Unpopular opinion - The current mission tree system has fundamental flaws and shouldnt be carried over to EU V

[Lavilledieu]

I have some extra major problems with the current mission trees, in addition to everything the OP has posted:
1) They are the millionth source of permanent modifiers. There is already so much stacking possible on the base game, it makes designing balanced mods a nightmare.
2) They make the balance gap between ordinary countries and historical majors even larger. I know many prefer to give the historical majors a boost, but I like having each nation a real chance to survive. I found having large balance gaps between such countries boring for multiplayer. You know everyone would flock to play the overbuffed countries instead of creating a wild map. Anyway, small issue, missions are only a piece of this puzzle.
3) Generic countries got more boring. The dynamic missions allowed a country that went colonial to get colonially-themed missions. I believe there were other missions like that.
4) It requires a lot of working hours to get a decent mission tree coverage in the game. Unless they can somehow transfer the mission trees from eu4 to eu5, eu5's mission trees will start out just like when they arrived for eu4: a rather empty mechanic, that some countries do make use of. For me, since I generally don't play as majors and don't own all the latest dlc, it still feels like that. Empty and ignorable.

 

[Josar]

I have some extra major problems with the current mission trees, in addition to everything the OP has posted:
1) They are the millionth source of permanent modifiers. There is already so much stacking possible on the base game, it makes designing balanced mods a nightmare.
2) They make the balance gap between ordinary countries and historical majors even larger. I know many prefer to give the historical majors a boost, but I like having each nation a real chance to survive. I found having large balance gaps between such countries boring for multiplayer. You know everyone would flock to play the overbuffed countries instead of creating a wild map. Anyway, small issue, missions are only a piece of this puzzle.
3) Generic countries got more boring. The dynamic missions allowed a country that went colonial to get colonially-themed missions. I believe there were other missions like that.
4) It requires a lot of working hours to get a decent mission tree coverage in the game. Unless they can somehow transfer the mission trees from eu4 to eu5, eu5's mission trees will start out just like when they arrived for eu4: a rather empty mechanic, that some countries do make use of. For me, since I generally don't play as majors and don't own all the latest dlc, it still feels like that. Empty and ignorable.

As it is now, it is harder to find a country without a mission tree, than a country with one. Middle East and Central Asia will be the area most sparse with mission trees.

 

[EarlKonrad]

3) Generic countries got more boring. The dynamic missions allowed a country that went colonial to get colonially-themed missions. I believe there were other missions like that.

The new diet system is an improved version fo the old mission system if that is what you are missing. The old system was very limited, both in the amount of missions and the conditions for them to be triggered. While not perfect, the newer system has more variety of missions and missions that are unique to certain estates, which is more uniqueness than the older system had. By the by, there are more mission now that pertain to colonization than in the older system.

 

[Nikoleis]

As it is now, it is harder to find a country without a mission tree, than a country with one. Middle East and Central Asia will be the area most sparse with mission trees.

Unless you don't buy a DLC with the mission you wanted because of a mechanic tied to it *cough*Concentrate*cough*

 

[arosenberger14]

I agree as well, mission trees have become the tail that wags the dog in EU4, and the sheer effort they require only becomes worse the more tags they add.

Mission trees serve to add flavor and distinction to countries... you know what else does that? National ideas, and idea groups. Instead of relying on separate mechanics to do largely the same thing, maybe EU5 should combine them into one, more dynamic mechanic that the player can use to shape their nation as the game evolves. Maybe even expand and add in the institutions mechanic as well for more fun.

Let's spitball what a system like that could look like. Call it a "National Institutions" mechanic, a mechanic that represents the knowledges and practices that a state and its people have specialized in. At the historical start, different tags will have different National Institutions; maybe give Ming a "celestial empire" one that lets them run their huge empire and act as a regional hegemon; give the Ottomans a "Turkish conquerers" one that lets them rapidly take over the places in the Middle East, the Portuguese an exploration one to speed their discovery of Africa and the New World, and the Venetians one that boosts their naval and trade power in the Mediterranean. You can develop new National Institutions through state power, by doing things like building a professional military to boost your military power, centralizing the state to boost your administration, exploring to boost colonization, etc... or things like early industrial textile or metallurgy technologies can develop naturally within your nation if you manage to create good conditions for them. And how about having "National Institutions" decay over time, turning from strengths into weaknesses to help prevent endless snowbaling from strength to greater strength and make the mid and late game more chaotic and exciting. Say France develops a "Court Culture" institution to help manage the nobility estate, but after a century it decays and harms the French Monarchy's ability to raise taxes, until boom, French Revolution.

Would love to see EU5 try some fresh and more dynamic takes on mechanics like this instead of just buffing up the same old ones with a shiny new coat of paint.

 

[Big Bad France]

The mission trees would be more interesting if you unlocked a branch at a time based on idea groups or something. Or maybe it could work more like government reforms. Making the player choose one path or another seems better than giving the player the whole tree upfront, anyway.

 

[iClipse]

One thing I feel is a missed opportunity is that overall they're only bonuses with no drawbacks.

Anbennar (the mod) has its own take on mission trees where there are often costs involved to completing missions. You can have a mission that adds a bunch of dev to an area, but to complete it, it costs 100adm/100dip/100mil as well as a year of your income. You can't just willy nilly complete missions like that if you have to do it 10 or so times. Also, completing the mission makes the cost of the others go up as well (since your income increases).

Their mission trees are littered with stuff like that. "Oh, you want this cool permanent bonus? That's 400 dip and a 10 year drawback first please".

 

[Arizal]

Thank you very much for that constructive post. I am glad to see changing mission trees ISN‘T an unpopular opinion, or that at least this thread attracted people with interesting opinions on the subject.

I think that PU missions should be axed. I also think many Conquest missions should have their generic counterparts based on culture, religion, culture groups and adjacency.

This would solve my problem with much of the system, as TAG specific missions would become just flavour text on top of what you can already get otherwise. Missions would be based on your current situation instead of on scripted railroad.

There should also be a way to adapt most of the existing internal development missions.

From what I saw of it, Imperator system seemed superior to EUIV implementation, but I may be mistaken on it.

 

[EarlKonrad]

One thing I feel is a missed opportunity is that overall they're only bonuses with no drawbacks.

Anbennar (the mod) has its own take on mission trees where there are often costs involved to completing missions. You can have a mission that adds a bunch of dev to an area, but to complete it, it costs 100adm/100dip/100mil as well as a year of your income. You can't just willy nilly complete missions like that if you have to do it 10 or so times. Also, completing the mission makes the cost of the others go up as well (since your income increases).

Their mission trees are littered with stuff like that. "Oh, you want this cool permanent bonus? That's 400 dip and a 10 year drawback first please".

You know what that system is called? Decisions. Pay and/or fulfill X in order to get Y. It is way older than missions, too.

 

[Tue_p3]

Paradox already agreed that this system is suboptimal and will not implement in another game. They for example tested another system in imperator Rome, which is quite nice.

 

[Temudhun Khan]

Imperator romes mission trees are BY FAR superior. They are more situational, not only all about warfare and just more fun.

I entirely agree, Imperator should be used as inspiration for EU5 mission system, obviously with a few changes (I don't remember if it was changed in the recent version, but the fact that you had to do one mission tree at a time was already annoying in Imperator and it would be even worse with EU and its way larger scope...)

 

[_Bachus_]

The major problem with trees is the spam and low quality of missions. Like they're doing most medium countries with around 40 missions. We're getting like thousands of unique missions across the game. With that numbers the quality and balance is thrown out of the window so If you search long enough you'll find your already familiar "horse breeding" mission. It's another version of events if you think about it. There are plenty poorly done events in the game, yet I don't see people wanting to scrap events because some few are off. And most missions are ok IMO. Yeah we have some OP ones or nonsensical ones, but as a whole I don't think this is much of a problem. You can simply not play with them. And events are forced upon you. There were multiple mechanics over the years that were forced upon the players. When you have to play with sth and it's poorly done, that's where the big problem is. And again mission trees don't fit MP at all. But you can't really do SP and MP both at the same time. So I will evaluate only SP as I play it. And for me missions aren't any big problems on its own. But of coruse I'm against low quality (content + balance) missions as well as low quality events and low quality other things. But as a concept I'm for missions even in current format.

 

[Nikoleis]

[...] I don't see people wanting to scrap events because some few are off. [...]

Not all events, but many of the less impactful ones / TAG tied could go and it would be all the better. There's many about famous people / local events giving Mana / Prestige / Stability "randomly" in Europe, which are nice point in history, but bother in term of gameplay as it is more clicks for more bonus without anything to do except existing. I mean, why should I care about the colors of Venice's gondolas and why other countries don't get free stability for, like, painting houses different colors?

Then there's some events that could become full fledged mechanics or simply use the existing ones. Anything like the Comet, meant to prevent Stability to stay at 3 forever, the many outbreak events, be it historical or the ADM draining Influenza one that spams you if you don't kill it at the source. Surrender of Maine is a Reconquest CB and is only an event due to gameplay limitation, Portugal getting Goa or Macau is Charter company, and many events about what could be local innovations (the Dutch Fluyt for instance, but also the French Musketeers or more cultural ones like the gondolas abve or Japan's tea ceremony, or technical advances such as Mercator's maps) I could envision as something more generic that might require spending Innovativeness (which would make gaining it more than a passive matter). Most of the bonus from men and women of History could simply be ruler traits, given to advisors so to make named ones more prevalent... the list goes on.

 

[Blindbohemian]

I agree as well, mission trees have become the tail that wags the dog in EU4, and the sheer effort they require only becomes worse the more tags they add.

Mission trees serve to add flavor and distinction to countries... you know what else does that? National ideas, and idea groups. Instead of relying on separate mechanics to do largely the same thing, maybe EU5 should combine them into one, more dynamic mechanic that the player can use to shape their nation as the game evolves. Maybe even expand and add in the institutions mechanic as well for more fun.

Let's spitball what a system like that could look like. Call it a "National Institutions" mechanic, a mechanic that represents the knowledges and practices that a state and its people have specialized in. At the historical start, different tags will have different National Institutions; maybe give Ming a "celestial empire" one that lets them run their huge empire and act as a regional hegemon; give the Ottomans a "Turkish conquerers" one that lets them rapidly take over the places in the Middle East, the Portuguese an exploration one to speed their discovery of Africa and the New World, and the Venetians one that boosts their naval and trade power in the Mediterranean. You can develop new National Institutions through state power, by doing things like building a professional military to boost your military power, centralizing the state to boost your administration, exploring to boost colonization, etc... or things like early industrial textile or metallurgy technologies can develop naturally within your nation if you manage to create good conditions for them. And how about having "National Institutions" decay over time, turning from strengths into weaknesses to help prevent endless snowbaling from strength to greater strength and make the mid and late game more chaotic and exciting. Say France develops a "Court Culture" institution to help manage the nobility estate, but after a century it decays and harms the French Monarchy's ability to raise taxes, until boom, French Revolution.

Would love to see EU5 try some fresh and more dynamic takes on mechanics like this instead of just buffing up the same old ones with a shiny new coat of paint.

This.

Mission trees are beyond terrible.

 

[Arizal]

You know what that system is called? Decisions. Pay and/or fulfill X in order to get Y. It is way older than missions, too.

Speaking of decisions, what’s missing in that system is a way to repeal them. It makes sense to decide of a law at a time of your choosing (though it could be associated with a more robust mechanic), but it isn’t realistic that you are then stuck with that decision forever, especially when it’s about the way some minorities are treated. Historically, there were changes of stances…

 

[EarlKonrad]

Speaking of decisions, what’s missing in that system is a way to repeal them. It makes sense to decide of a law at a time of your choosing (though it could be associated with a more robust mechanic), but it isn’t realistic that you are then stuck with that decision forever, especially when it’s about the way some minorities are treated. Historically, there were changes of stances…

I disagree. Most decisions are either rewards for accomplishing a goal or an optional bonus for your nations. They aren't a law like in Vic II.

 

[Arizal]

I disagree. Most decisions are either rewards for accomplishing a goal or an optional bonus for your nations. They aren't a law like in Vic II.

I thought it was implied that those decisions which are normally irreversible wouldn't be repealable. I was thinking mostly about the religious laws like the one about burning the heretics. Why would another king later (or the same one who had a change of heart) be unable to decide to be more tolerant? Why should a decision taken in 1500 still be applicable 300 years later under a different government? There should still be consequences to doing so, to prevent someone to take a decision and repeal it 10 years later just in time for the institution penalty to not be a problem, but it should definitely be possible.

As for the TAG-changing decisions, I suppose there could still be some kind of bonus with them, but in my vision of the game (which isn't shared by the devs nor from many people on the forum), changing tags should have no effect whatsoever on the fabric of your country (except of course if at the same time you are making changes into how the inhabitants have their relationships organized, like by forming a union of two countries or by recognizing a minority).

 

[grommile]

They aren't a law like in Vic II.

Blasphemy Act and Conventicle Act are laws (with penalties attached), and you can't repeal those except by changing your religion.

 

[LSF]

Imperator romes mission trees are BY FAR superior. They are more situational, not only all about warfare and just more fun.

Lets tell the truth. Not only missions. I:R in current (probably last) patch has much better game features than EU4. Had it some more years of development it would become an incredible game. It is a shame the shitty release killed the game. Also the era is a problem, few strong big tags, while EU4 timeframe has more centers of power on the map.

 

[JangoBunBun]

The old mission system has been reworked into the diet. You can get claims, and even subjugation CBs through it.

The new mission system added something that was badly needed: direction. Previously you'd play a new nation and have a pretty vague idea of what your goals were. Take Provence as an example. Previously you knew you wanted to defeat France, and maybe push king Rene's claims if you knew about them. But now a player can pick almost any great or regional power and have a sense of direction.