Is playing DLC Bulgaria a pain? and to a lesser extent Turkey too?

[Zeprion]

Why I think playing DLC Bulgaria is a pain and to a lesser extent Turkey too? Because of the micromanagement decisions so that you won't have civil or other bad things happened to you.

I suppose the purpose of this is to make you have something else to do in peacetime. But this is the equivalent of giving you a tic-tac-toe mini-game. There are better clicker games than Hearts of Iron IV's decisions.

Bulgaria's focus tree could have easily worked without all those factions that you have to please or destory in order to avoid a civil war. A civil war that you are bound to lose, if only they made a minor civil war so that it's not a big inconvenient if you don't want to bother. Turkey could have also easily worked without all that decisions micromanagement, Ataturk could have died at a fixed time or randomly within a certain interval and the Kurdish areas could start as a default colony state with the focus options to become a core state.

I love flavor in a game. But what I understand by flavor is: generals, unique portraits, realistic focuses and national ideas, historical accuracy. Not having to keep an eye on the decisions tab or else your country will fall into chaos, this isn't fun to play. Germany is a great example of this, it has a lot of flavor, a lot of options in the focus tree but no micromanagement decisions so that your country won't fall apart.

The first time micromanagement decisions were added was in Man the Guns' USA, but it's not the same thing. You don't get a civil war if the senate doesn't agree with you. And almost nobody particularly enjoyed that game mechanic, it was meh.

With the micromanagement decisions aside, although that is the main issue as the nations would be more enjoyable without them. These 2 focuses are also surprisingly rigid.

Rigid in the sense that there's not much room for sandbox or flexibility, you have a few "predefined stories" and that's it, and the moment you stop following that predefined story things start to get messy and fall apart like in Kaiserreich. That is not a good sign.

It may be fun to do a certain scenario in singleplayer, but that certain scenario needs to be adaptable in case: the player doesn't want to strictly follow the predefined path, other countries' actions in the game make some things kind of messy and other countries' actions in multiplayer makes things a lot worse.

It's great to have more options, but not so great to make them too restricitve or complicated. The complicated part of Hearts of Iron 4 should be the battles, not the focus tree or decisions tab.

Mexico has a lot of civil wars, but they are not a clicker game. It's actually fun to try to avoid them and make your country stronger in the process. And I believe it doesn't lead to buggy situations if you drift apart from the pre-defined path.

Netherlands has a "great game" decision battle between itself, UK and Germany. Although it has some problems, things start to fall part sometimes when UK and/or Germany doesn't go historical, the game mechanic is not that adaptable to change, it's fun to try to gain influence and it's not a clicker game. And if you lose, nothing that bad like a civil war happens.

I guess where I'm trying to get to is that a nation needs to be user-friendly, a clicker game to avoid a catastrophe is not user-friendly, neither having a rigid focus that breaks apart the moment you don't 100% follow the predefined path. A lot of things to do, doesn't necessarly equal more fun. Chess is fun and it's fairly simple. It has only a few rules but they are very nicely mixed together. France getting a serious civil war with the communists when stability drops below 25% despite having 0 communism popularity is not fun by comparison.

I'm not under the illusion that the devs will remove micromanagement decisions because of me, they put a lot of work into it and there may be other users who disagree, I'm just curious whether there are other players who share the same view about micromanagement decisions to keep your country from falling apart. And the reason I made this topic is because I hope the micromanagement decisions will be avoided in the future. For me Bulgaria simply isn't fun to play, although I wanted to play it. I don't want this to become the norm for the next Hearts of Iron 4 DLCs.

 

[donald dawkins]

I have found turkey to be less fun, however the new dlc for Bulgaria has made it have a lot of game impact in mp games in my own opinion.

turkey focus tree effectively renders it impotent until 1940-41, upon which its focus buffs and industry grows enough to be a relevant threat on par with Italy to the allies and the soviets.

Bulgaria also has this issue/gameplay style, having little industry, manpower and political instability early game, but with the right research and focuses can rival Italy in civilian factories by 39 and be able to have massive game impact in Barbarossa From its sheer industrial strength and lack of strategic responsibilities.

This has led to both nations being fun to play late game, but has also led (for me personally) to these nations being awfully unfun early game, in meme mp games or historical games with bad axis majors.

Because turkey is weak until 40, it’s basically prey to aggressive Balkan nations, and by the time it’s useful the game is already over or the clays all been taken. Equally, even if you do side with the Germans in an mp game, you’re in the same boat as the Soviet Union; you can sit for six hours of your life waiting to play just for Germany to fail to take France and watch the game end. Not very fun. Not very flexible.

Similarly, Bulgarias true strength is is it’s historical axis focus tree, which means it’s once resigned To game impact in 1940-41. So, in meme mp games it’s free real estate for Romania (which you really can’t do much about to stop) and if you have a bad Germany in an historical game you will waste 6 hours to achieve nothing. Again, not very flexible, not very fun.

in short, i feel that both these nations have become stronger late game, but have in fact lost their flexibility early game, being forced to build up excessively and avoid early fun to reach their full potential, whereas with their basic focus tree gave the opportunity for early foreign policy without gimping themselves in the process.

To simplify this argument, Bulgaria and turkey are currently like the USA right now; you can either go down new deal, wait 5 years and begin to have immense fun, or go down limited intervention to have some early fun, and basically be useless/ severely damage yourself and your ability to do anything in the game. These focuses give you a Hobson’s choice; you can make the Ottoman Empire, you can reclaim the balkans, but you really shouldn’t as it’s not particularly efficient or effective, leaving you with only real ONE option; late game axis stacking.

A successful dlc? I would say so as both nations HAVE become relevant and to a degree strong. A successful dlc in in terms of giving players good choices and options? absolutely not.

 

[Zeprion]

I have found turkey to be less fun, however the new dlc for Bulgaria has made it have a lot of game impact in mp games in my own opinion.

turkey focus tree effectively renders it impotent until 1940-41, upon which its focus buffs and industry grows enough to be a relevant threat on par with Italy to the allies and the soviets.

Bulgaria also has this issue/gameplay style, having little industry, manpower and political instability early game, but with the right research and focuses can rival Italy in civilian factories by 39 and be able to have massive game impact in Barbarossa From its sheer industrial strength and lack of strategic responsibilities.

This has led to both nations being fun to play late game, but has also led (for me personally) to these nations being awfully unfun early game, in meme mp games or historical games with bad axis majors.

Because turkey is weak until 40, it’s basically prey to aggressive Balkan nations, and by the time it’s useful the game is already over or the clays all been taken. Equally, even if you do side with the Germans in an mp game, you’re in the same boat as the Soviet Union; you can sit for six hours of your life waiting to play just for Germany to fail to take France and watch the game end. Not very fun. Not very flexible.

Similarly, Bulgarias true strength is is it’s historical axis focus tree, which means it’s once resigned To game impact in 1940-41. So, in meme mp games it’s free real estate for Romania (which you really can’t do much about to stop) and if you have a bad Germany in an historical game you will waste 6 hours to achieve nothing. Again, not very flexible, not very fun.

in short, i feel that both these nations have become stronger late game, but have in fact lost their flexibility early game, being forced to build up excessively and avoid early fun to reach their full potential, whereas with their basic focus tree gave the opportunity for early foreign policy without gimping themselves in the process.

To simplify this argument, Bulgaria and turkey are currently like the USA right now; you can either go down new deal, wait 5 years and begin to have immense fun, or go down limited intervention to have some early fun, and basically be useless/ severely damage yourself and your ability to do anything in the game. These focuses give you a Hobson’s choice; you can make the Ottoman Empire, you can reclaim the balkans, but you really shouldn’t as it’s not particularly efficient or effective, leaving you with only real ONE option; late game axis stacking.

A successful dlc? I would say so as both nations HAVE become relevant and to a degree strong. A successful dlc in in terms of giving players good choices and options? absolutely not.

Good points, I also dislike the fact that you can't do much early game anymore, but what do you think of the micromanagement decisions for internal factions?
Personally, I find it annoying that always you have to keep an eye on them, have to go back and click on a new decision every few days when you could pay attention to other stuff. You could start with the debuffs but not have to spam the decisions tab constatly to avoid having your country fall in the civil war.

When MEFO bills decisions were added for Germany, you had to click on them every 60 or 120 days(?!), it was rather inconvenient so the process was automatized, you have them by default without doing anything and only lose them when going to war, and that was far from every 7-30 days as it's the case for Turkey and Bulgaria.

 

[Cpt.Cross]

Lots of these threads come up and you will get down voted but nobody says why you're wrong.

Simple fact is that Turkey and Bulgaria are not fun to play as they are.

 

[Anton V]

Funnier than getting fascist demagogue with first 150 pp, switch to fascism and start declaring on neighbours by 1937 imo. It was the only way ppl played Bulgaria for years, before the web of guarantees in the Balkans made even this simple and boring strategy obsolete. Now you have 3(4) major paths, each of them giving you huge potential to expansion.

 

[Tsavong]

I liked to do the bulgarian faction minigame. It gives something to do while you wait for focus to finish, the possible civil war is a good thing to make me engaged and the pp cost is not so high that you dont bother like in turkey. There i found the decisions regarding the kurds and fundamentalists rather senseless do to their high cost and low success rate.
Then the bulgarian focus tree is really powerful in SP , especially the communist branch since you get all of the balkan as core without fighting any war if you do it right.
But I can see that in open MP games it might be not fun at all .
On top of that even in ahistoric singeplayer there are things that result in a complete mess . For example:

I played turkey recently and once again went down the ottoman path. At one point i puppeted bulgaria with the focus. 140 days later it was an romanian puppet, because romania did the "demand puppet Focus" against bulgaria and i had no say on that matter as their overlord...

 

[Dryhad]

I have not yet played Bulgaria but I have played a fair bit of Turkey and I did not find the decisions side of things at all onerous. The alerts for missions before there's any actual way of dealing with things can be annoying but that's clearly not what you're talking about, you're talking about the dealing with things. But I've never felt that I was on the brink of a civil war and only frantic clicking would rescue me, it's just another part of the build up, and with a proper consequence if you screw up really badly.

I agree that Turkey is very slow to start and I can appreciate that that won't appeal to many playstyles, but for my part I find the generic minor strategy of flip fascist as fast as possible and justify on all your neighbors to be incredibly boring. Turkey is back-loaded with its expansionism late game and that's actually how I like to play.

Sorry it's not your cup of tea.

 

[Zeprion]

Funnier than getting fascist demagogue with first 150 pp, switch to fascism and start declaring on neighbours by 1937 imo. It was the only way ppl played Bulgaria for years, before the web of guarantees in the Balkans made even this simple and boring strategy obsolete. Now you have 3(4) major paths, each of them giving you huge potential to expansion.

I'm not against the unique focus tree. Although the focuses are a bit dull early game, I definetly like having an unique focus tree over a generic one, they are clearly an improvement. The part I dislike about the new DLC is the micromanagement decisions for internal factions, which frankly I find not fun at all and a waste of time.

@Tsavong and @Dryhad, everyone including myself has a "the game is boring before the war starts" problem, for me it's a very minor thing as I took the time to look at what other nations/players are doing and adjust my strategy, for others it may be more of an inconvenient than for me. So there was a desire to do while you wait for focus to finish. But I was hoping that feeling that gap could have been done with other things that would give you benefits and would require strategic thinking.

The internal factions are just dull. Once you learn the meta, it becomes as easy as 1+1=2 to do it right, it's just boring. And the punishment of a civil war that you cannot win in case you fail I also find unreasonable. It's reasonable to have a civil war that will cause some damage to your country, but not to completly lose the game because you forgot to click on "support the X" decision for the 7th time.

Turkey is not on the brink of civil war, Bulgaria is. Turkey has those Ataturk and Kurds independence problems. A lot less grind than in Bulgaria's case, but I would have loved it more if it only started as a debuff and colonies states in Kurdistan that could later be removed and replaced with cores, that's how things used to be before this DLC. Even with decisions, I'm not against solving those issues with decisions in general, I'm against solving those issues with decisions that you have to click every 7-30 days because otherwise something bad will happen with your country.

For new players, I believe Bulgaria and Turkey are some of the least user-friendly nations right now.

In singleplayer Turkey and Bulgaria can be fun, as long as you stick to the script and probably stay on historical (lack of flexibility), but in multiplayer you have to wait a lot until you can actually participate in the war. And by "wait" I mean grind those decisions so you won't fall into civil war. That's assuming you don't roleplay as Romania can eat Bulgaria right away and USSR eat Turkey due to their early game weakness, and the fact that the player has to both fight on the frontline and take a look at those decisions tab every few second.

But ultimately, taste is subjective, it's just not my cup of tea.

 

[Anton V]

Well, I guess it is a matter of preference. Faction management is easy after one or two games when you learn the basics for the country specific problems and mechanics.
I spent a lot of time playing with BG in SP since BftB release and my opinion is that it's the country in the pack with easiest and most OP(like real, real OP) mechanics once you learn how to do it and depend on RNG as little as possible. It's not about the faction management, it's synch between it, timing the focuses, lifting army restrictions and swaying your neighbours and keeping an eye on the big dogs. And you can do it in 4 major paths.
MP is different case. Just don't play Bulgaria in MP if it's a meme game.

 

[donald dawkins]

Good points, I also dislike the fact that you can't do much early game anymore, but what do you think of the micromanagement decisions for internal factions?
Personally, I find it annoying that always you have to keep an eye on them, have to go back and click on a new decision every few days when you could pay attention to other stuff. You could start with the debuffs but not have to spam the decisions tab constatly to avoid having your country fall in the civil war.

When MEFO bills decisions were added for Germany, you had to click on them every 60 or 120 days(?!), it was rather inconvenient so the process was automatized, you have them by default without doing anything and only lose them when going to war, and that was far from every 7-30 days as it's the case for Turkey and Bulgaria.

I find the new decisions much like theUSA senate system; it’s basically a balancing factor that forces you to spend political power to become useful later on in the game, and if you choose to ignore these systems you hamper your nations capabilities massively.

for Bulgaria (the nation iev played the most out of the dlc focuses) you either waste early focuses and political power to stamp out the parties to get a big stability boost and later political power boost, or you don’t and you get a civil war and continued low stability that hampers your construction efforts And makes you weak to foreign invasion. Not much of a choice!

there’s no real pro or con decision making to be had, you either stamp out the parties and be useful or don’t and have it severely undermine your effectiveness.

it’s a great newb trap but otherwise these new decisions add nothing particularly new to the nation and instead simply act as a balancing tool, preventing you rushing other things with your political power (economy laws, trade laws etc) until mid-late game.

I see the logic due to Bulgarias economic potential, but fundamentally it acts as a subtle railroading technique to force you to play a certain way, which like my previous post, is the great failure with the new dlc.

really, each focus path for the new nations should give you pros AND cons for different play styles, whereas this new dlc only gives you cons for most play styles (early wars, early intervention etc) and one big pro for the long term approach.

With the great power of hindsight I would have changed the focuses to to allow greater styles of play while adding balancing cons for each play style. For example, I would have given Bulgaria a focus path that allowed early rush wars with large short term buffs, with the con of a hard time limit that if you didn’t achieve your focus goal within a certain date/ time you would suffer large penalties to your nations stability and general strength.

alternatively, I would have provided the Bulgarian focus tree the choice of large short term buffs with the cost of growing long term penalties that came as a cost of those short term benefits, meaning that Bulgarian players would have a choice of early war snowballing in blitzkrieg style gameplay or the other (current) choice of long term investment and mid game usefulness.

to summarise the new dlc in a short a sentence as possible; you get a lot of options, but only one real choice.

 

[Dryhad]

@Tsavong and @Dryhad, everyone including myself has a "the game is boring before the war starts" problem, for me it's a very minor thing as I took the time to look at what other nations/players are doing and adjust my strategy, for others it may be more of an inconvenient than for me. So there was a desire to do while you wait for focus to finish. But I was hoping that feeling that gap could have been done with other things that would give you benefits and would require strategic thinking.

See, I feel like the Six Arrows decision fill that role. Maybe they aren't the platonic ideal of this kind of thing but they definitely give benefits; as far as strategic thinking goes it's more in PP budgeting than anything more novel but I did find the timing of Secularism to have a minor strategic element related to the Traditionalist mission.

Turkey is not on the brink of civil war, Bulgaria is. Turkey has those Ataturk and Kurds independence problems. A lot less grind than in Bulgaria's case, but I would have loved it more if it only started as a debuff and colonies states in Kurdistan that could later be removed and replaced with cores, that's how things used to be before this DLC. Even with decisions, I'm not against solving those issues with decisions in general, I'm against solving those issues with decisions that you have to click every 7-30 days because otherwise something bad will happen with your country.

But Kurdistan does start as debuffed colony states that are later replaced by cores! Actually I've been incredibly unimpressed by the intervention decisions for Kurdistan, they are definitely not something I want to be clicking every 7-30 days, if at all! I've had much more success just leaning into the baseline occupation mechanics and coring when the focus tree and other requirements permit. However, the focus tree plays a big role in how that actually shakes out, so maybe some paths are duller than others.

 

[Vlad123]

As I said in my thread, let's add that all new focuses (99%) are 70 days old ... and you can start playing when ... that's it! I'm sorry but I did, my mod of quick decisions (7 days) to slowly increase fascism, besides you have focus, but it's just an extra boost, to become a fascist first. Nothing more, nothing less. I want to have something to really do, in peacetime ... don't remember to click on X every 7 days, otherwise the country explodes! Seriously!? But what is happening at the PDX !? Each decision he makes is worse than the last. Every decision to solve the problem, nor create a worse one ... The generic focus is in some ways still the best for the minors (especially fascist branch, + 7% recruitable population -10% recruiting time. Absurdly great and you get it FAST ! You get the French equivalent, when? In 42/43, when it's all done !?). If paradox has changed the ceo, or has moved the head of the hoi section to another game ... please take that person back and fire the current boss: he is incompetent!

 

[Iskulya]

Nope, not at all.

I think both countries are pretty great and work excellently. Doesn't really matter that they aren't beginner friendly because a beginner can just pick..... literally any other country in the game.

This isn't your first thread complaining about them, either. Why the repeat?

 

[Vlad123]

It's not just these two countries! Ask yourself why so many of the community LOVE Mexican NF! Because it is fast! If you see other focus three ... it's disastrous! 70 days for 2 civilian factories? or worse +3 infrastructures in +3 states !? Or even worse for EMPTY CONSTRUCTION SLOTS !?

 

[Harin]

micromanagement decisions

I have only played Turkey so far. I think I can understand what you mean when it comes to decisions and clicking on the map to address issues the country is facing.

While the new focuses give the player much more to do within a nation during the early game, outside the nation the game has not changed. Creating this world inside a world has created two main problems, in my opinion. First, the outside world seems oblivious to the focuses the minor nation is taking. When a minor nation takes diplomatic steps to become a regional power and has successfully completed focuses to start a local conflict, there seems to be no change in the major powers. The minor nation, despite having a very interesting focus tree, is still trapped in the game world where the majors will guarantee or take everything in the early game, despite what any focus tree says.

This could be fixed. When a minor nation successfully completes certain focuses, then the majors should back off. Guarantees should fall off, at the least. A minor that becomes a regional power, should be just that. As long as the regional power stays neutral between the major powers, it should have space to operate in.

The second main problem, in my opinion, is the decision user interface. It needs an update. Decisions are more interesting, important, and numerous, now. When playing Turkey I did not notice that I had icons to click in the Kurdish areas until I happened to have the decision window open while centered over Turkey. There were no decisions to alert me, it was just a sun looking icon on the map. For me, decisions fall into the category "out-of-sight-out-of-mind". When things get hectic, or a player thinks this is a good time to go speed 5, decisions can be overlooked. Reloading a game is not fun for the sake of a decision and in ironman, it is not an option.

I wished I had the perfect suggestion for making a better decision interface, but I don't. With the potential decisions have in adding to the game, it seems like they should pop up on the screen and stay there, like naval invasions and such. Maybe the decisions could line up, left to right, at the top of the screen, under the game menu. Maybe that is to, much, but opening the decision window every ten days or so while playing Turkey is bothersome. Since decisions can add so much to the game, it might be time to make the interface better.

 

[GSP Jr]

The first time micromanagement decisions were added was in Man the Guns' USA, but it's not the same thing. You don't get a civil war if the senate doesn't agree with you. And almost nobody particularly enjoyed that game mechanic, it was meh.

Actually, the "Congress" is pretty cool if you mod the game to include other functions/powers that Congress has in real life. Confirmation of Cabinet Secretaries and Armed Forces High Command are a couple that the Senate has come to mind immediately.

'm not under the illusion that the devs will remove micromanagement decisions because of me, they put a lot of work into it and there may be other users who disagree, I'm just curious whether there are other players who share the same view about micromanagement decisions to keep your country from falling apart. And the reason I made this topic is because I hope the micromanagement decisions will be avoided in the future. For me Bulgaria simply isn't fun to play, although I wanted to play it. I don't want this to become the norm for the next Hearts of Iron 4 DLCs.

Before BftB, you wrote walls of text advising the devs on your views of the historical region leading up to, and during the war.
All the different personalities and groups, the "Powder Keg" at it's most dangerous.
If I recall from some Dev Diaries, they thanked you for your input and you thanked them for paying attention to it.

You wanted all the flavor, all the complexity, every personality to be in the game, did you not?
How did you think the devs would let you control all those different possible paths besides clicking on things?

 

[guprad]

Personally I find the faction system extremely interesting . I actually love clicking on those decisions to be honest, it not only gives me something to do but it gives me the impression that all these various factions contribute something to Bulgaria history and I'm now interested in it. Want to pick up some few books to read about them to be honest. I actually hope they add more factions in the future, they actually divide the nation up in various ideological beliefs and makes it a bit more realistic to me, plus now they actually do something when they're unhappy with your rule, they affect it in negative ways and making them happy gives you benefits as they're less likely to affect you negatively.

 

[Zeprion]

Nope, not at all.
I think both countries are pretty great and work excellently. Doesn't really matter that they aren't beginner friendly because a beginner can just pick..... literally any other country in the game.
This isn't your first thread complaining about them, either. Why the repeat?

A matter of preference I guess.
Because it's not the same subject? The other thread you mention is about the fact the Bulgarian and Turkish focuses take too long until you get to the good stuff and have a lot of filler focuses, I briefly mentioned the micromanagement decisions but it was just a side note. This one is about the micromanagement decisions.

The fact that a beginner can just pick literally any other country in the game doesn't change the fact that this difficulty threshold is for no reason at all. England is supposed to be hard for a beginner, you fight on the whole globe, France is supposed to be hard for a beginner, you are weaker than Germany who will soon attack you and you historically lost. Why are Bulgaria and Turkey especially difficult then? no reason.

Actually, the "Congress" is pretty cool if you mod the game to include other functions/powers that Congress has in real life. Confirmation of Cabinet Secretaries and Armed Forces High Command are a couple that the Senate has come to mind immediately.

Before BftB, you wrote walls of text advising the devs on your views of the historical region leading up to, and during the war.
All the different personalities and groups, the "Powder Keg" at it's most dangerous.
If I recall from some Dev Diaries, they thanked you for your input and you thanked them for paying attention to it.

You wanted all the flavor, all the complexity, every personality to be in the game, did you not?
How did you think the devs would let you control all those different possible paths besides clicking on things?

You misunderstood my advices, they were not about Bulgaria and Turkey, except for better state borders in the Balkans.
I want more historical accuracy. That includes more flavor and personalities. But not micromanagement decisions, which I never suggested.
What has been done in Bulgaria and Turkey could have easily been implemented without the micromanagement decisions.

And I never suggested anything about more complexity, new game mechanics or internal factions decisions.
I'm not saying more complexity or new game mechanics in general are bad, just that I never suggested these.

Most of my suggestions were lore and flavor based, I enjoy both historical and alt-historical games, but I believe the historical path should be accurate.
For example: Romania was a democracy in 1936 under the PNL. In the game, Romania used to be non-aligned in 1936 under FRN.
While alternative historical games, however unrealistic they may be (Japan going communist), have to start the divergence from a historical point.
For example: The leader of the Japanese communist party, should be some advocate of communism, not someone who hated communism in real life, as it makes no sense and breaks immersion.

But there is a huge difference between more historical accuracy and more micromanagement decisions.
I never suggested any internal factions system.

The problem is not "clicking on things", but "clicking on things every few in-game days to keep your country from falling apart". Quite the difference.
As for how to control all those different possible paths?
- Simply remove the internal factions system from Bulgaria and keep the unique focus tree.
- And for Turkey, remove the Ataturk and Kurdistan decisions in the form they are now. Ataturk simply dies on a random date in the month he died in real life. While the Kurds start out as a colony state, and after a focus, for example: "Peace at Home" and "Achieveing Ataturk's Dream" you unlock decisions to core them. These are simple decisions: it can cost 100 political power and if you do it you instantly core that region, but nothing bad happens if you don't core that region.
With these simple changes, you get the same gameplay experience with all those different possible paths, but without the internal factions system.