The EU4 community needs to behave better

[urstan]

I'm not surprised that the devs don't want to participate on the forums anymore. There's a lot of toxicity and immaturity after the recent releases. On reddit people are celebrating that Leviathan got the worst reviews of any game on Steam, you can even see people trying to review bomb the main game. I think this behavior is ridiculous. Was it a good DLC? No, so refund it and move on. Did the patch break the game? Yes, so just revert to the previous patch while we wait for the fixes.

Frankly the entitlement is ridiculous. Back in the days you bought a game on a CD from a shop, you brought it home, that's it, there was no interaction with the developers or the company. If after a month you found out the game was broken, you were out of the return period so it was your problem. Many people spent thousands of hours playing this game yet turn on a dime to pile on criticism which is not even constructive. The point of the forums is to engage in a constructive dialogue with the devs, not attack them. PDX has all the metrics they need, if the DLC is being refunded or people are not playing the new patch, they can tell so they know it has to be fixed, it's in their own financial interest. People coming in and flaming the devs doesn't do anything except make the devs less likely to engage with the players.

I remember even a few years back the forums were the place to engage in interesting historical debates. But lately there's been a significant decline in the quality of discourse here. If we want to return to the old level, this community has to police itself better.

edit: go ahead downvote me, you're just proving my point that you can't engage on the merits, this is the same behavior I'm criticizing, disagree button go brrr, steam rating go down

 

[nukemind2012]

Consumer Rights Law

Read about the laws that protect consumers in areas such as deceptive business practices, debt collection, credit reports, privacy, and defective products.

www.justia.com

It’s the duty of the fan base to let them know when they are messing up. Consumers have rights, that’s why I posted that. Even in the age of CDs they did- though obviously Paradox has never run afoul of them, besides being in Sweden they aren’t EA lol. I do agree brigading EUIV overall is a step too far and any harassment is a no go. However being vocal is actually vital- this is the third dud in a row on launch. Emperor got better but GC didn’t.

This community often has great suggestions- many were even put in after the monuments nerf (though nerfing a major feature within 24 hours was annoying). If the community is quiet Paradox is will believe this is the right course, and sales will dwindle. We love this game- I love this game. I love Paradox, most here do. We are only vocal because of that love.

 

[duzenko]

I'm still waiting for a mere acknowledgement from P that they know the game is unplayable (using this exact word - no doublespeak this time).
Then an apology for broken games.
Then we can talk about how P can return to the old level by policing itself better.

 

[El_Cid_]

I'm not surprised that the devs don't want to participate on the forums anymore. There's a lot of toxicity and immaturity after the recent releases. On reddit people are celebrating that Leviathan got the worst reviews of any game on Steam, you can even see people trying to review bomb the main game. I think this behavior is ridiculous. Was it a good DLC? No, so refund it and move on. Did the patch break the game? Yes, so just revert to the previous patch while we wait for the fixes.

Frankly the entitlement is ridiculous. Back in the days you bought a game on a CD from a shop, you brought it home, that's it, there was no interaction with the developers or the company. If after a month you found out the game was broken, you were out of the return period so it was your problem. Many people spent thousands of hours playing this game yet turn on a dime to pile on criticism which is not even constructive. The point of the forums is to engage in a constructive dialogue with the devs, not attack them. PDX has all the metrics they need, if the DLC is being refunded or people are not playing the new patch, they can tell so they know it has to be fixed, it's in their own financial interest. People coming in and flaming the devs doesn't do anything except make the devs less likely to engage with the players.

I remember even a few years back the forums were the place to engage in interesting historical debates. But lately there's been a significant decline in the quality of discourse here. If we want to return to the old level, this community has to police itself better.

edit: go ahead downvote me, you're just proving my point that you can't engage on the merits

Did you buy Leviathan urstan?

 

[Oscot]

Back in the days you bought a game on a CD from a shop, you brought it home, that's it, there was no interaction with the developers or the company. If after a month you found out the game was broken, you were out of the return period so it was your problem.

You shouldn't complain when you're delivered a non-functional product in 2021 because you couldn't do so in 1976?
Of all the takes on this drama, this is kinda the worst one I've seen so far.

 

[Sharples88]

Harassment and threats should have no place, but you can't deny that Leviathan isn't one of the most broken DLC's ever released for EU4. The hatred, the reviewing bombing, it's more about sending a message that releasing DLC's like this shouldn't be acceptable. The reason I'm not refunding Leviathan is because I know Paradox will fix most of the bugs, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be called out. The Paradox studio shouldn't continue down this Bethesda-like early-access QA testing journey, they are planning more DLCs, and it's time the community pushed back on broken expansions.

It's not as cut and dry as you're saying to refund the game, I genuinely like playing EU4 with all it's expansions and have done so for something like 7,000 hours now, but this? The thing that angers/upsets me the most isn't really Leviathan but that Paradox is going down the wrong road.

 

[urstan]

Did you buy Leviathan urstan?

No, I didn't, I only buy them on sale after the initial kinks are worked out. But that's my point, you don't need the latest DLC to enjoy the game so all this outraged reaction is extremely over the top. You literally have people calling for Johan to be fired, attacking him for moving to Spain, all sorts of personal stuff. This is just another proof that gamers really deserve their reputation for being toxic if even a nerdy game like EU4 can turn into such a pile-on.

 

[JaxElite]

Do i understand correctly that you complain about people using steam rarings for their intended purpose?

 

[urstan]

Harassment and threats should have no place, but you can't deny that Leviathan isn't one of the most broken DLC's ever released for EU4. The hatred, the reviewing bombing, it's more about sending a message that releasing DLC's like this shouldn't be acceptable. The reason I'm not refunding Leviathan is because I know Paradox will fix most of the bugs, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be called out. The Paradox studio shouldn't continue down this Bethesda-like early-access QA testing journey, they are planning more DLCs, and it's time the community pushed back on broken expansions.

It's not as cut and dry as you're saying to refund the game, I genuinely like playing EU4 with all it's expansions and have done so for something like 7,000 hours now, but this? The thing that angers/upsets me the most isn't really Leviathan but that Paradox is going down the wrong road.

What is not cut and dry? If you don;t like their direction, don't buy their latest DLCs. I haven't bought a DLC since Dharma because I wasn't interested in India. If their DLC sales dip, PDX will know they're on the wrong road. But review bombing the base game when you enjoyed it for thousands of hours is just wrong.

 

[vanin]

One can not hold an entire community responsible for the actions of a few. Something I thought we all learned the hard way long ago.

 

[Writewolf]

Honestly I do agree.
Also because I distinctly remember that before Leviathan was released, there were pressions for a new dlc.
Paradox community was annoyed that other games had been more supported and "reinforced" than EU4 or CK3 was.
In both cases, Paradox satisfied formally the thing. They gave you the expansion you were aiming for.
I can agree that those two expansions were kind of...disappointing to say least.
But this doesn't give you the right to excalate from "disappoiting expansion" to "the doom of Paradox".
Mostly because I read, along with "refund", lots of people merely trolling and screaming like banshees about the paradox corporation.

Which is worse, lots of people shared interviews and researches where it was revealed that PDX was an anxiety-inducing environment. Without considering that maybe it's THEIR fault. I remember that one day, after someone said "Paradox developers needs a break, we're still in a covid-tied situation" the answer was "The other teams are already working, are they special-snowflakes?". This bothered me deeply because honestly we're putting on the same level a grown up game as EU4 (really, what more were you expecting from the game?) from a still teen game as Stellaris.

Before you ask, I didn't buy Leviathan, simply because it didn't click my interest. I bought all the other expansions because they all made me mouth water with interest, but this just didn't click to me, it sounded as something patchy.

And if you ask then what I do I suggest is: respect other people. Leave a comment where you say that Leviathan is patchy and then just revert to past saves. I am playing with them and enjoying a lot EU4. I'm going to make some games on my twitch channel, as soon as I managed to over come my unselfconfidence.

Finally: I wrote in the past a post where I was criticizing overall all people pointing out the slightest failure as a bug, sometimes even when it was something game built like "I can't scheme to kill my own heir!" which is written that to do so you must be sadist, it's written plain english in the description of the trait.
They cancelled the post because "We don't need gas cans near to the fire". that means they know that they can't talk with you calmly. that's awful, don't you think?

 

[urstan]

One can not hold an entire community responsible for the actions of a few. I thought we all learned the hard way long ago.

The point is that it's enough for a few to be toxic to poison the entire community. If someone p*sses in the pool, it doesnt matter that everybody else is clean. If the devs don't feel like wading through the toxic comments, they will just stop engaging altogether.

edit: lol at people actually disagreeing with this comment, do you like p*ss in your pool?

 

[Lepaso]

this community has to police itself better.

Then why are you getting mad at your contrarianism/bad-faith acting getting policed out of the community?

 

[JaxElite]

No, I didn't, I only buy them on sale after the initial kinks are worked out. But that's my point, you don't need the latest DLC to enjoy the game so all this outraged reaction is extremely over the top. You literally have people calling for Johan to be fired, attacking him for moving to Spain, all sorts of personal stuff. This is just another proof that gamers really deserve their reputation for being toxic if even a nerdy game like EU4 can turn into such a pile-on.

You seem like a victim of the gamers "the boy who cried wolf" issue. Gamers have called minor issues "broken" and joked about "literally unplayable" for ages. So observers like you who did not play the product assume that it is just the usual crying. But in this case this is not warranted. 1.30.6 had issues but was working. 1.31.0 and 1.31.1 are just simply not working. It is basically imppssible to play 3/4 of the game since you cant get there. Every game crashes. If you had malicious intent you would call this update malware, nut realistically it is "just" the worst game release in resent history. AC Unity and Cyberpunk were not remotely as problematic.
To make it clear. No developer in the history of game development would have released this on CD before the age of day one patches

 

[Nikoleis]

you don't need the latest DLC to enjoy the game

Actually the Siam non functional formation decision or the Majapahit unsolvable disaster required the DLC even if that was normally supposed to be part of the free patch, and there were crashes for not owning an unrelated older DLC, Conquest of Paradise. Solved matters with 1.31.1, but now saves just deletes themselves making it even worse so no, factually, this statement happens to be wrong when it comes to 1.31

 

[Limbojack]

Death threats are absolutely unacceptable, and I hope the moderators ban the people behind them, but I actually feel like that community at large is entitled to lash out when they've spent money on such a horrible product as Leviathan. I don't know where the responsibility for this pathetic excuse of a release really lies, but at the end of the day, someone in PDX decided that this crap was good enough to sell their customers - and that someone(s) deserves pretty much 85% of what the community has thrown at the company. I mean, they've pretty much taken a huge bite out of PDX's reputation before spitting it on the customers. As a matter of fact, this expansion was so bad and full of issues that I almost feel like we are under no obligation to keep the criticism constructive. PDX deserves the backlash, and hopefully - just hopefully - the company will learn something from this failures of Leviathan.

The fact that they suddenly decided to complain about toxicity now, and I'm sure there's plenty of toxicity on these forums, just feels so incredibly convenient to me; "oh no, people are hating on our game - let's try to redirect the focus, making them the problem." Yeah, no. I don't buy it. The vast majority of the people on these forums (I can't speak for the HoI4 forum, as I don't play that game) act pretty well - and even now, I would say that a vast majority of the criticism levied against PDX is reasonable.

 

[Borgratz]

The community is a big enough group of people that appeals to "just behave better" are totally meaningless. That only works with a group of 20ish people who you know and who you share some values with.

This is a macro level problem that needs to be handled by Paradox by improving community management, communication and, frankly, changing the way they produce content. If they do that, people will start behaving better, because the root problems that leads to situations like this are gone.

 

[urstan]

You seem like a victim of the gamers "the boy who cried wolf" issue. Gamers have called minor issues "broken" and joked about "literally unplayable" for ages. So observers like you who did not play the product assume that it is just the usual crying. But in this case this is not warranted. 1.30.6 had issues but was working. 1.31.0 and 1.31.1 are just simply not working. It is basically imppssible to play 3/4 of the game since you cant get there. Every game crashes. If you had malicious intent you would call this update malware, nut realistically it is "just" the worst game release in resent history. AC Unity and Cyberpunk were not remotely as problematic.
To make it clear. No developer in the history of game development would have released this on CD before the age of day one patches

I know that 1.31 is not working. So just revert to 1.30.6 and keep playing. It's not like it's the first time PDX releases a buggy game. I saw on reddit Victoria 1 was on release buggy and unplayable. I remember HoI3 kept crashing all the time. In fact, in those cases complaining would be even more justifiable because there was no working patch to go back to. But with EU4 you can just revert the version.

 

[vanin]

The point is that it's enough for a few to be toxic to poison the entire community. If someone p*sses in the pool, it doesnt matter that everybody else is clean. If the devs don't feel like wading through the toxic comments, they will just stop engaging altogether.

I think that is false and the idea itself sets a dangerous precedent, both in this setting and more serious real-life situations where communities can be said to contain toxic elements. And what can the community do about the toxicity, exactly? We do not control who can open accounts here. We do not control who can post here. We can't pick who to ban. The best thing we can do is report and down-vote what we think is detestable or over the line - that's it, and pray that the moderators act on it. And as far as I can see people do that very well because toxic posts are seen at a minimum because they get removed fairly rapidly.

If someone you know in real life behaves poorly you can influence them because you know them. Here we are a mostly anonymous mass of nameless strangers with no ties to one another other than that we frequent the same site. That is not strong enough ties to affect anyone's behaviour, and the people who are the real targets of threads like these are not going to listen or improve because they clearly do not care in the first place and no one here has hold or sway over them to affect such changes.

I am not going to let anyone hold me accountable for the actions of others. I have a share of dubious posts in the past I am not proud of, but I am not going to pin those on other people to deflect from my individual responsibility. "Pissing the pool" is such a poor analogy because unlike in a pool you can easily find out who is responsible and ban that individual. You can remove those posts also which means that you can literally filter the metaphorical piss out of the pool with the press of a button. Sounds like an amazing pool tbh.

One thing I think they could and maybe should do is require registering ownership of a base-game when forming an account, and once you are banned then that's it for you until you spend more money. But again the community can not be held liable that Paradox allows anyone to post.

 

[JaxElite]

I know that 1.31 is not working. So just revert to 1.30.6 and keep playing. It's not like it's the first time PDX releases a buggy game. I saw on reddit Victoria 1 was on release buggy and unplayable. I remember HoI3 kept crashing all the time. In fact, in those cases complaining would be even more justifiable because there was no working patch to go back to. But with EU4 you can just revert the version.

This is not only a forum about EU4, but also about EU4 DLC. Your point can be understood, although i dont agree with them if this was just aboit EU4. But Leviathan is a faulty product that charged people 20€. And your serious opinion is to roll back and dont use the steam rating feature as it is intended just because we shouldn't seem mean?