The EU4 community needs to behave better

[HoridMatec]

No it's not the devs job, it's the PR department's job. If you want to engage with the devs, you need to make sure the forums do not become a hostile environment. Otherwise, you'll just get corporate PR people and community managers to engage on the forum.

dude, that's what i said?

 

[urstan]

I find it hilarious that the only guy defending Paradox's catastrophical Leviathan release (yes, urstan, I'm talking to you ) has joined this forum TODAY and has only made posts in this one thread. I mean, seriously, what made you join this forum? Can you actually judge the "toxicity" of this forum and its community if you've just joined, and even worse, you haven't had the experience of paying 20€ for something unasable that even destroys the very base game (corrupted save files also happen to 1.30.6 games)

One, I'm not the only guy defending Paradox (we're many, there's another 20-year-old veteran in the forums). Two, I've been on these forums for years, I created a new account for this post because I don't want to be harassed by gamers. Three, of course I can judge the toxicity without playing Leviathan, in fact it makes me unbiased. I understand that you're upset but my point is that players need to stop throwing a temper tantrum every time they're upset by a game. Grow up, play something else, come back when it's fixed.

 

[zorkman]

switching from one anonymous account to another="rather cowardly"? why are you questioning my motives instead of engaging my arguments?

I have no little respect for someone, however much I might agree or disagree with them, who is afraid to show their real user name on a site. That is cowardly.

 

[Yanda]

I just want my refund bad then I will leave but they just keep ignoring me

 

[FaceDancer]

One, I'm not the only guy defending Paradox (we're many, there's another 20-year-old veteran in the forums). Two, I've been on these forums for years, I created a new account for this post because I don't want to be harassed by gamers. Three, of course I can judge the toxicity without playing Leviathan, in fact it makes me unbiased. I understand that you're upset but my point is that players need to stop throwing a temper tantrum every time they're upset by a game. Grow up, play something else, come back when it's fixed.

I'm not a frequent writer on these forums, but when I see something like this I have to respond. So it is totally okay for a big developer to publish such a bad product and your only solution is to "grow up, play something else and come back when they fix it"? Following those instructions brought us to the place we are in right now. Most people ignored buggy releases because "they eventually fix them" and Paradox, seeing that they can get away with it, kept lowering the bar.

 

[Pete0714]

So I guess we have no right to criticise when a product has major flaws, we are only supposed to praise them, because otherwise it is toxic? I'm sorry, no, living in an echo chamber is not constructive. Don't be personal and mean, yes, but they should consider it a duty to hear their customers.

 

[Atomcreator]

I'd give it up Urstan, you cant win against this lot.

For the record, I'm also pissed off with PDX lately. Which is why I haven't bought the dlc and that is where the crux lies. You can be as angry as the hulk on here, but no one, other than the local circle jerk is listening to you. You can bet your bottom dollar that no devs are reading it to make them feel worse than they already do for this shitty release, which probably isn't their fault.
So sit around being Mr angry on the internet repeating the same things all day and see what good it does you. The ONLY thing that matters is not buying any more DLC's. As you can see what has happened with Imperator, when no one plays the game and not enough buy the dlcs, then they will either move on or in the case of a flagship product like EU4, redouble their efforts, change management or change their profit gouging ways.
By all means complain and move on, provide bug reports and constructive feedback, but this constant repetitive whinging serves little purpose as we wait for the next patch.

 

[cumaethor]

Just ask Paradox who do they like better? You their white knight who as you said bought DLCs only on sale or people complaining who bought DLC now? I am pretty sure Paradox likes complainers more.

 

[Tarroque]

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

Your criticism of the community in general as being toxic, immature and entitled is not constructive, your point that people who have played EU4 are not allowed to criticize the game, even if the devs repeatedly break their own promises about "no more disastrous launches" is not convincing. If the forums are exclusively for "engaging in constructive dialogue with the devs" then they should be closed immediately as devs in your opinion don't want to participate on them anyway and thus the forum has no real raison d'être.

As I've written elsewhere, if Paradox were more concerned with being praised for their DLC than with being paid for it, then they should institute a system of payment in praise. The community is not responsible for setting the expectations through dev diaries or for setting the launch dates for DLC, this is Paradox's doing and thus responsibility. They not only create and market the game but feel confident in charging money for it. I don't think they could continue to exist if they did it for free, but repeated violations of trust is not something a sensible customer should be silent or supportive about.

I don't think a forum about a videogame should actively be seeking to debate history rather than the videogame that the forum is named after, and there are plenty of other places dedicated to discussions about history if that's what you're after.

 

[Borgio]

By all means complain and move on, provide bug reports and constructive feedback, but this constant repetitive whinging serves little purpose as we wait for the next patch.

That is exactly what I did. Before Leviathan I didn't even know that a seperate Bug-Report subforum existed because, frankly, I never experienced something worthy of a bug-report. Since Leviathan I filed 4 different bug reports in 6 days, compared to zero in my first 7.5 years of playing EU4.

 

[PeaceMK]

Maybe just make better dlcs? Its easy to nitpick few unacceptable behaviours and hide behind generalisations such as "toxicity", but most people are just upset they got a bad product, and will change their opinion once things get fixed.

It's almost sad that this is some twitter-tier suggestion that we just suck it, do nothing to not hurt anybodies' feelings and hope for something better next time

Nobody in their sane mind suggests personal attacks or threats, that's crazy, but people have a right to be mad upon being disappointed, especially if they paid money.

>Devs will stop checking the forums
Well boo-hoo, and i will stop buying their dlcs, see who comes worse from that trade.

 

[urstan]

So I guess we have no right to criticise when a product has major flaws, we are only supposed to praise them, because otherwise it is toxic? I'm sorry, no, living in an echo chamber is not constructive. Don't be personal and mean, yes, but they should consider it a duty to hear their customers.

They don't have a duty to hear the customers, Paradox doesn't owe you anything. It may be better for their bottom line if they take their customer's views on board but then the question becomes which group of customers should be heard? If you have a group of customers who buy every DLC on release and even pre-order them no matter their quality then why listen to them, they're going to buy the stuff anyway.

 

[FaceDancer]

They don't have a duty to hear the customers, Paradox doesn't owe you anything. It may be better for their bottom line if they take their customer's views on board but then the question becomes which group of customers should be heard? If you have a group of customers who buy every DLC on release and even pre-order them no matter their quality then why listen to them, they're going to buy the stuff anyway.

Dude if I had this mentality towards my clients I would be out of business in no time. Paradox owe to their customers good product, that they promised before the release.

 

[HoridMatec]

They don't have a duty to hear the customers, Paradox doesn't owe you anything. It may be better for their bottom line if they take their customer's views on board but then the question becomes which group of customers should be heard? If you have a group of customers who buy every DLC on release and even pre-order them no matter their quality then why listen to them, they're going to buy the stuff anyway.

FYI, leviathan is now down to 7% on steam, most people prob got refund if they bought on steam or canceled the sub, so it would be in paradox's best interest to take the feedback and do better as a company.

 

[marquina#9999]

They don't have a duty to hear the customers,

That is right. But the same way they are in their right to not listen to their customers the customers are in the right to complain about it. It goes bidirectionally.

Paradox doesn't owe you anything.

The moment a monetary transaction is involved they literally do owe to deliver what was advertised.

It may be better for their bottom line if they take their customer's views on board but then the question becomes which group of customers should be heard?

This is not true for all the cases but maybe if your product is the worst reviewed content of all time in Steam maybe you have done something wrong and you should stick it up and take the needed measures so it doesn't happen again.

If you have a group of customers who buy every DLC on release and even pre-order them no matter their quality then why listen to them, they're going to buy the stuff anyway.

That's true though. But in theory buying it and refunding is better than not even buying it (if you want to show your discomtempt).

 

[orko2020]

They don't have a duty to hear the customers, Paradox doesn't owe you anything. It may be better for their bottom line if they take their customer's views on board but then the question becomes which group of customers should be heard? If you have a group of customers who buy every DLC on release and even pre-order them no matter their quality then why listen to them, they're going to buy the stuff anyway.

If paradox doesn’t owe us anything, then why do we owe them to “behave better”? If they owe us nothing they can just choose to ignore us (which they started doing btw), if this isn’t reciprocal then we’re under no obligation to be constructive or well-behaved either.

 

[JordanD]

I think you didn't participate in imperator forums enough to see how much CK role players were disgusted with the "bland map-painter" that was Imperator. Basically they were expecting to assasinate and incest their way to becoming a consul as Caesar and the game didn't give them that. Even when Johan tried to explain to them that it was based on EU:Rome so it was a game in the tradition of EU games, they kept attacking him for mana and stuff like that.

Getting back on the topic of EU, I disagree that past releases drew as much flaming as this one. I don't remember after Dharma and GC that Paradox devs complained about the toxic community like they do now. I'd hate for us players to drive away the devs because of a few bad apples who are not being policed enough.

So, lets rip this apart one by one.

"I think you didn't participate in imperator forums enough to see how much CK role players were disgusted with the bland map-painter that was imperator. "

Of course not, I never joined. As I said, I looked to youtube videos long after I decided a game about roman history, a period I do have little interest in, might still spark some interest. I did get to see posts by CK2 players in the CK2 forums about Imperator however.

"Basically they were expecting to assassinate and incest their way to becoming a consul as caesar and the game didn't give them that."

Well, that does sound like a fun mechanic. Having to worry about the political enemies within as well as those outside your borders would probably add quite a bit of struggle and mechanical depth outside of conquest. Good on the CK2 players for having such a wonderful, positive idea for the game. Of course, I'll trust that this was the biggest and best of their gripes and that you aren't straw manning all criticism against the game. I could have sworn there was something about making people your friends having no impact or use and being able to spend mana to instantly convert provinces.....

"Even when Johan tried to explain to them that it was based on EU:Rome so it was a game in the tradition of EU games, they kept attacking him for mana and stuff like that."

People complain about how over bloated mana is in EU4. Maybe its a bit too much of a crutch in the series as a whole? But yes, trying to sell "Mana" and "Stuff like that", whatever those are, to a CK2 player wasn't going to work. Looks like it wasn't interesting enough for EU players and too EU for everyone else. How dare they not like map painting?

As for your disagreement.

To the EU4 Team [Suggestions and Constructive Criticism - No Salt]

Hello! :) @Groogy @DDRJake I would like to preface this post by saying that I in no way will be contributing to the flood of insults being tossed your way, in this post. Nor will I be talking about Paradox's DLC Policy which is mostly irrelevant...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

You can see that even as far back as GC people had to make posts as positively as possible to distance themselves from toxicity or risk getting their thread closed. The forums were so bitter that I felt the need to make a post in a game I had only a few hours in. You can even see a post mentioning how "
Since TR, especially since Rule Britannia, we started to see quite an increasing amount of criticism with each DLC, leading all the way here, with each DLC having more criticism for basically, the same reasons. Its always the same reasons, many of them, you've posted here and on another post."

Even then "When EU4 was not toxic" as you seem to believe, the devs didn't talk to us or take community ideas, we had poor releases, and there was a clear trend of it continuing that way. This is the history of EU4 forums.

 

[newtlord]

Have Urstan and Johan ever been seen in the same room together?

More seriously, I wish to add my name to the list of people who, while decrying all death threats and personal attacks, reserve the right to criticize the product- especially a product such as this.

 

[Nikoleis]

Have Urstan and Johan ever been seen in the same room together?

I feel the name is even a troll on that fron, as it is UR (as in yours in slang) and STAN, a new word for overly apologetic fans

 

[kill15]

i've joined this forum just to report a bug... many people did, but i have to leave my comment here as well..
community should complaing because as i see realeasing a bugged(buggy - sorry, not my native language) dlcs/games is apparently a common practice now...
ofc people who threats should be banned

PS: Is there any info about next bugfix release?