Unpopular Recent Changes

[TheMeInTeam]

You can mod estates out but to be fair they do have a strategy layer to them, that was bolstered in 1.15 by the fact that a given estate allows the province to ignore autonomy for its class (military, diplomatic, or administrative). So for example if Ming has been wrecked by rebels and you bully a 30 development province off them at 100% LA, you get nothing from the province. But if it's silk with a manufactory, you can slap "merchant guilds" there and get 100% of the production income and trade power. The 25% LA floor will eventually damage your tax income and manpower from that province...some day.

Of course, it's not like they give you more ticking -LA if playing without Cossacks, so you could view the "balanced for DLC" to be an unpopular move and have a case. It wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Silverbow]

Under what conditions would you evaluate a tactic to be exploitative?"

Exploit is an obviously unintended* abuse of a bug and/or a feature with the purpose of gaining an otherwise unachievable advantage.
* - by the developers

That would be my definition.

Thus:
strait blocking -> not an exploit
foreign core recruitment -> not an exploit
native ships -> not an exploit
cycling formable nations for infinite IA -> exploit
fast-clicking send missionary button to gain double conversion speed -> exploit
resetting truce timers by guarantee -> exploit


Of course, the devs seem to see it in a different light..

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Exploit is an obviously unintended* abuse of a bug and/or a feature with the purpose of gaining an otherwise unachievable advantage.
* - by the developers

That would be my definition.

Thus:
strait blocking -> not an exploit
foreign core recruitment -> not an exploit
native ships -> not an exploit
cycling formable nations for infinite IA -> exploit
fast-clicking send missionary button to gain double conversion speed -> exploit
resetting truce timers by guarantee -> exploit


Of course, the devs seem to see it in a different light..

That definition of course doesn't seem in-line with the implementation, but it's close to what I'm looking for in terms of making criteria. I take small issue with "otherwise unattainable advantage". What you are setting as "exploits" based on your definition are actions that bypass the game's resource limitations, rather than "otherwise unattainable" (you can for example more than double base missionary strength and speed, so the advantage of stacking missionaries isn't unattainable, but it does bypass the resources you'd otherwise need to attain it).

So that's one way of defining it, that you can set in advance, then look at both past and future actions in-game and evaluate them based on it. Two people making the evaluation would in most cases arrive at the same conclusion; generating monarch points infinitely from colony-sending would fit this criteria, while looting would not (looting trades one resource for another, and could be off in scaling however).

 

[Quaade]

Here's the problem with your paragraph: You are able to identify a tactic you believe to be an exploit (military access, ironically implemented this way to prevent exploits). However, it doesn't match your statement. For example, the player can routinely use estates to secure (and consistently run) discounted advisors. The AI does not do this consistently, it rarely does it at all. Therefore, according to your criteria using estates to run less expensive advisors is an exploit, something "unbalanced" because the AI can't do it.

Yeah military access was improved, but the later "improvement" was kind of a step back really, since too many times you end up with exiles which brings another exploits... Had Aragon and Portugal warring my neighbour, which I also wanted to annex and were at war with... They peaced out with their smaller ally and were exiled... They had to go all the way back to their home and return, by that time I had won and annexed...

For the estates, it´s a new feature and given how many times the AI fails and get those revolts, there are a number of issues with it still that needs to be addressed, but yes... Actually the advisor should be scaled down a bit... They are too OP...

"Basically, you either win only by using this or you are at the receiving end of it..." --> You didn't list that as a criteria, previously. That's why I'm asking for consistency. Blocking armies crossing straits was a game concept too, and it provided a hell of a lot less utility on a far less consistent basis, yet you're still seeing people cry exploit over using it.

I meant the same, just phrasing what was in the lines but not said... That´s my bad, but guessed you had the same thought about it anyway, but see how that´s not fulfilling as a statement since it should also be applicable to people not having that knowledge

I don't know about you, but if I want the AI to engage me in the mountains, I can still make the AI engage me in the mountains. You're missing the obvious point though. Defending in the mountains 100% fits criteria that one might use to claim strait blocking exploitative.

I can still make them engage, as stated, but not as often... And it´s not a surefire win of the battle or the war, it´s needed in some cases... Which is why I think it´s bad... It shouldn´t be that important and have that much hold of the war... But not really have much idea of changing it anyway, besides making own forts negate it when you attack a sieging army...

This is laughingstock levels bad. If you westernize as soon as you possibly can with a lot of starts, you will not catch up tech/ideas as a *player* until 1700, and that's if you hire 3/3/3 advisors the instant you finish westernizing. That's "OP"? No, that's the kind of pathetic that Garwhal with its generic ideas can surpass with above average play.

Nope... Did this in a couple of runs, no really issues... Was tech leader and mobbed the floor with the rest... Yes, it´s initially a fragile state but you can swiftly catch up and then you have even more bonuses... Managed to win massive wars against many OP nations, only when ALL of europe larger, rich nations with bonuses gathered, were they able to kick me back... But still won the war...

As Inca I even did less than with aztec, since it was only SA I should gain, not any holdings in Europe... Were still tech leader... But perhaps we play that differently, even spend many points in improvements of my provinces

You're usually much better than this. This is a fallacy. I'm not "rejecting all proposals". FFS, I'm asking that you actually MAKE a proposal in the first place, that doesn't self-contradict.

Yeah... Usually, but as stated... Early morning, only just had my coffee ;-) and going out the door in a while after

The game should be balanced, any unbalanced action should be improved... That´s not the same as there should/could be some unbalances... But I really lack some differences, it´s too much about military and being ahead there, the rest is only filling or improving on that... A nation that doesn´t pick the right military ideas would lose, which I think is a bad game design, they should be better yes but not impossible... If you get my meaning? The lack of playing and wanting to play a small-medium nation with else to do than total war all the time... but that´s really a different story...

Needless to say, the game is evolving and they should always look back at what they´ve done, how it works and how it works with the evolving game... Does it still works? Does it still works as intended or at least with little unbalance... Like Johan mentioned the use of "military zeal" policy as being way OP and not having it would be a loss.

No. You can define a precise level of light that constitutes "darkness" that is non-zero in advance. So long as you have that define, you can then *consistently* evaluate whether a given amount of light is sufficient or insufficient to reach that definition. Someone else might define it differently, but no matter what they pick or you pick, you can still measure if it's at that threshold.

You can define it from many other things than scientific, that´s just your high-horse in that case... It´s also philosophical which would be a very different argument, but still very much true... So it´s actually quite difficult to define, and even then... Defining it solely on the absence of another thing?... Is that really the best way to describe it (I believe it is, but that´s my point... you sometimes have to define it backwards)

Johan claimed his vision for the game didn't chance since EU 2 or something .

Well... Johan lies ;-) I don´t believe they had this game in their mind when they made EU2... I believe it´s very much how they envisioned it, but there have definitely been some changes to those ideas as new ones came up or old ones were scrapped as being impossible or unplayable

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Nope... Did this in a couple of runs, no really issues... Was tech leader and mobbed the floor with the rest... Yes, it´s initially a fragile state but you can swiftly catch up and then you have even more bonuses... Managed to win massive wars against many OP nations, only when ALL of europe larger, rich nations with bonuses gathered, were they able to kick me back... But still won the war...

Yeah, no.

Unless you know something I don't, you're not westernizing before 1580, probably not much before 1600 in Mesoamerica. You're not going to be up on *both* tech *and* ideas before 1700 unless you don't expand. Can you win wars? Yes. Can you beat colonizers? Yes. But doing that compromises getting to administrative efficiency.

South America is much, much stronger because you can westernize 50+ years sooner if you know what you're doing. Inca and the native councils in South America are head and shoulders stronger positions than any start anywhere in NA without exception.

Needless to say, the game is evolving and they should always look back at what they´ve done,

Still not answering my question.

You can define it from many other things than scientific, that´s just your high-horse in that case

No high-horse, that's just an attempt to invalidate a point that's suddenly looking very difficult to address.

I'm not asking for a peer-reviewed, vetted list of criteria supported by reproducible tests ^_^. Cmon man, none of this "scientific" nonsense.

I'm asking for a "list of things that would make one conclude x is an exploit", and also "list of things that would make one conclude that a given mechanic should be changed"...the latter being a little more all-inclusive because it includes UI changes and whatnot too. Going back to front instead is *intentionally* adding needless bias to decision making.

 

[net.split]

Why does it matter if a dev thinks something is or isn't an exploit? That isn't the only reason, or even the primary one, behind changes made to the game.

Just skip this weird middle layer of arguing about the word (especially when directed towards people for whom English isn't even their primary language) and get right into the gameplay ramifications resulting from a change made or proposed.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Why does it matter if a dev thinks something is or isn't an exploit? That isn't the only reason, or even the primary one, behind changes made to the game.

Just skip this weird middle layer of arguing about the word (especially when directed towards people for whom English isn't even their primary language) and get right into the gameplay ramifications resulting from a change made or proposed.

I did mention that in my wall of text a little. I believe the criteria for meriting a change to be a more useful standard than the ones used for determining "exploit", which is basically a subset.

Regardless, changes being made willy-nilly are why some of them are unpopular. The implementation is uneven between mechanics or based on no discernible gameplay-centric reasoning on occasion, leading to things like the fort change prioritized over "length of war", or the implementation of a way to feed vassals and lower their liberty desire...but only if you are willing to painstakingly give them provinces one at a time.

 

[net.split]

I did mention that in my wall of text a little. I believe the criteria for meriting a change to be a more useful standard than the ones used for determining "exploit", which is basically a subset.

Regardless, changes being made willy-nilly are why some of them are unpopular. The implementation is uneven between mechanics or based on no discernible gameplay-centric reasoning on occasion, leading to things like the fort change prioritized over "length of war", or the implementation of a way to feed vassals and lower their liberty desire...but only if you are willing to painstakingly give them provinces one at a time.

I highly doubt very many changes are made willy-nilly. I'd expect most of them come out of internal meetings, informal or otherwise, where options are considered, discussed, and ultimately selected based on various criteria.

Communicating the rationale to the customers is where things can get hairy. To begin with, there's the time situation. Devs have to pick and choose when they want to devote the substantial time required to present the full analysis that some of these decisions require in order to fully explain their reasoning. Giving partial reasoning is sometimes worse than just saying "because balance / exploits / I felt like it," as it could wind up being even more inaccurate or misleading to the players.

Then there's all the factors that go in that they can't talk about yet -- stuff like how a given change will interact with something that we won't see for four months or more in a future patch / DLC and so can't be talked about yet. But the change needed to go in now because they were already making code changes in that area, and waiting until later could result in duplicating work, increased chances of bugs, etc, which translates into fewer features overall.

Not to mention the explanations that just wouldn't really make sense if you're not involved in the project. Sometimes we do get a "we had to do this because of the code architecture / efficiency reasons," like with tags and such. But if you give that answer too often, even if it's accurate, it could wind up looking to an outsider (non-developer) like your team just isn't any good at programming.

All this isn't to say that every action taken is actually the right answer if we only understood the reasons. I've been vocal about my dissatisfaction with the fort system and my opinion about what direction that should have gone instead, and I think you're mostly right about primitives and ships (though I think there's an argument to be made that such an unintuitive strategy shouldn't be far and away the optimal one for them). Mistakes are also made, and beyond that most of this stuff is very subjective anyway (like what things should be priorities). But, we barely get a glimpse at what goes on in development despite Paradox being better at communications than most. It's just the nature of the thing.

 

[WhiskyGlen]

I am thinking the inability to block straits would make playing as Norway nearly impossible now. Gaining independence from Denmark used to be easy. Ally with Sweden, declare war when Swedish and Danish ships are on the same time, send your fleet in (I like to let the Swedish ships take some damage before intervening), and then blockade the Swedish islands. It still should be easy enough to gain independence from Denmark assuming they have no strong allies. But beating Sweden will become a lot tougher because the next tactic was to later trap Swedish forces on Aland after defeating them in battle.

It really does make no sense that units can retreat with a large navy blocking them. Someone mentioned "well, if there were artillery on the short, they would battery the ships." Not really. Most artillery back then did not have near the range to do so. Also, how about in the game before artillery starts appearing in large numbers?

 

[Freudia]

Then there's all the factors that go in that they can't talk about yet -- stuff like how a given change will interact with something that we won't see for four months or more in a future patch / DLC and so can't be talked about yet. But the change needed to go in now because they were already making code changes in that area, and waiting until later could result in duplicating work, increased chances of bugs, etc, which translates into fewer features overall.

I really hate this one. I can't imagine that's the case on every change they make. There wasn't really any excuse to take seven patches to give Hordes new units on various levels of military tech after removing foreign core recruitment. I don't expect an explanation for every single change Paradox does, but I do expect there to be some sort of reasonable attempt at logic that I can pick up on in their changes. More often than not, I can't, and I doubt it's because Paradox is much, much smarter than I am. I'm not going to claim I'm the best player ever, but I'm pretty okay at spotting implications of changes.

 

[Jomini]

I highly doubt very many changes are made willy-nilly. I'd expect most of them come out of internal meetings, informal or otherwise, where options are considered, discussed, and ultimately selected based on various criteria.

Actually a lot of them do appear to come with no such basis. For instance, it was recounted that Johan literally just up and decided one day to increase province count by an arbitrary number. This was one of the most dramatic changes to the game, but the devs themselves say they had no such meetings when this decision was made.

Other times we have been given inconsistent rationales and reasons for changes.

Certainly many, many of the mechanisms look like giant kludges. Relations, after all, are suppose to be a measure of how likely another country is to go along with your policy goals ... but they are riddled with giant -100 modifiers and we just tacked a favor system on that is poorly integrated with relations because they do not appear to have internal design consistency.

 

[Quaade]

Unless you know something I don't, you're not westernizing before 1580, probably not much before 1600 in Mesoamerica. You're not going to be up on *both* tech *and* ideas before 1700 unless you don't expand. Can you win wars? Yes. Can you beat colonizers? Yes. But doing that compromises getting to administrative efficiency.
Yup, westernized around 1588, but was tech leader, and beat the crap out of the rest... You are right, I didn´t have all the ideas in my run as aztec, but I would bet I could have had them anyway and I could take a run to show you since I´m not restricted by achievement the same way ;-)

The main thing is actually to get adm. efficiency up, you can still conquer since you would get ahead anyway... You conquer when you are ahead of tech, you tech up when it´s close to 0 % if not crucial... Prior to westernization you must only tech to keep advantage, conquer some lands and develop them, it´s way easier to reform and get free tech than spending the 250 % extra, best used on getting some lands and getting them strong... Keep small, since westernization is a bitch of time, goes faster when smaller (you know that, i know that) but doing it faster means less time with expensive tech...

I will try it again if you don´t believe it but I will give you... It´s not easy, and there are many mistakes along the way...
South America is much, much stronger because you can westernize 50+ years sooner if you know what you're doing. Inca and the native councils in South America are head and shoulders stronger positions than any start anywhere in NA without exception.

actually I westernized quite late there there was some issues with old world, so no one really colonized :-D damn I was mad...

I'm asking for a "list of things that would make one conclude x is an exploit", and also "list of things that would make one conclude that a given mechanic should be changed"...the latter being a little more all-inclusive because it includes UI changes and whatnot too. Going back to front instead is *intentionally* adding needless bias to decision making.

Not everything can be formulated like that, speaking from a jurist point of view, there are just sometimes where some unsaid, unspecific rules must apply and works better than a specified... But get the reason why there´s a need to it...

Why does it matter if a dev thinks something is or isn't an exploit? That isn't the only reason, or even the primary one, behind changes made to the game.

Just skip this weird middle layer of arguing about the word (especially when directed towards people for whom English isn't even their primary language) and get right into the gameplay ramifications resulting from a change made or proposed.

I get the reasons, it´s nice to know what and how the game will evolve and change... Some tactics are used by people and suddenly they are taken away, and their enjoyment of the game is lessened...

 

[DanubianCossak]

There wasn't really any excuse to take seven patches to give Hordes new units on various levels of military tech after removing foreign core recruitment.

Are you sure about that?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I highly doubt very many changes are made willy-nilly. I'd expect most of them come out of internal meetings, informal or otherwise, where options are considered, discussed, and ultimately selected based on various criteria.

What makes you believe this? The evidence we have opposes this belief. Namely, multiple mechanics function in conflict to developer statements, and more still you see changes that are at odds with other changes/reasoning given for changes (also, if the meetings happened and were executed well, we wouldn't have inaccurate/wrong/misleading patch notes for more major patches than not ). A few of those have been covered in this thread, so I don't want to beat a horse, but we have no reason to believe that criteria is first set in such meetings, then applied consistently to the design/implementation of the game's mechanics.

actually I westernized quite late there there was some issues with old world, so no one really colonized :-D damn I was mad...

Then I call BS on your catching up quickly. Sunset Invasion is still easily possible, but there's no region in the world with more waiting/larger monarch point hole. Calling the tech-reform boost + religion combination "OP" when it's among the weakest positions in the world (in both SP and MP) is exactly the kind of "logic" that leads to buffing strong nations and nerfing weak ones.

Not everything can be formulated like that, speaking from a jurist point of view, there are just sometimes where some unsaid, unspecific rules must apply and works better than a specified... But get the reason why there´s a need to it...

You can't even come up with subjective distinguishing measures/evaluations? Nothing at all?

Only the devil's advocate post on this thread has managed to come up with a single criteria that would scrape out the egregious stuff like negative maintenance while not banning basic actions. It is not by itself sufficient, but it is an example of something you could measure between mechanics with much less bias than what's being done currently.

I'd rather see more of that than the debate equivalent of hiding . The question I asked is not unanswerable.

 

[Freudia]

Are you sure about that?

Beyond a doubt.

 

[net.split]

I can't imagine that's the case on every change they make.

Me neither! Just some of them.

Actually a lot of them do appear to come with no such basis. For instance, it was recounted that Johan literally just up and decided one day to increase province count by an arbitrary number. This was one of the most dramatic changes to the game, but the devs themselves say they had no such meetings when this decision was made.

Other times we have been given inconsistent rationales and reasons for changes.

Certainly many, many of the mechanisms look like giant kludges. Relations, after all, are suppose to be a measure of how likely another country is to go along with your policy goals ... but they are riddled with giant -100 modifiers and we just tacked a favor system on that is poorly integrated with relations because they do not appear to have internal design consistency.

Bolded the key word there. Any time that it isn't glaringly obvious why a given change was made and a dev doesn't take the time to outline the rationale, it appears on the outside to be a change with no basis. Assuming that's actually what happens is basically accepting that the devs come in to work in the morning and just randomly muck up stuff in the game for no reason.

This is not how people approach their career works.

The story of adding provinces to the game is just that -- a story. You and I weren't actually present when it happened; we have a few sentences from Wiz about it that were communicated to us primarily to entertain. Why would he stop and go into several paragraphs detailing all their internal communications? And why would you assume that Johan requested these map changes without doing any consideration as to whether it would be consistent with EU4's design goals?

Also giant kludges are pretty much par for the course in complex software projects, especially those with frequent changes like this one. To avoid or eliminate kludges in something like this you'd have to perform substantial re-engineering every time you wanted to introduce something new. If Paradox did that, we'd get half as much DLC for twice the price with the same feature set. And that's probably an optimistic estimate.

What makes you believe this? The evidence we have opposes this belief. Namely, multiple mechanics function in conflict to developer statements, and more still you see changes that are at odds with other changes/reasoning given for changes (also, if the meetings happened and were executed well, we wouldn't have inaccurate/wrong/misleading patch notes for more major patches than not ). A few of those have been covered in this thread, so I don't want to beat a horse, but we have no reason to believe that criteria is first set in such meetings, then applied consistently to the design/implementation of the game's mechanics.

See above. It is extremely naive to assume that a developer makes changes to a game essentially randomly. Even amateurs tend to avoid this kind of behavior.

I have worked on a game project before (as the lead). Specifically a multiplayer strategy game that had a forum. I've been on the other side of this.

I've made changes to the game that I believed were consistent with my design goals, and I've run into loud player outcry as a result. Sometimes it was because their interpretation of my goals wasn't in line with my actual goals for various reasons. Sometimes it was because I made mistakes -- the implementation failed to live up to the concept, or there were unintended side-effects that themselves were indeed in contradiction with my goals. Oftentimes you're forced to make trade-offs, holding your nose and implementing something that isn't really what you wanted to do, but it's better than the alternatives you were able to come up with or investigate for different reasons. These latter ones are often quick fixes, and you fully intend to revisit the issue and address it later, but then priorities are changed and this thing that was supposed to be a temporary patch becomes an annoyingly integral part of the game for a year.

This stuff isn't easy. It's hard to do even if you're really, really good at it and blessed with a large budget and team. People will make mistakes, or they will do things that appear to be mistakes because you don't have the full information to perform a proper evaluation of the choices made. And they will often disagree about whether or not something is good or bad for a game.

For example, I expect the devs don't see your issue with the Incans to be a serious problem because it's only the most skilled and effective players that will likely encounter such lengthy downtimes. Less skilled players won't unite so quickly and so are much less likely to be sitting around for decades on speed 5 waiting for the Europeans to arrive. Strictly speaking, there are far more less skilled players than there are players at your level. Therefore, internal priorities will declare this mostly a non-issue.

Inability to survive European invasion afterward might be a problem (since the general audience would encounter it as well), but it's a bigger one as it starts to get into a lot of other systems that affect a lot of other things, so it would need to be tackled very carefully (in concert with stuff like naval revamps, which we already know is in the queue somewhere, and accompanying AI rewriting that might allow for the long-desired mechanic of forcing smaller armies shipped around the world).

Finally, there's also the reality that people change their minds over time. A design goal in 2014 may now be seen as undesirable by the same team in 2016. This could happen for a lot of reasons -- talking to players, experiences with the game over time, evolution of personal taste, new ideas making the rounds in the game designer community, and more.

As an aside, I'm not sure I've ever seen large and detailed patch notes for any piece of software that are 100% accurate. It doesn't really matter how dedicated you are, some things will slip when you're transcribing that many things. Even if you're using change management software to record everything and have very disciplined developers.

It's perfectly fine to call out inaccuracies and inconsistencies. It's a good thing to offer analysis of changes; this does any design team a good service. But try to avoid working from an assumption of incompetence and randomness on the part of the design team. That doesn't help anybody, and it's very rarely accurate. Even for projects that go totally south.

 

[Jomini]

Me neither! Just some of them.


Bolded the key word there. Any time that it isn't glaringly obvious why a given change was made and a dev doesn't take the time to outline the rationale, it appears on the outside to be a change with no basis. Assuming that's actually what happens is basically accepting that the devs come in to work in the morning and just randomly muck up stuff in the game for no reason.

This is not how people approach their career works.

Actually this is how most people approach their careers. Humans generally use heuristics that are termed "hunches" and "gut feeling". Most often decision makers conceive of their preferred outcome and use evidence to rationalize pre-existing opinions. Much like you are doing here.

There is nothing wrong with that, it is how humans are wired. Even formal science tends to run this way (if interested you might try reading the works of Polyani). We are generally good at making hunches and gut feelings work and generally we are poor at making syllogistic deductions. Spending dozens of man-hours on hashing out those gut instincts is a waste of resources if your gut-instincts are generally good.

As someone with a lot of training in observing, understanding, and exploiting decision structures, Pdox does give off a lot actual signals that ideas originate outside of group contexts and that individuals are given limited tasking information with maximum autonomy for individual team members. This is generally a good thing - it is literally what the US military is supposed to attempt to maximize combat effectiveness. It does mean that many, many ideas are the result of one guy's decisions and they may indeed be fully arbitrary.

The problem comes that we use pejorative language like "exploit" and "gamey" etc. for what are inherently subjective decisions. It also means that many changes work at cross purposes and exhibit strong elements of time-inconsistency. It also means that having a free, highly engaged and thoughtful critique community on the boards makes for a very nice feedback mechanism.

The story of adding provinces to the game is just that -- a story. You and I weren't actually present when it happened; we have a few sentences from Wiz about it that were communicated to us primarily to entertain. Why would he stop and go into several paragraphs detailing all their internal communications? And why would you assume that Johan requested these map changes without doing any consideration as to whether it would be consistent with EU4's design goals?

Largely because I have followed Johan's public statements for over a decade and it is consistent with: A. the actual evidence Wiz presented, B. past behavior, and C. good business strategy.

The more time you put into coordination, the less you put into production. If it were an obviously bad idea, there will be push back. If it isn't, you do not need to waste time.

Also giant kludges are pretty much par for the course in complex software projects, especially those with frequent changes like this one. To avoid or eliminate kludges in something like this you'd have to perform substantial re-engineering every time you wanted to introduce something new. If Paradox did that, we'd get half as much DLC for twice the price with the same feature set. And that's probably an optimistic estimate.

Depends on the context. I work with military software and kludges are heavily frowned on in a number of my applications, of course we spend something like 4x the cost of normal software development because kludges breed systematic weaknesses which are bad things in environment where people die and there are literally no constraints are acceptable behavior.

In general, I continue to be highly pleased with Pdox's content, it is fun and interesting except for some of their crutches that continue to be boring in a strategy title. What I wish is that we could finally retire some of the more obnoxious standby's that have well outlived their time: effectively hardcapped waiting periods to delay exponential growth, insurmountable modifiers (e.g. -1000) that never become scaled because the AI cannot actually use the system to know its own best interest, and a strong pay-to-win model.

 

[net.split]

Actually this is how most people approach their careers. Humans generally use heuristics that are termed "hunches" and "gut feeling". Most often decision makers conceive of their preferred outcome and use evidence to rationalize pre-existing opinions. Much like you are doing here.

This is not the correct context in which to apply that information.

As someone with a lot of training in observing, understanding, and exploiting decision structures, Pdox does give off a lot actual signals that ideas originate outside of group contexts and that individuals are given limited tasking information with maximum autonomy for individual team members. This is generally a good thing - it is literally what the US military is supposed to attempt to maximize combat effectiveness. It does mean that many, many ideas are the result of one guy's decisions and they may indeed be fully arbitrary.

It's been noted that Johan has been the lead designer for EU4 and previous versions. This (having one person basically making these kinds of decisions) is common. This doesn't mean his decisions are fully arbitrary; it would be literally impossible to craft a game by designing it arbitrarily. Games are defined as a set of rules, and if they're written in an arbitrary manner then the game simply won't function or make any sense at all.

Are there arbitrary elements? Sure, for certain definitions of "arbitrary." Why 1000 provinces, specifically? Because he wanted a lot more, and he's using a number system based off having ten fingers. Is 1000 somehow better than 963 or 1108? That's impossible to objectively answer, and it's also beyond the scope of what we're actually discussing here.

The more time you put into coordination, the less you put into production. If it were an obviously bad idea, there will be push back. If it isn't, you do not need to waste time.

I agree.

Depends on the context. I work with military software and kludges are heavily frowned on in a number of my applications, of course we spend something like 4x the cost of normal software development because kludges breed systematic weaknesses which are bad things in environment where people die and there are literally no constraints are acceptable behavior.

Of course. I've also worked with military software. Medical software is arguably even worse. That's not the context we're dealing with, though.

In general, I continue to be highly pleased with Pdox's content, it is fun and interesting except for some of their crutches that continue to be boring in a strategy title. What I wish is that we could finally retire some of the more obnoxious standby's that have well outlived their time: effectively hardcapped waiting periods to delay exponential growth, insurmountable modifiers (e.g. -1000) that never become scaled because the AI cannot actually use the system to know its own best interest, and a strong pay-to-win model.

Come on :\

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This is not the correct context in which to apply that information.

Wat. We have evidence of exactly that being done in the past in this context ^_^.

The purpose of my suggestion of criteria was not to come up with a scientific method of game design, but rather to reduce the bias introduced in this behavior (not eliminate it, not even close). Something along the lines of "what types of behaviors in my game do I believe harm the experience, and why do I believe that?" would carry most of the necessary consideration.

Without asking yourself that, you wind up instead making a change and then saying "I made this change because reason y", which is different from what you'd have done if following the paragraph above.

Come on :\

Same to you. He is absolutely correct. If you have AoW, Cossacks, + national focus you have a tremendous laughingstock level of advantage towards expanding compared to without them, to the point that games between having them and not having them are not comparable. The game continues in this direction each DLC. Global nerf to ticking -LA --> derp if you have Cossacks you can actually make more money in the short term...but if you don't? Rekt son, have less money and manpower and such.

Have Cossacks? Here have an easy way to manage this 1000 development vassal. Don't have it? FILTHY CASUL, YOU BETTER NOT GO OVER 300.

That there's a pay-to-win model in this game would be very difficult to credibly dispute.

 

[net.split]

Wat. We have evidence of exactly that being done in the past in this context ^_^.

The purpose of my suggestion of criteria was not to come up with a scientific method of game design, but rather to reduce the bias introduced in this behavior (not eliminate it, not even close). Something along the lines of "what types of behaviors in my game do I believe harm the experience, and why do I believe that?" would carry most of the necessary consideration.

Without asking yourself that, you wind up instead making a change and then saying "I made this change because reason y", which is different from what you'd have done if following the paragraph above.

That's not the same argument. Previous poster was using research about how we (usually incorrectly) justify or explain opinions that we have, typically after-the-fact. This is different from making game design decisions in an arbitrary or random manner.

At best it could help explain why a developer's justification for a change is inaccurate, but it in no way suggests that the developer is behaving in an arbitrary manner.

That said, your proposal is sensible. It's also something I already expect every professional game designer to do. And it's not the only question that gets asked, as there are other constraints as discussed previously.

Same to you. He is absolutely correct. If you have AoW, Cossacks, + national focus you have a tremendous laughingstock level of advantage towards expanding compared to without them, to the point that games between having them and not having them are not comparable. The game continues in this direction each DLC. Global nerf to ticking -LA --> derp if you have Cossacks you can actually make more money in the short term...but if you don't? Rekt son, have less money and manpower and such.

Have Cossacks? Here have an easy way to manage this 1000 development vassal. Don't have it? FILTHY CASUL, YOU BETTER NOT GO OVER 300.

That there's a pay-to-win model in this game would be very difficult to credibly dispute.

"Pay-to-win" as a phrase has a pretty specific definition. Either it lets you gain an advantage over other players by spending money they didn't spend, or it lets you bypass in-game obstacles by spending money. The first is obviously false as all players in a multiplayer game play with the same DLC enabled (specifically, all of that owned by the host, even for players that never spent a dime on any of them). The second is typically applied in a context of free "stamina" in F2P games, or instant heals and other types of "cheats" in other games, which also clearly doesn't apply here.

Even if you want to argue that it technically meets the definition because it enables all these cool new things, I'd point out that these advantages are either possessed by all nations or none of them. The AI doesn't get powered up every patch, requiring you to buy DLC to get the same power-ups for yourself. Further, your examples exhibit some serious cherry-picking. For instance, many world conquest players skipped or disabled Common Sense because the development system made it harder to conquer the world. So even with the most relaxed and forgiving definition possible, there are instances that run counter to your claims.

In short, it's disingenuous misuse of the phrase in a way intended to be inflammatory, appealing to emotion to try to rally other players to oppose the DLC model by framing it as something it isn't.