I have been playing Crusader Kings 2 for over 2,000 hours, and there have been some fantastic changes I have seen over the past 2 years. Paradox, you constantly impress me with your consistent focus on improving your games.
That being said, I would submit to you a few items that I believe are essential to the quality of life of a Crusader Kings 2 gamer. This comes from tremendous amounts of repetition, and quite a lot of thought.
These are the six changes I would love to see implemented in CK2:
Finally I leave you with the following thoughts.
Look at the additions you have made over time. In the beginning you there was no marriage finder. You had to use the character finder to look for suitable wives directly. Then you added the marriage finder to make our gameplay more approachable. Look back at plotting. You used to have to manually ask every single person to join your plot, and there was *no visual cue* that they would be willing to accept from the character list.
Look also at preventing plotting; you used to have to manually ask every person to politely stop their murderous ambitions, now you do not have to. These are quality of life or ease-of-use improvements. They do not make the game less complicated or enjoyable, or dumb it down in any way. They make the game *better*. More accessible to the gamer. And they are what make CK2 great.
Please continue making changes like these, and please consider the topics I have mentioned.
I would appreciate any feedback from other people about these topics, or if you have other suggestions to please post them here.
That being said, I would submit to you a few items that I believe are essential to the quality of life of a Crusader Kings 2 gamer. This comes from tremendous amounts of repetition, and quite a lot of thought.
These are the six changes I would love to see implemented in CK2:
- Changes to the Find Character Interface: Trait specific search functionality, ideally text based in my mind. For example a text field where you could type "lustful, midas touched" and it would only show characters who match BOTH restrictions. We can already filter the data by character name, why not allow the traits to be searchable as well. Age restrictions (IE minimum and maximum ages). If the data can be sorted by age I am sure it can be constrained by age. Allow further constraints on religions and cultures. Instead of just culture and religious *group* matching, make it specific to your exact culture and religion. This functionality can easily be justified in my mind by considering what the action represents in game. You aren't some god with the ability to sense all other characters on the map. You are instead asking your chancellor or spymasters to 'bring me names of people who match these criteria'. It doesn't break immersion to give us more control over what we are seeing. Allow for saved search settings. A quick toggle between frequently used search settings would be *amazing*. Even just exporting the state to the settings file so you can leave it on commonly used settings. I cannot tell you how many hundreds of time I have set those settings to "Male,not in prison,any marriage, not ruler, same culture, same religion, adult, not great house'. Why can't this setting be remembered? Outliner settings are remembered, this should be too.
- Fix the auto-invite to plot button to actually work automatically instead of needing to be disabled and re-enabled after every plot. Every time I do this I imagine my spymaster asking me with a grin on his face "So you have just ordered me to begin plans to murder your enemy... should I.... invite... people...??" (To which I reply, YES YOU FOOL!) Also on the plot potential tooltip show the amount of potentially 'bought' plot power. IE: "Initial plot power, Bribable plot power, potential plot power'. This value can be determined manually, there's no reason to not make it available as a sum. From an immersion standpoint imagine this; you ask your spymaster what he thinks the likelihood is of being able to kill a specific person. He knows the lands, he knows the courts and the people. He says to you "With the right amount of coin, it may be done." He knows who needs to be bribed. Just let this number be more apparent to the player.
- Stop using the + and - system. It is too difficult to see, and completely unnecessary. Everything is based on numbers, please just show the number! EUIV uses a 'positive reasons' and 'negative reasons' value, and if the sum is greater than 0 they will accept. This system is more logical and more transparent than the + and - tally. Whats worse is having to manually count the +'s and -'s when it is a close tie.
- *Please* fix auto appointed commanders! In the past your vassals would provide you with an automatically appointed commander if they liked you enough. It is *still* in the game files. If they liked you enough they come themselves. If they like you but not quite enough to send themselves, they send their marshal. If they like you too little, they send *no one*. The problem is when you updated us to the liege levy mechanic this functionality was *broken*, and has never been repaired. The only time your vassals will send themselves now to lead your troops *automatically* is if they are a landed council member to your court and they are allowed to lead troops. Making us appoint a commander manually to every single flank is tedious, and the old system worked better than this.
- Related to above, redesign the assign new commander interface. Right now it is based off the character selection interface which is the same interface used for bride finding, council member appointment, etc. The problem is that this interface does not show the leader's combat modifiers. Frankly when I am considering commanders I could not care less if they are a homosexual or greedy or deceitful, or their culture or their religion. I want to know how good they are at *combat*. Right now you have to appoint the commander, check his modifiers, go back to the selection screen. Or manually go to that character's profile and hover over the command modifiers. It wouldn't be difficult to put a tooltip that shows the traits from the assign new commander interface. It would also be *amazing* if you could filter this list, for example only show commanders with the 'organizer' trait, or to only show those who have terrain modifiers. Forcing the player to *search* for these characters doesn't make the game more fun. It just makes it take longer. In a real life situation any goverment/king would know who their best commanders are. It isn't a secret. Just make them easier to find!
- Please consider implementing some or all of my Keyboard Shortcuts mod. Many people who have used it have attested that they simply cannot play the game without keybinds after having used the mod. It is your property, I posted it on your site, please incorporate it into the game. See my signature for a link to the mod.
Finally I leave you with the following thoughts.
Look at the additions you have made over time. In the beginning you there was no marriage finder. You had to use the character finder to look for suitable wives directly. Then you added the marriage finder to make our gameplay more approachable. Look back at plotting. You used to have to manually ask every single person to join your plot, and there was *no visual cue* that they would be willing to accept from the character list.
Look also at preventing plotting; you used to have to manually ask every person to politely stop their murderous ambitions, now you do not have to. These are quality of life or ease-of-use improvements. They do not make the game less complicated or enjoyable, or dumb it down in any way. They make the game *better*. More accessible to the gamer. And they are what make CK2 great.
Please continue making changes like these, and please consider the topics I have mentioned.
I would appreciate any feedback from other people about these topics, or if you have other suggestions to please post them here.
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