I wish the CK3 team would communicate more like the Stellaris team.

[druez]

Maybe its the timing of the releases or something. But, man it sure seems like the Stellaris team really goes out of their way to communicate with their players. Discuss mechanics and have back and forth diologue. Is it just because their game is more mature?

We are supposed to be getting a patch before the end of the year in CK3, but they still haven't mentioned anything about what will be in the patch. I don't get it. We are like less than a month away before years end. (I'm considering year end like 2 weeks before end of December, since the whole team usually has off around X-Mas to new years.)

So what gives, what are we getting?

 

[grommile]

Is it just because their game is more mature?

No, it's because Stellaris (the game) at its worst was a much bigger mess than CK3 is.

 

[druez]

No, it's because Stellaris (the game) at its worst was a much bigger mess than CK3 is.

Stellaris on release sure, maybe. But, Stellaris for the last few years has been on point, at least for me. I just wish this team would in CK3 wouldn't be so "closed". They put out the roadmap discussion and then really since than nothing. Zip, Zero... Talks about how they are going to communicate and than nothing. I don't get it.

 

[kawamuratc]

Stellaris is an older game with significantly more feature creep and a lot more … hmm. I’m trying to think of the best way to explain this that doesn’t come off dismissive or as having a poor opinion of Stellaris, it’s dev cycle, or the communication strategy. Because I don’t. I think Stellaris has grown in the best way possible for itself.

Stellaris is a more poorly designed game for what it is now and it has been a huge learning experience for the people working on it. To make up for that, to keep people playing it (and buying DLC to make its support profitable) requires some sort of massive PR thing. In the case of Stellaris, this PR campaign also happens to involve you directly commenting on their work as they give you updates.

I don’t actually know how much more they listen to you over the devs in this forum, but that PR is clearly working: you certainly feel like you’re having a dialogue of some kind, which makes you feel good about what’s actually been a very messy and chaotic life cycle.

Stellaris is a really fun game. Or, I should has been several very fun games but I have yet to check out the game it is now. That’s because, as part of the really rough development of Stellaris, it has undergone massive changes.

The game I played at release was an entirely different game than I played after the FTL, galaxy geography and pop changes. It’s not a case of the game being expanded; that base game I first played no longer exists. I think the two or so games that have existed since then are better games, don’t get me wrong, but they are different games.

Unlike Stellaris, CK3 does not appear to have that future ahead of it. The game, as it is now, was designed from the ground up to have a lot of the tools needed to make the expansions to the game the devs have in mind.

CK3 feels like starting a project with a fully stocked shop and all your materials ready to go. Stellaris was me in my first apartment having to go out and borrow and buy the tools and material I needed for a project as I discovered I needed them.

So I ultimately don’t think the CK3 studio needs to spend extra work hours on the same level of PR that Stellaris has had to.

I think the project leader has decided those work hours are better spent on the game. I don’t disagree; outside of the time spent on a minimal number of dev diaries, every hour spent working on the game is more profitable and more useful for making a fun game.

And I believe CK3 will always have a deficit in dev hours because of COVID, just like many of us continue to have a feeling that we’re making up for lost time because of disruption to our lives and possibly even increased (or increasing) disability. Because of this deficit, it’s hard for me to imagine a time when writing more updates for us cornballs on the forum will be worth it.

 

[Wokeg]

;_; Folks we've been less active on the forum this week because it's been a hectic week over here. That's all. No one's dead, the project's not been canned, and we're not locking ourselves off from the outside world. Things should calm down a bit next week and dev activity'll likely pick up again, chill.

As for news: we're still committed to trying to talk about things when we've got something firm to say. In the meanwhilst, we're still here to have discussions, take feedback, go over niggling bugs, all that jazz, we just had some deadlines hit us that needed a bit more focus.

 

[CollectorOfBolts]

Things should calm down a bit next week and dev activity'll likely pick up again, chill
...
we just had some deadlines hit us that needed a bit more focus

Year-end free update dev diary next week with update out the week after, then? (Assuming that the deadlines were hit today as the above implies.)

 

[TripleAgent]

As for news: we're still committed to trying to talk about things when we've got something firm to say.

On this point specifically, can you tell us at what milestone of development of the next patch/flavor/expansion typically triggers having "something firm to say?" Sometimes it feels like we're only told about things that are fairly set in stone at the time they're said, which I admit is good for not having to backtrack later, but I think it also creates situations like this where we've got long periods of radio silence.

Just as a suggestion, probably more for the PDX higher-ups, as a long time customer; I don't need things to be "firm" to hear about them. I'd love to see more dev diaries more in the workshop phase, where ideas are discussed, outlines of what you're looking to do and issues the expansion seeks to address, etc. Something like the roadmap that was posted a few weeks ago, but more focused on what you all are currently focused on in terms of direction, etc.

I think that would have two big benefits. First, you'd get fewer people complaining about the lack of updates or content, since we'd know the general direction of where we're going, etc, even if it's very clearly early WIP. Second, being able to workshop ideas earlier in development, getting ideas, a sense of how the community feels, etc, might even work better from a development perspective; if some aspect of a change is unpopular or controversial, it might be helpful to the devs to know that early in the development of a mechanic, rather than when most of the work on the mechanic has already been done.

 

[WestuHal]

I think the devs said in one of the more recent dev diaries that free patches would have one dev diary before release.

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

People seem to forget how much of a mess communication was with Stellaris until the last year or two. Yes, they had more regular dev diaries, but the forums were a constant state of rage for most of the history of Stellaris. The 1.6 and 2.x upgrades were notably taken very badly by the fanbase, and serious issues just weren't addressed for a long time. Radio silence. Now they seem to have two teams -- custodians and DLC -- and that's helped improve the polish of the game. I'm not sure if that's replicable to other games. I think that's the only reason the tenor has changed. The game still has a lot of warts, but it least feels like they are trying to address them. Also Wiz is gone and I think that was a good move ultimately. In any case, I don't think you can really hold Stellaris up, in general and over its whole history, as a paragon of good game design and communication. Like, I'd love to teleport this post to the Stellaris forums 2-3 years ago and see the response it'd get lol.

 

[johnty5]

I really love CK3, I think that a lot of the criticisms it gets around here are hyperbolic, I think the devs are great and I have confidence that they have a solid long-term vision on where the game needs to go. I’m pretty sure I’m one of the most positive posters around here. But I’ve utterly given up on the idea that CK3 communications are going to improve. I have no idea whether it’s lack of time or resources or something else - but it’s something, and I just don’t believe it’s going to happen anymore.

I’m still looking forward to future patches and DLC. Really looking forward to them. But I don’t expect expect forum involvement in them like I do with Stellaris or Victoria 3. It’s clear that, for whatever reason, that’s just not the way CK3 development is going to work.

 

[greywulfos]

Do people expect like a complete play-by-play of everything going on? Some weeks there's just not really going to be much to talk about.

"DD #1093423984: Don't worry, we've spent all week trying to fix a bug that hopefully won't make it to release"

 

[Videogames]

Do people expect like a complete play-by-play of everything going on? Some weeks there's just not really going to be much to talk about.

"DD #1093423984: Don't worry, we've spent all week trying to fix a bug that hopefully won't make it to release"

It's not so much that we need a blow by blow of everything they've done on a weekly basis, but rather there are a lot of bugs and design issues - some of which are very old - that the community would be really happy to have some dev input on.

 

[DaBombXXX]

Do people expect like a complete play-by-play of everything going on? Some weeks there's just not really going to be much to talk about.

"DD #1093423984: Don't worry, we've spent all week trying to fix a bug that hopefully won't make it to release"

The last scheduled DLC came out more than half a year ago already. We have been given no information at all about the next expansion, besides that it won't come out this year and that it's 'RP' focused. This information was given September 20th, already 2 months ago. They also stated that we *might* get a free update this year. We have been given no information about that either, this was also announced 2 months ago.

There is a vast middle ground between weekly dev diaries with little information and the months of radio silence we get when it comes to future content of the game.

 

[greywulfos]

The last scheduled DLC came out more than half a year ago already. We have been given no information at all about the next expansion, besides that it won't come out this year and that it's 'RP' focused. This information was given September 20th, already 2 months ago. They also stated that we *might* get a free update this year. We have been given no information about that either, this was also announced 2 months ago.

There is a vast middle ground between weekly dev diaries with little information and the months of radio silence we get when it comes to future content of the game.

We know that it's going to have something to do with the map, and we also know that it's not content that's been covered by any previous expansions. The devs, for the most part, engage with forum threads pretty frequently. What do you actually expect to be hearing?

 

[DaBombXXX]

We know that it's going to have something to do with the map, and we also know that it's not content that's been covered by any previous expansions. The devs, for the most part, engage with forum threads pretty frequently. What do you actually expect to be hearing?

What quarter of the year we could expect, for one. The smallest of crumbs regarding what the actual content will be. We got a trailer for Royal court several months before it came out, it's not like people are asking for something that hasn't been done before.

 

[klopkr]

;_; Folks we've been less active on the forum this week because it's been a hectic week over here. That's all. No one's dead, the project's not been canned, and we're not locking ourselves off from the outside world. Things should calm down a bit next week and dev activity'll likely pick up again, chill.

As for news: we're still committed to trying to talk about things when we've got something firm to say. In the meanwhilst, we're still here to have discussions, take feedback, go over niggling bugs, all that jazz, we just had some deadlines hit us that needed a bit more focus.

Hell yeah, excited to see you guys hit your stride. Let your wings fly high.

 

[johnnybgood89]

Till then, going to play WOW for a while.

 

[Wokeg]

Year-end free update dev diary next week with update out the week after, then? (Assuming that the deadlines were hit today as the above implies.)

If I had the info for you, I'd share it. That said, I hope you realise you're reading a lot of specifics in the phrase "we had some deadlines": it's a big team for a large game split across two studios in two offices aiming at ~3 new pieces of DLC next year + a free patch (per the floorplan dev diary) + aiming for a free patch this year. The 3-4 of us most active on the forums having deadlines at the same time doesn't mean we're all working on the upcoming patch, or even that we're all working on the same thing. There'll be a DD up when we've got something to say.

The last scheduled DLC came out more than half a year ago already. We have been given no information at all about the next expansion, besides that it won't come out this year and that it's 'RP' focused. This information was given September 20th, already 2 months ago. They also stated that we *might* get a free update this year. We have been given no information about that either, this was also announced 2 months ago.

There is a vast middle ground between weekly dev diaries with little information and the months of radio silence we get when it comes to future content of the game.

I make it to be ~2.5 months since Friends & Foes, not six. :shrugs: I don't know what you're asking for here, honestly: either we can mention things early to let y'all know what we're up to, but in that case don't expect lots of details coming quickly, or we can mention things closer to release with a steady drip-feed of DDs, but then don't expect to know about vague WIP plans far in advance, or we can put out filler DDs that might be interesting to some but not all, but then not all the posts'll pertain to future DLCs.

The current approach is to put out fewer dev diaries that generally have more to say, partially because folks got pretty vitriolic about most DDs that didn't laser-focus on a DLC, and to try to be more engaged in the forums, Discords, and Reddit in the meanwhilst. We're not radio silent, we're just not talking about upcoming DLC at the moment.

On this point specifically, can you tell us at what milestone of development of the next patch/flavor/expansion typically triggers having "something firm to say?" Sometimes it feels like we're only told about things that are fairly set in stone at the time they're said, which I admit is good for not having to backtrack later, but I think it also creates situations like this where we've got long periods of radio silence.

Just as a suggestion, probably more for the PDX higher-ups, as a long time customer; I don't need things to be "firm" to hear about them. I'd love to see more dev diaries more in the workshop phase, where ideas are discussed, outlines of what you're looking to do and issues the expansion seeks to address, etc. Something like the roadmap that was posted a few weeks ago, but more focused on what you all are currently focused on in terms of direction, etc.

I think that would have two big benefits. First, you'd get fewer people complaining about the lack of updates or content, since we'd know the general direction of where we're going, etc, even if it's very clearly early WIP. Second, being able to workshop ideas earlier in development, getting ideas, a sense of how the community feels, etc, might even work better from a development perspective; if some aspect of a change is unpopular or controversial, it might be helpful to the devs to know that early in the development of a mechanic, rather than when most of the work on the mechanic has already been done.

That's an interesting question! In my experience, I think it's usually when we've got something that's vaguely functional and has at least a placeholder version of actual UX available. It's sorta difficult to show things off otherwise - there's always paper prototypes, sometimes script prototypes, and the initial placeholder UX (i.e., the stuff Code makes in ~10m so there's enough for Design to work on), but those all tend to run into issues in DDs. It's easy to misunderstand a paper prototype (typically due to a lack of detail implying a lack of thought - this is something you see when anyone is given an early system with less than full context), script prototypes don't tend to show off much at all unless you know what you're looking at, and initial placeholder UX looks so god-awful that it can really sour people on a feature if that's all they've got.

If I'm honest, I also can't say I know many devs, especially outside of crowdfunded or early access titles, who open up the design process that early or that communally. To take one example: I don't think Royal Court, for all the problems it had, would have much benefited much from being opened up early on. There would've been a lot of helpful feedback, for sure, but there also would've been an inordinate amount of lobbying to scrap the 3D scene and past a certain (very early) point that just wasn't going to happen, which is just asking for drama. More to the point, though, a lot of the issues it had didn't stem from a lack of good input/feedbacking/iterative processes, they came from a combination of the same post-release turnover many large titles go through, us onboarding another studio remotely on our project, and the general chaos of a global pandemic. Opening development at an earlier stage wouldn't necessarily have helped it much, but would've given more time for people to get worked up about particular bits. So whilst I see what you're saying, I don't think that's quite the best way to go about fixing it.

My personal preference would, instead, be to do more work with things like open betas, or openly scheduling popularly voted bugs & suggestions from their relevant sub-forums to be prioritised in the yearly free patch. ^^' And of course, we're still trying to be more active in the forums and get more people from the team active too. That one's a very much on-going.

 

[Stardance]

If I had the info for you, I'd share it. That said, I hope you realise you're reading a lot of specifics in the phrase "we had some deadlines": it's a big team for a large game split across two studios in two offices aiming at ~3 new pieces of DLC next year + a free patch (per the floorplan dev diary) + aiming for a free patch this year. The 3-4 of us most active on the forums having deadlines at the same time doesn't mean we're all working on the upcoming patch, or even that we're all working on the same thing. There'll be a DD up when we've got something to say.

I make it to be ~2.5 months since Friends & Foes, not six. :shrugs: I don't know what you're asking for here, honestly: either we can mention things early to let y'all know what we're up to, but in that case don't expect lots of details coming quickly, or we can mention things closer to release with a steady drip-feed of DDs, but then don't expect to know about vague WIP plans far in advance, or we can put out filler DDs that might be interesting to some but not all, but then not all the posts'll pertain to future DLCs.

The current approach is to put out fewer dev diaries that generally have more to say, partially because folks got pretty vitriolic about most DDs that didn't laser-focus on a DLC, and to try to be more engaged in the forums, Discords, and Reddit in the meanwhilst. We're not radio silent, we're just not talking about upcoming DLC at the moment.

That's an interesting question! In my experience, I think it's usually when we've got something that's vaguely functional and has at least a placeholder version of actual UX available. It's sorta difficult to show things off otherwise - there's always paper prototypes, sometimes script prototypes, and the initial placeholder UX (i.e., the stuff Code makes in ~10m so there's enough for Design to work on), but those all tend to run into issues in DDs. It's easy to misunderstand a paper prototype (typically due to a lack of detail implying a lack of thought - this is something you see when anyone is given an early system with less than full context), script prototypes don't tend to show off much at all unless you know what you're looking at, and initial placeholder UX looks so god-awful that it can really sour people on a feature if that's all they've got.

If I'm honest, I also can't say I know many devs, especially outside of crowdfunded or early access titles, who open up the design process that early or that communally. To take one example: I don't think Royal Court, for all the problems it had, would have much benefited much from being opened up early on. There would've been a lot of helpful feedback, for sure, but there also would've been an inordinate amount of lobbying to scrap the 3D scene and past a certain (very early) point that just wasn't going to happen, which is just asking for drama. More to the point, though, a lot of the issues it had didn't stem from a lack of good input/feedbacking/iterative processes, they came from a combination of the same post-release turnover many large titles go through, us onboarding another studio remotely on our project, and the general chaos of a global pandemic. Opening development at an earlier stage wouldn't necessarily have helped it much, but would've given more time for people to get worked up about particular bits. So whilst I see what you're saying, I don't think that's quite the best way to go about fixing it.

My personal preference would, instead, be to do more work with things like open betas, or openly scheduling popularly voted bugs & suggestions from their relevant sub-forums to be prioritised in the yearly free patch. ^^' And of course, we're still trying to be more active in the forums and get more people from the team active too. That one's a very much on-going.

You know, if a dev diary doesn’t drop today, I’ll take this as a worthy substitute. Thank you for sharing your detailed thoughts!

 

[TripleAgent]

My personal preference would, instead, be to do more work with things like open betas, or openly scheduling popularly voted bugs & suggestions from their relevant sub-forums to be prioritised in the yearly free patch. ^^' And of course, we're still trying to be more active in the forums and get more people from the team active too. That one's a very much on-going.

Thanks for the reply! I would also LOVE to have open betas, it's been a really great feature in some of my favorite games (shoutout to Project Zomboid) and being able to try out a new version with issues as a "beta" is far less annoying than running into those issues on a full release.