HOI4 Dev Diary - New year update

[podcat]

2021? Damn, we are in the future now boys and girls!

I wanted to write this diary because it feels like it's been a really long time since we chatted. Well I guess it wasn’t that long actually but 2020 has definitely made everything feel like its taken forever ;D

2020 has probably been the most challenging year so far for the team since release. The COVID-19 situation really messes with your wellbeing, even if your life normally is chilling inside with your cat and computer games so I hope you are all taking care of yourselves. Looking back I think we overestimated direct impacts to work efficiency and absolutely underestimated impacts to mental health and general well being - things that are also incredibly important for doing a good job and being productive, as well as helping to onboard new members to a team. We have absolutely been impacted, and as a result I want to be pretty clear that you should not expect the next big expansion to drop before summer this year, which is what I was planning before COVID hit us right after La Resistance dropped.
I know a lot of you have been asking about dates for diaries to start up and for us to show stuff again, but you are going to have to wait a bit longer for that. I can say though that the expansion we are brewing up is gonna be pretty sweet I think and focus on a lot of things people have been wishing for

So, given that there was no PDXCON last year, where I normally do this, I felt I should take this opportunity to drop some statistics on you all…

Player Counts
With COVID keeping us all inside we and I suspect a lot of the rest of the gaming industry has seen a lot more players than normal playing. I know personally I have gotten a lot more gaming in. It's going to be interesting to see if there is a dip once our lives go back to normal again (whenever that may be).

Top Mods
I am just highlighting the biggest total conversion mods here, and % numbers are based off daily player numbers.

I think the standout here is TNO having jumped up in popularity quite rapidly during the year so congrats to the team behind that! Also feel free to chime in in comments if you think we have any other big up and coming mod to keep eyes on!

Road to 56 and KR keeping their top spots from before, and I also want to say that I am really inspired and impressed by the cool video and other transmedia content the KR team is putting out. I’m eager to see if any other mod teams do similar stuff in the future

Top 20 played nations
Counting most sessions > 5h

Germany - 17.9%
Italy - 7.4%
Soviet - 7.7%
France - 5.5%
Turkey - 5.1%
Britain - 4.7%
USA - 4.6%
Japan - 3.9%
Hungary - 3.7%
Spain - 3.2%
Greece - 3.0%
Romania - 2.0%
China - 1.9%
PRC - 1.9%
Bulgaria - 1.8%
Yugoslavia - 1.7%
Netherlands - 1.5%
Portugal - 1.5%
Mexico - 1.4%
Czechoslovakia - 1.2%

I think it's really cool to see Turkey this high. It was always popular but with Battle for the Bosporus it jumped up overall 60%. Greece and Bulgaria also more than doubled in popularity.

While I got you all gathered here reading, I also want to make sure to highlight here that there was an accidental released update of the launcher and that the launcher team is working on reverting that as quickly as they can as it introduced some bugs. Read about it here. I also want to say that we have received increasing amounts of reports of people using cheat tools to mess with multiplayer games over christmas, and we are looking into it.

See you all later, and to be clear this is not the start of regular diaries just yet. You'll have to be patient a bit longer on that front.

 

[CraniumMuppet]

Huzzah! The devs are not dead yet!

You'll be surprised what you can live through - Iago

 

[podcat]

lmao the icon they used for TNO

whups I didnt reflect on it. Will poke my graphics guy haha. at least this way we promote 2 mods at once ;D
(fixed now)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1858912372 Stats are wrong as this is missing

nah its over 100% usage so it broke the algorithm. Sooty >> all

 

[podcat]

One question, with the next DLC being delayed, is there a smaller (bugfix or anything else) patch planned in-between (no pressure, just curious)?

I cant promise stuff obviously but looking back we always have patches on our anniversary around 6th June and such. As I said in the diary if we can solve some of the MP issues its not impossible that we can release fixes for that earlier too, but I am just guessing. Depends on what happens, so all I can promise is that I will tell you when we got stuff for you

The work we are doing now is pretty huge and focused on long term solutions on tricky stuff so thats why we have been hidden away a bit

 

[podcat]

What is the most popular generic tree nation as of that data? My guess would be Brazil or Argentina, but I am genuinely curious.

If I recall Sweden at like 1.1%. Brazil at 0.85%. Surprised me as well.
If I filter out all sessions shorter than 15h though Brazil climbs past it significantly

 

[podcat]

Out of interest, and if you can tell, is that because of MP? In MP Brazil seems to punch well above what you'd expect as it has a large manpower and therefore can be a relevant force for D-day.

Nah, smaller nations close to the big powerhouses tend to get destroyed or not do so well so people quit earlier. In brazil it takes a while before that happens so its better for longer games. MP is a pretty small chunk of players so it usually doesnt affect these kind of stats that much

 

[podcat]

It is great to hear from you guys! Staying so busy it can sometimes be hard to realize just how much it helps when you drop a blue post on the forums. Since you cannot spare the time to be drawn into a discussion maybe you could add something like, "I have to get back to work, so this is my only post for now." at the end of you post. With the extended time needed to get this DLC right, dropping more blue posts would be appreciated by myself and I suspect most of us. While we would love to hear updates, please do not disappear because it is not a good time for updates. There is a whole game to discuss, so please drop in as much as you can.

Thanks, will try to. I still read a lot so no fear there, but posting and following up takes more time so I do that less.

 

[podcat]

When I first read this, I thought, "It's a good thing they can extend deadlines like that." I run projects (not software related) myself and that deadline can be serious business. Now that I have run a few errands and come back, I realize this flexibility is great. I am sure there are serious pressures to get a profitable project out the door, but obviously they are not so extreme as to force the HOI4 crew to cripple the DLC to meet a deadline.

Well yeah, deadlines are always serious business, but there the fact is that with our model we still have money coming in long term every month so we must look at releases over a bigger period, and then quality has a big impact. It also has knockon effects on trusts on later releases and such. There is also stuff that can happen that is so severe there is no downscalings or other actions that can be taken to adjust for it without gutting quality, and as a a team of smaller size with high reliance on key individuals we are fragile to that. HOI3 was the last time we had to make calls like being able to pay employees or release the game now that I can remember and that was really painful. If i recall correctly several people in management delayed their salary payout then and didnt tell anyone so we could run a bit longer.

 

[podcat]

Which is easier/faster to make, NF tree improvements or events? If it's the latter, then there seriously need to be some events for Pearl Harbor (like when Mexico nationalizes its oil) and ways to reduce resistance without LaR.

Focus trees is by far the most expensive content that can be made for any of our games I would say. But events arent always great. They are hidden so bad for very important stuff that players need to have good agency over