Mod Popularity - March 2013

[Johan]

22% of all users who played CK2 in March tried a mod at least once.

9,8% - Game of Thrones
6,0% - CK2+
2,0% - The Prince and the Thane
0,9% - Lux Invicta
0,7% - Project Balance
0,6% - A New World, The Dawn of Empires.

 

[Meneth]

well i think thats quite a lot of people for a mod, not as much as hoi obviously. Probably my own fault too for not adding many new things recently but i still have a pillaging system, resources, buildings, events etc lol. But im glad paradox gives us more info, the more info the better!

Well, 1300 isn't actually that many people when it comes to the larger picture.
I run the CKII Wiki, so I've got access to a bunch of stats on visits and such there. The most relevant stat is that it gets 50 000 unique visitors each month, which essentially means there must be at least this many people who play the game (plus/minus a bit due to non-players checking out the wiki, people being counted twice, etc), probably a lot more. So if there's 100 000 players that'd make 1300 unique downloads only 1.3% of the userbase. As it is likely that some of those downloads were also redownloads, and the userbase is quite possibly even higher, it is understandable that 1300 isn't enough to get a mod onto the list.

 

[Meneth]

Then how do you know you're not missing anything


I forget: does the game ask you to send data when you load up a new mod for the first time? I seem to recall that happening, but I'm not sure.

If the mod sets a user directory, it asks yes. So for most big mods (CK2Plus is an exception though, as for whatever reason it doesn't use a user dir) users will be asked again upon first launching the mod.

 

[Meneth]

Thank you so much for this data guys. This should become a monthly thing for all current PDS games IMO.

I'm interested to see how CK2+ will fare leading up to TOG being released. We know Wiz is dropping support for it so I wonder if people will start moving towards TPATT and Project Balance before that happens or if people will still hold on.

I'm also interested wether Steam Workshop will mean a bigger % increase for people using mods in EUIV, so def collect data for that game

It has already dropped from 8.5% of 18.5% who play mods to 6% of 22% who play mods. So from 46% of all mod users to 27% of all mod users.
I imagine it'll continue to drop. Wiz has said to my knowledge that he'll continue updating it for compatibility though, just not to add new features so it shouldn't disappear entirely.

 

[Meneth]

Innitially yes, but lately he said he'd drop support completely after TOG is release, and someone else would have to step in to bring it up to date.

Ah, he will? In that case I imagine usage will drop drastically after TOG releases unless someone else takes over.

 

[Meneth]

The Roman decline happened over a long time while the empire of Alexandros was there one day and then went boom, much like what'll happen to CK2+ after TOG. You can say F&F and Sinergy are Seleukia and Ptolemaic Egypt (either one) and PB and TPATT are Rome and Carthage.

Well, lets hope PB only gets the "massive expansion" bit of the Roman Empire, and not the "long, protracted decline" bit.

 

[Meneth]

Lux is doing very well, for a mod whose founder/ coder/ ideas person left months ago :laugh:.

Yeah, I still wonder where Shay went; he seemed like a pretty nice guy the times he was on the IRC.

 

[Meneth]

There's two reasons why i don't use major mods... balance and AI. With the huge amount of features added there's no way AI can keep up and there's no way everything is balanced, hell even vanilla CK2 is unbalanced and mods only make it worse.

Try Project Balance. The very goal is to balance things better according to historical plausibility.
And as it adds next to no new features, the AI still does fine.

 

[Meneth]

Some of the major mods do take balance into serious consideration and actively try to make sure things work out. PB definitely tries to achieve balance - you can take a look at the millions of test games Meneth has run on PB to get a good idea; I'm also pretty sure CKII+ has done something similar. I've also tried that for my VIET mod. The main issue, perhaps, is how exactly you define balance - some people might not like the results of something.

Million sounds about right. I know I've got at least 500 hours of test games, likely more. I've got 766 hours total of running CKII, but I'm not sure exactly how many % of that was testing, how many % was playing, and how many % was idling.

 

[Meneth]

Thats very dumb rationalization of your elitism.

Most of people just don't agree with many so called "features" and "overhauls" that those mods has. So instead of downloading whole package, they would rather download smaller package with only features they want.
It is not about "roflstomping", everyone has their style of play. If you deliberatly bugfest the vanila so you would roflstomp everyone, thats your problem. Someone else could just roleplay and woudln't have same problem.

Roleplaying won't really help the AI realms being silly though, and vanilla has major problems with that.
As an example the republics are hugely powerful, the Baltics always get conquered by Christians far before what makes historical sense, and Ethiopia usually gets conquered by the Fatimids.
Vanilla is good, but after playing mods where this kind of silliness happens far less I simply cannot go back.

 

[Meneth]

People want a historically perfect game. Go watch a documentary instead of playing an open sandbox game then.

No one wants a historically perfect game.
A lot of people want a historically plausible game. The situations mentioned above are not historically plausible, essentially meaning that if you replayed that bit of history a thousand times with a "random seed" of sorts, you'd never or almost never see them happen.
By more accurately representing relative strengths and political considerations, far more historically plausible outcomes can be achieved. Not exactly what historically happened, but something that at least could ​potentially have happened.

 

[Meneth]

Another issue I think is how one defines balance and historical plausibility. CKII+ fans think CKII+ is very balanced and historically plausible. Others don't, and think CKII+ is just being Nintendo hard for the sake of being Nintendo hard. Then there's PB fans who think PB is very balanced and historicaly plausible (like me). Others disagree and think PB is too close to vanilla and doesn't do enough.

I don't think there's much denying that PB is more historically plausible than vanilla though

A similar thing for every balance and overhaul mod. Well, pretty much every mod. That's why I don't like absolutist claim that X mod is the solution to fixing the game's problems and making it better - I do think that PB is the best overhaul and balance mod, but I do think that others who don't like it have legitimate concerns, even if I disagree with them.

Which is why it's good I think there's a variety of these mods out there so people can pick and choose, including vanilla.

Indeed, the variety is great. Though I can't really understand playing vanilla over any of the number of mods that makes the game so much more historically plausible.

 

[Meneth]

You know nothing about historically plausible events. Sorry, but that just shows how YOU are silly. You just want small variation from real history and not historically plasible events, because, as chaos theory suggest (with chaos naturally emapncipating even from small diferential system), small change (itself being realy plasuble) can lead to great consequences (what you hate).

Unless you realy understand what you want and what you are saying (no one woudl argue with "I want only small variation from history as I like the feel of it"), you should stop with that unreasonable elitism.

Small changes can cause big changes, yes.
Small changes in 1066 can't reasonably cause the Baltics to be conquered by Christians by 1100, unless you've suddenly got every pagan ruler and half the pagan population falling dead. Which isn't what happens in vanilla; they just get outright conquered.

As I am doing evolution, I would give you silly example of your thoughts. Imagine evolution, as human is product of evolution, so is human history.
Now take example of scenario that happened. Like the evolution of human. As there are a lot of possibilities how human could evolve, when you would "run" the evolution 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times, human would be different (or won't evolve at all or would be extinct pretty soon).

So lets assume, there is some game with evolution. As there is nearly infinite scenarios of human evolution, there is exactly 0 chance that the product of simulated evolution would be same as the product of human evolution. And that is with exact representation of all mechanics, this is impossible (in fact, the probability of scenario more similar to evolution of human would be higher with less precise model).
If some player would come onto forum and said something like you, that some mods are better because they alter game in way that there is greater chance of repeating human evolution, and that is because the parameters behave more plausible (I wanna end it there, so this will be less exact, but I think you should got my point from it), this would me nothing but silly, as exact plausibility of human evolving same as in our history (or even "game" producing exactly same result twice) is 0.

To further your analogy:
What I'm trying to do is not to make sure humans evolve. What I'm trying to to is to make sure a monkey doesn't suddenly evolve into a fish rather than staying humanoid.

Have you looked into the changelog of PB? Beyond a very few instances early in the campaign, I do not try to force the game down any specific path. I try to balance out factors as they were historically so certain outcomes become more likely (for example, the Christian rulers in Iberia are in a stronger position, as by 1066 they were exacting tribute from the Muslims they bordered), and let the rest run its course.

can't you guys just discuss something else, like World Peace or Operation One Game One Mod[REDACTED] or something? you're making the modding community look like.... ummm, Mac Users?

Sorry, I'll shut up now; I just don't like it when modders' work is being misrepresented.

 

[Meneth]

As a gigantic fan of PB, I can and often do still go back to vanilla. Sometimes, I just don't want to play a game with all of the features of an overhaul mod. If I want to play as a republic, overhaul mods simply are not as fun. Sometimes, I would just rather not deal with PB's 250 man retinues in every county in the game or CB restrictions. When I do want a game that feels more plausible, then I will download the latest version of PB and fire it up. In my opinion, there are reasons to play mods and there are reasons to play vanilla. Neither is better than the other. They are just different.

If I could disable retinues for counts in some decent way I would, but currently there's no good way.
Hopefully Paradox will make retinues more moddable at some point.

 

[Meneth]

As a comparison. Vanilla gets about 50 hours of playtesting per release candidate, not including the tests from the betagroup, which gives another few hundred hours of test.. As well as every single night the team kicks off another 3-4 handsoff games to see endresults and check stability, but handsoff is not real balancetesting..

In a game like this with a very assymetric setup, it is rather different than a game with symmetric starts.

Balance is a very very subjective term, as there it all depends on your vision of what you want to happen... You can't say mod x is more balanced that mod y or vanilla as its actually not a relevant statement.

Mods can be more fun. (also subjective, but nobody would ever play a mod that gave them less enjoyment)
Mods can be more historical.
Mods can have more plausible outcomes.
Mods can give you an experience more like the one you want.

Oh, balance is definitely subjective, which is why I've tried to define it as specifically possible: if there's no player interference, most outcomes should be historically plausible. I don't believe there's all that many other definitions that would make much sense in the context of a historical grand strategy game. And by that definition one can indeed say that mod x or y is more balanced than vanilla
Working using that definition works quite well, and using handsoff games then work very well, with the occasional handson here and there.

Nice to get a small view into how Paradox testing. Sounds like what I'd have done if I were more than one person, but physical reality sadly limits me a bit in how much testing I can do.

 

[Meneth]

Meneth, the question is: How historically plausible was our history?

It seems like the flow of events was so often triggered by some totally unexpected events which go against any rule of historical plausibility
Only very few historical events were inevitable according to rules of historical plausibility. But this is too far from modding.

It is essential to believe that you in your mod are doing your best to improve the game the best way ever. The fact is, though, that if anyone else would have the time and passion that the modders have, there would probably be many more other mods using other perspectives to improve the game feeling... each of them being the best from given perspective.

Oh, there were definitely a lot of unexpected events in history. The sack of Constantinople during the 4th Crusade for example is a great example of that.
However, even the unexpected events make some sense.
Ruler dying unexpectedly? Makes perfect sense.
The stars aligning so that the Baltics are conquered by the Christians by year 1100? Not really.
Norway joining a crusade and Jerusalem thus ending up with a Norwegian ruler? Sure, why not.
The Fatimids breaking the Baqt which they were reaping major benefits from in order to conquer Ethiopia? No, doesn't make much sense (though is still doable in PB if you're determined)

So while some individual, unexpected events can indeed have major effects, some outcomes require such a huge number of unlikely events that they should only happen once in a blue moon (read: once in 50 games or so at most), rather than most games like in vanilla.

 

[Meneth]

Meneth, things in history are just as seemingly implausible as anything you just mentioned. Read about the Plague of Justinian sometime if you want a sense of how contingent history is. Basically the ERE was in the middle of its last great resurgence and a plague killed 40% of the residents of Constantinople (and most of the rest of the empire). Boom, overnight endgame for the strongest shot at a return to Roman form. Heck, if it wasn't for that perhaps we'd all be debating in Latin and anyone who suggested that the Empire might have fallen in the the mid 6th century would be being shouted down.

And such rare things can happen once in a while, even in PB.
But the Baltics being conquered by 1100 4 games out of 5 is patently silly. It happening 1 game out of 50 on the other hand isn't unreasonable; that's the stars aligning like in your example.
I don't try to entirely eliminate historically implausible outcomes, just reduce their occurrence to more closely reflect the actual plausibility of them happening.

 

[Meneth]

Meneth: you seems to operate under different definition of historical plasubility.

My definition of historical plausibility:
Outcomes that had next to no chance of happening historically from a start in 1066, should only happen rarely.

Quite a simple definition really.

 

[Meneth]

I will be honest and say that, in my opinion, this PB has a couple of really poor choices regarding the gameplay mechanisms. But since there clearly is a demand for such changes and this demand can be covered by a mod like PB; such changes will hopefully stay out of the vanilla version.

I'd love to hear them. In the PB thread of course, not here

 

[Meneth]

Any chance of stats like these for April and/or May?