Reminder: Some of us don't play with mods/third-party content

[Hufford P. Nancy]

This message isn't really intended for the devs, who have articulated their understanding of this issue perfectly well, but I see the following suggestion made by fans frequently enough that I think it deserves a direct response from another fan. The suggestion in question goes something like:

"PDX should incorporate content from modders such as national focus trees, officer portraits, national spirit icons, etc. while the professional team works on mechanics/bugfixes."

I can only speak for myself, but I have no interest in mod content (aside from the occasional total conversion project like The New Order or Kaiserreich). Nothing against modders, but I'm here solely for products made by the core team. If too much content from mods finds its way into the vanilla game, I'll likely edit it out.

I'm fine with the recent CCP. I regard it as third-party content, like the Sabaton albums. I won't be buying it personally, but it's a nice option for those who enjoy such things and would like to support the artists involved. I hope optional art/music is the extent of such DLC, but we'll see.

And yes, I'm aware fan content has been worked into the main game before, like Stanley Baldwin's portrait. I have mixed feelings about those additions, honestly, and it seems like calls to embrace a mod-centric approach have intensified lately. Hence, this thread.

Anyway, please don't get into a debate over the quality of mods or the base game itself, which isn't the point, and try to be nice if you want to discuss the issue. Thanks.

 

[Rycestealer]

Sure. That's your opinion and your choice not to interact or utilize the often superior modded content. I can respect that, but I fundamentally disagree with you for entirely. If the devs who work full time on the game make inferior content to modders who work for free, why shouldn't people be critical of the devs. The last three major expansions have added very little in terms of gameplay or said gameplay had 0 meaningful interactions. A great example is the air designer. You click more times to make the same fighter, same CAS, same everything every game. The MIO were just more clicks for small no uses that added nothing. No sort of Good Neighbor mechanic with south America. Naval missions still being broken. I can go on, but the devs deserved to be criticized for their failure to make meaningful expansions to the game and maintain dlc mechanics like the espionage system.

I have 0 problems with collaborations with modders and integrations of their work, especially if it's entirely original, and better yet, free, but people want enjoyable focus trees and meaningful new mechanics. The game is 8 years old and there hasn't been a good expansion since NSB(arguably the only good one) and it's an embarrassment that in these 8 years how little the dev team has actually done compared to modders and even other PDX teams like those for Stellaris and EU4. I sincerely hope that we get a good DLC but crap like radios/music and cosmetics like horse armor is clearly what a plurality of the community do not want.

So no. I strongly disagree with the notion that we shouldn't be comparing the base game to mods. If comparisons and criticisms get the team at Creative Assembly to add more content to a previous DLC and improve their DLC policy, then we should keep up the pressure and make very clear our expectations and desires to PDX.

We, the players deserve better.

 

[Arheo]

Sure. That's your opinion and your choice not to interact or utilize the often superior modded content. I can respect that, but I fundamentally disagree with you for entirely. If the devs who work full time on the game make inferior content to modders who work for free, why shouldn't people be critical of the devs. The last three major expansions have added very little in terms of gameplay or said gameplay had 0 meaningful interactions. A great example is the air designer. You click more times to make the same fighter, same CAS, same everything every game. The MIO were just more clicks for small no uses that added nothing. No sort of Good Neighbor mechanic with south America. Naval missions still being broken. I can go on, but the devs deserved to be criticized for their failure to make meaningful expansions to the game and maintain dlc mechanics like the espionage system.

I have 0 problems with collaborations with modders and integrations of their work, especially if it's entirely original, and better yet, free, but people want enjoyable focus trees and meaningful new mechanics. The game is 8 years old and there hasn't been a good expansion since NSB(arguably the only good one) and it's an embarrassment that in these 8 years how little the dev team has actually done compared to modders and even other PDX teams like those for Stellaris and EU4. I sincerely hope that we get a good DLC but crap like radios/music and cosmetics like horse armor is clearly what a plurality of the community do not want.

So no. I strongly disagree with the notion that we shouldn't be comparing the base game to mods. If comparisons and criticisms get the team at Creative Assembly to add more content to a previous DLC and improve their DLC policy, then we should keep up the pressure and make very clear our expectations and desires to PDX.

We, the players deserve better.

Reading stuff like this just makes me so incredibly tired.

 

[Hufford P. Nancy]

@Rycestealer

Thanks for doing exactly what I asked people not to do.

"I strongly disagree with the notion that we shouldn't be comparing the base game to mods."

I never said that, nor was it the point of this thread. It's also funny how you say NSB was the only good expansion, since I just saw someone complaining about it in another discussion. Everyone thinks they speak for the whole community.

I'm not going to respond to posts that willfully disregard or misconstrue what I originally wrote, but I will ask moderators to delete them if they go too far. Thanks again to anyone who might actually take the time to understand my intention.

Truthfully, this wasn't conceived as a debate thread, though intelligent conversation is always welcome. I could have just conveyed my point of view privately, everything above certainly just being my opinion, but I thought perhaps others might be holding the same perspective quietly--the ones pushing for mod integration tend to be the loudest.

 

[Ilyasviel]

Sure. That's your opinion and your choice not to interact or utilize the often superior modded content. I can respect that, but I fundamentally disagree with you for entirely. If the devs who work full time on the game make inferior content to modders who work for free, why shouldn't people be critical of the devs. The last three major expansions have added very little in terms of gameplay or said gameplay had 0 meaningful interactions. A great example is the air designer. You click more times to make the same fighter, same CAS, same everything every game. The MIO were just more clicks for small no uses that added nothing. No sort of Good Neighbor mechanic with south America. Naval missions still being broken. I can go on, but the devs deserved to be criticized for their failure to make meaningful expansions to the game and maintain dlc mechanics like the espionage system.

I have 0 problems with collaborations with modders and integrations of their work, especially if it's entirely original, and better yet, free, but people want enjoyable focus trees and meaningful new mechanics. The game is 8 years old and there hasn't been a good expansion since NSB(arguably the only good one) and it's an embarrassment that in these 8 years how little the dev team has actually done compared to modders and even other PDX teams like those for Stellaris and EU4. I sincerely hope that we get a good DLC but crap like radios/music and cosmetics like horse armor is clearly what a plurality of the community do not want.

So no. I strongly disagree with the notion that we shouldn't be comparing the base game to mods. If comparisons and criticisms get the team at Creative Assembly to add more content to a previous DLC and improve their DLC policy, then we should keep up the pressure and make very clear our expectations and desires to PDX.

We, the players deserve better.

I find it ironic that you criticize the air designer and MIOs for being "more clicks for small no uses that add nothing" while at the same time saying that modded content is superior. Every time I look at a major mod, it's just bloat everywhere. In fact, if there's anything I dislike about the state of hoi4 DLCs nowadays, it's that they're imitating modders by adding these gigantic focus trees that force you to stop playing the game to click on a focus every month. The 35 days focuses are the worst thing to happen to this game. Instead of having a bunch of those, they should make them take longer, but also be more meaningful. I'm really not looking forward to the inevitable upcoming bloated German and Japanese trees.

 

[IlPopa]

Integrating mods into the base game is a fantastic idea and I haven't seen any argument here for why it isn't.

I also really want a job where I can tell a paying customer how tired it makes me having to listen to their feedback.

 

[Arheo]

Integrating mods into the base game is a fantastic idea and I haven't seen any argument here for why it isn't.

That would be a very fast way to end up with a game with no clear intention or purpose. The joy of mods is that you can set your own direction and off you go - you don't have to care about the game's intended goals, you don't need to match the game's art style or quality standards (in either direction), and you can reuse any vanilla assets, script and/or code in any way you like.

On the more practical end of things: if one of our designers encounters a situation where they wish to produce a narrative that is not properly supported by the game engine, they can have that functionality added. Mods will very often work around that blocker in ways that produce an extremely unmaintainable or unperformant game. One on hand I totally understand them doing that; but on the other it makes it impossible to just 'roll things in' even if we wanted to.

There are a minority of mods (usually QoL and translation) that don't fall foul of these issues - we've integrated fan-made mod translations before, and there are a few QoL mods out there that I have my eye on.

Of course, you're free to disagree with this.

I also really want a job where I can tell a paying customer how tired it makes me having to listen to their feedback.

Listening to feedback is not the tiring part of it, as I think you are aware. It's impossible to have a meaningful dialogue when a post suggests that it carries the weight of the whole community.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

The 35 days focuses are the worst thing to happen to this game. Instead of having a bunch of those, they should make them take longer, but also be more meaningful.

The thing is, they become both shorter and more impactful at the same time. It's power creep in its full bluntness. Finland as of AAT is a perfect example.

On the other hand, decent stuff of the past like 'Continue the Zuidersee Works' nowadays is never created.

 

[Kosaki MacTavish]

On the other hand, decent stuff of the past like 'Continue the Zuidersee Works' nowadays is never created.

Longer focus with high risk-high reward like that is good, i think.

Shorter focus with meh reward is also good too, like that railway-building focus for various nations that did not give you a railway designer. (India should've either shorten the focus days, or or give supply hubs/more railway stretchs/railway designer to compensate the longer time to complete it)

Shorter focus with high reward without any risk isn't. Some can justify it for being a wartime focus, but more risk on other means (consumer goods / political power gain / stability debuffs) than the rewards should've been added to compensate.

 

[Arheo]

The thing is, they become both shorter and more impactful at the same time. It's power creep in its full bluntness. Finland as of AAT is a perfect example.

On the other hand, decent stuff of the past like 'Continue the Zuidersee Works' nowadays is never created.

I do actually agree with a lot of this, and the 'ever shorter' trend is something we've taken some steps to avoid in upcoming content. I don't think 35 day focuses are inherently bad, but how they're used can be and I'd rather they existed to fulfill a specific pacing purpose than just become the new norm.

Again though, that's one where some parts of the community would ardently disagree with us: we get abundant comments on dev diaries asking for shorter and shorter focus lengths and bigger rewards.

 

[stormsand9]

Integrating mods into the base game is a fantastic idea and I haven't seen any argument here for why it isn't.

I also really want a job where I can tell a paying customer how tired it makes me having to listen to their feedback.

I don't want to play a game where every tiny central american country has a focus tree, or completely irrelevant nations like bhutan nepal or tibet have one- that will just slow down the game.
I support having focus trees for countries like Switzerland because their tree should make them powerful and not easy to invade: just like real life. Same with South American Countries- Brazil fought in WW2 in Italy and the Atlantic war- giving other south american countries to act as a counter balance to Brazil whether in historical but especially ahistorical is only natural as well.

Nor do I need a focus tree that is only fully completed by the year 1954 for every major. There is such a thing sometimes as adding too much- where some focus' are just useless and nobody ever picks them- like the focus in Centre Soviet Union path that gives you war economy. Nobody who owned Together For Victory ever took that focus, everyone sent an attache to spain then grabbed war economy manually. And now that Together For Victory is base game, the only people who will EVER take that focus' is someone who a: doesn't know Attaches are a thing or b: is very new to the game.

And if you want that kind of job... retail jobs are always hiring- and you've clearly never worked one.

 

[Rycestealer]

I find it ironic that you criticize the air designer and MIOs for being "more clicks for small no uses that add nothing" while at the same time saying that modded content is superior. Every time I look at a major mod, it's just bloat everywhere. In fact, if there's anything I dislike about the state of hoi4 DLCs nowadays, it's that they're imitating modders by adding these gigantic focus trees that force you to stop playing the game to click on a focus every month. The 35 days focuses are the worst thing to happen to this game. Instead of having a bunch of those, they should make them take longer, but also be more meaningful. I'm really not looking forward to the inevitable upcoming bloated German and Japanese trees.

Fundamentally, mods are limited with what mechanics they can change due to the fact that they can hardly touch the games core mechanics so mechanical additions have to be effectively jury rigged into the game. While I agree that many mods have issues and there has been an abundance of focus bloat due to many mods prioritizing story telling over gameplay, my core issue lies in the lack of meaningful additions to the game such as the air designer and the MIOs, and the morose issues in existing content (focuses) that are only lightly touched in the 'war effort patches'.

The issue with the air designer is that there is a cut and dry path to get to the ideal plane and they might as well have left the original plane techs as is. I don't think there is a solution to the air problem besides adding more stats to the planes themselves that impact performance so that you aren't just agility/speed/air attack maxing. Reliability? If there were more incremental techs or more depth to ic cost vs performance. It would also be wonderful to have older planes have a role besides dumping them on the international market with more techs for naval spotting and ground recon. Additionally, it would be wonderful if planes didn't magically get pilots out of nowhere and if pilots were a resource instead of having an air force that could be scaled up to 10 times it's size in the span of weeks and months.

In terms of the MIOs, I really find that they add very little to gameplay with the small bonuses being a means to keep the player engaged and click something similar to the 35 day focuses that I also generally dislike. Yes you can queue them, but I think that they are a poorly implemented mechanic that does not really do much to improve the gameplay.

I think meaningful gameplay additions would be iterating upon the logistics system that already exists, improving access to existing mechanics and equipment types like amtracks, and making sinking convoys and hunting submarines worth while.

Finally I also would like to agree with bloated being a potential issue in future trees. I personally dislike silly mini games and a dozen 7 day focuses or being drowned in events, but I also think that what bloat means varies from person to person and as both a player and a modder, I am curious on what you and others consider bloat. There exist other issues like naval missions just not working all that well and so on, but fundamentally I do not think that anything I have said is contradictory though I will acknowledge that it was a tad hyperbolic.

 

[Rycestealer]

Reading stuff like this just makes me so incredibly tired.

Well, I apologize that my expressing my personal frustrations as a player made you tired. It's at least gratifying to know that the complaints of a long time player like myself are actually being read and interacted with as opposed to the radio silence of other companies like CA.

 

[Rycestealer]

@Rycestealer

Thanks for doing exactly what I asked people not to do.

"I strongly disagree with the notion that we shouldn't be comparing the base game to mods."

I never said that, nor was it the point of this thread. It's also funny how you say NSB was the only good expansion, since I just saw someone complaining about it in another discussion. Everyone thinks they speak for the whole community.

I'm not going to respond to posts that willfully disregard or misconstrue what I originally wrote, but I will ask moderators to delete them if they go too far. Thanks again to anyone who might actually take the time to understand my intention.

Truthfully, this wasn't conceived as a debate thread, though intelligent conversation is always welcome. I could have just conveyed my point of view privately, everything above certainly just being my opinion, but I thought perhaps others might be holding the same perspective quietly--the ones pushing for mod integration tend to be the loudest.

Hearts of Iron collaborating with modders is nothing new. We had a whole Hearts of Iron release, Darkest Hour, born out of such a union. While I think it is kinda of ironic to mod out modded content and I understand wanting a 'pure' or definitive vanilla experience from other games. So long as integrated mods are able to form a curated experience that fits the vision of the developers and fills holes in gameplay, I don't see any issue. Hell there even is a framework to disable individual DLC so that can be utilized in concert of that to create a lighter experience.

 

[Herennius]

(...)

The issue with the air designer is that there is a cut and dry path to get to the ideal plane and they might as well have left the original plane techs as is. I don't think there is a solution to the air problem besides adding more stats to the planes themselves that impact performance so that you aren't just agility/speed/air attack maxing. Reliability? If there were more incremental techs or more depth to ic cost vs performance. It would also be wonderful to have older planes have a role besides dumping them on the international market with more techs for naval spotting and ground recon. Additionally, it would be wonderful if planes didn't magically get pilots out of nowhere and if pilots were a resource instead of having an air force that could be scaled up to 10 times it's size in the span of weeks and months.

(...)

Regarding reliability, the devs already stated that they have identified this as an area to improve the air designer in future. Yes, in an ideal world we would have received the air designer with that and every future adjustment already by release, but I personally prefer having the air designer in its current form already since BBA over getting it at some future point. Or maybe not all.

 

[Hufford P. Nancy]

Hearts of Iron collaborating with modders is nothing new. We had a whole Hearts of Iron release, Darkest Hour, born out of such a union. While I think it is kinda of ironic to mod out modded content and I understand wanting a 'pure' or definitive vanilla experience from other games. So long as integrated mods are able to form a curated experience that fits the vision of the developers and fills holes in gameplay, I don't see any issue. Hell there even is a framework to disable individual DLC so that can be utilized in concert of that to create a lighter experience.

Darkest Hour wasn't integrated. It was a separate product you could purchase or not, with full knowledge of its development history. Great for people who liked mods, not intrusive for those who didn't. The same would hold true if modded features in future DLCs were controlled by toggles--they wouldn't actually be integrated.

The issue with full integration is that it wouldn't give players a choice, and it could be perceived as using third-party content to edge out primary content. Some people believe that if you buy from Honda, you should get a Honda car, not a Honda car-plus-what-someone-else-thought-would-be-a-great-design-alteration. I buy from Paradox to get Paradox games.

Again, this is why I have no problem with the recent CCP announcement. It's separate, and I can choose how and if I want to include it in my game.

Also, a potential curation process doesn't sound like it'd necessarily be short, simple, or easy. I'd rather the devs just focus on their own ideas than spending energy on bringing others' in line with their vision, whether that's in regard to aesthetics, balance, or coding, But that's me, naturally.

I'm not sure about irony. If the only way to watch the original Star Trek series was through a fan-made restoration that edited the source material, I don't think anyone would consider it a double standard if others tried to undo such tampering. Nonetheless, point taken. Perhaps hyperbole on my part.

 

[Eruth]

I don't want to play a game where every tiny central american country has a focus tree, or completely irrelevant nations like bhutan nepal or tibet have one- that will just slow down the game.
I support having focus trees for countries like Switzerland because their tree should make them powerful and not easy to invade: just like real life. Same with South American Countries- Brazil fought in WW2 in Italy and the Atlantic war- giving other south american countries to act as a counter balance to Brazil whether in historical but especially ahistorical is only natural as well.

Nor do I need a focus tree that is only fully completed by the year 1954 for every major. There is such a thing sometimes as adding too much- where some focus' are just useless and nobody ever picks them- like the focus in Centre Soviet Union path that gives you war economy. Nobody who owned Together For Victory ever took that focus, everyone sent an attache to spain then grabbed war economy manually. And now that Together For Victory is base game, the only people who will EVER take that focus' is someone who a: doesn't know Attaches are a thing or b: is very new to the game.

And if you want that kind of job... retail jobs are always hiring- and you've clearly never worked one.

Why would having more trees slow down the game? There’s not a lot of AI that goes into choosing a focus; for the first several years they follow a pre-set path, and then they just add up a few of
and roll an RNG to pick after the path runs out. The only way it would decrease performance is if it gave the tag more units/factories to manage, so just make the minors trees less powerful than the generic.

 

[pheonicia]

I do actually agree with a lot of this, and the 'ever shorter' trend is something we've taken some steps to avoid in upcoming content. I don't think 35 day focuses are inherently bad, but how they're used can be and I'd rather they existed to fulfill a specific pacing purpose than just become the new norm.

Again though, that's one where some parts of the community would ardently disagree with us: we get abundant comments on dev diaries asking for shorter and shorter focus lengths and bigger rewards.

With some 70 day focuses that did very little on their own, cutting them down to 35 days was a good idea. But when I look at a large focus tree with a bunch of 35 day focuses that still collectively do very little, I think I'd prefer a shorter (net time wise) focus tree with fewer, longer focuses that are individually more impactful.

 

[GSP Jr]

Mods are a huge selling point for HOI IV and the HOI series.
With all the time & effort put into making the loader and game allow them, they are not going anywhere any time soon.
You are, of course, free to use or not use mods as you like, same as DLC's, same as any other 'option' in the game.
Mods are also a double edged sword - some are poorly done, some don't actually do what they say, and some will just crash the game.
They have a good side also - many graphics or music mods are fabulous content, and some add units or equipment the vanilla game has not incorporated yet.
One of my favorite mods, 'Expanded Historical Quotes' does nothing at all except add more quotes from the era while the game boots up.
Some mods are designed for multiplayer to standardize and/or enforce agreed upon rules.

I don't see anything wrong with PDX adding things to the game that are/were in mods. I have had things in my mods that were eventually added to the game. No big deal, it happens, after all, it is 'based on a true story', so as more content is added some of it will previously been in mods.

The important thing to remember is HOI IV is a GAME and is suppose to be FUN.

Mods give players more ability to customize their fun. Without mods, the game would lose a lot of its allure for many players.

 

[prometheuskathoristikos]

I can only speak for myself, but I have no interest in mod content

You can speak for me. I dabble in mods occasionally, but I much prefer the core, professionally-developed experience.

I furthermore agree that the devs should not be looking for widespread mod integration. Mods are, in my opinion, unduly glorified, precisely because they are free. There is not something inherently amazing about them, in such a universal way, across all games, as the zeitgeist seems to have established, such that professional developers, the ones who actually create the games, without whom there would be no games to mod, are somehow able to approach that level.

HOI4 devs are doing great work, and if anything, I see some of the issues currently with the core game, such as content bloat at the expense of refinement and integration, as products of the pressure of mod culture.