the lack of a popular hub for discussion rather than a lack of modders, interested players, or interesting ideas.

 

[Johan]

"offline" in this case normally means Steam client is in "offline mode" or not running at all so it isn't sending info to Steam's servers.

Doesnt stop our metrics collection.