Is development on CK3 unusually slow?

[Karlington]

Wokeg for the win.

@Wokeg is the best developer on the forum in my opinion. Active fairly regularly, often responds to questions, and is usually polite and friendly, even toward those who criticize Paradox or CK3.

 

[Germanicus_Caesar]

@Wokeg is the best developer on the forum in my opinion. Active fairly regularly, often responds to questions, and is usually polite and friendly, even toward those who criticize Paradox or CK3.

I have to agree! I hope more forumites see that critiquing in a respectful fashion can lead to a response and discourse.

 

[AdjectiveNounNumber]

I think, the reason is, that the major DLCs aare bigger in CK3. They need to rework a lot.

The Royal Court update and dlc added two good mechanics. The cultural rework and the inventory system. The headline feature however, the royal court itself was an underdeveloped dud. Compare that to the past few HOI4 dlcs and you see much more content added in less time.

 

[tilly]

@Wokeg is the best developer on the forum in my opinion. Active fairly regularly, often responds to questions, and is usually polite and friendly, even toward those who criticize Paradox or CK3.

i live in constant fear that the dumbest jerks alive are going to keep throwing abuse at the guy despite all the incredible work hes putting in, completely unpaid and off his own back. hes not a pr guy, hes literally just a dude being chill. hard to control for the fact that most everyone alive it seems comes online and immediately becomes a screeching baby unfortunately, can only hope the positive feedback outweighs all the genuine tantruming

 

[Karlington]

i live in constant fear that the dumbest jerks alive are going to keep throwing abuse at the guy despite all the incredible work hes putting in, completely unpaid and off his own back. hes not a pr guy, hes literally just a dude being chill. hard to control for the fact that most everyone alive it seems comes online and immediately becomes a screeching baby unfortunately, can only hope the positive feedback outweighs all the genuine tantruming

I'm not sure if the posts have just been deleted before I saw them, but I haven't seen abuse regularly thrown at him. I'm not saying never, but it doesn't seem to be a regular thing to me.

 

[Wokeg]

I've harped on this before - that the core feudal model in CK2/3 works better for India than it does for much of Europe, so I'm glad to see that this is known in-house too! I do think that in addition to inheritance, the other point of divergence for India mechanically should be CBs and claims. Medieval Indian rulers didn't need a claim to morally justify aggressive war, which was seen as the proper business of kings. But, the CBs available to them should focus more on vassalizing other rulers and exacting tribute, and much less on personal land aggrandizement. And it should probably be rather harder to actually fabricate claims and revoke land from vassals.

The ideal cycle should be something like this - an ambitious new king goes on a digvijaya spree, using a CB to subjugate or extract tribute from all the neighboring rulers. But all the lords he beats remain in their places, and his own demesne stays modest. In a moment of vulnerability or on succession, many of those vassalized rulers may faction off into independence. (And even winning a war against a rebellious vassal doesn't give an excuse to revoke land - those vassals after all are also acting in the accepted rules of the political game.)

All sounds super interesting, and it's more likely than you'd think! Our resident India-expert (and I do realise that that's rather a large area to claim expertise in, but he's been the go-to Paradox source for all things Indian since Rajas of India AFAIK) is actually the Design Lead, and though he often crowbars in India improvements quietly, I don't think it's any secret that he'd love for us to do an India flavour pack. Or two. Or three.

Ahem, at some point.

Though for those casus bellis to be worthwhile you'd have to make it so that vassals meaningfully contribute to your strength compared to personal demense, something they just really don't do in CK3.

Deffffinitely a problem we're aware of. Sort of a larger structural issue with a few things, though, so that's a bit of a tougher nut to crack than jigging around some CBs and factions.

After a brief skim, I’ll just add my two cents: the pace has been slower than I want, and the content added very underwhelming relative to what I want. Until such time as at least the latter changes, I’m just not playing or buying.

The only CK3 content I’m remotely excited for is the AGOT mod.

Understandable and I hope we can lure you in in the future. In the meanwhilst, have fun with the mod! Thiiiiiink I heard someone say something about a milestone recently, though not sure if that means it's playable yet? I forget.

It's hard to disagree with that, but at least major players on the map are supposed to have their own special government types and mechanics, and that should have been in the base game since actual release, in my opinion. The HRE, Byzantium, Caliphate, Seljukes, all of them for sure are major players that are of utmost interest to many players. Yet they are all mostly the same, and the Pope is still just an EU bank that calls sometimes to some wars.

I can wait for Russia that wasn't that important in that times. I can wait for nomads, because Mongolians come in late game. I can wait for republics, that also weren't that important besides Venice in the Fourth Crusade. But the HRE, Byzantium, goddamn...

So in an ideal world, I do agree and would love that, but in practice, and I'll be blunt here - I don't think that was ever really feasible. I'd also be surprised if almost any game managed what you're asking for. Extremely, immensely, pleasantly surprised, please-please-please-prove-me-wrong surprised, but still surprised. The rub here is the idea that release really should have had a lot of unique gameplay modes for cool states that were both prominent and weird, in the best way, but there's not actually a consideration for what that would have done to other parts of the title. Not just because, for instance, a unique government for the Seljuks rushed so that they could have one would potentially miss out on whether, with a bit of extra work, such a thing could've become a general "steppe nomads who conquer urbanised peoples" government, but because we do already have issues with people suggesting that they feel content is spread too thin over too many areas. Given that we didn't feel comfortable adding a stripped-down version of republics or nomads as playable at release, I don't know where the development time for something as large and disparate as Byzantium (or the Caliphate, for that matter) would have come from, or what features or content would thus be cut instead. Especially since we're talking ample code and feature designer time here, so not savings that could be generally recouped by shrinking the map, which neither of those disciplines handle.

Our game director actually talked a little bit about this in the floorplan dev diary, but imperial gameplay is something we're interested in doing in an expansion at some point. Though I don't think anyone wants another Royal Court-length development cycle (least of all the team), what I personally would like to see is imperial gameplay given proper time and space to be developed into something fun, interesting, and different, not something rushed in at the expense of general content so that we could tick a box.

Side-note: I also appreciate that this is what-aboutism, but because the ERE getting its own unique gameplay mechanics at launch is a common critique I see, I've got ask: why is that such a stumbling block for us? Because I've played a lot of janky medieval strategy games in my time, and I actually can't name any off the top of my head that gave an actual variant gameplay mode for Byzantium, let alone the HRE or the Caliphate. A little extra flavour, maybe some slight mechanical twists, but nothing that made them play fundamentally different to every other entity in the title, certainly at launch. Hell, the only ones that come close to my mind (caveat that I've not played Knights of Honour 2 yet), are:

1. CK2: Holy Fury (which... has its own problems in how it portrays the ERE, and never touched the other two).
2. EUIV.
3. Not for any of these, but the hordes from Atilla: Total War and some later entries in the series, which are basically playing a completely separate game from the settled peoples.
4. Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII (I've not played but it was suggested to me by friends as something that fulfils the criteria).

... and the only similar scale-ish strategy game I can name that actually made a whole big thing of this is the highly-underappreciated Sovereignty: Crown of Kings. Which is admittedly a fantasy game rather than a historical one, but it does do the whole "high-level strategy but every nation is completely asymetric in its goals and playstyles" thing. I'm sure there's some somewhere (though I did look before writing this and still came up with zilch) but I am a bit confused why it's such a common notion that it's a mark against CK3 that we didn't release with it when, slightly tragically, that's actually just the general standard for medieval games.

Wokeg for the win.

@Wokeg is the best developer on the forum in my opinion. Active fairly regularly, often responds to questions, and is usually polite and friendly, even toward those who criticize Paradox or CK3.

I have to agree! I hope more forumites see that critiquing in a respectful fashion can lead to a response and discourse.

i live in constant fear that the dumbest jerks alive are going to keep throwing abuse at the guy despite all the incredible work hes putting in, completely unpaid and off his own back. hes not a pr guy, hes literally just a dude being chill. hard to control for the fact that most everyone alive it seems comes online and immediately becomes a screeching baby unfortunately, can only hope the positive feedback outweighs all the genuine tantruming

I. Well. Uh. Thank you. I'm afraid I'm British and therefore deeply emotionally stunted and will now proceed to shut down for the next three weeks whilst I process living human compliments. Some people also PM'd me, with very kind words.

I think I need to lie down.

 

[Videogames]

All sounds super interesting, and it's more likely than you'd think! Our resident India-expert (and I do realise that that's rather a large area to claim expertise in, but he's been the go-to Paradox source for all things Indian since Rajas of India AFAIK) is actually the Design Lead, and though he often crowbars in India improvements quietly, I don't think it's any secret that he'd love for us to do an India flavour pack. Or two. Or three.

Hurray, glad to hear it. While this particular item is India-adjacent, was adding the extra Burma content regarding the Ari-Theravada conversion one of those quiet crowbars?

Side-note: I also appreciate that this is what-aboutism, but because the ERE getting its own unique gameplay mechanics at launch is a common critique I see, I've got ask: why is that such a stumbling block for us? Because I've played a lot of janky medieval strategy games in my time, and I actually can't name any off the top of my head that gave an actual variant gameplay mode for Byzantium, let alone the HRE or the Caliphate. A little extra flavour, maybe some slight mechanical twists, but nothing that made them play fundamentally different to every other entity in the title, certainly at launch. Hell, the only ones that come close to my mind (caveat that I've not played Knights of Honour 2 yet), are:

1. CK2: Holy Fury (which... has its own problems in how it portrays the ERE, and never touched the other two).
2. EUIV.
3. Not for any of these, but the hordes from Atilla: Total War and some later entries in the series, which are basically playing a completely separate game from the settled peoples.
4. Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII (I've not played but it was suggested to me by friends as something that fulfils the criteria).

... and the only similar scale-ish strategy game I can name that actually made a whole big thing of this is the highly-underappreciated Sovereignty: Crown of Kings. Which is admittedly a fantasy game rather than a historical one, but it does do the whole "high-level strategy but every nation is completely asymetric in its goals and playstyles" thing. I'm sure there's some somewhere (though I did look before writing this and still came up with zilch) but I am a bit confused why it's such a common notion that it's a mark against CK3 that we didn't release with it when, slightly tragically, that's actually just the general standard for medieval games.

My take on this issue is that:
1) a lot of other medieval games are a lot lower-fidelity in the simulation. If the primary difference cognizable in a game is that the ERE gets cataphracts and skoutatoi with slightly different stats than Latin knights and spearmen, and there's modeling of government at all in the game, then there's not much to be hoped for anyway.

And then, 2) it was often bandied about during the CK2 era that the engine wasn't quite up to implementing an ERE-style imperial government, and we'd have to wait for the sequel where that capacity would be baked into the engine from the very beginning. The way the engine strained to acccommodate republics was cited as evidence to support that CK2 couldn't do it. I think a lot of us did get excited for what that eventual implementation would be in the sequel. But then CK3 comes out with neither republics nor imperial government, and after the first big expansion they're still a ways off. So it's like "you made us wait for the sequel to take a shot at doing the imperial government justice, but now the sequel's been out for a couple years and you're still not taking that shot!"

Anyway, thanks so much for engaging with us and putting out some pretty big posts. We're happy to have you around in the community.

 

[Antimonum]

So in an ideal world, I do agree and would love that, but in practice, and I'll be blunt here - I don't think that was ever really feasible. I'd also be surprised if almost any game managed what you're asking for. Extremely, immensely, pleasantly surprised, please-please-please-prove-me-wrong surprised, but still surprised. The rub here is the idea that release really should have had a lot of unique gameplay modes for cool states that were both prominent and weird, in the best way, but there's not actually a consideration for what that would have done to other parts of the title.

No body expected everything to be finished on release and no reasonable player expected the content of every character and culture everywhere to be completely done with unique mechanics and art by time of game release. But the game could have at least be build up more on the content, that CK2 did OK like Artifacts or bloodlines. Instead we got Artifacts in Royal court after a long wait with no significant change from CK2 except 3D models (the icons of Artifacts in CK2 were good enough).The Artifacts offered nothing more of value than that which CK2 already provided, so this content was delayed and not released at start for no defendable game improvement reasons.
People do not expect a brand new random game of a random company to have answers for all core gameplay and the Paradox devs do not have the luxury to compare themselves with every other game company, since Paradox develops grand Strategy historical games for so long and should be expected to be the best and the fastest on account of their experience with CK. So paradox should know better and should be regarded by players with higher scrutiny and have much higher standards. This is the reason for the high expectations for faster development, and the reasons why a lot of people do not accept excuses for slow development and lacking content years after release.

 

[TheEagle1]

All sounds super interesting, and it's more likely than you'd think! Our resident India-expert (and I do realise that that's rather a large area to claim expertise in, but he's been the go-to Paradox source for all things Indian since Rajas of India AFAIK) is actually the Design Lead, and though he often crowbars in India improvements quietly, I don't think it's any secret that he'd love for us to do an India flavour pack. Or two. Or three.

Ahem, at some point.

Deffffinitely a problem we're aware of. Sort of a larger structural issue with a few things, though, so that's a bit of a tougher knut to crack than jigging around some CBs and factions.

Understandable and I hope we can lure you in in the future. In the meanwhilst, have fun with the mod! Thiiiiiink I heard someone say something about a milestone recently, though not sure if that means it's playable yet? I forget.

So in an ideal world, I do agree and would love that, but in practice, and I'll be blunt here - I don't think that was ever really feasible. I'd also be surprised if almost any game managed what you're asking for. Extremely, immensely, pleasantly surprised, please-please-please-prove-me-wrong surprised, but still surprised. The rub here is the idea that release really should have had a lot of unique gameplay modes for cool states that were both prominent and weird, in the best way, but there's not actually a consideration for what that would have done to other parts of the title. Not just because, for instance, a unique government for the Seljuks rushed so that they could have one would potentially miss out on whether, with a bit of extra work, such a thing could've become a general "steppe nomads who conquer urbanised peoples" government, but because we do already have issues with people suggesting that they feel content is spread too thin over too many areas. Given that we didn't feel comfortable adding a stripped-down version of republics or nomads as playable at release, I don't know where the development time for something as large and disparate as Byzantium (or the Caliphate, for that matter) would have come from, or what features or content would thus be cut instead. Especially since we're talking ample code and feature designer time here, so not savings that could be generally recouped by shrinking the map, which neither of those disciplines handle.

Our game director actually talked a little bit about this in the floorplan dev diary, but imperial gameplay is something we're interested in doing in an expansion at some point. Though I don't think anyone wants another Royal Court-length development cycle (least of all the team), what I personally would like to see is imperial gameplay given proper time and space to be developed into something fun, interesting, and different, not something rushed in at the expense of general content so that we could tick a box.

Side-note: I also appreciate that this is what-aboutism, but because the ERE getting its own unique gameplay mechanics at launch is a common critique I see, I've got ask: why is that such a stumbling block for us? Because I've played a lot of janky medieval strategy games in my time, and I actually can't name any off the top of my head that gave an actual variant gameplay mode for Byzantium, let alone the HRE or the Caliphate. A little extra flavour, maybe some slight mechanical twists, but nothing that made them play fundamentally different to every other entity in the title, certainly at launch. Hell, the only ones that come close to my mind (caveat that I've not played Knights of Honour 2 yet), are:

1. CK2: Holy Fury (which... has its own problems in how it portrays the ERE, and never touched the other two).
2. EUIV.
3. Not for any of these, but the hordes from Atilla: Total War and some later entries in the series, which are basically playing a completely separate game from the settled peoples.
4. Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII (I've not played but it was suggested to me by friends as something that fulfils the criteria).

... and the only similar scale-ish strategy game I can name that actually made a whole big thing of this is the highly-underappreciated Sovereignty: Crown of Kings. Which is admittedly a fantasy game rather than a historical one, but it does do the whole "high-level strategy but every nation is completely asymetric in its goals and playstyles" thing. I'm sure there's some somewhere (though I did look before writing this and still came up with zilch) but I am a bit confused why it's such a common notion that it's a mark against CK3 that we didn't release with it when, slightly tragically, that's actually just the general standard for medieval games.




I. Well. Uh. Thank you. I'm afraid I'm British and therefore deeply emotionally stunted and will now proceed to shut down for the next three weeks whilst I process living human compliments. Some people also PM'd me, with very kind words.

I think I need to lie down.

Three packs for India?! and their royal court in the game already much better than Arabs rulers royal courts! which is not historical accuracy in the time period of the game!
It's the golden age of the Arabs world yet the Caliph got an empty royal court which looks like a bathroom.

If it's me, I will give all nations attentions and give them some love, I am not against the three packs but I mean the Arabs really deserve attention and more historical accuracy at least.

I hope this will change for better in the near future.

 

[Jobbb555]

My guy we are no longer talking about “on release features” it has been years since launch and the fan base is being told “yeah we will probably get around to them at some point.” about features that are near unanimously requested, some which are even in the predecessor. The floor plan/roadmap dev diary sounded like i was being told “we know what you all want, mechanics, but we are not giving it to you, “yet”.

CK3 is a great game. Very few people had any negatives about the launch. I know it was my belief that after ~2 years the excellent foundation would have been built on with additional content, revamped weak spot features from ck2, and some polish. But now we stand even longer past that with scant additions.

I know CK3 will still get there and surpass CK2 but i’m definitely annoyed with how off my estimate was and the reluctance to prioritize what the fans are asking for just stumps me.

 

[tilly]

I'm afraid I'm British

thats okay we forgive you

nah though jokes aside youre a genuine champion dude. i had a tweet go viral once so i can say with some certainty i can imagine no fresher hell than being in the public eye, as far as im concerned your efforts to be communicative here on the forums are nothing less than herculean

 

[Basileus2]

the Caliph got an empty royal court which looks like a bathroom.

big lol

 

[fodazd]

About the comparison with other games: It's true that I don't *usually* expect unique mechanics for the byzantine empire in other historical strategy games, or at least not more than CK3 has currently. All of these other games are a lot more abstract though. If another game portrays *all* of the playable countries as centralized states, then of course it will not bother me if the byzantine empire is also portrayed that way, since it is more accurate there than anywhere else.

I think CK3 suffers a bit from its own success here: Since it is generally a lot more detailed than other historical strategy games, the problems and ahistorical mechanics become a lot more noticeable and jarring.

I have a similar problem with AI personality: There is no other game than CK3 where I have ever thought to myself "You know, the AI is acting really out of character, and it is bothering me". This isn't because other games are so good at making the AI behave in character, but because other games are generally abstract enough that I don't develop the *expectation* that the AI is supposed to act in character.

I think of this kind of like an uncanny valley effect when it comes to historicity and mechanics.

 

[end37275]

Three packs for India?! and their royal court in the game already much better than Arabs rulers royal courts! which is not historical accuracy in the time period of the game!
It's the golden age of the Arabs world yet the Caliph got an empty royal court which looks like a bathroom.

If it's me, I will give all nations attentions and give them some love, I am not against the three packs but I mean the Arabs really deserve attention and more historical accuracy at least.

I hope this will change for better in the near future.

They were talking about their India expert's ideal world, not their actual plan for the next few flavorpacks

 

[rugger7]

I want to say thanks for the outreach in this thread. I'm one of those who've been disappointed so far with the post-release communication, and this is the type of dialogue I've been looking for. We don't have to agree about the game direction, but it's nice to have some insight from the devs as to why certain directions were taken or where they see gaps in the game that need improvement. I just wish some of this had started sooner.

That being said, I am still a bit disappointed in the current direction. I will admit, as someone pointed out above, this may be my own fault for misguided expectations of what CK3 would be. I put in 1-2k hours in CK2 and loved it. I was excited for CK3 and assumed it would improve the underlying mechanics of CK2 from the start or within the first couple years of DLC. I read the DD's and knew what was coming at release, but still did what I never do: bought a season pass (royal edition) without knowing what it would contain. I knew republics, nomads, papal mechanics, etc. would be missing at release, but assumed that with two flavor packs and an expansion that these would come in the first cycle or so of DLC. When NL came out, it felt pretty lackluster and not really what I was looking for, but I still had two more DLC to go. With RC, I was very upset. 3D graphics were not what I cared about (my own opinion, not indicative of the community). I'm a board gamer, so mechanics matter more for strategy than visuals and RC felt very light on the strategy mechanics. FoI brought some of that with the struggle mechanic. So my initial purchase of the royal edition now felt like a giant mistake since I would never have purchased NL or RC otherwise (not sure if those purchases are included in the "RC sold well" statement from wokeg). I can't say I feel betrayed or cheated since PDX never said I'd be getting the mechanics I was hoping for with the royal edition DLC, but looking back, having some idea of what I'd be getting would have been nice rather than buying sight unseen. Going forward, I'm not making that mistake again and will wait to see how this game develops before putting money into any more DLC. It's not a loss of trust, since we've never been lied to or misled, but it feels similar. Maybe it's more what we aren't being told that is disappointing; the lack of communication. Again, I applaud Wokeg for the discussion in this thread as it's giving come clarity where it was lacking before.

Now here we are with another expansion that seems to still hold off the addition of mechanics I'd been hoping for since launch, with no indication on the horizon they may ever happen. Improving role playing and immersion is great, but I find it harder to RP if I feel too abstracted from the realities, politics, civil and social structures of the timeframe. As Wokeg said, these aren't always easy to do, but it'd be great to see some movement in that direction. Even showing some experiments the team is doing would help. Stellaris did that one summer if I recall, and many of those experiments either went no where or weren't implemented for some time. It was still great to see what the team was trying, even if it didn't work. It increased my faith in the team. I haven't opened CK3 in about 2 years, and likely won't for the foreseeable future. The game just isn't what I was hoping for prior to release, and I'm less optimistic it will get there in the next couple years. This is just my opinion, and I'm certain many in the community feel differently. Obviously the comments of once customer are not going to change the direction of game development, but I think the devs need to know where some of this disappointment is coming from.

To add some constructive criticism: I think the modular cultures and religions was a great addition and possibly the best improvement over CK2. Some have stated that took the flavor away since everything is now a shade of grey rather than distinct, but I think that's able to be worked around. If governments were modular as well, they could to be based on laws. What laws were available could be based on culture traditions and pillars. If different laws and therefore governments unlock different mechanics, all of the sudden cultures feel very different from each other. Normans invading Anglo-Saxon England are going to have different laws so William has to juggle these two systems should he prevail. English as a melting pot culture feels like the merging of two legal systems as well as cultures.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. I hope the game continues, and I still hold a small bit of hope it will one day be what I was hoping would come from the successor to CK2.

 

[FishieFan]

Three packs for India?! and their royal court in the game already much better than Arabs rulers royal courts! which is not historical accuracy in the time period of the game!
It's the golden age of the Arabs world yet the Caliph got an empty royal court which looks like a bathroom.

If it's me, I will give all nations attentions and give them some love, I am not against the three packs but I mean the Arabs really deserve attention and more historical accuracy at least.

I hope this will change for better in the near future.

3 packs for the 3 ways to divide india, north, south and east
The courts are generally lacking, steppe people get no yurts

 

[TheEagle1]

3 packs for the 3 ways to divide india, north, south and east
The courts are generally lacking, steppe people get no yurts

Still 3 is a huge for one area!
and the basic big history nation got nothing, or less cool stuff compare to other minor nations! WOW. Amazing.

 

[grommile]

Still 3 is a huge for one area!

India is six times the size of Spain and has 50-100 times as many languages

 

[FishieFan]

Still 3 is a huge for one area!
and the basic big history nation got nothing, or less cool stuff compare to other minor nations! WOW. Amazing.

Its a sub continent. Basic big history nation is hre not byz

 

[TheEagle1]

India is six times the size of Spain and has 50-100 times as many languages

We can always find excuses when we want to do something

All we ask for is historical accuracy + balancing + working on the game contents without religious, race or culture emotions.
(Specially when it comes to Islam, Arabic and Arabs).

If someone has let's say even 0.0.01% islamophobia, it will sadly negatively effect the contents.