I have a honest question especially geared towards the so called "grogrards" of the paradox games. It's not a defiance and it's not a troll question.
I became playing those games more or less 10 years ago with ck2, eu4, vic2 and years after then stellaris. I also bought ck3, that I played, and hoi3/4, basically never played. Coming from total war series and other more mainstream titles (like Aoe or Sc2), I really appreciated the little things that those titles brought to the table: for ck2, the atmosphere, eu4 for diplomacy, vic2 economy, stellaris the in universe stories. I never really appreciated the combat system nor, especially, the choice of creating a lot of variables that were little or at all explained or even inferable from playing the game (without looking at the wiki or videos). There are many examples of that, but I will just put there, for ck2, the combat tactics system, that not only are not well explained in game ( a lot of info is not there to read) but even by reading the wiki you will need to look at it every minute (cause sorry but no, I can't remember if I have to put 10% or 15% light infantry and 40 or 50% light cavalry to attempt to fire a cool tactic). For stellaris i will put instead the megastructure system, that if you don''t go to read the wiki you will never know you have a massive chance to get it if you have another megastructure in your space. And there are a lot others.
The problem I always had with that system is that it gates away HUGE parts of the games, not only " eastern eggs", and even then I would have to argue that at least a good part of eastern eggs in a good designed system should be obtainable almost by mistake, not by putting togheter a huge list of eccentric conditions.
Then I became reading the forums and reading "dumbed down this, dumbed down that", generally about silly things like navies for ck3 from ck2 or the same tactic system, that I never liked or considered some type of cool and "so smart" mechanic. I will say that I consider the course of action that began from ck3 (and, in part at least, stellaris - can't talk about hoi4 but for sure ppl consider it dumbed down from hoi3) a good thing for the developers: no more unclear, unexplained, vague but -extremely influent on the game- mechanics and instead well developed and explained ones. I don't consider it to dumb down, cause in my opinion the difficulty should come from challenging mechanics, not badly or not at all explained ones that need to be understood by looking at the wiki. But I seem to understand that a lot of the loud minority that always make those complain is that they miss that treasure hunt of sorts that "allows" them to discover how some parts of the game work still after hundred of hours and allows the game to last more since you will have probably always something else to discover, about the game mechanics.
Prefacing that i think it's a completely silly thing, cause imho discoveries should happen from gameplay, not mechanics, I'm still curious to know if those people miss the unclear mechanics or instead think those mechanics were so smart that ck3 can be considered a dumbed down version of ck2, almost a for kids version of the same game.
I became playing those games more or less 10 years ago with ck2, eu4, vic2 and years after then stellaris. I also bought ck3, that I played, and hoi3/4, basically never played. Coming from total war series and other more mainstream titles (like Aoe or Sc2), I really appreciated the little things that those titles brought to the table: for ck2, the atmosphere, eu4 for diplomacy, vic2 economy, stellaris the in universe stories. I never really appreciated the combat system nor, especially, the choice of creating a lot of variables that were little or at all explained or even inferable from playing the game (without looking at the wiki or videos). There are many examples of that, but I will just put there, for ck2, the combat tactics system, that not only are not well explained in game ( a lot of info is not there to read) but even by reading the wiki you will need to look at it every minute (cause sorry but no, I can't remember if I have to put 10% or 15% light infantry and 40 or 50% light cavalry to attempt to fire a cool tactic). For stellaris i will put instead the megastructure system, that if you don''t go to read the wiki you will never know you have a massive chance to get it if you have another megastructure in your space. And there are a lot others.
The problem I always had with that system is that it gates away HUGE parts of the games, not only " eastern eggs", and even then I would have to argue that at least a good part of eastern eggs in a good designed system should be obtainable almost by mistake, not by putting togheter a huge list of eccentric conditions.
Then I became reading the forums and reading "dumbed down this, dumbed down that", generally about silly things like navies for ck3 from ck2 or the same tactic system, that I never liked or considered some type of cool and "so smart" mechanic. I will say that I consider the course of action that began from ck3 (and, in part at least, stellaris - can't talk about hoi4 but for sure ppl consider it dumbed down from hoi3) a good thing for the developers: no more unclear, unexplained, vague but -extremely influent on the game- mechanics and instead well developed and explained ones. I don't consider it to dumb down, cause in my opinion the difficulty should come from challenging mechanics, not badly or not at all explained ones that need to be understood by looking at the wiki. But I seem to understand that a lot of the loud minority that always make those complain is that they miss that treasure hunt of sorts that "allows" them to discover how some parts of the game work still after hundred of hours and allows the game to last more since you will have probably always something else to discover, about the game mechanics.
Prefacing that i think it's a completely silly thing, cause imho discoveries should happen from gameplay, not mechanics, I'm still curious to know if those people miss the unclear mechanics or instead think those mechanics were so smart that ck3 can be considered a dumbed down version of ck2, almost a for kids version of the same game.
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