Play WWW slower please

[Lifthrasil]

Quit complaining. Re-watch the older videos, there are videos from the WWW/Japan playthrough that are 90% paused. Complaints like yours are what bores everyone who has been devoted since day 0 of WWW. We actually want to see the game being played, rather than backtrack a million times for every little nitpick.

Well since the Agree/Disagree ratio on my OP is about 1:2 right now, I'm certainly not boring "everyone" here. Although the majority seems to disagree with me, your gross generalisation is false. Your commitment "from day 0" to the WWW is also not worth anything. Important is if I watched the WWWs, and that I did. I'm just unsatisfied with how they are done, and many people here seem to agree with me. Me voicing my concern is totally justified, so cut back your aggressive tone, mister.
How about you stop trying to marginalize opinions that differ from yours, hm?

 

[Frosted Vert]

The need for instant action had lead to a lot of 'gamey' actions by Daniel. Look at the forums and you'll see that the latest WWW raised more concerns than it addressed. Now terrain penalties, dug-in bonuses, division building, guarantees and world tension are all in question because the need for excitement saw pure infantry divisions waltz across the Danube and Carpathian mountains while Italy, France and Germany didn't bat an eye while Austria was annexed.

 

[Bridger15]

Playing at a snail's pace is not entertaining.

I don't want entertaining. I want to learn the game so that I don't have to spend hours learning it when it comes out. I've managed to piece together most of the hotkeys from the tooltip popups by going through the videos frame by frame, but there's still a few I'm missing.

 

[leviathan172]

I watched it. I read the DDs, I am at times very active at the forum. I "know" how division composition works, but I have never really seen it in action. All Daniel ever did was to add more INF batallions to his INF divisions. And one time he added a recon batallion. Wow...
What I hoped for was something like: "This is the division designer. We know my INF has troubles with situation X at the moment, so I will add this battalion Y as it helps find a solution. But I could also add batallion Z and achieve this and that".
You know: explain the mechanics ONCE, but more ELABORATE!

The problem I see with this, is that changing your division design is not something you can do on the fly, at least not with seeing a good effect. Your divisions don't magically get more manpower/equipment, it takes a good amount of time, especially if they are being resupplied from combat at the same time. On top of that, if you don't have a decent stockpile ahead of time of, for arguments sake, artillery, since Daniel only made infantry. At the time of the change the divisions would be at an instant penalty (if I understand the system correctly) due to not having equipment, and wouldn't for probably a long time until your industry actual produced what you demanded. In addition to this iirc the individual division "xp" takes a hit as well when divisions are modified, even further worsening the problem.

 

[Midden]

I watched it. I read the DDs, I am at times very active at the forum. I "know" how division composition works, but I have never really seen it in action. All Daniel ever did was to add more INF batallions to his INF divisions. And one time he added a recon batallion. Wow...
What I hoped for was something like: "This is the division designer. We know my INF has troubles with situation X at the moment, so I will add this battalion Y as it helps find a solution. But I could also add batallion Z and achieve this and that".
You know: explain the mechanics ONCE, but more ELABORATE!

Hi, this isn't Daniels fault, the game is currently designed that at the start pretty much all start Divs are Inf only with a shortage of inf equipment. So only having 7 factories these are set to logically make inf equipment... As the game progresses as we have seen in the WWW's, even when the number of factories increases, the player starts on planes....

In the WWW's the player seems to be trapped by the starting set up, there just doesn't seems to be a point in the games when the player can safely diversify the content of his divisions due to the small number of factories and the penalty effect of switching production.

 

[Augustus93]

The answer: national focus

Wrong. It was actually because he changed the military laws.

 

[Axe99]

I'm with Lithrasil on preferring a slower pace, but given the widely varying interests of the audience, and we had four slow-paced (even if they got increasingly faster) videos, I think some of the vids being a bit quicker isn't a bad thing. I wouldn't mind another one or two slower paced vids (maybe from the 1939 start?) before launch, but my main interest is in eventually playing HoI4, rather than watching it be played, so I can live without the vids.

Quit complaining. Re-watch the older videos, there are videos from the WWW/Japan playthrough that are 90% paused. Complaints like yours are what bores everyone who has been devoted since day 0 of WWW. We actually want to see the game being played, rather than backtrack a million times for every little nitpick.

I've been watching the WWW's since the beginning, and didn't watching the last couple of MP ones because they were too fast and bored me (I couldn't see what was going on clearly, so it was actually slower paced in terms of actual information from my angle - lots of "noise" surrounding limited information, unless you literally paused ever couple of seconds when a screen flashed up so you could take in what they'd donw). I'm not saying you shouldn't get a faster run now - we've had a series of four slow-paced Japanese vids, and I think some vids for the crowd that like faster paced action is fair and appropriate. However, I do think there's value in recognising there's a diverse audience for these videos, and that the OP has a case to make.

 

[Zaku]

Wrong. It was actually because he changed the military laws.

He also finished a NF called "militarism" at the same time. That also gave him a lot of MP.

Yeah just watched it and everything was a blur, at one point Hungary's manpower shot up from something like 25K to 500K in a matter of minutes and I had to go back through the video pausing all the time in order to work out what had been done to increase it so dramatically

You need to pay more attention then. Daniel clearly said earlier that he wants to enable the military youth and the militarist NFs so he would get a massive increase of MP. They even talked about how op these two are.

 

[Radu]

@Zaku

But the question must be asked then : why do that?

Why show in streams "This is how exploitable our game will be".

Daniel is QA if I understand correctly. This means it is indeed his job to, well, break the game. That's fair.

But why showcase the game in such a state then? Or why showcase the exploits? That's like a movie's trailer consisting of raw green screen shots or cut shots. Or a car commercial showing an unfinished chassis.

 

[Zaku]

Or why showcase the exploits?

What exploit?

But the question must be asked then : why do that?

Why do what? Use NFs?

 

[Harada.Taro]

They have to show alot in short time. It's just promotional video.... Not like the way you will play for good. Well At least not the I will play. I have always played HoI at the slowest speed when I'm at war with game automaticly pausing after each battle, province lost/won, technology discovered or event popping. To me HoI is micromanaging not gathering a mass pack and clicking one point then watching the struggle... I prefer to assign to each division a specific objective, province to go through than letting the AI do a mess....

 

[Invictus5966]

I like the WWW singleplayer. But I had hoped that you (PDX @Da9L ) would explain the game mechanics more, and take more time to play it.
For example:
- make more detailed battle plans (not just: well here is the attack arrow that I draw here. done.)
- actually building a good compositioned division in the division planner and explain why you do this or that.
- play on slower pace, check the battle screens, explain what is happening.
- ect.
In general I had hoped for a more "entertaining Let's play"-ish approach, maybe even with a bit RP, not another speed 4 balance test.

While I like Daniel and he is very experienced, I think maybe his great experience is the exact reason why I am disappointed by his WWW style. It's just so much routine for him now that following his moves is hard.

So my plea would be:
- play the game a bit slower, so we can see what is happening + more explanations
- a bit more role play wouldn't hurt
- maybe(!) consider changing to another WWW player. I liked the playstyle of the dude that played Germany in the first WWW against Johan. Or the guys from the Finland WWW, they played a bit slower as well.

Nothing personal, @Da9L

EDIT: to avoid misunderstandings: I don't want them to explain everything every session again. Explain the mechanics ONCE, but more ELABORATE!

Let's see who agrees with me

Re watch the past few WWWs, he did just that.

 

[Zaku]

THAT exploit. Unless you have issues with your short term memory.

This is not an exploit.

An exploit is using a broken mechanic to game the system. Those NFs are not broken because they do exactly what they intended them for, to give MP to minor nations.

Also stop with the insults.

 

[Radu]

This is not an exploit.

An exploit is using a broken mechanic to game the system. Those NFs are not broken because they do exactly what they intended them for, to give MP to minor nations. Maybe the numbers need a little balancing, but that's normal for a beta.

No, an exploit is any interaction that allows the player to perform actions outside of the intent of the developer.

For example, back in HOI2 you had units sitting in the "deployment pool" when finished. These units initially took up very little TC and deployed with minimal penalties to Org.

It's not the fact that these units sat in the deployment pool that was the exploit. It's the fact that the strain on TC and Org penalty on deploy were very low.
It was the values that made the exploit. Not the mechanic itself.

Same here.

The modelling of, in this case, manpower mobilization of a country isn't the issue. It's exactly how many troops are made available out of thin air.

 

[Lionace]

I have no issue at all with following the game at its current pace and find slowing down to explain things I already know about frustrating, since it takes away from the time that could be used more to my liking.

But I understand that there is a diverse audience. Not everyone has played previous HoI games or followed every HoI 4 video that was released so far. It wouldn't be a good idea to alienate these people, because they likely make the majority of customers (not necessarily the majority of HoI forum dwellers).

It would be best if both of these groups got something. A tutorial video series that would go over the basics which wouldn't get explained again during WWW should be made in my opinion. I know it's easier said than done, since the game is not finished yet, but there should be enough basic concepts that will go unchanged (save for tweaking specific values) to make a series of videos. And it would allow WWW to go at its current pace.

 

[Zaku]

No, an exploit is any interaction that allows the player to perform actions outside of the intent of the developer.

The intent of those NFs are to give MP to minor nations and they do exactly that.
The word you are searching for is unbalanced, but using something unbalanced doesn't mean it's an exploit. Hell, then using quantity national ideas in EU4 would be considered an exploit as well because that is(or at least was a few patches ago) terribly OP.

The modelling of, in this case, manpower mobilization of a country isn't the issue. It's exactly how many troops are made available out of thin air.

So it's a balancing issue at most, and not some exploit based on a bad mechanic like the TC stuff you talked about.

 

[Augustus93]

He also finished a NF called "militarism" at the same time. That also gave him a lot of MP.



You need to pay more attention then. Daniel clearly said earlier that he wants to enable the military youth and the militarist NFs so he would get a massive increase of MP. They even talked about how op these two are.

It was a combination of him going from volunteer army to better laws and the national focuses that he picked. But the overwhelming majority of it came from the laws, but they do seem to stack.

 

[Zaku]

It was a combination of him going from volunteer army to better laws and the national focuses that he picked. But the overwhelming majority of it came from the laws, but they do seem to stack.

Going from volunteer to limited conscription gave around 90K and "militarism" gave about 400K, so it gives quite a lot.

 

[Augustus93]

Going from volunteer to limited conscription gave around 90K and "militarism" gave about 400K, so it gives quite a lot.

Yes, you are correct. They just happened so fast after each other that I thought that the massive boost came from the laws.

 

[Nitan17]

They have to show alot in short time. It's just promotional video.... Not like the way you will play for good. Well At least not the I will play. I have always played HoI at the slowest speed when I'm at war with game automaticly pausing after each battle, province lost/won, technology discovered or event popping. To me HoI is micromanaging not gathering a mass pack and clicking one point then watching the struggle... I prefer to assign to each division a specific objective, province to go through than letting the AI do a mess....

Same. The way they play in WWW is vastly different to my own playstyle in Paradox's games. They play it almost like a real-time game, while for me, it's turn-based - in war, I play on a very low speed, pausing very often, almost every turn, micromanaging every unit. In peace speed is set higher, but every time something happens, I immediately pause. I understand why they play like they do - it makes the game looks more exciting and takes much less time = more can be shown. But at the same time, it's SO PAINFUL to see them just throw units at the enemy, to see Daniel claim he's "micromanaging", while he is blindly forcing his 0 organization units to push straight forward.

That aside, I like how the game is looking so far, I'm only worried about battle plans - with no way to turn off AI's assistance, it could very easily mess up wars. I know that manual orders override these of AI, but you can't manually order a unit to stay in place - AI will assume it's doing nothing, and will give it an order. Oh well - if it won't be changed, at least I will mod out the planning bonus and perhaps reduce some defending bonuses, so that playing without plans will be viable.

And I went way too off-topic, sorry about that.