Is HoI4 the neglected child of Paradox Interactive?

[Fulmen]

It seems to me that where as EU4 and to an extent Stellaris and even CK2 make great leaps forward, HoI4 has faced enormous difficulties which at least to me seem to stem from a lack of sufficient allocation of development resources. There's a very long list of balance issues and bugs, some of which are easy to fix and have been solved by modders, that are still in the game 18 months and two expansions after release. Not to mention the appalling AI that for many people renders the game unplayable in singleplayer.

The upcoming DLC looks very promising content-wise, but so far we've seen nothing addressing things like extreme tech-rushing, teleporting strat bombers, one-division training, skipping doctrine techs, overpowered ART templates, focuses forcing other countries into tech-sharing groups, infinite naval invasion spam, "Do Not Engage" exploiting, etc.

What is the current and past size & composition of HoI4's development team in relation to that of EU4's? I'm interested to know. Because it seems like EU4 is the favourite child and HoI4 the neglected one. Arguably EU4 is probably easier to develop, but wouldn't that call for more resources assigned to HoI4?

However at the end of the day I don't know all that much about video game development, so feel free to point out if I'm in the wrong here. I have heard that the HoI4 team is or was quite small in relation to some of the other PDS teams, but that might just be hearsay.

Btw I made this thread because I came across an old bug report thread of mine from a year ago where I and others listed a lot of bugs and exploits. The overwhelming majority of them are still in the game. Here's the thread, in case you're interested.

 

[kviiri]

It seems to me that where as EU4 and to an extent Stellaris and even CK2 make great leaps forward

EU4 had/has a very long list of long-standing problems, such as a stupid tech system, unintuitive "distant overseas" modifier, forts getting new rules every version and a dozen-or-so partially overlapping mechanics to simulate internal politics. Often the fixes have been similarly bad to what the game started with, and most additional content recently has been "omg more modifiers!" as if the game wasn't full of overlapping boring numerical bonuses already.

Comparison with CK2, okay, I can dig that. But I don't really see EU4's development as being a good point of comparison if your intent is to make HoI 4's upcoming changes seem sub-par.

 

[uishax]

It did seem to lack manpower before release, which is understandable given the tortured development and delays of the game.
The game was very profitable, however, so they probably started recruiting for the team after the launch, this takes time of course, as programmers need time to fit into the team and project, so the first two DLCs involved little to no difficult programming, and was pretty much the work of Art+content designers (since these two type of workers can adjust much faster), naturally they were lacklustre.

Now that the programmers have started working, there has been a ton of fundamental mechanic changes, which is why waking the tiger feels so impressive. I expect future DLCs to also share this quality.

 

[pdstanbridge]

I love the way HOIIV is heading personally. It's a slow burner though - as long as you appreciate that, it's great fun.

 

[Duffdrums]

I love the way HOIIV is heading personally. It's a slow burner though - as long as you appreciate that, it's great fun.

Yeah i have 1100 hours on this game but Singleplayer is boring when you know the game, the AI is retard.

if i want to enjoy the game, i can only do it with friend in MP with 1000 lines of rules because this community can't play seriously, its exploit eerywhere !
I can't enjoy a MP game with pick up.

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

I think you misspelled Victoria

 

[adam_grif]

Your assumptions are not correct - HoI4 is not starved for resources compared to other Paradox titles. They hired additional staff before work began on Waking the Tiger, and as I understand it the HoI4 and Stellaris teams are both similar in headcount, and have more people working on them than CK2 and EU4 do.

 

[kaguravitro]

I see they are traying the long trip for the game that i think come 1 year early becose first version was bad, realy bad. Now i think is playable, but no so good as they can do.

EU III to EU IV was looking for a mana abuse system, i preffer III, but i have to admit III runs quiet good even in vanilla.

Thanks good my fear was they make a mana abused system here. They dont do it, was a good handle of systems and effects fir political power and experience.

Some things i can undesthood, naval system have some problems (eternal patrol, to much desicive battle, no organisation loss, some bug still with cv) but not fuel, PLZ DOLAN, thats the bigger problem actualy (too long advances, planes, planes all the times, naval patrol continously, no petrol cutdown for japan). No intelligence system, but i know all early games added it later.

I know this game use an enterly complex systems that are different of all other from Paradox, i think it come eraly, and i think that to solve the problems they should use more resourses almost for a year to solve main problems, later dlc generation (i know they will be like 15 jajaja) they could back to actual number of developers. I see with tiger that maybe the chain of command system can be a prelude to the supply system overhaul.

A goodone is that this mod incluided some features very cleared used in some mod, so is podible they make more support for modding. I hope we dont need 7 years to have a mod support for as Darkest Hour to have a 1897-1995 or present mod

 

[wildbillhdmax01]

I have to agree. It's been said and speculated that HOI4 was severely lacking resources through it's development. Which continued post launch, and to this day. There was only one AI programmer on the team, even listed in the credits. I think it was only 6 months ago that they added a couple more programmers. One of them just for the AI. It's also doesn't help that the first AI programmer Wiz left before the game was done, leaving them to put another AI programmer in, mid way through development. I'm not sure how big the HOI4 team is now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was smaller than the other teams.

People have been saying for a while now that HOI4 needs more resources, more programmers, and more developers.

 

[Carlyle1]

Stellaris has same number of people working on it. But the differences between stellaris development and hoi4 are huge. And many people will agree on playing vanilla stellaris is much more fun than playing vanilla Hoi4

 

[Labatyd]

Stellaris suffered from the famous naked corvette issue basically over 1,5 years before it was fixed (imagine building nothing but 10 width INF because nothing else is even close to viable). I agree that "do-not-engage", "redirecting intercepted troop convoys", "strat bomber flickering", "nuking airports", "paradropping victory points", "LF3 balance" and all the other stuff are issues but they never made the game unplayable. The Stellaris naked corvette meta though was UNPLAYABLE for anyone that wanted to have anything resembling a strategy game.

I can't comment on EU4 or CK2 but f**** me don't call Stellaris better supported!

 

[Carlyle1]

For those who don't want to meme with naked corvettes, stellaris is a better game still. Just ban naked corvettes by house rule and you're good to go. It's not like we don't ban anything in hoi4

 

[am300307]

Everyone knows that the Victoria franchise is the neglected child of paradox interactive

 

[Gefallener_Held]

It's all very disheartening. They should be focusing on this first and foremost, then worry about extra focus trees, goofy althistory scenarios for Germany and other countries.

 

[ThatGuyFromCollege]

Stellaris has same number of people working on it. But the differences between stellaris development and hoi4 are huge. And many people will agree on playing vanilla stellaris is much more fun than playing vanilla Hoi4

If I had to pick between Vanilla HOI4 and vanilla Stellaris I would take HOI4, because Stellaris has bascially nothing to do in the midgame, the endgame can get pretty exciting but you have to go through many hours of boring gameplay since at that point you aren't really exploring anymore you're just getting into a fleet measuring contest with neighbors. I'm pretty sure more people would agree to play HOI4 anyways, if playercount stats have anything to say.

 

[Carroarmato-P40]

Everyone knows that the Victoria franchise is the neglected child of paradox interactive

*ahem*
EU: ROME.

 

[Jamey]

HOI4 has come a long way since 1.0. It’s team is growing and seems to be one of the largest in Paradox Dev Studio.

So, no, I wouldn’t say that it is neglected. It just launched with some fairly big issues that are taking time to resolve.

I’ve stopped playing (and just drop in to read the dev diaries right now) because I hit my limit on fun with HOI4 without further improvements, but it is leaps and bounds better than it was when it shipped and I expect that in 6 months or a year I’ll come back and have a blast with it again.

 

[Carlyle1]

If I had to pick between Vanilla HOI4 and vanilla Stellaris I would take HOI4, because Stellaris has bascially nothing to do in the midgame, the endgame can get pretty exciting but you have to go through many hours of boring gameplay since at that point you aren't really exploring anymore you're just getting into a fleet measuring contest with neighbors. I'm pretty sure more people would agree to play HOI4 anyways, if playercount stats have anything to say.

Yeah i had some really boring time in mid game as well but still those endgame crisises and you can have fun with building up in mid game.

Or you can look it this way, you beat every other situation but can't beat the end game crisis and you have nothing to do.

Depends on which way you look

 

[kaguravitro]

THey will try to make a lot of dlc, spend much mony. Well its their politice, but i think we have spend mony to have a little more free-bug and more complete game. The lack of fuel usage (you can model usage for land unit by tricky method as attrition) and the continuos spaming naval invasion (even if you low values it happens to much), some other features of naval warfare (combats are good but continous patroling is insane, with no cost) continous air patrol, some economic tools.

Its a good game, i thin i willl spend so much mony even if dolar is high in Argentina, but i wish developers decide to solve some core problems. I can wait 2 years of playable ai to get a enought good ai, but the problem i said in last paragragh are anoyng me. I hope they move the resourses to solve this and then reduce to mantein a conservative advance on corrections and upgrades in systems and ai.

The have a comunity that can make mod, heavy mod, so the main feature is listen them, solve problem and implement systems for a better game. Never vanilla will be at the level of modded versions, even if theres differents aproachs (1956 vs BICE for example).

 

[PG908]

There are a lot of unaddressed issues and major, major bugs that need to be fixed, such as the laughably easy to reproduce lobby ghost bug, plenty of stack overflow-related bugs with equipment that should never have existed, and a variety of exploits and cheesy mechanics abuse.

Also AoT research cheese. Just no. Make it work reasonably.