It's time to kill EUIV

[VA GHOST]

When did the game first hit the ~10$/€ mark? It's been a while, isn't it?
While your statement holds true in general, it's not really the case with EU IV. The price of the base game has stagnated for a long time. Everyone remotely interested has had so many opportunities to check it out by now. The price of the expansions shouldn't matter much (besides, anything older than a year has been reduced multiple times by 75% as well), since I seriously doubt many would buy expansions to try out a new game.


While I do think corruption and states/territories need some balancing (we always need to wait for the next patch to see new mechanics starting to work, don't we?), I don't get your argument in general.

The main complaints I hear all the time about EU IV (which I, personally, can support as well) are:
1) The game is too easy.
2) Nothing to do except expansion.
3) Hardly anyone reaches late game / finishes their campaigns most of the time.

As far as I see, the developers are constantly trying to find a solution to these problems, which is absolutely requested by a large part of the players judging from forum posts, now in the form of corruption and states/territories.

So, how is the challenge to have a stable/ affluent realm an inherently bad thing? Since EU III, money has never been an issue after a few decades into any campaign, which is somewhat unrealistic and has always been complained about (and rightly so). How is it bad that money realistically becomes another constraint besides monarch power?
>>>>>>>>
The game is easier for players who min/max everything yes. (See developers playing MP for Cossacks) Instead of tweaking current game mechanics they introduce (imho poorly thought out) new mechanics which merely duplicate current simpler mechanics. Having money being too short in the beginning and to much later means they should tweak their economy. Not introduce something new that just punishes the average player. I've started games as England and Brandenburg, even dropping everything to zero and disabling forts I lose money. That does not make sense and goes against their wanting players to build forts.
>>>>>>>>

How is it bad that you can't blob as easily anymore while keeping absolute control over even remote parts of your empire, which, again, is unrealistic and has been criticized many times before. It was high time for a change here, so why not try it with the increased autonomy of territories?
The new system even provides players with much more control than e.g. the flat autonomy increase of overseas provinces. Now, we can at least decide which provinces/regions we value more and like to have better integrated in our realm.
>>>>>>>>>
So they introduce corruption and states/regions which make no sense and act as a money drain instead of tweaking the economy. So adding new territories makes money go away in established provinces - corruption - makes no sense. Instead of say, adding new provinces and cultures making your government less stable and efficient as it used to be - i.e. stability mechanic.
>>>>>>>>>>

The funny thing is, if we would just play at higher game speeds a bit more, there shouldn't even be a big difference compared to before. Except, we actually would reach mid/late game and smaller nations had a chance to survive the first 50 years for once. How would that be less fun?

The one thing that is getting harder are world conquests. But I can see balancing those with a viable mid/late game with any challenge left to be incredibly difficult in any case.

Again, this doesn't mean corruption and territories work perfectly as of right now. I do think they need balancing!
In my recent campaign, the AI has lots of problems to deal with the new economic constraints. Scotland has been in severe debts for decades following three rebellions and after they subsequently dishonored their alliance with France, they got conquered by an Irish 2PM it apparently couldn't afford to keep more than 3000 men under arms.


The way players play the game is absolutely not wrong. However, where is the fun, when you're bigger than anyone else 50 years into the game? Shouldn't the game designer's acknowledge if the game doesn't work as intended / there are game design flaws and try to address those?

How is introducing new artificial mechanics worse than tuning / expanding existing artificial mechanics?
And - that may be personal - how on earth would getting a stability hit of all things be better? Am i the only one getting nightmare from the mere sound of it?
Next thing you propose is fixing things by introducing more increased coring cost penalties.

>>>>>>>
I don't propose what you said in your last statement nor am I fully in with the stability IDEA but I was illustrating they could have the same effect as what they tried with corruption and states/regions upon player behavior by tweaking current simple and efficient already in the game designs and functions.

 

[romothecus]

And the amount of people playing any given week still grow. Almost twice as many play the game today as when Art of War was released as an example.

I'm not sure Art of War is the most relevant point to begin measuring from. But regardless, I have a feeling that number of people playing per week might start declining this summer, for one reason or another...

 

[Grand Historian]

I'm not sure Art of War is the most relevant point to begin measuring from. But regardless, I have a feeling that number of people playing per week might start declining this summer, for one reason or another...

Art of War was pretty much what heralded the arrival of EU4 2.0/the transition into unofficial EU5.

 

[Nassau]

Currently the price to be up to date with EU4 is a tad bit higher than at release.. Original game still is at 40€, unless at temporary sales.

And the amount of people playing any given week still grow. Almost twice as many play the game today as when Art of War was released as an example..

No, we won't kill EU4 anytime soon, it would just be insanely silly to do, as people buy our expansions and dlc's in enormous amount every month.

You startled me there. I played BFH, during which constant promises like these were made. Until the killed it. Then I realised EU4 as single player is totally different.


Still, you scared me.

 

[SolSys]

... Both ideas go against a great game designer's rules: Monsieur Sid Meier's ...

The latest Civ game that I immensely enjoyed was Civ3 [Civ4 was OK, but I was busy with school], so that little argument flies out the window.

Nonetheless, I still have great respect for the man [and the company].

 

[Grand Historian]

The latest Civ game that I immensely enjoyed was Civ3 [Civ4 was OK, but I was busy with school], so that little argument flies out the window.

Nonetheless, I still have great respect for the man [and the company].

Civ 4 was great (if not a bit too political) and Civ 5 with all expansions is arguably the best in the series, and I don't think Sid himself has really been involved with much recently.

 

[VA GHOST]

The latest Civ game that I immensely enjoyed was Civ3 [Civ4 was OK, but I was busy with school], so that little argument flies out the window.

Nonetheless, I still have great respect for the man [and the company].

Just to correct you Sid's name is on CIV IV, but he wasn't in the design team for IV (not sure if III even) - he was working on game designs for Sims. Also, your argument boils down to "so and so released a bad game" so his rules for making great games should be ignored.

Steven Spielberg directed and associate producer for Indy IV.

So we can call him a hack and any guidance or rules he has for making great movies because his one bad movie undoes
Jaws
Schindler's List
Catch me if You Can
Indy I
etc, etc

Even if he was in the design of IV - that nulls his list of GREAT games?

 

[DanubianCossak]

Civ3.

I played this game in an internet caffe in like 1999.

I play it almost every week to this day.

God i wish they developed it more.

 

[Grand Historian]

Civ3.

I played this game in an internet caffe in like 1999.

I play it almost every week to this day.

God i wish they developed it more.

In general I find Firaxis' rule of 'two expansions per game for Civ' to be incredibly frustrating, as it always feels like there's just a few things more that could be done to truly make the game perfect with just one more tur- expansion.

 

[ramius3443]

Currently the price to be up to date with EU4 is a tad bit higher than at release.. Original game still is at 40€, unless at temporary sales.

And the amount of people playing any given week still grow. Almost twice as many play the game today as when Art of War was released as an example..

No, we won't kill EU4 anytime soon, it would just be insanely silly to do, as people buy our expansions and dlc's in enormous amount every month.

Out of curiosity, can we get a post including the latest player-statistics sometime soon? It's not an immediate concern, and by all means feel free to put it off, but it is always interesting to see those

 

[solidprice]

1.16 had more toys taken away then given.
Many were need to mix things up, but it may have been too much too soon?
Some things I do believe shouldn't have been in free patch but in the dlc.

Imo a small dlc break would help squish the bugs,balance things out, and make a better dlc.

 

[LokiusMaximus]

Problem is, you are way too focused on short-term here. If the AI nation rolls over very fast, it is actually bad for them long term, since you will just come next time in 10 years and repeat it, and there is nothing they can do. However, IF they resist to the last, it will drain your manpower, your money and give you far more AE if you chose to take 100% warscore. This, will possibly leave you weakened with a large number of people pissed off, which, pretty much is the only situation in which a strong nation can considerably lose a war.

But what if you don't want 100% warscore? Or rather, many of the options in the peace deal hurt the other nation but don't add to AE. So in other words, not only do you take the province or two you want, but you also make them revoke cores, give you 10% of their income, have them transfer their trade power (doubt anyone would want to do that to Bavaria, but you could), force them to give you extra ducats they have lying around, or even force your religion on them if it's different. Which does make me wonder, why doesn't forcing religion have a negative AE effect on you for nations of that religion? For example, if Austria is Catholic and Bavaria is Protestant and Austria forces Catholicism on Bavaria, shouldn't that upset the entire Protestant world? At the same time, shouldn't it improve your opinion among the Catholic world? I love forcing religion on nations before fully annexing them. Makes it easier in the future when I take them.

The MPs system is not bad, but there comes a times when you want a change. It is like eating a good steak everyday. It is great, but there comes a time when you want a good fish. For me this is what happesn with the MP system AND with the NIs. Everyday I miss more and more the old sliders. I thik a mixed system, with both ideas AND sliders for different things, would be th best solution.

I miss the sliders because I felt they added a level of complexity to the game. Though I believe I heard they are never coming back so that may be a moot point.

So, you argue an update of EU IV to EU V would be a good thing based on how the main change from EUIII to EUIV was bad (aka shouldn't have been made)?

Why does it need to revert to the old system? Maybe there could be a blend or maybe there could be something entirely different?

But for whom does any such discussed changes matter? Does the "casual" EU IV player, who doesn't follow this forum, writes Steam reviews (sometimes obviously not even understanding some of the basics) and is just in for a quick round of fun playing one of the major powers really care about truce times and such? I highly doubt it.
To clarify, I absolutely do not say it's bad to play "casually" or be less enthusiastic, all I'm saying is Paradox is well advised to continue valuing the opinions of their core audience more that buys new expansions the day they come out and, in the end, finance their whole business model.

This depends on how many of these core gamers there are compared to the casual gamers. If the core gamers are 5%, then even them buying the expansions doesn't close the gap of the others that buy the box game.

So did EU IV. Apart from fundamental system changes like the revamped diplomatic system with certain responses, the change from chance to progression based actions, monarch power (for better or worse), the unrest revamp or the fort system, even other "modes" like working (Steam) multiplayer, custom nations or random new world. But some of these have been added later on? Exactly my point: There is no need to add such features over the course of several (full price) iterations like so many other franchises do.

Ok, but let's assume you buy all the expansions at release... yes, you can wait some time and get large discounts, but you have to assume people will buy them at release as that is the true "value" of the DLC.

I believe I paid $50 for EUIV at release. So we will go with that.

DLC:

Res Republica: $5
Wealth of Nations: $10
Conquest of Paradise: $15
Art of War: $20 (in my opinion, best expansion by far, yet costs 40% of the base game)
El Dorado: $15
Common Sense: $15
The Cossacks: $20
Mare Nostrum: $15

In Total:
Base game: $50
DLC: $115 or 230% of the base game. Even if you got all of them at 75% off, that's still over 80% of the base game and I've never got anything for 75% off.. I did get some for 67% off, but like most people here, if I am looking forward to a release, I don't want to wait. So no wonder Paradox is going this route. There is a lot more money to be had. They could have added all of these features into EUV and it would be half the profit.

I hate annual updates as much as you. That's why I really love how EU IV is being fine tuned over many years instead of paying much more for a "new" product with several problems that is supported for one year or so with minimal patches but maximally expensive season passes / DLC. And this is absolutely not limited to sports games.

That is why I support biennial releases. I suggested that once on the Football Manager forums and while about 2/3 of users on the forum supported me (based on the poll), the company said it will never happen because they need the annual funding. Of course, I wasn't asking for paid DLC during those two years either. So for them it would be a complete loss of profit.

And as "hardcore" player (aka reading this forum) I oftentimes see several posts demanding "EU IV to die" or something along those lines every week and it frankly gets annoying

It probably does, but I think it also gets annoying to some when some people seem to believe the company can do no wrong.

That's by the way where the rating system seems actually beneficial: so developers don't get a wrong idea just because a vocal minority complains (which is always a danger since humans are much more likely to write when they don't like something as opposed to when they're satisfied).

This is true.

And we all know EU V will come eventually. But that can wait IMO. After Stellaris is released, next thing will be CK III and/or Victoria III. Until then, the only thing that they could do is stop the patches / upgrades - and please don't!

I am thinking Stellaris will be very exciting. Although, there is a chance it could be a major flop for me as well. SciFi is not my favorite thing, but I do like the concept of EU in space. I also am highly looking forward to Victoria III since I missed out on the golden days of Victoria II.

See, that's the spirit I personally don't like. Why do feel the need to put down opinions you disagree with? If you don't like the game to be a tad realistic / challenging and just enjoy blobbing like it was RISK, that's fine by me. But why do you proclaim your opinion to be truth? It is boring TO YOU. Your boring is my fun.

Do you really believe it would be fun for most people to have an essential max of expansion being 100 provinces?

And, for the record, I find the new fort system to be great. Flawed? Absolutely, movement paths etc. are still a big issue and are likely to continue to be.
Is it better than before, though? Hell yes, you only realize afterwards how boring 'kill main army -> carpet siege all of France in less than a year" wars actually were. Now it's much more realistic and you actually have to pay attention not to get your armies assaulted.

I like the idea of forts.. I just think they need some revision. I also think completely destroying an enemy army should be a bigger factor than it is. Or destroying an entire navy of a major naval power like England, Spain, Portugal, or the Ottomans.

And the amount of people playing any given week still grow. Almost twice as many play the game today as when Art of War was released as an example..

No, we won't kill EU4 anytime soon, it would just be insanely silly to do, as people buy our expansions and dlc's in enormous amount every month.

Well, as I showed earlier in this post, the cost of all the DLCs when first released is $115 compared to $50 for the base game. So you are right, from a development standpoint, killing EUIV would be horrible for business.

Go play some total war or civlization V. Eu4 it's Grand Strategy designed for more demanding players. You can't play this game and expect it too be some kind of casual strategy shooter.

I really enjoy Total War when I feel like controlling the troops. But this game really is not that demanding since it seems it has been greatly simplified compared to prior iterations. Never been a huge fan of Civ. In Civ 5, it was only one unit per tile and that got boring fast. Though some say it was better than Civ 4 doom stacks. *shrug* I would like to see different unit types, a better technology tree, and as others mentioned, some from of family tree.

I had exactly the same ideas yesterday and the game was running fine on W7 SP1, with any option activated in 'compatibility' tab. The only thing to do is to kill manually the bink process (ctrl+maj+escape) that prevents the game loading after UbiSoft splashscreen.

What did you notice while comparing the two games?

Once you make an East Asia expansion your sales are probably going to shoot through the roof.

That is the problem with all these expansions. For those with over 1,000 hours, they are great. For the casual gamer, most of these show little benefit. I would guess the vast majority of players, whom are not hardcore into the game, play mainly European play throughs. With over 500 hours and a constant speed 3 (that is the speed I like), I'd say I've had no more than 12-15 total playthroughs. There is still so much for me to do in Europe that I have not thought about expanding to other areas. So most of the expansions I bought don't improve my gameplay a ton. Except Art of War that is.

A proper line of succession would be nice. I know that you guys don't want to make the game into CK2, but a family tree isn't going to make EUIV into CK2, nor would parallels for republics (pool of prominent citizens from which one could draw people to stand for election) or hordes and tribes (list of tribal leaders who may rise to sieze the Khanate).

Correct me if I am wrong as it has been 15 years, but didn't EUII have a small family tree? Or was there just a graphic when an heir was born that I am mistakenly thinking was a family tree?

 

[Clownie]

Currently the price to be up to date with EU4 is a tad bit higher than at release.. Original game still is at 40€, unless at temporary sales.

And the amount of people playing any given week still grow. Almost twice as many play the game today as when Art of War was released as an example..

No, we won't kill EU4 anytime soon, it would just be insanely silly to do, as people buy our expansions and dlc's in enormous amount every month.

I principally agree with your DLC policy (and your rationale that your DLC policy is good because sales are good) because I'm a capitalist, but I personally disagree with it because I think you're selling too poorly thought-out content for too much money.

As some food for thought, have you considered that Paradox could make better DLC and have happier customers for just about the same price if design focus shifted a bit? It wouldn't affect sales, as your loyal customers are still loyal customers who will buy pretty much anything you make as long as you don't become EA. But, personally, I'd derive a lot of satisfaction from both making a significantly better game and turning a profit.

 

[jdrou]

And on your store today:
$9.99 for EU IV.

But that is a temporary sale price; next week it will be back to $40. There were sales two years ago too so that wouldn't affect the long-term increase in unit sales.

 

[Wafthrudnir]

I principally agree with your DLC policy (and your rationale that your DLC policy is good because sales are good) because I'm a capitalist, but I personally disagree with it because I think you're selling too poorly thought-out content for too much money.

As some food for thought, have you considered that Paradox could make better DLC and have happier customers for just about the same price if design focus shifted a bit? It wouldn't affect sales, as your loyal customers are still loyal customers who will buy pretty much anything you make as long as you don't become EA. But, personally, I'd derive a lot of satisfaction from both making a significantly better game and turning a profit.

Better DLC for just about the same price? Call me in!

Only problem is: What is better DLC? Seems highly subjective to me.

Plus, I believe the developers do their best to deliver the best possible result that's achievable within the time they have to work on the DLC. Should they then spend more time on each DLC, so that it would get better automatically? In a perfect world, yes, absolutely - but only Paradox knows if this would still be profitable.
If customers apparently keep buying the expansions, this sends a strong sign that they are generally happy, doesn't it?

The one thing which I observe is that the developers' priorities oftentimes seem to differ somewhat from what many (or a vocal minority) would like to see implemented next. Thus, I could see Paradox introducing (regular) polls to be a nice thing, so the community would be involved even more and be able to utter feedback in a more structured manner.

Overall, however, I do have the impression that the developers do value feedback. How many threads have I seen pleading to concentrate on (central) Africa before Mare Nostrum? How often was the need for a change of the naval system expressed (which we partly got)? Wasn't empires with total control over every remote province called as unrealistic as the total irrelevance of money after 50 years (voila, territories and corruption mechanics - again, I'm not saying they're perfectly implemented yet!)?
And then we got the ability to rent out our army, which I didn't even know I wanted before, but now I absolutely do.

So, I think the assumption that they deliver too poorly thought-out content is hardly objective. In the end, everyone has to decide if it's enough value to justify a purchase like with all commercial products.
I, for one, doubt that I'll regret this purchase considering how it reignited my interest in EU IV once more and how many hours I will spend enjoying it (it e.g. actually made me want to take Espionage for the first time). Still, I, subjectively, feel that The Cossacks delivered more value for my money (even considering the higher price tag), but seeing that many seem to hate that expansion with a passion and that I still struggle to understand why Art of War seems generally to be considered to be the best DLC by far, only proves to me how difficult it is to make content which appeals to everyone / is universally considered to be "good".

 

[Arrowkill]

I think what a lot of people here fail to realize is that from a game design perspective, there is absolutely NO reason why a game should be killed in favor of a sequel unless the engine has enough improvement and the Cost to Develop vs. the Profit from Development is skewing towards minimal or no profit. At the end of the day, this is a company that has to meet a bottom line in order to function. They want to maximize profit while minimizing cost and keeping their customer base happy.

These forums represent a small segment of the overall community which buying large has no problem with the current game. We could start a steam poll, but like any poll, those who are upset make a larger effort to vote than those who are content.

All of this comes back to the response Johan gave us basically saying, why would they ever kill a game that shows improvement and increases in income. Most people would not want to spend yet another $50 give or take for EU5 when we are perfectly content with EU4. Ultimately, one thread with 5 pages worth of conflicting responses does not form a large enough group to warrant action on part of Paradox.

Want to actually make them listen? Then stop playing the game and don't buy expansions. If enough people do this, they will see the statistics on their end and start moving towards making a new game. Until either that occurs or the engine is so outdated they need to upgrade it, we will be playing Europa Universalis IV with DLC coming out every few months or so.

 

[Clownie]

If customers apparently keep buying the expansions, this sends a strong sign that they are generally happy, doesn't it?

Generally, yes. In a market with no competition (grand strategy), not really, no.

The one thing which I observe is that the developers' priorities oftentimes seem to differ somewhat from what many (or a vocal minority) would like to see implemented next. Thus, I could see Paradox introducing (regular) polls to be a nice thing, so the community would be involved even more and be able to utter feedback in a more structured manner.

Wholeheartedly agree.

Overall, however, I do have the impression that the developers do value feedback. How many threads have I seen pleading to concentrate on (central) Africa before Mare Nostrum? How often was the need for a change of the naval system expressed (which we partly got)? Wasn't empires with total control over every remote province called as unrealistic as the total irrelevance of money after 50 years (voila, territories and corruption mechanics - again, I'm not saying they're perfectly implemented yet!)?
And then we got the ability to rent out our army, which I didn't even know I wanted before, but now I absolutely do.

Some definitely do (Wiz, Chaingun come to mind; sadly, Wiz is off the team and Chaingun doesn't have a say in development). Johan doesn't appear to be on that list, which is a huge issue.

How many threads have you seen pleading to concentrate on East Asia since release? Has it ever happened?

The need for a change of the naval system was indeed clamoured for, but did we get what we wanted? Doubt it. I'm not the authority on what the community thinks, though, so I could throw up a poll but I think those need mod approval for some bizarre reason.

Condottieri is definitely a fantastic feature. One of the best since release.

So, I think the assumption that they deliver too poorly thought-out content is hardly objective. In the end, everyone has to decide if it's enough value to justify a purchase like with all commercial products.
I, for one, doubt that I'll regret this purchase considering how it reignited my interest in EU IV once more and how many hours I will spend enjoying it (it e.g. actually made me want to take Espionage for the first time). Still, I, subjectively, feel that The Cossacks delivered more value for my money (even considering the higher price tag), but seeing that many seem to hate that expansion with a passion and that I still struggle to understand why Art of War seems generally to be considered to be the best DLC by far, only proves to me how difficult it is to make content which appeals to everyone / is universally considered to be "good".

In terms of how well thought out a mechanic is, I think it's best to ask oneself three questions:

1. What was the purpose of the mechanic ("Fun" is not a valid answer; you need to be able to answer why it's fun)?
2. Does it achieve that purpose?
3. Were there any unforeseen consequences?

If the answers to 2 and 3 aren't yes and no respectively, then it's poorly thought-out. A whole bunch of mechanics fail, by my reckoning (of course I'm not the dev, so my authority isn't absolute, but my analytical approach does lend me an advantage) – mostly on 3, but some also on 2. Furthermore, for added and not altered content, a fourth question is useful:

4. Could it have been implemented in a more interesting or complete way without requiring significantly more resources to do so and without causing it to fail question 3?

If we add this one, almost every addition to the game fails, be it upon implementation of the addition itself or upon implementation of another thing. Examples:

-Forts. AI was and still is very bad at forts, and needs a huge handicap to be capable of using them.
-Taking land in peace deals. As TMIT points out, it's flat-out bugged in more than one way. I refer here specifically to the inability to take some land in some circumstances. Venice used to be unbeatable if player-controlled because they could plop a fort down in their capital and then never lose land in wars even if they lost, because their gallies were undefeatabale and they could therefore not have their only fort occupied and thus their enemies could never actually seize their land. I'm not sure if this is still the case; I'm guessing not, but I don't actually play easy nations.
-Attrition. This feature worked so poorly with the AI it was reduced to a non-feature. Naval attrition also counts; the AI just can't deal with that.
-El Dorado religions. They always require a Westerner to border them in order to reform, which is enormously problematic because that doesn't always happen, and AI changes over time massively affect how playable these religions are (currently, the answer is "barely). See question 3.
-Westernisation. Admittedly, this was fine in 1.2, but that's a long time ago and many good suggestions have come up since. Removing the need for brainstorming the actual idea makes it a lot easier to actually get to the point of implementing it, especially since modders have laid the groundwork with systems I doubt anyone in their right mind would call worse. The VeF mod comes to mind; it makes modernisation (not westernisation, that doesn't exist) an 8-step process which you can begin at any time as long as you're ADM tech 3 or higher. It's hardly perfectly implemented in that mod (it's too easy/cheap and takes too much time if you ask me), but something like that would still be a huge improvement over the current system.

In general, Paradox is piling on more stuff to the game without looking at the old stuff enough, causing said old stuff to become grossly outdated (westernisation, stability, shogunate, attrition). However, from a business point of view, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do – time spent revamping old content to be better is time not spent making new content that you can then sell. I think the only reason we ever got a better RNW was that Wiz was disgusted with what the old project lead did and sincerely wanted a better game.

Yes, some things are improved over time (cultures, provinces, and national ideas come to mind), but how often do old expansion features get a serious look-over? That's right – when a new expansion is stepping on their toes and the devs realise, "oh darn, this mechanic is actually kind of out of synch with the entire rest of the game (or just plain bad (looking at you, old exploration feature))).

Ultimately, these problems could largely be solved by spending more time ideating and less time implementing. More time ideating => a stronger idea of what should be implemented => less time spent implementing and testing.

Anyway, I'm mostly just making a plea @Johan to focus more on quality than profit, for the precise reason that profit is not strictly a strong indicator of quality in a market where there is no competition. In other markets, it's also not strictly true, since advertising often trumps quality (FPS games and Hollywood), but that's tangential.

edit: Art of War is considered a good expansion because of its accompanying free patch; it'd make little sense to someone who wasn't playing at the time. Also, very few of the things implemented in that expansion/patch failed my set of questions, which is about the strongest sign of quality I can think of.

The expansion itself? I wouldn't buy it. But I did buy it, because I support Paradox when they make actually great content, which that patch was oozing with.

 

[Wafthrudnir]

Generally, yes. In a market with no competition (grand strategy), not really, no.

Anyway, I'm mostly just making a plea @Johan to focus more on quality than profit, for the precise reason that profit is not strictly a strong indicator of quality in a market where there is no competition. In other markets, it's also not strictly true, since advertising often trumps quality (FPS games and Hollywood), but that's tangential.

A well thought-out post, which makes some good points.

I can't, however, concur with the assertion that Paradox operates in a market without competition. EU, CK, Victoria etc. are strategy games, Grand Strategy is just a marketing term making them sound better (after all, it's possible to come up with a sub genre for virtually every game out there when it makes sense from a PR point of view). Apart from that, they not only compete with strategy games and video games in general, but at least every other medium out there, including movies or TV series.

Consumers have amounts of money they can and are willing to spend on entertainment. If they like so-called grand strategy, there is a decent chance that they will buy EU IV and its DLC, but even the most die hard enthusiast would not resort to alternatively purchase nothing at all if they just don't like the product anymore or are not willing to pay its price (which a whole lot of users seem to do in case of the expansions).
So what do they do? They instead spend their money on Civilization or another strategy game, which they find to be of a better value. Or another video game entirely such as an FPS or sports game. Or even a movie or book they're more interested in.

Fundamentally, any other way to spend money for entertainment actively competes with EU IV! Thus, profits are very much an indicator of quality - albeit a limited one, that much is true. Paradox is subject to the same market mechanisms as any other company and has to deliver a product that offers so much value / quality that potential customers are willing to pay for it (or make it seem that way via marketing as you've already stated, but that strategy is oftentimes not sustainable and another issue altogether).

In general, Paradox is piling on more stuff to the game without looking at the old stuff enough, causing said old stuff to become grossly outdated (westernisation, stability, shogunate, attrition). However, from a business point of view, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do – time spent revamping old content to be better is time not spent making new content that you can then sell.

Yes, some things are improved over time (cultures, provinces, and national ideas come to mind), but how often do old expansion features get a serious look-over? That's right – when a new expansion is stepping on their toes and the devs realise, "oh darn, this mechanic is actually kind of out of synch with the entire rest of the game (or just plain bad (looking at you, old exploration feature))).

Ultimately, these problems could largely be solved by spending more time ideating and less time implementing. More time ideating => a stronger idea of what should be implemented => less time spent implementing and testing.

This is the second part of your post I find problematic. You correctly state that we will never get revamps of old mechanics, since they are obviously not profitable and doesn't make any sense from a business perspective. The only thing even allowing for such things is putting more "sexy", new features in the game and along the way working on some outdated mechanics.

So it's either patches + new mechanics or no fixes at all. But while you are right that new features often turn out to be problematic and unbalanced, your solution seems a little too simple. While we both don't know what happens when they conceptualize new content (the developers could be a bunch of clueless morons who just get lucky sometimes for all we know), the assumption they just need to spend more time ideating and new features will automatically be better is a stretch to say the least.

I mean, how many hours do they ideate now (/ compared to implementing)? How many hours should they spend? Does their business model even make sense when they plan out and play test everything in excruciating detail before release? As of now, we all know, we are to some degree beta testers. Every patch needs some hotfixes directly afterwards and another full patch to work somewhat as initially intended / get the balance right. (In this vein, the difference between e.g. estates in 1.14 and 1.15 is huge to me.)

edit: Art of War is considered a good expansion because of its accompanying free patch; it'd make little sense to someone who wasn't playing at the time. Also, very few of the things implemented in that expansion/patch failed my set of questions, which is about the strongest sign of quality I can think of.

The expansion itself? I wouldn't buy it. But I did buy it, because I support Paradox when they make actually great content, which that patch was oozing with.

That's what I thought. It's surprising, though, that many seem to attribute the free features in 1.6 to AoW, but fail to see that Mare Nostrum effectively brought us a revamped central Africa among others and don't seem to include it in their evaluation (that's not to say, they may, of course, still conclude MN+1.16 lack in value, I just find the huge difference to AoW+1.6 puzzling).
I thought it was a good idea that Paradox started advertising the free content more, but at this point I fail to see how their PR could convincingly communicate that one requires the other in the future.

 

[LokiusMaximus]

All of this comes back to the response Johan gave us basically saying, why would they ever kill a game that shows improvement and increases in income. Most people would not want to spend yet another $50 give or take for EU5 when we are perfectly content with EU4.

If you add up the totals of all the DLC, which is where they continue making their revenue, then it's $115 for full price which is more than double the original price of the game. It's a horrid value for consumers, but an awesome value for the developers. Those that are content with the game often don't want drastic free changes. I won't download the new patch because I am tired of expansion being nerfed. I remember when as Norway (before forts), I was capable of conquering all of Russia, all of England, most of North America, most all of the HRE to include Austria, Some of France, large portions of Italy if not all of it, and still have time to bite into Turkey. My biggest disappointment was not enough time to finish off France, Spain, and work into Asia. Since forts, I tried one play through as Norway and was only able to conquer about 3/4 of that. Granted, I don't like constant micromanagement, so some of that is "player error." If I made myself the most efficient as possible, I could have got a lot more. But the simple fact is that expansion is constantly being nerfed (the exception being The Art of War), and I am tired of it and I'd venture to guess many others are as well.

It really depends on what do you consider to be the challenge of the game. Creating the biggest empire and getting the highest possible score? Or is the challenge having "fair" fights with the AI for a longer period of time? Honestly, in every game I play, I could not stand up to a mass coalition alone until maybe the last 50-100 years (and this varies depending on nation). I need allies up until that point and so long as alliances are necessary to survive, the game still has challenge because those alliances can be broken if not careful. And if you really want more challenge, then you break them on your own.

 

[LokiusMaximus]

That's what I thought. It's surprising, though, that many seem to attribute the free features in 1.6 to AoW, but fail to see that Mare Nostrum effectively brought us a revamped central Africa among others and don't seem to include it in their evaluation (that's not to say, they may, of course, still conclude MN+1.16 lack in value, I just find the huge difference to AoW+1.6 puzzling).

The ability to transfer provinces to allies in the Art of War, which was a paid feature, is one of the most important features ever added to the game (I thought I remember another expansion also adding it since). Of course, I'd argue that is something that has been important for long before EUIV was even released.

The Art of War also had other game changing paid features. Mothballing is very important, marches, garrison sorties, allied objectives (they rarely work, but in theory are a great idea), allowing you to use a subjects casus belli, the Religious League Wars are neat, cancelling idea groups (long over-due), and giving up your cores (something I rarely do, but sometimes will in a subject nation)

I honestly don't know the timeline of all these features and how many are now available under other DLCs or how many have since been added as free features, but these are things I see on the Art of War Wiki as paid features. All features I have use for regardless of what nation I use, minus the religious wars.

Let's compare that to the paid features of Mare Nostrum:

- Barbary nations can raid for slaves with their ships.
Useless if you never play as a Barbary nation.

- Steal Maps is a new spy action that lets you conduct a despicable act of thievery and discover all provinces your victim already has discovered in a region.
I suppose some use for someone trying to colonize as a non-major nation? I am always content with the known provinces I already have and I tend to try to avoid colonial nations these days.

- New diplomatic action to share maps
See above

- Hunting naval mission: Fleets will hunt enemy fleets in a specific region.
- Evasion naval mission: Fleets will evade enemy fleets in a specific region.
- Blockade naval mission: Fleets will blockade enemy ports in a specific region.
- Intercept naval mission: Fleets will seek out and attack enemy fleets near allied coastlines, focusing on troop transports."

All useful, especially the last. But mainly they allow you to ignore your fleets for a while. Hopefully it doesn't lead to loads of ships dying from attrition because they get carried away.

- The new diplomatic option Unconditional Surrender forces your enemy to send a peace demand for up to 100 WS within two months, or Call to Peace will be gained at twice the normal rate.

Useless except for probably in multiplayer. I prefer to choose my 100 warscore loss (and I rarely have to take 100) rather than allow the AI to pick. Usually you can convince them to allow you to release nations easily reconquered.

- Majorly reworked Espionage. Instead of sending diplomats to carry out sustained spy actions, there is now a new 'Create Spy Network' sustained action, where your diplomat covertly builds up a spy network in another country. Spy networks are size 0-100, and espionage actions other than Build Spy Network are now instant actions that cost a certain amount of spy network points when used but are guaranteed to succeed (for example, Sow Discontent applies the Discontent Sown modifier to the target country for 5 years). Spy Offense modifier was changed to Spy Network Construction and determines the speed at which networks are built, while Spy Defense determines the chance of detecting when another country is building a spy network in your country and disrupting their efforts.

This is something I'd need to try to have a true opinion on. I kind of like the idea, but then, I rarely use spy action other than fabricate claim (is fabricate claim part of this?). If fabricate claim is a part of this, it seems it would be extremely annoying to have to build up a network in a nation before you can fabricate a claim. Especially if in the HRE where there are tons of one to three province nations rather than larger nations.

- Having a spy network in another country now gives you passive benefits to siege ability and aggressive expansion incurred against that country.

Sounds good.

- Study Technology is no longer an action but a discount to technology cost gained from having a spy network in another country with more advanced technology. Size of spy network and how many techs they are ahead of you determines the size of the discount, with only the largest discount for each category used (so if you get 20% land tech discount from one country and 15% from another, your actual discount is 20%).

Does this mean technology discounts are no longer automatic? If so, annoying. If I misunderstand that, then ok... Could have some use.

- Three new espionage actions: Slander Merchants reduces another country's trade power for 5 years, Sabotage Recruitment reduces manpower and sailor recovery speed for 5 years and Corrupt Officials increases corruption.

The sabotage recruitment seems very useful.

- The Mare Nostrum DLC also unlocks the Hunt Pirates mission (from the El Dorado DLC).

Great, so another feature many already paid for (myself included) being included in the price of an expansion.

- Unit View: Added Naval Mission Settings panel that allows you to adjust the behavior of a fleet when on a mission.

Ok... Fine.

- You can now rent out Condottieri to other countries.

This is cool and could be useful for sure.

- You now press sailors automatically when occupying coastal provinces.

Not really sure what this means.

- "Detach Damaged" is changed to "Repair Damaged". Damaged ships will head to port for repairs and then reunite with the fleet they were detached from.

Useful to prevent annoying micromanagement and thus save a few ships. But why is this not a free feature?

- You can now send a diplomat to conduct counterespionage against a country, increasing the chance of detecting their attempts to build spy networks by 100%.

Is anyone really going to use their very important diplomats for this?

- Naval leaders are now allowed to be reassigned to and from ships within supply range.
Kinda like land leaders who can magically teleport from halfway across the world to a different army. But alright, that is cool except I never use naval leaders because the size of the navy is far more important than the admiral compared to how armies work.

- Promote Mercantilism: Spend diplomatic power to strengthen your mercantilism.

Cool, but one more mana sink. Diplomatic power used to be something I had a ton of, but a patch or two ago it seems a lot more has been required for diplomatic annexation so I find myself always falling behind in diplomatic technology.. even worse than admin these days. And I never build up provinces.

- Timeline Feature added.
Neat

- Merchant republics can form Trade Leagues
- Trade league acts as a free defensive pact between all members
- When leader of Trade League embargoes someone, all members of trade league embargo. This embargo does not reduce their trade efficiency.
- Trade league leaders automatically have a trade dispute CB on any countries they would be able to generate such a CB on via spy action.
- Trade Leagues get 20% more trade power from their ships.

Cool, but sounds boring for the player. Don't these need to be single province? I could have swore I read that in a DD a while ago.

Point is, nothing here is game changing except, to an extent, spy networks. Not like The Art of War where many features were game changing.