EU4 - How do you play - August 2015 Edition

[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.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

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!

 

[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.

 

[melkor88]

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?

 

[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.

 

[chrnno]

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?

Number of games is not the same thing as number of people so you are comparing unrelated statistics.

Really? If I happen to be offline when an automatic save is required, I got a message asking me to refresh. I usually have to wait 30 secs after the connection comes back to have the refresh button working. It's really annoying to play in these conditions, even if I love Ironman.

If you are playing local ironman you only need internet connection to start the game. Back when I started playing eu4 my internet was not working most of the time but never had any problems.

 

[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.

 

[doktorstick]

I would be interested in seeing the patch-level breakdown. For instance, since 1.13beta came out, what is the % of games played using 1.11, 1.12, 1.13-beta? I would also be interested in seeing of the owners of Common Sense, how many games are played with it enabled vs. disabled.

 

[Tacticus101]

The 25% of games being Ironman means started games right? So would that include games restarted before even unpausing? I imagine that would mess with statistics.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

 

[witekgreg]

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

It is because CK2 Team rather doesn't listen to the voice of the community THey have their own vision of the game and doesn't share with their point of view in every week Dev diaries like EU4 Team does...

 

[columbusbobby23]

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.

I would suggest "Tin-Man" would be a better name for it.

 

[Metz]

This shows that we need bigger interfaces for some of the screens to help support gameplay on larger resolutions.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

I don't understand it entirely either..

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

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?

 

[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?

 

[AhoyDeerrr]

@Johan @Wiz, would it be possible for you to tell me what the percentages of people playing my own mod is please? I would be eternally grateful.

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

I dont know if it necessarily larger, but I guess that depends on how you define larger, CKII undoubtedly has more extensive mods, whereas EUIV seems to have a lot more small mods that add only a small amount of things in a targeted area, such as event packs or national idea sets.

I would also say that the CK2 user mod forum seems a lot more active than the EUIV one.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

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.

 

[zorkman]

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.

That is true of every game now & in the past. The only reason there is a better understanding today is you can get statistical data from the likes of Steam regarding how many hours a game has been played.