HoI4 Dev Teasers (previously Podcat's Twitter Teasers)

[Sighfer]

do you actually think that the devs balance the game around MP?

No. I know that the devs balance the game around MP. Focus on Multiplayer + simplification of command and control were the biggest reasons this game is played more than HoI3. The hilariously fast recovery from civil war in Spain, the actual viability of Italy, the fact that Soviet Union has most of its equipment missing and two 210 day focuses that do literally nothing, and one where you hurt yourself. It was always this way, and still is. The offmap nuclear reactor and buying colonies in the Poland rework were the just the most egregious examples.

 

[Taniwha]

do you not want SP to be more or less balanced too? do people want the AI allies to win 80% of the time (or the AI axis)? do people want just one type of tank to be viable, or to have super broken techs (like sub3s) be super broken? i really don't think so.

additionally, it just makes little sense. to use a popular game as an example - can you imagine if they intentionally made combat mechanics in minecraft different for MP and SP?

This guy sums it up for me:

No, I want SP to be historically accurate, not balanced. I want to see Italy collapse, France too scared to move outside its borders, not oil in Libya, nor Japan successfully taking China. A slider for alt-history memery would be nice, too. That's the real reason you're not getting an Italy rework any time soon - it's historical accuracy and multiplayer balance are diametrically opposed.

I don't think this is ever going to happen, to be clear. In my heart of hearts, I don't even think it would be a good thing, since a studio that catered for my tastes is a studio that would go under quickly.

But damn it, I want a WW2 game that looks like WW2! I want Japan bogged down in China, and Germany to be desperately lurching from conquest to conquest in the hope that the next round of plunder will stave off the collapse of their hilariously inefficient and incompetent war economy, I want the USA to squash Mexico like a bug if it tries to conquer South America.

 

[Dryhad]

I find this discussion of historicity in divisions quite interesting because I see it as a place where the game could potentially be brought more in line with history without resorting to railroading or other such lazy solutions. To me, the ideal outcome is if the incentives in division design are the same that were present in the historical period. Now, I really do not know enough about military history to begin to outline how that might be achieved, but I don't think it is at all unreasonable to propose that what was a strong model of organisation on the battlefield in 1939 ought to be a strong model of organisation in HoI4. The player may, and indeed must, retain "creative control" over their own divisions, the objective should be to align the meta with something approximating optimal historical practice.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

No. I know that the devs balance the game around MP. Focus on Multiplayer + simplification of command and control were the biggest reasons this game is played more than HoI3.

The vast majority doesn't play MP: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ary-and-free-dlc.1027532/page-5#post-22926462
Going off those numbers I would recon that around 40% of players play MP at all, and regardless the amount of games played in MP is far more important to your point than the number of players who have tried it. Similarly, even on forums and the subreddit - where MP players are almost certainly overrepresented, since they tend to care more about the minutiae of the game and new developments - we are still massively outnumbered by SP players.

And when people talk about MP balance, it's almost in the (semi-) serious/historical game context, which makes up just a tiny fraction of MP games - usually for each hist lobby there's at least 3 equally-full nonhist lobbies and a similar number of players in private/overhaul-modded games.

Maybe there's specific examples of balance changes you could point me to which suggest otherwise, but in general I (and most MP players) very much feel the game is catered to an SP audience.

The hilariously fast recovery from civil war in Spain, the actual viability of Italy,

Those were done so people play them in general. It has very little to do with MP.

the fact that Soviet Union has most of its equipment missing

Many types of equipment in this game are abstracted into smaller numbers - especially planes and ships (well, sort of - starting ships aren't, ship production is) - but land equipment is too. Artillery is the exception to this, sort of.

and two 210 day focuses that do literally nothing,

Again, I fail to see what this has to do with MP, given that most players hate those focuses, most light conversion mods take them out, and no good player ever takes them

and one where you hurt yourself.

Not sure which you're referring to - the purge? That also has nothing to do with MP...

It was always this way, and still is. The offmap nuclear reactor and buying colonies in the Poland rework were the just the most egregious examples.

Those are for a country which is banned in every serious MP game.

I get that this forum loves to hate on "metagaming MP players," but seriously?

 

[pro.gamer.69]

But damn it, I want a WW2 game that looks like WW2! I want Japan bogged down in China, and Germany to be desperately lurching from conquest to conquest in the hope that the next round of plunder will stave off the collapse of their hilariously inefficient and incompetent war economy, I want the USA to squash Mexico like a bug if it tries to conquer South America.

I want that too, but that's basically an entirely different game. Hoi4 is more of a WWII-themed sandbox than a WWII simulator, if that makes sense.

 

[Fulmen]

The game is definitely not balanced around MP. Veterans of HoI4's "competitive MP" scene will remember it took PDX months to fix completely game-breaking MP-only issues like shadow factories, and with many others it's taken them years. Some are still not fixed. Heck, they didn't even know what the shadow factory exploit was until ~4 months after it was first reported on the forums.

MP in HoI4 is, has always been and always will be, an afterthought destined for the backburner and the bottom of the priority list. That's the unfortunate state of affairs that occurs when less than 1% of the playerbase actually plays MP with proper, well-regulated rules and all important countries manned by human players, i.e. "competitive MP".

 

[Taniwha]

I want that too, but that's basically an entirely different game. Hoi4 is more of a WWII-themed sandbox than a WWII simulator, if that makes sense.

Alas, I don't have the head for the full AGEOD simulation, so asking for more accuracy from Paradox is my best hope.

 

[Znail]

No. I know that the devs balance the game around MP. Focus on Multiplayer + simplification of command and control were the biggest reasons this game is played more than HoI3. The hilariously fast recovery from civil war in Spain, the actual viability of Italy, the fact that Soviet Union has most of its equipment missing and two 210 day focuses that do literally nothing, and one where you hurt yourself. It was always this way, and still is. The offmap nuclear reactor and buying colonies in the Poland rework were the just the most egregious examples.

Those examples makes very little sense. Why do you think Spain and Poland are even played in MP? And no, most people does not play multiplayer nor is it the main focus from the devs.

 

[Louella]

It's not balanced around MP, but some of the design decisions might sometimes look like they might have been made that way. Things such as Italy's industrial & military strength, isn't designed for MP, but rather so that in single-player, it's possible to take on the other countries.
Germany and Italy are ahistorically strong, and that's a design decision that affects SP and MP. Minor countries are also ahistorically strong, which again affects both SP and MP.
But those decisions weren't made solely for MP reasons.

 

[FStefanak]

My prediction is that they will (finally!) remove fixed combat width and replace it with some randomization, and hopefully also fix the excessive over-the-width penalty. Yay!

 

[Furiosa2727]

This guy sums it up for me:



I don't think this is ever going to happen, to be clear. In my heart of hearts, I don't even think it would be a good thing, since a studio that catered for my tastes is a studio that would go under quickly.

But damn it, I want a WW2 game that looks like WW2! I want Japan bogged down in China, and Germany to be desperately lurching from conquest to conquest in the hope that the next round of plunder will stave off the collapse of their hilariously inefficient and incompetent war economy, I want the USA to squash Mexico like a bug if it tries to conquer South America.

Black Ice and Total War does this.

 

[minimouse007]

Black Ice and Total War does this.

sometimes people want the good mechanics to create authentic results, not the authentic results only

 

[Taniwha]

sometimes people want the good mechanics to create authentic results, not the authentic results only

Quite.

 

[Tornado Nick]

sometimes people want the good mechanics to create authentic results, not the authentic results only

Can't speak for Black Ice, but Total War manages this quite nicely. Although it certainly takes quite a bit of jerry-rigging to accomplish, it shows that the already existing mechanics of Hoi4 are enough to model reliably ""authentic"" results, with creative wiggle room. It's just that, in Vanilla these mechanics are employed in an often poor and unbalanced way.

 

[Duke_Dave]

I'd like to add that historical divisions were often designed that way out of neccessity (lack of manpower, material, logistical problems) and that the player might not face the same issues because we start in 1936 and can approach issues differently.

 

[kimidf]

But damn it, I want a WW2 game that looks like WW2! I want Japan bogged down in China, and Germany to be desperately lurching from conquest to conquest in the hope that the next round of plunder will stave off the collapse of their hilariously inefficient and incompetent war economy, I want the USA to squash Mexico like a bug if it tries to conquer South America.

Although the game will never be a pure and simple simulator of WW II but it seems we are getting a little closer to that but it will not be at once a certain mechanic but a combination of many and it seems that the war but Japanese will be something more historical when it is launched the new dlc / patch with the tremendous reworked logistics and new ground combat system

 

[blahmaster6k]

The vast majority doesn't play MP: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ary-and-free-dlc.1027532/page-5#post-22926462
Going off those numbers I would recon that around 40% of players play MP at all, and regardless the amount of games played in MP is far more important to your point than the number of players who have tried it. Similarly, even on forums and the subreddit - where MP players are almost certainly overrepresented, since they tend to care more about the minutiae of the game and new developments - we are still massively outnumbered by SP players.

And when people talk about MP balance, it's almost in the (semi-) serious/historical game context, which makes up just a tiny fraction of MP games - usually for each hist lobby there's at least 3 equally-full nonhist lobbies and a similar number of players in private/overhaul-modded games.

Maybe there's specific examples of balance changes you could point me to which suggest otherwise, but in general I (and most MP players) very much feel the game is catered to an SP audience.

Those were done so people play them in general. It has very little to do with MP.

Many types of equipment in this game are abstracted into smaller numbers - especially planes and ships (well, sort of - starting ships aren't, ship production is) - but land equipment is too. Artillery is the exception to this, sort of.

Again, I fail to see what this has to do with MP, given that most players hate those focuses, most light conversion mods take them out, and no good player ever takes them

Not sure which you're referring to - the purge? That also has nothing to do with MP...

Those are for a country which is banned in every serious MP game.

I get that this forum loves to hate on "metagaming MP players," but seriously?

One thing I have observed is that while multiplayer players get the most hate, it's typically the historical SP-only grognards that do the most complaining, which usually takes the form of "the game isn't historical enough waaa."

I would prefer a more historically accurate game myself in terms of balance, but I'm more of a gamer than anything. If the game is fun, I will play it. And I recognize that sometimes fun and engaging gameplay is more important than historical accuracy.

 

[TalyonUngol]

It is dangerous for the game as a whole to go towards more historical and less gameplay fun... but that's a different topic.

With the new supply/railraod/logistics/combat width, I see the balance of the game turning more towards historical accuracy with Japan being bogged down((Which Japan if in an AI hands, seems to always get bogged down in my games... so it'll be even worse later.))

And Germany will struggle even more than it already does in the hands of the AI since they always get their butt whooped from the USA invasions.

 

[Kosaki MacTavish]

Any teasers? Or i miss the announcement for a PDX event?

 

[Stronghold]

Any teasers? Or i miss the announcement for a PDX event?

It's usually not this early in the day