The railroading in the missions is really stupid and very limiting

[love sweden]

Look at the British mission for example. If for some reason you wanna stay Catholic then you can´t complete your missions and lose all your permanent claims on Egypt. Yes you can technically switch religion back later but that doesn´t mean its a good thing that entire sections of the missions are locked off from you cause you wanna do something else then the devs want you to. It is even more aggravating when you see how only a single mission is locked behind religion requirements. The spanish missions are atleast more direct and lock half the content away if you aren´t Catholic. Wich is very good design if I were watching a movie but very bad since I am playing a sandbox history game where the devs are taking out the sandbox part for arbitrary reasons.

 

[corbenic]

How exactly are they limiting you in your sandbox experience when missions are completely optional and you can just ignore them and proceed with your own plan?
And what is your idea for a better mission system design?

 

[EarlKonrad]

What I like most about the current mission system is that it makes the AI expands in a certain way instead of just conquering their weakest neighbor. It does some have problems of being very intransigent in some missions, however.

 

[Blk82]

According to the wiki, that mission can be completed by either not being Catholic or embracing the counter-reformation. It the mission can't be completed as catholic, it is probably a bug or an oversight. The missions normally don't force a religion or an alliance upon a given nation. Are you sure that you can't complete it as Catholic?

 

[dynalon]

The missions normally don't force a religion or an alliance upon a given nation.

What about Castille/Spain? Five of them require Holy Orders in your Colonial Nations, which means that you have to remain Catholic (or flip to Andalusian and Muslim, lol), unless the Wiki is mission some alternative requirements.

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

Look at the British mission for example. If for some reason you wanna stay Catholic then you can´t complete your missions and lose all your permanent claims on Egypt. Yes you can technically switch religion back later but that doesn´t mean its a good thing that entire sections of the missions are locked off from you cause you wanna do something else then the devs want you to. It is even more aggravating when you see how only a single mission is locked behind religion requirements. The spanish missions are atleast more direct and lock half the content away if you aren´t Catholic. Wich is very good design if I were watching a movie but very bad since I am playing a sandbox history game where the devs are taking out the sandbox part for arbitrary reasons.

There are other issues with it. If you join the HRE, which is arguably something the game pushes for (although it's pushing for Emperorship, which is helped by being a member but of course not necessary), you cannot become an Empire and complete the "British Empire" mission.

 

[EarlKonrad]

What about Castille/Spain? Five of them require Holy Orders in your Colonial Nations, which means that you have to remain Catholic (or flip to Andalusian and Muslim, lol), unless the Wiki is mission some alternative requirements.

Even worse than that. If you get unlucky and your CNs decide to use their colonists on their provinces instead of using them for colonization, you won't be able to complete the mission. Question is, how did this get past Q&A or the design table?

 

[Astalic]

Before speaking of the system we have now : i realy don't like the old system. Allways ignored it.

Now more on topic :

You can just ignore your mission if you want to play 100% sandbox, i do it sometime and this not a problem.

Only few mission have really good and permanant reward (the finisher of russian tree with 5% admineff is the only one who come to my mind) other are just claim and/or 20 year boost.

The new system is pretty cool IMO, and being railroaded when i want to do a "mission run" isn't a problem.

But i guess this is a matter of taste.

 

[Muelleri]

Imperator Rome’s mission system looks better than eu4, but current eu4 mission system is still better than old mission system except few things (like minor nations have so few missions so they need repeatable missions too like before).
And already many missions are included in DLC so this system will be not changed.

 

[Waverider900]

Was talking with a friend about this just the other day. I totally respect that it’s a matter of taste as well. But my own personal issue with the missions in their current state is that (given that you’re coming in wanting to using them, since they’re a part of the game) they’re constraining rather than dynamic.

Even the old pre-tree missions had a leg up in that regard; they reacted to what you were doing and your changing geographic and political situation, and gave you missions based on that. They certainly did this quite poorly and perfunctorily, but in my mind, the ultimate mission system is as reactive to the player’s chosen narrative as it is locked into its own predefined narrative.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this is far easier said than done. But, taking for granted that I and some others would fundamentally rather use missions than ignore them (again, a matter of taste), I’d really love a game where the mission tree builds off of my choices, rather than (at worst) constrains them or (at best) plays out the exact same narrative structure each time.

 

[SolSys]

WRT dynamic missions, it is a good thing then that the old mission system will be making a "comeback" as estates agendas.

 

[PhoenixG]

The thing that I don't like about the mission tree is when you tag switch/form a different countrym you keep all your claims and temporary modifiers. Making it easy to stack all the modifiers and gain lots of claims. Cuz culture flipping as became really easy, compare how it use to be. With the result of a sloppy solution.... the end-game tag.

 

[Twoflower]

The new EU4 mission system was a step towards HoI4's national focuses. While it is an improvement over the old system, I would really like to see another aspect of the HoI-style focuses adapted to EU4 - the choices between different paths. I think it was DDRJake who said right after the patch that introduced the new missions that they made a conscious decision not to lock off certain parts of the mission trees, but I think it might be a good idea to rethink that choice.
Right now, most mission trees basically just facilitate and reward conquest, with some more creative missions about development, economy and culture interspersed here and there. There really aren't any tradeoffs or opportunity costs when you can always grab all goodies from your mission tree, and the strategic choice is just about when to complete a given mission, not about if one mission should be pursued over another.
In a strategy game, it would be more interesting to have actual decisions - like for example different and mutually exclusive mission "branches" for Catholic and Anglican England.

 

[DicRoNero]

What I like most about the current mission system is that it makes the AI expands in a certain way instead of just conquering their weakest neighbor.

What's wrong with conquering the weakest neighbor? I for one was always perplexed to see Burgundy war dec on Provence (for Barrois) who would call in HRE Austria with France and whatnot as their allies.

All that simply cause Burgundy tried to expand in 'certain' way, rather than being opportunistic.

 

[Lavilledieu]

Look at the British mission for example. If for some reason you wanna stay Catholic then you can´t complete your missions and lose all your permanent claims on Egypt. Yes you can technically switch religion back later but that doesn´t mean its a good thing that entire sections of the missions are locked off from you cause you wanna do something else then the devs want you to. It is even more aggravating when you see how only a single mission is locked behind religion requirements. The spanish missions are atleast more direct and lock half the content away if you aren´t Catholic. Wich is very good design if I were watching a movie but very bad since I am playing a sandbox history game where the devs are taking out the sandbox part for arbitrary reasons.

I heavily dislike too much railroading and buffing of the "historically successful" countries.
Strong ideas, unique events, strong scripted rules & generals, strong decisions, strong governments, lucky nations bonus, unique estate stuff (cf France next update), mission trees ... Almost everywhere where possible, they got stuff to aid them being successful.
Of all those categories, I am ok with mission trees being a lot more powerful for the historically successful than for the others. Granted, that does not mean that all of them are perfectly balanced. One of the things that greatly annoys me, is that some missions give permanent modifiers. On top of all the bonus modifiers gained from the other sources like decisions/unique gov/stronger ideas/etc a select few countries (those that are already very strong) can get permanent modifiers through ideas, while almost no one can do that too.

 

[Kimbole]

Personally I like the mission trees generally. Where they fit with the path of the country in the real world I see them as adding historical setting and introducing flavour rather than railroading me. I tend to enjoy the creative ones that give province improvements or trigger the appearance of people/events best though, rather than ”complete a task to open up another task” chains of permanent claims...

 

[RichardOlcese]

As many things in life, the thing here is to reach an equilibrium between sort of free will (player's wishes) and historic determinism (railroading missions). Like... I don't like the Austrian missions messing with Poland, or the English missions messing with France (I'd like to retreat and stay as an island). On one side, you can just avoid those missions; on the other side, avoiding them makes you feel you're not using part of the game/features, and not benefiting from mission rewards. Something like "I paid for the whole game, I'm gonna use the whole game". It's a tricky matter. Nevertheless, I believe the super Paradox team has reached a relatively good success in giving you historically related missions, that are optional after all, and that generally do not railroad you so soo sooo much towards a fatalistic fate.

 

[chronicalpain]

lots of patches in eu4 for every taste, i found out i only like the first patch myself so i stick to that

 

[Ixalmaris]

Mission trees have been a bad idea right from the start, but they are easy to make and you can sell them in DLC as replacement for actual content. Thats why they are there and they won't go away.

 

[Orkonkel]

Eu5 will be a fresh start to do over and do better all these features that are a little bit wonky atm.