What the title says.
Almost every thread where the devs are posting gets derailed into a counters discussions and inevitably locked. Going on to the forums to see what the developers are saying about the counter situation is nearly impossible since their posts are drowned in spam. A sticky with a few dot points on it would be nice.
Now, this is my 2p on the counters situation.
While I agree that NATO counters may be intimidating for a player new to the wargame genre, and an alternative is a good idea, I just think the current alternate Paradox has chosen is a poor one. The counters are still unclear as to what they are. (It also doesn't help that they're microscopic light-green on dark-green blobs, a black an white symbol with very simple aspects to it, such as the NATO infantry symbol, are very clear as to what they are)
Take the cavalry and infantry for example.
I literally had no idea what the symbol on the bottom was until someone pointed it out on /gsg/. I showed it to 4 of my friends, none of them got it either. They all said it looked like a gun. It's actually a sad-looking horse. Infantry are a bit more clear, but still not that great.
Mountain is pretty obvious, it's just three triangles, and since that simple shape is so often associated with mountains in lots of cultures, we can assume it's a mountain infantry.
If you take a look at the image in the most recent DD showing off the DMZ and map, you can see right outside Berlin, three icons for units. A helmet (presumably infantry), a large rectangle next to a small rectangle (presumably motorized, or trucks, or something, idfk), and then some random blob. I cannot tell what that is. SpArt? A tank? SpAA? A trireme? Roadkill?
The big issue is that the current alternative to NATO counters are almost as abstract and unhelpful. If even people who have lots of experience with NATO counters and army equipment have difficulty telling what is going on, then it's going to be just as hard for new players. That's why I think it's better for NATO counters to be in, since they're way more clear (black and white cross, okay, that's infantry. a light green blob that looks vaguely like a helmet on a similarly colored backdrop? uh...) and is only like 10 more minutes worth of effort. My first time in HOI3 with NATO counters was an interesting experience, I didn't know what the symbols meant at the start. But I clicked on that diagonal striped counter and saw that "oh, this has cavalry in it, and this one with the cross has infantry on it, there must be a pattern here...". It doesn't take a genius to figure out. It's almost insulting that you think that people can't figure out NATO counters, and the alternative you provide is nearly as abstract. Grand Strategy Games have never been about figuring out everything in the first 10 minutes, and that's why they're so great.
Also, stop using "but it's anachronistic" as a point against them. so what? I'm sure when the Nazis were planning Barbarossa, they didn't indicate what was going where by some crappily drawn helmets and blobs. And they starting being used in the Napoleonic Wars, over 100 years before WW2. They're only called NATO counters because NATO popularized them after the war. If you're removing things because they're anachronistic, you might as well remove achievements that have popular culture references because it's "anachronistic".
Paradox is honestly just being so stubborn about this, when there's not reason to. I don't think they know who their audience is. The existing audience already know what NATO counters are, and the people who will find this game new and actually enjoy it are the kind of people who go to effort to learn things, because they want to.
Stop treating your current and future fans like babies, or we'll keep acting like babies.
Almost every thread where the devs are posting gets derailed into a counters discussions and inevitably locked. Going on to the forums to see what the developers are saying about the counter situation is nearly impossible since their posts are drowned in spam. A sticky with a few dot points on it would be nice.
Now, this is my 2p on the counters situation.
While I agree that NATO counters may be intimidating for a player new to the wargame genre, and an alternative is a good idea, I just think the current alternate Paradox has chosen is a poor one. The counters are still unclear as to what they are. (It also doesn't help that they're microscopic light-green on dark-green blobs, a black an white symbol with very simple aspects to it, such as the NATO infantry symbol, are very clear as to what they are)
Take the cavalry and infantry for example.
I literally had no idea what the symbol on the bottom was until someone pointed it out on /gsg/. I showed it to 4 of my friends, none of them got it either. They all said it looked like a gun. It's actually a sad-looking horse. Infantry are a bit more clear, but still not that great.
Mountain is pretty obvious, it's just three triangles, and since that simple shape is so often associated with mountains in lots of cultures, we can assume it's a mountain infantry.
If you take a look at the image in the most recent DD showing off the DMZ and map, you can see right outside Berlin, three icons for units. A helmet (presumably infantry), a large rectangle next to a small rectangle (presumably motorized, or trucks, or something, idfk), and then some random blob. I cannot tell what that is. SpArt? A tank? SpAA? A trireme? Roadkill?
The big issue is that the current alternative to NATO counters are almost as abstract and unhelpful. If even people who have lots of experience with NATO counters and army equipment have difficulty telling what is going on, then it's going to be just as hard for new players. That's why I think it's better for NATO counters to be in, since they're way more clear (black and white cross, okay, that's infantry. a light green blob that looks vaguely like a helmet on a similarly colored backdrop? uh...) and is only like 10 more minutes worth of effort. My first time in HOI3 with NATO counters was an interesting experience, I didn't know what the symbols meant at the start. But I clicked on that diagonal striped counter and saw that "oh, this has cavalry in it, and this one with the cross has infantry on it, there must be a pattern here...". It doesn't take a genius to figure out. It's almost insulting that you think that people can't figure out NATO counters, and the alternative you provide is nearly as abstract. Grand Strategy Games have never been about figuring out everything in the first 10 minutes, and that's why they're so great.
Also, stop using "but it's anachronistic" as a point against them. so what? I'm sure when the Nazis were planning Barbarossa, they didn't indicate what was going where by some crappily drawn helmets and blobs. And they starting being used in the Napoleonic Wars, over 100 years before WW2. They're only called NATO counters because NATO popularized them after the war. If you're removing things because they're anachronistic, you might as well remove achievements that have popular culture references because it's "anachronistic".
Paradox is honestly just being so stubborn about this, when there's not reason to. I don't think they know who their audience is. The existing audience already know what NATO counters are, and the people who will find this game new and actually enjoy it are the kind of people who go to effort to learn things, because they want to.
Stop treating your current and future fans like babies, or we'll keep acting like babies.
