V3 before CK3

[Kriegsspieler]

Vicky 2 is a hella complicated game but I doubt Vicky 3 will be. They pretty much said it themselves in the "High Council of Grand Strategy" they design games based around systems players will have fun interacting with and not as simulations. At that time they commented on how Vicky 2 is very much a simulation and how that caused complaints from the players in terms of how the AI acted.

I doubt they would reverse their development trend to make something like Victoria 2 again. Especially since they claim people wouldn't like it.

Maybe, but failing to capture all the interesting things that made Victoria what it is -- or "was," depending on your point of view -- would alienate the very audience that wants so much to see a new version. And if you look at their current line-up of games, the level of simulation and complexity is pretty variable. HOI is pretty complex, whereas EU is little more than a dressed-up game of world conquest. The other games fall in between those extremes. And yes, there are plenty of "player experience" elements in HOI -- many of them not very well done, like US politics and alt history -- but the core game is a simulation.

It sees to me that the people who most want to see Vicky rebooted want more than anything to replay the social, economic, and political developments of the 19th century. To provide a game that stinted on any of those features would leave their audience very, very disappointed. At least, so it seems to me. It would be sort of like when Sid Meier got it into his head to release Railroads, after people had gotten used to playing far more sophisticated railroad sims ever since the original Railroad Tycoon. He failed to pay attention to that.

That amount that was disappointed by CK3 instead of V3 is a lot less than the I:R disappointment, I think.

That's hard to compare, wouldn't you say? Both were clearly considerable in number.

 

[Son Of Perdition]

Maybe, but failing to capture all the interesting things that made Victoria what it is -- or "was," depending on your point of view -- would alienate the very audience that wants so much to see a new version. And if you look at their current line-up of games, the level of simulation and complexity is pretty variable. HOI is pretty complex, whereas EU is little more than a dressed-up game of world conquest. The other games fall in between those extremes. And yes, there are plenty of "player experience" elements in HOI -- many of them not very well done, like US politics and alt history -- but the core game is a simulation.

It sees to me that the people who most want to see Vicky rebooted want more than anything to replay the social, economic, and political developments of the 19th century. To provide a game that stinted on any of those features would leave their audience very, very disappointed. At least, so it seems to me. It would be sort of like when Sid Meier got it into his head to release Railroads, after people had gotten used to playing far more sophisticated railroad sims ever since the original Railroad Tycoon. He failed to pay attention to that.

I agree it would alienate the die hard fans, but Paradox obviously doesn't care about not doing that what with the whole non existence of Victoria 3 and change in pace in the first place. Plus it isn't like HoI4 is the same as HoI3. HoI4 is miles less a simulation than its predecessor. Plus one can only assume a lot of the simulation in Ck2 will get cut for Ck3, after all it's a marketing point that the game will bend to player and the focus of the game is the dynasty itself.

I'd like to note that simulation and complexity are two different things and how I mean simulation (as far as the point I am and was making) is things happening outside player control with player influence being but a minor contributing factor to the end result. Chief example being the economy in Victoria 2. The economy is an unpredictable mess of supply and demand based on pops and the speculation of AI capitalists with beautiful randomness tied in. It is the simulation of a real worlds economy. Gameplay wise it isn't intuitive or engaging. Most tutorials tell you just never touch the trade screen. And it's a balancing problem in multiplayer because it can be abused, though that would be true in real life too. The question is whether the simulation is better or if a system where the player can exert direct influence is better and that is a question of taste. Personally I'd air on the side of a simulation, but if the majority disagrees then that's who the game will be made for, and that seems to be true as that is Paradox's trend.

 

[Arthrodira]

V3 requires a simulated economy. Interacting with this simulation is the crux of the game. Don’t get me wrong - there are a lot of things that need to be improved and many ways that players could take charge of the economy that are not implemented in V2 (such as international trade negotiations), but the simulation is critical.

 

[Kovax]

The one consideration on the part of Paradox is that a revamp of CK2 > CK3 should pay off fairly quickly, as it appeals to a broader base of support than V2 and has a lot of immediate recognition from strategy gamers. V3 will probably sell well in the long run, as the die-hard adherents to more historical simulations will very likely show almost fanatical support over time (when you've only a couple couple of choices, you support them fanatically), but it won't be the quick shot of cash that a mass-market game would provide.

Basically, we're talking about two decent sellers, one that makes its money up front and the other that generates nearly as much or more, but does so more gradually over the long term. After Imperator, they may have opted for the quick shot of cash.

The other consideration is that a mass-market targeted remake of the Victoria series would very likely drive away the players that it's supposed to satisfy, while not capturing nearly as much of the popular market as a Dark Ages or WWII game tends to draw by its very nature.

 

[Arthrodira]

The one consideration on the part of Paradox is that a revamp of CK2 > CK3 should pay off fairly quickly, as it appeals to a broader base of support than V2 and has a lot of immediate recognition from strategy gamers. V3 will probably sell well in the long run, as the die-hard adherents to more historical simulations will very likely show almost fanatical support over time (when you've only a couple couple of choices, you support them fanatically), but it won't be the quick shot of cash that a mass-market game would provide.

Basically, we're talking about two decent sellers, one that makes its money up front and the other that generates nearly as much or more, but does so more gradually over the long term. After Imperator, they may have opted for the quick shot of cash.

The other consideration is that a mass-market targeted remake of the Victoria series would very likely drive away the players that it's supposed to satisfy, while not capturing nearly as much of the popular market as a Dark Ages or WWII game tends to draw by its very nature.

The decision had to be made far before IR was released though.

 

[Son Of Perdition]

The one consideration on the part of Paradox is that a revamp of CK2 > CK3 should pay off fairly quickly, as it appeals to a broader base of support than V2 and has a lot of immediate recognition from strategy gamers. V3 will probably sell well in the long run, as the die-hard adherents to more historical simulations will very likely show almost fanatical support over time (when you've only a couple couple of choices, you support them fanatically), but it won't be the quick shot of cash that a mass-market game would provide.

Basically, we're talking about two decent sellers, one that makes its money up front and the other that generates nearly as much or more, but does so more gradually over the long term. After Imperator, they may have opted for the quick shot of cash.

The other consideration is that a mass-market targeted remake of the Victoria series would very likely drive away the players that it's supposed to satisfy, while not capturing nearly as much of the popular market as a Dark Ages or WWII game tends to draw by its very nature.

That decision was made long before IR. IR took some of the systems from CK3 for it's development per the respective game leads themselves

 

[Kriegsspieler]

That amount that was disappointed by CK3 instead of V3 is a lot less than the I:R disappointment, I think.

I agree it would alienate the die hard fans, but Paradox obviously doesn't care about not doing that what with the whole non existence of Victoria 3 and change in pace in the first place. Plus it isn't like HoI4 is the same as HoI3. HoI4 is miles less a simulation than its predecessor. Plus one can only assume a lot of the simulation in Ck2 will get cut for Ck3, after all it's a marketing point that the game will bend to player and the focus of the game is the dynasty itself.

I'd like to note that simulation and complexity are two different things and how I mean simulation (as far as the point I am and was making) is things happening outside player control with player influence being but a minor contributing factor to the end result. Chief example being the economy in Victoria 2. The economy is an unpredictable mess of supply and demand based on pops and the speculation of AI capitalists with beautiful randomness tied in. It is the simulation of a real worlds economy. Gameplay wise it isn't intuitive or engaging. Most tutorials tell you just never touch the trade screen. And it's a balancing problem in multiplayer because it can be abused, though that would be true in real life too. The question is whether the simulation is better or if a system where the player can exert direct influence is better and that is a question of taste. Personally I'd air on the side of a simulation, but if the majority disagrees then that's who the game will be made for, and that seems to be true as that is Paradox's trend.

Ok, fair enough -- let's hold simulation and complexity apart. And we'll agree to disagree on how much a "simulation" HOI4 is.

Anyway, one of things that made Victoria a work of art -- and this was even true of the original, as inscrutable as it was! -- is that it tried to reproduce the interlocking developments in social evolution, the economy, etc. in ways that ran semi-autonomously. The more you understod it with experience, the more impressive the achievement. The amazing thing to me about playing Victoria was just watching everything unfold before my eyes, and then trying to influence the system and turn it to a national advantage. So sure, they may want to compromise on the complexity of the model in some respects. But Victoria's niche in Paradox's games is that multi-level simulation. To take away too much of its complexity (sorry, I do think they're related!) and historical specificity and make the game a bland sandbox would not be interesting to its core fans. And I cannot see how an unmemmorable period in history, marked by few significant wars, would draw in fans, if it didn't continue the tradition of simulating the interlocking social, economic and political developments.

That being said, perhaps the evolution of EU2 into EU3 may provide a bit of a cautionary tale. To many core EU fans, EU3 went much too far in abandoning the historical "script" of early modern Europe. The Reformation was no longer fixed in location of timing, and many other scripted events were jettisoned in making EU3 much more of a sandbox set at a particular moment in history. To this Johan perhaps would reply that EU always was a game of world conquest, even when it began life as a board game. So in making it more of a sandbox, nothing was done to compromise the basic appeal of the game.

The issue of MP is really interesting, but my experience playing Paradox games in MP is limited to HOI4, and in my experience that requires extensive modding to make it at all workable. I can't imagine how the same would be accomplished in Victoria. Doesn't the UK always win, unless the other players start out intending to take them down?

And fwiw, I agree with Kovax that CK3 offers considerably more opportunity for a quick pay-off, with the unlikelihood that its audience will grow considerably over. Unless they add in dragons and wizards that is! I think (I hope!) that Victoria will expand its audience more slowly by doing better and more transparently what the game always was designed to do.

 

[Luckierexpert]

V3 requires a simulated economy. Interacting with this simulation is the crux of the game. Don’t get me wrong - there are a lot of things that need to be improved and many ways that players could take charge of the economy that are not implemented in V2 (such as international trade negotiations), but the simulation is critical.

Simulation of the economy, sure. I agree that the world economy can't be something that the player has lots of control of but even if there isn't much more than in Victoria 2, I'd at least like Victoria 3 to tell me what's going on in the world that's affecting my factories. I do see the simulation of the economy getting simpler compared with Victoria 2, as the devs have gone on record as saying the the economy system is over-engineered and a nightmare to bug fix if you change anything. A simpler system would make it easier to fix any future "liquidity crisis" -esq issues in the simulation but may take away some of the more intricacies of the system Victoria 2 has, although they could be preserved with good design.

 

[Kriegsspieler]

Simulation of the economy, sure. I agree that the world economy can't be something that the player has lots of control of but even if there isn't much more than in Victoria 2, I'd at least like Victoria 3 to tell me what's going on in the world that's affecting my factories. I do see the simulation of the economy getting simpler compared with Victoria 2, as the devs have gone on record as saying the the economy system is over-engineered and a nightmare to bug fix if you change anything. A simpler system would make it easier to fix any future "liquidity crisis" -esq issues in the simulation but may take away some of the more intricacies of the system Victoria 2 has, although they could be preserved with good design.

I think that's right. There's room for improvement here and certainly a greater degree of transparency.

 

[Son Of Perdition]

Ok, fair enough -- let's hold simulation and complexity apart. And we'll agree to disagree on how much a "simulation" HOI4 is.

Anyway, one of things that made Victoria a work of art -- and this was even true of the original, as inscrutable as it was! -- is that it tried to reproduce the interlocking developments in social evolution, the economy, etc. in ways that ran semi-autonomously. The more you understod it with experience, the more impressive the achievement. The amazing thing to me about playing Victoria was just watching everything unfold before my eyes, and then trying to influence the system and turn it to a national advantage. So sure, they may want to compromise on the complexity of the model in some respects. But Victoria's niche in Paradox's games is that multi-level simulation. To take away too much of its complexity (sorry, I do think they're related!) and historical specificity and make the game a bland sandbox would not be interesting to its core fans. And I cannot see how an unmemmorable period in history, marked by few significant wars, would draw in fans, if it didn't continue the tradition of simulating the interlocking social, economic and political developments.

That being said, perhaps the evolution of EU2 into EU3 may provide a bit of a cautionary tale. To many core EU fans, EU3 went much too far in abandoning the historical "script" of early modern Europe. The Reformation was no longer fixed in location of timing, and many other scripted events were jettisoned in making EU3 much more of a sandbox set at a particular moment in history. To this Johan perhaps would reply that EU always was a game of world conquest, even when it began life as a board game. So in making it more of a sandbox, nothing was done to compromise the basic appeal of the game.

The issue of MP is really interesting, but my experience playing Paradox games in MP is limited to HOI4, and in my experience that requires extensive modding to make it at all workable. I can't imagine how the same would be accomplished in Victoria. Doesn't the UK always win, unless the other players start out intending to take them down?

And fwiw, I agree with Kovax that CK3 offers considerably more opportunity for a quick pay-off, with the unlikelihood that its audience will grow considerably over. Unless they add in dragons and wizards that is! I think (I hope!) that Victoria will expand its audience more slowly by doing better and more transparently what the game always was designed to do.

I do agree, simulation is the core of Victoria 2 and what makes it so different and so good in comparison to EU4, HoI4, Ck2, etc. And I also agree that not making Victoria 3 a good simulation is a disservice to those who want Victoria 3 the most. However, I don't think that is the game that will be made when or if Victoria 3 is ever made.

To bring up how HoI4 isn't a simulation in the same way as Victoria 2 or, from my understanding, HoI3, mainly because I find the topic interesting, HoI4 follows history so in that sense it's a simulation, but what the game doesn't account for is the economy. Sure, you can buy resources, but there's no stockpile of them, there's not exchange rate for them. As the war progresses they don't soar in costs, there's no contracts with corporation to produce weapons, there's no selling of war bonds to make money to pay for the war effort. HoI4 is certainly taking steps to reach a middle ground between simulation and gameyness, looking at your fuel system, but it's far and away from what other games have done. If HoI4 was a simulation, construction speed would advance with time as more and more people changed pop type and not with a simple research tech. Manpower would increase as pops were influenced and as militancy increased. Demand would force democratic nations off open economies to protectionist policies in order to ensure their own production. The government would own all the trade ships but they would still need to protect them. etc. etc. Im sure you get what Im getting at

 

[Kriegsspieler]

To bring up how HoI4 isn't a simulation in the same way as Victoria 2 or, from my understanding, HoI3, mainly because I find the topic interesting, HoI4 follows history so in that sense it's a simulation, but what the game doesn't account for is the economy. Sure, you can buy resources, but there's no stockpile of them, there's not exchange rate for them. As the war progresses they don't soar in costs, there's no contracts with corporation to produce weapons, there's no selling of war bonds to make money to pay for the war effort. HoI4 is certainly taking steps to reach a middle ground between simulation and gameyness, looking at your fuel system, but it's far and away from what other games have done. If HoI4 was a simulation, construction speed would advance with time as more and more people changed pop type and not with a simple research tech. Manpower would increase as pops were influenced and as militancy increased. Demand would force democratic nations off open economies to protectionist policies in order to ensure their own production. The government would own all the trade ships but they would still need to protect them. etc. etc. Im sure you get what Im getting at

This is all true. I think there are two major factors limiting HOI's ability to serve as a more realistic economic simulation. The first limitation is the time frame. If HOI began earlier, say in the mid-1920s, you could do more with the economy. But to expand the time frame would go against the second limitation, which is that HOI is supposed to be a game about World War II, period. So you need to have Italy lined up with Germany, the UK aligned with France and the US (the US somewhat at a distance), and the USSR and Japan sort of sitting out there on their own. Except for deliberately fictional, alt-history variants, as have been offered in dlc's and in a mod such as Kaiserreich, the game needs those actors to conspire in generating the war that most of us want to replay. So Italy and Germany and Japan have to be Fascist, the USSR Communist, and so on. A game starting in the 1920s would upset those foundations.

 

[Son Of Perdition]

This is all true. I think there are two major factors limiting HOI's ability to serve as a more realistic economic simulation. The first limitation is the time frame. If HOI began earlier, say in the mid-1920s, you could do more with the economy. But to expand the time frame would go against the second limitation, which is that HOI is supposed to be a game about World War II, period. So you need to have Italy lined up with Germany, the UK aligned with France and the US (the US somewhat at a distance), and the USSR and Japan sort of sitting out there on their own. Except for deliberately fictional, alt-history variants, as have been offered in dlc's and in a mod such as Kaiserreich, the game needs those actors to conspire in generating the war that most of us want to replay. So Italy and Germany and Japan have to be Fascist, the USSR Communist, and so on. A game starting in the 1920s would upset those foundations.

I agree, plus even a 1930 start date would be terribly boring economically, hello great depression

 

[Challenge]

WW II grew out of the economics of the 20s and 30s, however. Without the inflation brought on by the war reparations Germany was forced to pay the National Socialists wouldn't have had the hook they needed to take power. Vickie has to be about the global economy as well as the social impact of the machine age. The economic and social collapse of Tsarists Russia, for example, brought about the Bolshevik Revolution. Without the economic need for raw materials and spices there is no draw for colonial development and the entire empire building structure of the game has no purpose.

Without the economic/social complexity Vic III might well be condensed to an early era HOI4. I for one am a big fan of that period of history; it was terrible in many ways, but it was glorious.

 

[RELee]

but it was glorious.

Amen!

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

I add my voice to the "a DLC + free patch would be nice" crowd. On the other hand, the very same fact that there haven't been any DLC/patch for years makes me wonder if:
- it means Victoria is deemed dead
- they are actually working on Vic3 so resources aren't spent on improving a soon-to-be-shelved game.

IMHO Vic3 isn't in the forseeable future because it's pretty niche and complex compared to the other games of their line, so it's a big investment for a comparatively smaller potential gain. In that case, however, I don't really understand why PDX isn't releasing at least a DLC just to cash in a bit for a minor effort. Sure there is room for improvement, unless the game engine just doesn't allow much more than the current game.

 

[RELee]

V2 was deemed "out of development" years ago, before the 3.04 patch in fact. The 3.04 patch was a "labor of love" by the developers who love the game as much as we do. It was probably allowed only because it was worked on for free in their off hours.

I only know this because I have kept up with Victoria and her developers over the years. This information is publically available else I would not be repeating it. I don't remember where it is though. Perhaps in one of the 3.04 threads in the forum.

And before anyone asks, I do not have any access to official back channels. I'm a mushroom just like the rest of you. So, I don't have any idea on what is or is not planned in regards to any version of Victoria.

 

[Kriegsspieler]

IMHO Vic3 isn't in the forseeable future because it's pretty niche and complex compared to the other games of their line, so it's a big investment for a comparatively smaller potential gain. In that case, however, I don't really understand why PDX isn't releasing at least a DLC just to cash in a bit for a minor effort. Sure there is room for improvement, unless the game engine just doesn't allow much more than the current game.

Well, Victoria Revolutions was exactly what you are calling for -- a comprehensive dlc reworking of the game that came out well after the original Victoria had been put to bed. Its success was directly responsible for getting Victoria 2 made. It showed Paradox that there was a market for the game, although making it really happened on a shoestring.

I kind of doubt that they would do that again, however. It was done at a time when the company's business model was far less secure.

 

[LodovicoAriosto]

I still occasionally play Victoria: Revolutions. Using some naval submod based on VIP mod. Victoria 2 was bland compared to the first iteration but it was better than nothing. CK3 could be a great game but its announcement barely captured my interest. Zero excitement. Quit playing CK2 after 5-6 expansions - too much clutter. I prefer solid and pure game foundations with major improvements from time to time rather than chaotic incremental growth of minor bonus optimization subsystems advertised as "complexity". HoI4 has been relatively free of this so far but I am worried it follows the same path towards fantasy realm, away from historical plausibility.

Besides playing Vicky 1, I was so desperate for a WW1 game than I purchased some pretty low budget strategy titles and regretted it. The production value is not there. The 19th century and WW1 are horribly underrepresented in popular culture these days. Perhaps it has something to do with politics - I think there is hunger and potentially huge market for this. When even mainstream shooters manage to sell WW1, why not Paradox? Sorry for rudeness but CK3 feels like laziness, cowardice and creative constipation. I will probably skip it like Stellaris and Imperator or buy further down the road. Vicky 3 would be an instant preorder, no questions asked.

 

[RELee]

Yeah I can't find a WWI game that holds my attention either.

 

[Challenge]

Had a game once, Imperialism, (DOS based) that covered the time period. For the time it was quite complex: the production lines to build finished products to feed the military and the masses; needed to make nice with the undeveloped countries to get access to their raw materials; go to war with the other 4 super powers... Nice game. I was constantly looking for a replacement since it wouldn't run on even a year 2000 machine. Someone engineered a way to get it to work on an advanced Windows machine, but it looked like a crayon drawing.

Then I found Vicky II. Well, I found the original, but 2 was already out and I didn't play the first one much before I moved up. Then it took me a year of one loss after another, usually for different reasons, to finally start holding my own. I have a few Paradox titles, but I just keep going back and getting trashed in different countries in Vic 2.