Player retention comparted to CK3 first 2 weeks after release

[ironman3112]

Looks like the typical 24h max is 8k and min is 5k now.

I think it's fair to say there needs to be a major patch or expansion released to bump these back up as people are likely to forget about this game and move on at this rate.

Really doesn't help that once you've played a couple nations you've really played them all. There is minimal flavour and events for countries to differentiate them. With the primary economy loop being rotating between the market, construction queue and infrastructure.

 

[PanzerMan7]

Looks like the typical 24h max is 8k and min is 5k now.

I think it's fair to say there needs to be a major patch or expansion released to bump these back up as people are likely to forget about this game and move on at this rate.

Really doesn't help that once you've played a couple nations you've really played them all. There is minimal flavour and events for countries to differentiate them. With the primary economy loop being rotating between the market, construction queue and infrastructure.

Just @ me next time

 

[Leoreth]

I think this is a bit of an odd argument, personally. I'm not sure we can define "bad" in the context of an entertainment product except by not fulfilling the advertised vision (so I would argue "warfare" is bad because it does not make the game simpler to control or more strategic in nature, as advertised), or because you as an individual like it less (I like the economic and political systems' design significantly less than their implementation in Victoria 2). By either metric, Victoria 3 is a "bad" game in my book, though your opinions may legitimately differ - I just 't think that defending V3's systems as "not inherently bad" is a bit of a rhetorical retreat given I don't think we can really define "inherently bad" to begin with.

Despite your selective quote I elaborated what I meant by that.

My point is that people are cherrypicking features they personally don't like to explain the audience reaction. I don't think the game would have gotten a meaningfully different audience reaction if it was just Vic2 with different graphics, to use an extreme example. Or if feature X wasn't in the game or worked more like people are used to from different Paradox games.

What drives the response to the game, even if people are singling out specific features, is that the game UI does not accomodate them well or because the AI is incapable of interacting with it satisfactorily. Nevermind the fact that AI and UI are also challenges for whatever shape feature X would have taken if it was something completely different. It is the failure to meet these challenges that determine the audience reaction, not the design of the feature.

Of course you can add nuance to this argument by pointing out how feature X imposes much higher challenges on AI and UI than alternative feature Y, but I rarely see that point made. And from the "things should be like Vic2 or EU4" point of view, this would not make much sense anyway, because usually the Vic3 delta is a simplification here.

 

[DominusNovus]

We have the radicalism system. It works differently, but it's not fundamentally absent. Which game loop do you think is missing?

Its not what I think is missing, its what Johan thinks is missing.

If you'd ask me, and I designed and coded Victoria 1&2, I viewed the militancy and consciousness of the pops as the basic fundamental of those games, that the entire core game-loop was oriented around, but the V3 team changed how pops behave, and I've not seen a single complaint about those not being in the game.

My response to Johan on that point was that people might not be viewing the difference between Vicky 2 and Vicky 3 in quite that light, but I could easily see the difference between 'militancy and consciousness' in Vicky 2 and just 'radicalism' in Vicky 3 resulting in a variety of knock-on effects. Given that, even among people who like Vicky 3, the internal politics is one of the top problem areas in the game, I'd say its quite reasonable to look at this change as a potential culprit.

 

[Panagean]

My response to Johan on that point was that people might not be viewing the difference between Vicky 2 and Vicky 3 in quite that light, but I could easily see the difference between 'militancy and consciousness' in Vicky 2 and just 'radicalism' in Vicky 3 resulting in a variety of knock-on effects. Given that, even among people who like Vicky 3, the internal politics is one of the top problem areas in the game, I'd say its quite reasonable to look at this change as a potential culprit.

I'm happy to be Johan's case-study! I think the radicalism system is dumb and consciousness/militancy was a clever way of representing two non-orthogonal ideas (if somewhat incomprehensible in practice). It's just I think there are so many far dumber parts of V3 it's really not worth moaning about a system that is "meh" structurally and broadly does what it says on the tin.

 

[DominusNovus]

I'm happy to be Johan's case-study! I think the radicalism system is dumb and consciousness/militancy was a clever way of representing two non-orthogonal ideas (if somewhat incomprehensible in practice). It's just I think there are so many far dumber parts of V3 it's really not worth moaning about a system that is "meh" structurally and broadly does what it says on the tin.

I think it might be the case that at least one of the dumber parts of V3 (namely, the overall condition of internal politics) could have its roots in this change. Seems to me that much of the issue is that so much is all or nothing, and as long as people aren't radicalized, you can get away with almost anything. Whereas having, as you put it, non-orthogonal metrics of pops' political inclinations would help to keep things more in check.

 

[Haakon_XIII]

If they pull a No Man's Sky out of this, I'll respect it. But I find it unlikely.

I really doubt it. HelloGames has never charged or asked for money from the players, while the Paradox philosophy tends more and more to fill us with DLCs for music, sprites, events, basic mechanics... and it is less and less frequent that they actually launch a big and important patch without a DLC accompanied by the excuse that the game has expenses. I suppose that 500,000 games sold has not given enough benefits to not develop it without wanting to profit from their own mistakes. The next DLC that will come with a big patch will be to fix something that shouldn't have gone out like this-
There are many business models in videogames, unfortunately the "HelloGames model" is not the boss and it cannot be said that No Man's Sky is exactly an easy and cheap game to make and correct.

 

[L'Afrique]

Imperator Rome: 623 (worst performing PDX game ever; dropped to 1-2k from 42k in 3 months since launch. Numbers increased to 7k after big 2.0 Marius patch, but then dropped again, this time to "stable" 2-3k until the game was abandoned. Since that time, Imperator has ~1k active players, likely sustained by modding community through mods like Invictus. This also suggests, that ~3-7k active players is just not enough for PDX to maintain their games. I understand them, game development is costly)


View attachment 937163
View attachment 937164

My friend here amongst the cat fur would like a word.

 

[PedroLuiz]

I can't help but wonder what we would have gotten if Vicky3 was as similar Vicky2 as CK3 was to CK2. A stripped down, prettied up, 'made for DLC' game, but still with the same core mechanics and... I hate using this phrase 'gameplay loop,' as Vicky2 had. According to Johan, the core of Vicky2 was the militancy and consciousness mechanic. Vicky3 totally dropped that. That'd be like CK3 dropping the vassal/liege system entirely.

anything that isn't "factorio but you don't basically have a choice of where to build" would have sold better

 

[PedroLuiz]

Having goods teleport around the map is the problem, imo. That likely destroyed replayability. Would modelling shipping costs be hard? Absolutely. I think that is why they didn't do it. But it significantly harmed the game.

the same thing happens in Vic 2 and that game doesn't have that problem

 

[ironman3112]

I've never been bothered in VIc2 how I haven't had to build infrastructure otherwise my goods couldn't get to the market.

The worst parts about Vic2 was the micro surrounding building provincial improvements such as forts/shipyards/railraods (when capitalists didn't build them) and this is a core mechanic of Vic3 with managing infrastructure across all provinces. There's a better reason to do it - as your goods can't make it to the market - doesn't make it any less tedious.

 

[Allan Nonymous]

Honestly, if you look at the stats for Vic3, they look a lot like the stats for Stellaris, another game that fundamentally had a really difficult and tedious game loop in its early days. Paradox eventually reworked enough of the game that it became fun to play and numbers went up. TBH, Vic3 is more niche (and more controversial) than Stellaris so I wouldn't be surprised if it bottoms out as low as 5k. Y'all need to stop doomposting and dreaming about Vic2. A Vic2 clone, TBH, would have been a lot worse, for a lot of reasons.

Given the wild success of the game's sales figures. The devs are gonna get a lot more runway than Imperator even if player count drops. Add the prestige of the game and I doubt the game will be going down any time soon. OFC, things like this are never guaranteed but, you know.

 

[Leoreth]

Its not what I think is missing, its what Johan thinks is missing.

My response to Johan on that point was that people might not be viewing the difference between Vicky 2 and Vicky 3 in quite that light, but I could easily see the difference between 'militancy and consciousness' in Vicky 2 and just 'radicalism' in Vicky 3 resulting in a variety of knock-on effects. Given that, even among people who like Vicky 3, the internal politics is one of the top problem areas in the game, I'd say its quite reasonable to look at this change as a potential culprit.

I don't find that Johan quote very enlightening. How is militancy and consciousness the core game loop of Vic2? What interactions are driving it? Is it an issue of how it is foregrounded?

I can agree that there are differences between those two systems but I don't really understand how one is center to the game and the other is not. My impression (from admittedly mostly experiencing Vic2 from game streams and very little play) is that both games are primarily focused on the economic development facet.

I wish Johan communicated a bit more extensively when he writes things like that. It's usually just plain opinion drops that don't explicate his thinking behind these decisions. I usually find myself unable to learn much from that.

 

[Panagean]

Honestly, if you look at the stats for Vic3, they look a lot like the stats for Stellaris, another game that fundamentally had a really difficult and tedious game loop in its early days.

Is the gameplay loop not now tedious? If you're a Stellaris fan more power to you, but every time I say to myself "I like science fiction, I'll give this a go!" and jump in, I bounce off hard against gameplay that seems basically centred around (admittedly, well-written) event-driven randomness, resource balancing through empire micromanagement and staring at a beautiful map of the galaxy from a million lightyears up, while my fleet doomstacks around.

 

[PedroLuiz]

Is the gameplay loop not now tedious?

it used to be worse but i agree with the boring remarks, the same problem also plagues Vic 3 even though the game's system is arguably far more interesting than Stellaris

 

[DominusNovus]

I don't find that Johan quote very enlightening. How is militancy and consciousness the core game loop of Vic2? What interactions are driving it? Is it an issue of how it is foregrounded?

I can agree that there are differences between those two systems but I don't really understand how one is center to the game and the other is not. My impression (from admittedly mostly experiencing Vic2 from game streams and very little play) is that both games are primarily focused on the economic development facet.

I wish Johan communicated a bit more extensively when he writes things like that. It's usually just plain opinion drops that don't explicate his thinking behind these decisions. I usually find myself unable to learn much from that.

Why not just ask him? He's relatively responsive.

 

[Johan]

I don't find that Johan quote very enlightening. How is militancy and consciousness the core game loop of Vic2? What interactions are driving it? Is it an issue of how it is foregrounded?

I can agree that there are differences between those two systems but I don't really understand how one is center to the game and the other is not. My impression (from admittedly mostly experiencing Vic2 from game streams and very little play) is that both games are primarily focused on the economic development facet.

I wish Johan communicated a bit more extensively when he writes things like that. It's usually just plain opinion drops that don't explicate his thinking behind these decisions. I usually find myself unable to learn much from that.

Well. its almost two decades since i coded v1, and 13 years since I last checked the V2 sourcecode. but IIRC, it kind of works like this.

Each pop has a militancy and consciousness value that increases and decreases due to many factors in their province, state and country. They go from 0 to 10, including decimals.

Low conciousness makes pops less likely to understand what is good for them, Low consciousness pops tend to vote and support the current ruling party, while high consciousness supports the issues that they benefit.
It primarily increases by the plurality in the country and the pops literacy, while clergy actively reduced consciousness of pops. This meant that societies without a liberal tradition or with low literacy would have a harder time to get through social or political reform unless forced at gunpoint.

Militancy on the other hand, has no effects below 7?, and from then and up they start funding movements they align with, and at high militancy they rise up in arms.

This hooked in everywhere in the economy and politics, as militancy increased by not getting life or everyday needs fullfilled, disliking the ruling party, not getting reforms they desired, nationalism and much more, while it was reduced by getting everyday needs and luxury needs fullfilled, stationing troops in their province, etc..

And low conciousness but high militant pop would back movements that would not necessarily help them in the future, but they were angry and desperate for change in society.

Oh yeah, Plurality was another very important factor, as it was basically "how liberal is this country".

 

[EGaffney]

As a player with hundreds of hours in each, V1/2 wasn't really about building factories, even though that was a high-profile game action, maybe because the meta involved repeated manual interactions with a somewhat obtrusive UI. The factories are merely the practical embodiment of your tech tree. You build factories to get consumer goods or weapons. The game is about what happens once you and the POPs got their hands on those (or, often, failed to). In so far as there is a score, it is based on having lots of production and a large army, which you do by acquiring lots of population and raw material inputs, not so much by choosing between regular or luxury clothing. Most of the time, I was thinking about the former and not the latter.

 

[Lord Lambert]

Y'all need to stop doomposting and dreaming about Vic2. A Vic2 clone, TBH, would have been a lot worse, for a lot of reasons.

Doubt.

Given the wild success of the game's sales figures.

What wild success? 500k? Is that what constitutes wild success?
You think this because it is a milestone that the Vicky twitter account celebrated. In reality, it's the lowest since EU4, with Imperator as the only exception.

 

[GrounchoVilla]

dunno whether a v2 clone would have been "better", but if I want a v2 clone I'll just download v2 - I have it and I assume its way cheap on steam!