Imperator: Rome - Status Update (Apr 2021)

[CPU Taro]

We're not always going to get it right, talk to any of the large gaming companies and they will tell you there is significant risk with doing "new" games, because you don't know how well it is going to be received until you launch it. This isn't going to stop us from trying though, Imperator was an important step for us in understanding the challenge of creating new GSGs (most of Paradox wasn't around the last time a new one launched).

We have learned that we can grow the games, like we did in the past, but it requires a different approach to how we run an already large game and we've also learned some important lessons about how to develop and market for launch, for our next new game (whatever/whenever that might happen).

With the reorganization of the studio, we're also better placed to avoid the need to move people around between projects, which in the long run is going to offer a stability that we've struggled with in the past years and ultimately led to our decision to put Imperator on hold at the moment.

Thanks for the response. I do appreciate that there are a lot of moving parts and that these decisions don't come easy. Trying to remain optimistic about things in the long run (Lord knows someone has to be, out here).

Does Stellaris provide a better model for how to handle new IPs? Or are it and Imperator simply not comparable? (I can't help but think 2.0 didn't get nearly enough in the way of marketing, though obviously I am ignorant to the actual numbers.)

Side note - does anybody really enjoy the hell out of the soundtrack for Imperator? Tyros & The Mediterranean are without a doubt my favorites.

Between the map and the music, yes, it's a very easy game to accidentally stare at for an hour.

 

[KaiserJohan]

Civil War and Carthago are a jam. PDX game soundtracks are bangers. I listen to them even outside the game.

Absolutely! My favorite is the Vicky2 soundtrack followed by Imperator. CK3 isn't bad either but I'm bloody tired of EU4 music at this point!

 

[Imperium_754]

Just saw this post today...so, long story short, I:R will not see any further development, any new content, and any new patch in the future at all?

If that's the case, well...when I bought the game after 2.0, I considered this a "bet" that it will be improved over the years, as we have seen so far for other products, given the vast improvement brought from that update.
The game itself, if compared to other "new generation" pdx games is in a good spot, and (personally) I see this as a solid ground for further content and improvement.
If that's not going to be the case, well, I'll be extra careful in the future when (and if) it comes to buying products from what it was one of my favorite Software Houses.
Disappointing.

That's only my opinion of course

P.S.
I know that many of you will not agree with me, and that's totally fine
But I can't help thinking that on my side that was a complete waste of money. due to this news. I got the game plus DLCs, I have "hoped" for further improvements of the game, and that brings no motivation at all to waste even more time on a technically dead piece of software...reason why I'll watch out from doing the same mistake.
As they say, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice....

 

[Emberfox]

Just saw this post today...so, long story short, I:R will not see any further development, any new content, and any new patch in the future at all?

No.
They have a shortage of devs and after leaving I:R in a decent spot they decided to use the devs of that game to improve on other games.
Thus the game is on hold for now and will not see any release this year.

They are currently searching for developers and want to continue making stuff for I:R. Thus they officially said that this game is on hold and not cancelled.


The game being abondoned is conjecture from disappointed fans. Though understandable, I fear the same to be honest, it is not fair to claim this as a fact.

 

[Imperium_754]

That's a good explanation, and obviously I hope you're right.
Although I can't imagine which player base would justify continuing to develop a game after (roughly) a year being halted if continuing the support and development does not justify this right now...

I can understand all reasons, I really do, we all (well...most of us ) know how the real world works, but also, my point of view is the one of a consumer, and I wonder how much any game would actually sell if the software house/developer would have openly said: dear customer, you might also buy our product today, but you won't be seeing any update for at least a year or so, no timeframe for that yet.

But yes, right, let's see how all of this will evolve, I'm not THAT confident that development will resume one day, I'll be happy if proven wrong tho, till that time if it will ever come, I guess I'd rather look somewhere else

 

[Chehabian]

No.
They have a shortage of devs and after leaving I:R in a decent spot they decided to use the devs of that game to improve on other games.
Thus the game is on hold for now and will not see any release this year.

They are currently searching for developers and want to continue making stuff for I:R. Thus they officially said that this game is on hold and not cancelled.


The game being abondoned is conjecture from disappointed fans. Though understandable, I fear the same to be honest, it is not fair to claim this as a fact.

This is probably the most sober take on the entire thing. I think people tend to wallow when things they like are perceived to be 'taken' from them.

I think it's important for people to remember that we've got some great modifications to the game that already exist.

The Bronze Age is an absolutely awesome mod and has a dedicated team to updating and adding content to a fun and interesting period in world history.

Imperator Invictus is a major overhaul and I am convinced that this *will* be the gold standard to playing the 304 start date. Even *when* Paradox returns, I remain convinced that people will be playing the hell out of this mod. It's *that* ambitious in my view.

The Fall of Rome is another great, ambitious mod. While I don't know much in the way of updates, I do know it's being worked on and this is another new time frame with lots of interesting content to be filled out as well.

We've got a lot here - by the time Paradox comes around to working on this any updates they release will *ONLY* make these mods even better.

Have hope you citizens of Rome!

*Clanging shield and sword together*

 

[Wenla]

Civil War and Carthago are a jam. PDX game soundtracks are bangers. I listen to them even outside the game.

IMHO: Stellaris, best gaming music ever!

 

[Imperium_754]

This is probably the most sober take on the entire thing. I think people tend to wallow when things they like are perceived to be 'taken' from them.

I think it's important for people to remember that we've got some great modifications to the game that already exist.

The Bronze Age is an absolutely awesome mod and has a dedicated team to updating and adding content to a fun and interesting period in world history.

Imperator Invictus is a major overhaul and I am convinced that this *will* be the gold standard to playing the 304 start date. Even *when* Paradox returns, I remain convinced that people will be playing the hell out of this mod. It's *that* ambitious in my view.

The Fall of Rome is another great, ambitious mod. While I don't know much in the way of updates, I do know it's being worked on and this is another new time frame with lots of interesting content to be filled out as well.

We've got a lot here - by the time Paradox comes around to working on this any updates they release will *ONLY* make these mods even better.

Have hope you citizens of Rome!

*Clanging shield and sword together*

To be honest, I don't think that's the whole point.

What you mention are all community driven products, mods, you get them for free if you like, or either you go vanilla, you just don't buy them.

While what we have here is a company that is saying to its paying customers: thanks for your contribution (in real money) but we won't keep supporting what you have legally bought due to internal mismanagement of our resources.
Like it or not, it will affect their credibility and perception of their reliability.
And in my opinion, this is just not good nor fair but yet, it happens for sure.

Again, I'm personally not sure why a developer would eventually resume a product after one year, if at the peak time of its "popularity" they decide not to continue supporting it.
So yes, I have my reserves on believing that we'll see more I:R after an entire year or longer.
As I said before, I'll be happy if this turns out to be wrong, but in the meantime I simply do not trust (me as other people I'd suppose) the company enough to jump buying another pdx game with al DLCs and so on, and I'm playing pdx since EU 2, just saying.

 

[Chehabian]

To be honest, I don't think that's the whole point.

What you mention are all community driven products, mods, you get them for free if you like, or either you go vanilla, you just don't buy them.

While what we have here is a company that is saying to its paying customers: thanks for your contribution (in real money) but we won't keep supporting what you have legally bought due to internal mismanagement of our resources.
Like it or not, it will affect their credibility and perception of their reliability.
And in my opinion, this is just not good nor fair but yet, it happens for sure.

Again, I'm personally not sure why a developer would eventually resume a product after one year, if at the peak time of its "popularity" they decide not to continue supporting it.
So yes, I have my reserves on believing that we'll see more I:R after an entire year or longer.
As I said before, I'll be happy if this turns out to be wrong, but in the meantime I simply do not trust (me as other people I'd suppose) the company enough to jump buying another pdx game with al DLCs and so on, and I'm playing pdx since EU 2, just saying.

Yes - but what I mean to say is that any future content that comes should it be a patch or a dlc will only accentuate the already stellar mods that are already available.
Complexity, better mechanics, smoother optimizations - it only can help.

My comments are not an appeal for you to forget what's happened - but rather that there *is* a possibility of good things to come.
Ignoring that appears to me at least to be a rather dour view.

 

[Inochi]

While I doubt one of the three new phantom projects is Victoria III (a long harbored wish of the community), whatever they do make, might be in a bad phase due to production bottlenecks, Covid etc.

That aged poorly... in two days. Well Victoria 3 it is (search on Steam).

 

[kingsword]

Even if they completely stopped further development, the game still came a lot of way and got immense improvement in the 2 years after launch. I'm not upset about it, it reached a much better spot than EU Rome. Gives me hope about Victoria 3.

 

[Imperium_754]

What we consider "acceptable" is based on each individual point of view, and I'm not going to argue with that by the way.
But I believe that , as gamers/consumers, we got so much used to the fact the companies release unfinished or buggy products that will be fixed over the years, eventually, that this is not a "shocking" fact anymore.

Yes, the game is in a better spot than at its release, but still, some areas are very much lacking (Tribes, as an example, I'm sure there's more).
Yes, there have been huge improvements, definitely, but...this should be the minimum I would expect as paying customer, to purchase a product that actually works as intended at the very least and - why not - at its release. Ideally, I know that the gaming industry has changed a lot, and this does not reflect the reality anymore (I'm not just talking about pdx, but to the whole industry).

Also, Victoria 2 is probably my favorite of all pdx games, and of course, I have hopes for a Vic 3, but that's one thing.
And this is totally disconnected, for me of course, from the fact that a company discontinues development and support for another product.
In short: "we stop developing and supporting product A, so that maybe for the future we will have a better product B" - I'm sorry but this excuse doesn't work for me, I pay for both products, and how a company wants to organize this internally is out of the responsibility of the customer, in my opinion.
Such behaviors highlight a certain lack of transparency towards their loyal player base, and I don't see how this will help in the future.

Whatever, ladies and gentlemen, peace, fingers crossed and let's see what is going to happen

 

[Koramei]

I think going from around 200 to 450 CE would cover a lot of interesting history. You would still need to lean heavily on the Three Kingdoms period for marketing, but having some of the time before and a fair bit of time after gives plenty of great events to use to drive the experience.

You should definitely take it at least a century or two later; going to about 600 gets you to not just the reunification of China under Sui and Tang, but the transformation from chiefdoms into true states in Korea and Japan.
Starting with the fall of Han, you can have a game that takes East Asia from a region where China was the only state level society and essentially the only truly significant player, to a region where its neighbors on every side had emerged as cultural (and at times military) peers. It’s a super dynamic and important period, especially for looking beyond just China.

 

[Lakigigar]

I've bought the game now. To be honest for all the content it had, i could get it for 14 dollars (even less in euro's), so I thought that was certainly worthwile. I have not yet experience with earlier versions, but I don't think the game is bad, but I haven't played enough. It's however a bit hard to get into, but I honestly have no experience with Rome games. I also have Total War: Rome and I honestly didn't like that game because I truly sucked in it and didn't have a clue how to play it. I:R doesn't have the real-time 3D battle system (and so does any other Paradox games), which is good since I don't like that (which is why I don't have any other Total War games). The Ancient Classiquity Age is however the era period i know least off from all periods Paradox games so far cover, and it will take a lot of time to even be able to play the game and whether it's good or not.

So far i've not seen signals that it was terrible, not a single one, except for some UI choices that could perhaps be done better (like dragging the map modes to your map shortcuts is a bit weird). But that's the only thing i've discovered. It's however possible that the flaws only get discovered after hours & hours & hours of playing (perhaps lack of variety/diversity in multiple playthroughs).

To be honest, all those games take time to master. I probably didn't master a single Paradox Interactive game, but i'm quite good in EU4 and i'm able to play Stellaris and Hearts of Iron 4, but i'm less good in those than EU4, despite having put hundreds of hours in those games (not to mention the playthroughs i've watched on YT).

 

[Rossigil]

I would love to tackle Japan, Korea, China and the Indochina region in new games. But to do them justice I believe we need to have people on the team from those regions to bring their cultural perspective to the design and content.

Very bad argument, in my humble opinion. Yes, such tactics can save the company (at least for some time) from being criticized by some SJWarriors but has nothing to do with actual game development. This reminded me of the recent situation with 'This Land is My Land'. That game is about being a chief of a Native American tribe. That game has a lot of bugs, a lot of other problems but was criticized for not having a single Native American developer in the team (developers are from Ukraine).

PDX can hire people from Asia to make a game about Asia, people from Egypt to make a game about the pharaohs, or people from Greece to make 'Heirs of Alexander' content pack for Imperator: Rome, but... I know a bunch of developers from Belarus (it's in Europe, just in case) who know nothing about history, culture, other aspects and due to it won't bring any cultural perspective to the design and content of the game about Belarus. And I believe that is a common state of affairs, regardless of region or social position.

Game developers (programmers, designers, artists, etc.) work hard to make games good. That's the only real prerequisite for creating a good game. Not being LGBT themselves to make a game with (or about) LGBT, not being nazis or communists to make a game about Great Patriotic war of USSR people, not being superheroes to make a game about Marvel's Avengers. But actually working on their projects.

We've got a lot here - by the time Paradox comes around to working on this any updates they release will *ONLY* make these mods even better

Or mess things around forcing modders to adapt their mods to newly added content

 

[Herennius]

Very bad argument, in my humble opinion. Yes, such tactics can save the company (at least for some time) from being criticized by some SJWarriors but has nothing to do with actual game development. This reminded me of the recent situation with 'This Land is My Land'. That game is about being a chief of a Native American tribe. That game has a lot of bugs, a lot of other problems but was criticized for not having a single Native American developer in the team (developers are from Ukraine).

PDX can hire people from Asia to make a game about Asia, people from Egypt to make a game about the pharaohs, or people from Greece to make 'Heirs of Alexander' content pack for Imperator: Rome, but... I know a bunch of developers from Belarus (it's in Europe, just in case) who know nothing about history, culture, other aspects and due to it won't bring any cultural perspective to the design and content of the game about Belarus. And I believe that is a common state of affairs, regardless of region or social position.

Game developers (programmers, designers, artists, etc.) work hard to make games good. That's the only real prerequisite for creating a good game. Not being LGBT themselves to make a game with (or about) LGBT, not being nazis or communists to make a game about Great Patriotic war of USSR people, not being superheroes to make a game about Marvel's Avengers. But actually working on their projects.

Or mess things around forcing modders to adapt their mods to newly added content

Having the "right background" neither does not automatically qualify nor does having it not prevents you from doing good work...but: The chances to find an expert for fine details of East Asian culture might be simply higher in these geographic area. It is a simple statistic effect - take alone the language barrier: Studying the history of a foreign culture deeply will likely require having knowledge of the language; something you don't need to master, if you stick to the region where you are coming from. Sure, there are translated texts and modern EDV doing translations, but I'm not sure if that fully compensates the difference when it comes to getting access to original texts.

 

[Inochi]

Apparently the idea of hiring an expert in their field for a particular country, which are more common in their own respective countries and regions, which I am 99,5% sure related to HISTORY, CULTURE and WORDING and PUNS in the events and ingame details has now to be politicized.

Congratulations Rossigil, you just brought that nonesense to an actual factual discussion about expertise. No one has asked to add Japanese programmers to a Japanese game. This was about historians and cultural trainers... for tea ceremonies, historical kabuki etc. NOT about damn SJW politics.

Excuse PDX if they won't ask SamuraiNerd64 if the Katana is the best sword in history due to them being Western (it is NOT), but might want to actually ask several experts in their respective fields, like a smith or a geologist to know why their local iron ore was so bad it had to be purified with special techniques.

In many fields you might find decent experts in other regions of the world of ANY cultural background. Ultimately you will find the best people for local culture and language... in those regions that follow those cultures and languages. Turns out water is wet.

Blind criticism to foreign experts on a game (not programmers, EXPERTS) is blind ideology on either side.

Let's go back to Meritocracy. I liked it.

 

[Dnote]

Very bad argument, in my humble opinion. Yes, such tactics can save the company (at least for some time) from being criticized by some SJWarriors but has nothing to do with actual game development. This reminded me of the recent situation with 'This Land is My Land'. That game is about being a chief of a Native American tribe. That game has a lot of bugs, a lot of other problems but was criticized for not having a single Native American developer in the team (developers are from Ukraine).

PDX can hire people from Asia to make a game about Asia, people from Egypt to make a game about the pharaohs, or people from Greece to make 'Heirs of Alexander' content pack for Imperator: Rome, but... I know a bunch of developers from Belarus (it's in Europe, just in case) who know nothing about history, culture, other aspects and due to it won't bring any cultural perspective to the design and content of the game about Belarus. And I believe that is a common state of affairs, regardless of region or social position.

Game developers (programmers, designers, artists, etc.) work hard to make games good. That's the only real prerequisite for creating a good game. Not being LGBT themselves to make a game with (or about) LGBT, not being nazis or communists to make a game about Great Patriotic war of USSR people, not being superheroes to make a game about Marvel's Avengers. But actually working on their projects.

Or mess things around forcing modders to adapt their mods to newly added content

Chinese history isn't as well recorded as European history, and definitely not as well read outside of the country itself. There is also a significant cross-over between fantasied versions of their history with the actual history itself.

Bringing in an expert to consult or as a permanent content designer to help us work through that would be invaluable.

It is worth pointing out, we already use local experts as consultants on our existing historical games, so it wouldn't be new for us to do it.

 

[olivenkranz]

Chinese history isn't as well recorded as European history, and definitely not as well read outside of the country itself. There is also a significant cross-over between fantasied versions of their history with the actual history itself.

Bringing in an expert to consult or as a permanent content designer to help us work through that would be invaluable.

It is worth pointing out, we already use local experts as consultants on our existing historical games, so it wouldn't be new for us to do it.

Will there be a sad and a thoughful emoticon on the forums? ANd a badge for HoA?
Thanks in advance

 

[CPU Taro]

Very bad argument, in my humble opinion. Yes, such tactics can save the company (at least for some time) from being criticized by some SJWarriors but has nothing to do with actual game development. This reminded me of the recent situation with 'This Land is My Land'. That game is about being a chief of a Native American tribe. That game has a lot of bugs, a lot of other problems but was criticized for not having a single Native American developer in the team (developers are from Ukraine).

PDX can hire people from Asia to make a game about Asia, people from Egypt to make a game about the pharaohs, or people from Greece to make 'Heirs of Alexander' content pack for Imperator: Rome, but... I know a bunch of developers from Belarus (it's in Europe, just in case) who know nothing about history, culture, other aspects and due to it won't bring any cultural perspective to the design and content of the game about Belarus. And I believe that is a common state of affairs, regardless of region or social position.

Game developers (programmers, designers, artists, etc.) work hard to make games good. That's the only real prerequisite for creating a good game. Not being LGBT themselves to make a game with (or about) LGBT, not being nazis or communists to make a game about Great Patriotic war of USSR people, not being superheroes to make a game about Marvel's Avengers. But actually working on their projects.

A lot of people want their games to be honest as possible in their representation of the past, very believably including such people as indigenous Americans who've long had their cultures fetishised for a quick buck.

The very fair criticisms of the original treatment of Maori content in EU4's Leviathan (to which the devs have been receptive) should show you the inherent benefits of consulting with people before almost-inevitably hamfisting the implementation, e.g. misspelling important terms: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/treatment-of-maori-is-borderline-insulting.1470769

Dnote and Herrenius are both completely on point. To access even a fragment of the work of historians of ancient China you need staff who are at least fluent to a literary level in Chinese, nevermind the importance of a general cultural literacy. You don't need to make this about internet culture wars to appreciate the expertise of people nor the obvious language barriers that exist around many subjects and peoples.