Hoi4 first impressions (from the videos)

[Bernard Black]

Saying the OP had unorthodox methods for describing his feelings is a rather polite way of putting it. Negative reactions to how the game looks or feels have been expressed countless of times on these forums but most of the people at least try to present an argument for the way they feel and there are a bunch of forumites who will eagerly engage in a discussion about any criticism put forth.The OP on the other hand hasn't done anything of the sorts but just argues along the lines:" I dont like it, its for kids, they are all stupid." What kind of meaningful answer can anybody expect to get from that?

I can totally see the point that HOI4 doesnt look like much of an improvement over HOI3, but personally i like that they fixed a lot of things i consider badly designed in the predecessor which was flawed in many aspects. Keep in mind, that for a lot of people the changes already go too far. I also think its a bit too itterative and they were not really testing out bold new ideas. But look at the reaction they get if they do, there are a lot of traditionalists who want a very similar experience. I hope for much more experiments in the following years with the ongoing development but i don't claim to be representative of anything.

People are free to voice their opinions, but if they want that to have them taken seriously, they need to present some reasoning which makes people care. Otherwise it just remains one opinion among countless others with no reason for anyone to give a rats ass.

Regards

 

[Kovax]

I don't agree with how the OP said what he said. On the other hand, I can't entirely dismiss his criticisms because some of them match what I'm strongly suspecting myself. This game is looking very different from the rest of the series, and I'm not sure if it's in a good way, bad way, or just different, but the more I see of it, the less positive I feel about it. It looks, and seems to play out, in a much more "cartoonish" way than the micromanagement heaven (if you're into that) or hell (if not) of HOI3 (which was, incidentally, mostly voluntary, depending on what you set on AI control and what you did manually). Having complex features which you can automate for simplicity or balance is good, once you figure them out, while having everything automated for you gets really boring after the first couple of runs of the "same old". Granted, there appear to be several real improvements in HOI4, but whether that compensates for the things being "streamlined" or outright removed remains to be seen.

The biggest issue I saw with HOI3's acceptance was the lack of a decent tutorial or easily digested manual (and no, edible paper is not the answer), because the game COULD have been far easier to learn if you knew how to set a few of the controls to automatic and then tackled it a little at a time. Sadly, the defaults were to dive straight into the deep end, and later find out that "oh, I could have done THAT instead". The problem was not complexity (complexity usually adds to replayability), it's that the complexity was thrown at you all at once, and that many of the tooltips, tech descriptions, espionage mission names, and other details did not accurately tell you what things REALLY did ("Industrial Sabotage" affects enemy repair rate, not build time? Really? You mean I wasted 3 years of espionage activity during peacetime for nothing?). Combine that with the radical redesign of the game mechanics in the first couple of patches and expansions, and a fair percentage of what little documentation was available was either obsolete or wrong.

At this point, I'm going to have to wait and see how the HOI fanbase reacts to the game once it's out for a few weeks or months. I will not buy it upon release, because it's going to take a bit of convincing for me to get past my present reactions to what I'm seeing. If it turns out to be a good game anyway, I'll be pleasantly surprised. If not, I can always hope that the modding community can turn it into something I'd enjoy, or wait for HOI5.

 

[LordOfWar16]

dont like it, dont play it. Simple as that. There is the door and i hope you have a nice day. There is no room here for trolling.

Either that or you are seriously judging an game from an alpha version that you have barely seen anything of yet.

 

[uberjedi]

I for one will buy it and test it before I make any judgements.
But on the WWW it does look a bit like a hellish clickfest.

 

[Surimi]

Something that needs to be addressed is the fact that Daniel was able to draw a single line using the "battle plan" systems in the winter of January and with little or no problems, make it to the Urals in like six months. He is also able to wage war against the SU, Sweden, and attempt and amphibious invasion of the UK simultaneously. I guess it can be chocked-up to balance, but one thing I STRONGLY dislike is that it seems with minimal effort invested into battle plans, conquests are possible.

If Germany is to be victorious, it should require much more than simply drawing a line straight down.

Daniel actually explained in the video why that was possible.

Basically, due to a bug in the early build they were using in the first WWW, the USSR was taken over by a Trotskiist coup early in the game. This had a catastrophic impact on their industrial development, which meant they were vastly weaker than they should have been. Basically, Germany in that game could straight up outproduce the USSR several times over.

It was also explained later that there are also ongoing weaknesses with the AI which will hopefully be much better before release.

Honestly, these things will happen when you do a fairly unscripted showcase of a game which, at the time these issues took effect, was in alpha. It's better, I feel, to see an impression of where the game is in development rather than a carefully tailored "vertical slice" depicting what the developer believes the finished product will look like. Daniel could easily have ignored the fact that the USSR was bugged out and it's likely noone watching would have noticed that had happened, from a marketing perspective that might even have been a better move, but at the same time I kind of respect the decision not to do that and I think it gives a better insight into the current stage of development.

 

[safe-keeper]

First he refers to the videos as his "first impressions", then he claims he's followed the game "since the first trailer".
Er, okay .

 

[Vazal]

None of you guys know me, simply because I don't post here too often. This is mostly because I don't like interacting with people on official forums because in my opinion they tend to be too "passionate" about the game and I don't really feel like they can take criticism at all. And also I know better than to argue over bunch of things that I know for sure not gonna change just because I didn't like it. But still sometimes I come here and express my opinions when I see something extreme. It might be good or bad. Depends on the game, honestly.

But today, sadly, it's not gonna be good. While it's obvious that OP had unorthodox methods of describing his feelings towards the game, I can't honestly say that they are without basis. I'm not gonna go over each feature one by one and say what I like or what I hate about it. But for me it's crystal clear that HOI4, overall, does not feel like a step forward, it actually feels like a step aside. What I mean by that is this, it's almost like they didn't think about adding on top of HOI3, which is what they usually do, adding on top of the previous game. But instead they thought, let's forget everything we know about previous games and let's just treat Hearts of Iron as a new trade mark and make it from the ground. Like let's make a different Hearts of Iron game. And I'm seriously not exaggerating when I say this, this game doesn't like it's being developed by Paradox at all, it's almost as if Ubisoft making it.

I will, of course, give it a try when it comes out, sometime in the future when I feel like it. But I honestly have really low expectations. And I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't enjoy it as much as I did HOI3 and HOI2. On the other hand I have really high expectations for Stellaris, so I might just end up playing it for a long time instead of HOI4.

Well said.

It looks like an okay game, but it doesn't feel like Hearts of Iron. I played and modded both HoI2 and HoI3 and when I look a those video's and DD I am not feeling it. It's like you said, it seems to be made by another company.

Ofcourse I will buy HoI4, but only with Steam summer sales or Christmas sales. It's not something that I want to have from day one or something I want to start modding from day one. When I first heared that HoI4 was coming, I really wanted to get in modding it from day 1, now it isn't the case. Instead of a must have game, it changed to a game that eventually will find a place in my steam games list.

I assume HoI4 will be a good game, but for someone who loved HoI3, I don't know if this will be my type of game.

For those that know Games Workshop, this feels like me the shift from Warhammer 8th Edition to Age of Sigmar.. .

While I think the first post of this thread is not okay, I also think that some people are to fanatical in their response.

 

[Secret Master]

Rather than accuse people of trolling in posts, you should contact a moderator if you suspect trolling is an issue.

Since the thread started as, and in some sense continues to be, a train wreck, I will close it.

 

[Had a dad]

I hope Had a Dad comes by soon

I was on vacation. My partners in crime took care of it though. (only the "H" is capitalized )

Some general pointers that may have helped in this thread.

We do allow others to express their opinion, and as long as it's not abusive / flame, but constructive criticism, it is welcomed, and the OP was...meh. Other posts in the thread clearly crossed the line and a few were infracted.
Also, please refrain from calling others trolls, even if it is evident that they are being one. Just click the "report" button, and a member of the forum staff will be by to look at it in short order.

 

[Had a dad]

woops seems it is evident that I didn't finish reading the thread, as SM covered the part about calling people trolls

end result posters on page 3 and 4 got a pass if they behaved badly as I knew this train wreck had already been closed.