Time to take a (permanent?) break because…

[Arheo]

I have reopened the thread on naval issues, because it is a genuinely useful store of information on the state of the naval databases. This is not a guarantee that I will implement any or all of what is in there.

Furthermore, nobody is 'out to silence' anyone, and issuing an ultimatum such as 'unlock or else' is ironically more likely to harm your cause than help it. The forum mods did exactly what they were supposed to do in locking the thread. They do not appraise the content of a thread when it is locked, they look at the fact that someone necro'd it after 9 months - and rightly take action.

 

[Arheo]

Since there are some misunderstandings mentioned in the OP about what people are infracted or banned for here, let me clear it up:

Constructive criticism is a good thing. Criticism, constructive or otherwise, can be delivered in many ways. If you deliver your constructive criticism in a harmful, offensive, or toxic manner, this will result in a) a hard working forum moderator getting frustrated, b) you receiving an infraction, and c) adding to the general feeling of 'I really don't want to get involved on the forums', that many Paradox developers encounter at some point in their careers.

Then there's the purely strawman stuff, of which this user has handily provided me a perfect example:

genuinely surprised you put that much effort into researching naval ships and don't just make a mod for the game. The developers have clearly shown they will not invest time into stuff like this, navy is completely neglected, It's been 3 years since MTG and they've fixed and added literally nothing to it. And it's especially true with anything related to realism such as more accurate ship models you provided.

Who needs to hear from developers? Their intentions are clear based on [insert reason here].

This is something that plays into general misunderstandings about what prioritization means to the gaming industry. Limited resources, limited timescales, and a need to punch with development. Do we have time to fix everyone's pet issue immediately? No - and I make no apologies for that, because if we do, it is at the expense of something else, and not everyone values a feature or fix the same way as you.

Sometimes, it is easier to justify dealing with many related things at once, instead of tackling them piecemeal. That usually involves finding an apt time spot in our very packed release schedule in order to cover a system at large.

More often than not, I will stop replying to conversations after such posts, because once people start putting words in our mouths, there's really no point continuing to engage.

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All of this to say: constructive criticism will not be punished. Bad manners will.

 

[Arheo]

Really what this boils down to is "not everyone values a feature or fix the same way as you". I personally could have added every single change OP has posted in their naval thread within a few days, and have done so comparatively in terms of changes when i overhauled every nations navy and ship variants in my multiplayer mod. There really is no other excuse as developer of a multi million dollar game like this, other then you don't think improving little things will make more sales, which is understandable from a marketing perspective. If you are passionate about this game like many modders are, there is literally no excuse to putting the time in or 'hiring' someone to do it for you, no matter how insignificant. There's always numerous little things to improve and fix, like ship variants in this case, which as i said, would be a quick improvement.

To ask a rhetorical question: how would you feel if every day, someone told you you had no passion or drive and that they could do your job better or faster than you?

 

[Arheo]

I've played with thousands of people now in my multiplayer mod over the years and no one has said that yet to me, mostly because I've always spent excess time improving it and immediately fixing things based on community feedback and games.

I have a lot of admiration for the many modders in the paradox community, and was one myself before joining PDS. This said, do not equate modding with working on an active codebase and engine, as well as the script associated with it. Modders have the luxury of potentially infinite time, entirely flexible quality targets, no need for translations, multi-platform support, no business targets, etc.

Changing one word that alters the meaning of a sentence in the base game could quite literally involve dozens of people, and hundreds of man hours after you rebuild for all platforms, undergo certification, and get things retranslated and verified. For script changes, there's more significant QA involved.

I agree that modders can use the canvas and paints that we provide to build incredible things - but the maintenance of those tools is an invisible cost to them.

However if i was in your shoes as literal game director, i would outsource help from the community.

We do this frequently, which is exactly why I want to keep threads such as the one this topic was originally covering, around. We limit this to suggestions, not the actual implementation of features, for reasons that should be obvious.

 

[Arheo]

You are mostly right, however generally speaking you are not. If you take this thread for example, every single suggested change would involve readjusting a .txt OOB and some country history for naval ships, obviously anyone would be able to implement this without mentioned obstacles. Likewise i just looked at every single change in the 1.11.4 Beta and over 75% of the changes are not code related, and simple adjustments of values such as how much a modifier gives, ai weight for focuses, adding missing portraits/order of things ect, things anyone is able to change, and quickly as someone whos knowledgeable.

In my opinion it would be clearly advantageous to allow people in the community to upload suggested changes to github or whatever other platform, at which point as game director you could go over the changes and QA among other things and consider adding it(or even just part of it) into the game without spending the man hours doing it, or finding out how to even do it.

Let me ask you this, how many dozens of threads of suggested changes, even simple and straightforward ones like this, have you thought "hmm this is a pretty good idea, but i cant be bothered incorporating it, as it would require too much work and moving people on it" Whereas if it was already finished infront of your face, and only a matter of you looking over it and giving it a green light, would actually be in the game? My guess is over 50%, which would be a very large amount of content and improvements, and appease tons of people who have been complaining about the same simple fixes for months/years.

I respect your conviction for this idea, but we won't ever be going this route - while it sounds nice on paper, it would be a disaster in practice.

 

[Arheo]

Well yes, I'm objectively correct.

And with that stunner of a comment, I'll be locking this thread. We've exceeded the limits of what can be considered constructive here.