Johan said:
I liked the Victoria manual, I do however get irritated at certain parts not having headlines in bold text.
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I liked the Victoria manual, I do however get irritated at certain parts not having headlines in bold text.
Manuals
I'm afraid that regardless of style or content, manuals make a very easy target. The only really great manuals I've ever seen came from the old Microprose games and they were books in their own right, although some of the old SSI game manuals came close.
Currently any of the big mainstream games (the Blizzard, Westwood RTS types plus whatever trash is popular in console games) is issued with a separate strategy guide (for $15 USD extra) which speaks volumes as to the lack of value in the included manual. Given the niche nature of the market, I'd doubt a strategy guide would make economic sense for Paradox and their publishers when all the translation issues are considered.
Just my opinion but I'd drop any worries about including a history of whatever period is involved. If you're buying one of these games, you ought to know your way around the past pretty well already and if you don't, ten pages of ultra-high level prose won't help much anyway.
If the economics can work, the old Microprose manuals such as the Master of Orion 1 or X-com manuals are still about the best the industry has ever produced and would if reproduced for a Paradox game, far exceed anything in the current market. If the economics don't work, and judging by what the big guys are producing they don't, the goal of the Victoria manual to focus on the interface is probably the best the economics will allow.
Johan said:
I'm afraid that regardless of style or content, manuals make a very easy target. The only really great manuals I've ever seen came from the old Microprose games and they were books in their own right, although some of the old SSI game manuals came close.
Currently any of the big mainstream games (the Blizzard, Westwood RTS types plus whatever trash is popular in console games) is issued with a separate strategy guide (for $15 USD extra) which speaks volumes as to the lack of value in the included manual. Given the niche nature of the market, I'd doubt a strategy guide would make economic sense for Paradox and their publishers when all the translation issues are considered.
Just my opinion but I'd drop any worries about including a history of whatever period is involved. If you're buying one of these games, you ought to know your way around the past pretty well already and if you don't, ten pages of ultra-high level prose won't help much anyway.
If the economics can work, the old Microprose manuals such as the Master of Orion 1 or X-com manuals are still about the best the industry has ever produced and would if reproduced for a Paradox game, far exceed anything in the current market. If the economics don't work, and judging by what the big guys are producing they don't, the goal of the Victoria manual to focus on the interface is probably the best the economics will allow.
Scotsman said:
Ever read the Homeworld manual? It was great.
As for Paradox manuals, they're ok, even good on what they cover but the tend to have a couple of sections telling you about things that were removed or totally changed after the manual went to print and some things just don't get mentioned. And of course, with all the patches the games get they become totally outdated pretty quickly.
Scotsman said:
Oops, missed this. I personally love the history sections in the Paradox manual and I'd like to see them kept in as long as there isn'y a strict word limit on the manual.
Sapper_Astro said:
This sounds just about right for me. It would only take something like 5-10 extra pages (relatively within the manual's text/page limit, IIRC), and it would really solve a bit of the initial problems of application/deduction of concepts explained elsewhere in the manual.
Johan said:
I actually liked the manual of EU1 the best. It was the thickest, it had comprehensive look into the history of the period. I actually read it before starting to play the game and in my opinion everything that was needed about concepts etc. was there. That manual was the only one that was actually *interesting* to read (The manual of HoI comes second). EU1 manual didn't bother too much with the interface but that wasn't too complicated in EU times and most people with IQ more than 60 should be able to quickly get hold of thing by themselves.
I also think that the EU1 manual was the only manual that really got you into right historical mood to play the game
Why I liked the EU1 manual =
- if it would lay in a pile of books, you'll always find it back fairly easy,
- good to smash a fly,
- good reading times every-where, but in the bed!
- it was a motivating story to get into the EU game, no mather wath learning curve was coming,
by the way, I also like Victoria manual,
I like most Paradox manuals, internet acces is more the lever to get decent gameplay,
- if it would lay in a pile of books, you'll always find it back fairly easy,
- good to smash a fly,
- good reading times every-where, but in the bed!
- it was a motivating story to get into the EU game, no mather wath learning curve was coming,
by the way, I also like Victoria manual,
I like most Paradox manuals, internet acces is more the lever to get decent gameplay,
Brannart said:To answer your question:
You may find the game easy. That's great!
look, don't take this personal but when you benchmark Victoria in the market, it will arrive in the "challenging, high and steep learning curve, difficult to master" camp,
it's not that we begrude others opinion, but that's simply the nature of the Paradox games, either like it or dislike it,
saying "challenging" is not the same as "too difficult"
I think I like EU2 best, then HoI, then vicky.
i cant really put my finger on why, other than the micromanagement is tremendous in this one...
why cant people find their own jobs? why must I manage that? its not like the king had to say 'you group of french conservative protestants! go work in that factory' ... and all the different PoP groups are confusing, but I do like what they were trying to go for... and the economy still baffles me a bit...
a good start, but needs more polish and automation options i think...
still eu2+eep is the best...
i cant really put my finger on why, other than the micromanagement is tremendous in this one...
why cant people find their own jobs? why must I manage that? its not like the king had to say 'you group of french conservative protestants! go work in that factory' ... and all the different PoP groups are confusing, but I do like what they were trying to go for... and the economy still baffles me a bit...
a good start, but needs more polish and automation options i think...
still eu2+eep is the best...
JeanBaptiste said:
Have you set auto-assign workers to factories from production view?
Well, I want to answer Scotsman post, that was regarding my first post. (thats the 3rd on page 2, if you wonder what Scotsman´s quotes are referring to...)
I was comparing Vicky to this "console sports games" (which I play on PC, of course; comparing the stability of a PC game to a console game would indeed be quite unfair towards the PC game) as I was pointing out stability problems of Victoria.
And regarding stability I think you can compare them.
Face it, the complexity of equations the player has to solve doesn´t count at all here.
The complexity of the equations your PC has to do is the important thing that determines how difficult it is to create a stable game.
And as this sports games have complex graphics and the player´s actions directly change the position of some whole bunch of polygons, whatever,
Yes, I do believe it´s fair to compare the stability of those programs to Vicky´s.
I mean I don´t say I have stability problems just because I´m evil and want to cause damage for Paradox, but because especially multiplayer causes heavy stability problems here
(as I said singleplayer is also very stable here now, but only after slight changing of my system configuration, while other games seem to be able to be stable on whatever system configuration you use - that was my point)
btw. who else tried multiplayer ? How was the stability for you ? I´m really interested in that one.
Okay, now I was expecting some answer of this kind, but I´m glad that you at least kept a friendly tone.
I think no one doubts that the usual RTS (RealTimeStrategy for those, who didn´t knew it) games are compared to Paradox games much more dependant on "mental velocity" (whatever the correct English term for this is, but you know what I mean) than on tough single decisions, for which you have much time,
BUT Starcraft had 3 different races with completely different units and strengths (defense, offense ("Zerg rush")) and still it was balanced out of the box.
I did not claim that Starcraft would be harder to balance than Victoria, but it also isn´t totally obvious how to chose the Hitpoints and cost of a terran battleship and the speed of a Protoss Infantry that the whole thing is still balanced.
However Blizzard did balance it, while Victoria is - totally - unbalanced out of the box ;
may it be more difficult to do the balancing, but that´s no excuse for how ridiculously easy the game was in 1.00 and 1.01 (and still is to easy in 1.02 if you play certain countries and/or use some exploits respectively semi-exploits (but that´s another story where the opinions diversify a lot - I myself was not happy with 1.02, too.
This was however more caused by the way the difficulty was raised, not because it was raised)).
Well about your last paragraph I appreciate that you didn´t insult anybody, but I guess (well actually I´m sure) that this is on the same wave as the guys that pointed out the "intelligent deep-strategy gamer" directly or indirectly.
I don´t doubt that other genre´s games have more black sheep players (mostly because they have more overall players), but anyone intelligent knows that you can´t judge someone´s IQ by the games he´s playing.
I was on some team-meetings of a "need for speed" (some serious stupid console arcade racing game for those who don´t know it ) team - so you may believe me here.
True, but it surely also doesn´t make sense to beat those people who say "this is not perfect" , "that could be much better" , "why don´t they improve this?"
away with the phrase "you don´t need to play Paradox games if they aren´t good enough for you".
Sadly that is what happens on this forums regularly.
Yeah well, fair expectations - I guess the very high quality of Europa Universalis one and two made my (and other´s) expectations indeed quite high.
Still I stick with the opinion that "Victoria, 1.00" is also below "fair expectations", the game release was just too early.
Sorry this was again a bit off from the current topic of the thread, but my excuse is that this current topic also isn´t the original one .
About the manuals:
I usually use manuals for two things:
-bed-reading (Homeworld was already named as an example, I´d also count eg. Empire Earth here)
-to look up how something specific can be done. (or tables: character values in Baldurs gate eg.)
however in Victoria this is not needed, because as soon as you discover something the nice tooltips will tell you how to handle it.
In Vicky´s case some tutorial section that guided your first steps would however have been nice, because there´s no in-game-tutorial.
Scotsman said:
I was comparing Vicky to this "console sports games" (which I play on PC, of course; comparing the stability of a PC game to a console game would indeed be quite unfair towards the PC game) as I was pointing out stability problems of Victoria.
And regarding stability I think you can compare them.
Face it, the complexity of equations the player has to solve doesn´t count at all here.
The complexity of the equations your PC has to do is the important thing that determines how difficult it is to create a stable game.
And as this sports games have complex graphics and the player´s actions directly change the position of some whole bunch of polygons, whatever,
Yes, I do believe it´s fair to compare the stability of those programs to Vicky´s.
I mean I don´t say I have stability problems just because I´m evil and want to cause damage for Paradox, but because especially multiplayer causes heavy stability problems here
(as I said singleplayer is also very stable here now, but only after slight changing of my system configuration, while other games seem to be able to be stable on whatever system configuration you use - that was my point)
btw. who else tried multiplayer ? How was the stability for you ? I´m really interested in that one.
Scotsman said:
Okay, now I was expecting some answer of this kind, but I´m glad that you at least kept a friendly tone.
I think no one doubts that the usual RTS (RealTimeStrategy for those, who didn´t knew it) games are compared to Paradox games much more dependant on "mental velocity" (whatever the correct English term for this is, but you know what I mean) than on tough single decisions, for which you have much time,
BUT Starcraft had 3 different races with completely different units and strengths (defense, offense ("Zerg rush")) and still it was balanced out of the box.
I did not claim that Starcraft would be harder to balance than Victoria, but it also isn´t totally obvious how to chose the Hitpoints and cost of a terran battleship and the speed of a Protoss Infantry that the whole thing is still balanced.
However Blizzard did balance it, while Victoria is - totally - unbalanced out of the box ;
may it be more difficult to do the balancing, but that´s no excuse for how ridiculously easy the game was in 1.00 and 1.01 (and still is to easy in 1.02 if you play certain countries and/or use some exploits respectively semi-exploits (but that´s another story where the opinions diversify a lot - I myself was not happy with 1.02, too.
This was however more caused by the way the difficulty was raised, not because it was raised)).
Well about your last paragraph I appreciate that you didn´t insult anybody, but I guess (well actually I´m sure) that this is on the same wave as the guys that pointed out the "intelligent deep-strategy gamer" directly or indirectly.
I don´t doubt that other genre´s games have more black sheep players (mostly because they have more overall players), but anyone intelligent knows that you can´t judge someone´s IQ by the games he´s playing.
I was on some team-meetings of a "need for speed" (some serious stupid console arcade racing game for those who don´t know it
) team - so you may believe me here.Spruce said:
True, but it surely also doesn´t make sense to beat those people who say "this is not perfect" , "that could be much better" , "why don´t they improve this?"
away with the phrase "you don´t need to play Paradox games if they aren´t good enough for you".
Sadly that is what happens on this forums regularly.
Spruce said:
Yeah well, fair expectations - I guess the very high quality of Europa Universalis one and two made my (and other´s) expectations indeed quite high.
Still I stick with the opinion that "Victoria, 1.00" is also below "fair expectations", the game release was just too early.
Sorry this was again a bit off from the current topic of the thread, but my excuse is that this current topic also isn´t the original one
.About the manuals:
I usually use manuals for two things:
-bed-reading (Homeworld was already named as an example, I´d also count eg. Empire Earth here)
-to look up how something specific can be done. (or tables: character values in Baldurs gate eg.)
however in Victoria this is not needed, because as soon as you discover something the nice tooltips will tell you how to handle it.
In Vicky´s case some tutorial section that guided your first steps would however have been nice, because there´s no in-game-tutorial.
Sikker said:
I will assume by your question that you want know if Victoria 1.02 is worth the price tag. The answer, in my humble opinion, is :no
Vicky 1.03, 1.04, or 1.05 may be but my copy is collecting dust until those patches are available.
This is my opinion(of which I am entitled to) so fan-boys can refrain from demanding lists of reasons or evidence for this conclusion. I dont pretend to know everything about the game; I am only sayign I dont care to know anything more about the game until some problems are resolved.
Spruce said:
If I took this personal I wouldn't be such an old timer in these parts.
Spruce said:it's not that we begrude others opinion, but that's simply the nature of the Paradox games, either like it or dislike it,
saying "challenging" is not the same as "too difficult"
True, but there are levels in that. I would wager that most forum members would say that Victoria is by far more challenging than EU2.
Who's to say if Paradox bit off more than they could chew on this one? The consumer will, of course - as will the gaming press. For good or ill...
I never understood how people have said Victoria is challenging. If you play it for 2-3 hours, you will have it down. If you play it for couple days, you will have most aspects of the game mastered. It's certainly no more challenging than anythign else.
As for the manual question, my favorite was the EU I manual. I loved the history section in it. Sure, it didn't help much to learn the game. But in those days I didn't even know of these forums, and learned it the good old fashioned way, trial and error.
As for the manual question, my favorite was the EU I manual. I loved the history section in it. Sure, it didn't help much to learn the game. But in those days I didn't even know of these forums, and learned it the good old fashioned way, trial and error.
My advice on manuals:
Get the staff and testers together to make sure that the basics are covered. Then have them submit a list of those basics to a native English speaker with writing experience who is familiar with Paradox products (and hopefully the product involved). Have them write up a manual. Before you release the game, release that manual on the Paradox forums so that people can ask questions (or submit corrections) and you can improve the manual. You have a dedicated fan base; I suggest you use it. It might require releasing an even earlier manual - but at least it would allow people to make good points about it ahead of time.
My experience with Paradox manuals (I own HoI, EU2, and Victoria) is that the English is generally stilted and hard to understand, and that they generally seem to be written by only one person - with a very particular way of looking at things which is not mine. More input and better English would go a long way toward improving Paradox documentation, IMHO.
Get the staff and testers together to make sure that the basics are covered. Then have them submit a list of those basics to a native English speaker with writing experience who is familiar with Paradox products (and hopefully the product involved). Have them write up a manual. Before you release the game, release that manual on the Paradox forums so that people can ask questions (or submit corrections) and you can improve the manual. You have a dedicated fan base; I suggest you use it. It might require releasing an even earlier manual - but at least it would allow people to make good points about it ahead of time.
My experience with Paradox manuals (I own HoI, EU2, and Victoria) is that the English is generally stilted and hard to understand, and that they generally seem to be written by only one person - with a very particular way of looking at things which is not mine. More input and better English would go a long way toward improving Paradox documentation, IMHO.
Cagliostro said:
Too bad many of those dedicated fans wouldn't buy the game, but warez it and still they would have the manual.
Mozart41st said:
you make it as challenging as you wish. I played Austria and I was dreaming of the "Austrian empire". All a sudden I found myself attacked by the "anti-Austrian empire", more or less all my neighbours,
just a tought tough,
Grosshaus said:
Are you trying to be insulting?
Claiming that fans are simply pirates-in-waiting is irresponsible and insulting. It's ridiculous that fear of pirates by Paradox is more important than pleasing their customers. Perhaps if they got it the other way around it might be possible to find Victoria in a few more stores at the moment.
As the manual is roughly worthless, and this forum answers any questions one might have, the manual is superflous. I bought the game and played without the manual, so I'm sure the army of pirates who must cause such paranoia in your every thoughts can play the game as well.
You're SURE Dinsdale? Hrmmm how can you be SURE unless you are one of them yourself with actual experience? hrmmmm????
ravinhood said:You're SURE Dinsdale? Hrmmm how can you be SURE unless you are one of them yourself with actual experience? hrmmmm????
Got to love witch hunts
Should I scan the box in and post it on the forum?