Wake Up!

[King]

The Fact is right now Doomdark is at home, recharging his batteries, finding his Zen, perparing for the Big push after Christmas for the 1.04 patch. Already they game is more optimised, already lots of little things have been fixed (theatre AIs are much more likely to bring HQs home) and more will be done. Till then why not go back to sleep?

 

[King]

I can tell though that Paradox are learning from this one. Take the AoD release - this has been put back because it was crashing too often. So at least we can take comfort that Paradox seem to have learnt a bit of a lesson through HOI3.

We have learnt our lesson, but have you? By that I mean you as a fanbase. I sit over the Victoria 2 forum and tell people the economic systme wil bear a striking similarity to one you see in Victoria, there will be changes and these will make it better, but at its core is something we know works. I get so many replies going we want more, we don't care if it is 100% working out of the box, you'll patch it, etc. etc.. To be honest it is damned if you do and damned if you don't. If we do a Hearts of Iron 3 and try to reach as far as we can we get accused of ripping you off with a buggy piece of crap. If try to be more conservative we get accused of rippiing you off with a bland product that offers nothing new. It is really difficult to find the right balance. We try and we will not always succeed, but we do try.

 

[King]

+1. thx though for the dev post instead of sitting behind the banhammer.

Hoenstly there is no need for that comment, that is borderline trolling and see if people did not troll so much you find more dev posting and less ban hammer. I am actually on holiday at the moment but still find the time to post here, so you guys are not paying me at the moment so you should not be posting crap lke that.

 

[King]

i meant that in a positive way. most companies do simply ignore their forum completely.

No offence but the rules state

"You will not argue with, comment on or question the actions/authority of the Paradox staff (Administrators, Moderators, etc.) in a public forum. Should you wish to do so you are directed to contact the Paradox staff via PM (the private messaging system - see “Violations and Penalties” below). "

So I am actually within my right to ban you for that post.

So as a general comment to everyone, think before you post.

 

[King]

C'mon, please, be honest.
Some of the issues in the initial game were clearly related to a certain grade of careless in the testing and development phase.
They were so evident that they popped up in the very first minutes of gameplay. It's not possible to deny that the game has been deliberately given "green light" when still incomplete.
That is not a matter of balancing things or "beleiving that the game vas ok" (your words). It is my opinion that the whole thing has been done on purpose.
Reasons, on the other side, are still unclear for me.
I wish I find something different from "money" but I can't.

You are welcome to this opinion, but it is simply not true. We did not deliberately release a game that was still incomplete. You ask me if given another year of development we could of done more? Then the answer is yes. Are you asking me if deliberately aimed to release a sub standard product in order to generate forum angst then the answer is no. We had a budget and we aimed to make the best game we could with it, we aimed a little higher than perhaps we should of, but we did not aim to make a bad game.

 

[King]

I have to say King, with most of the Vicky2 DDs getting 250+ posts, I think the overwhelming majority have been positive and most of the negative ones were about a trivial POP name.

Almost everyone posting regularly in the V2 forum is very positive about where the game is going.

You are misreading my post, I am not critisiing the Victoria fans for their feedback. I am simply observing that you guys, unsurpsingly some would say, keep asking more. The lesson we have learnt is that sometimes we simply can't give you more.

 

[King]

I'm still waiting for a game to be released with challenging, intuitive AI. Not sliders which impose restrictions to give it an 'artificial' difficulty, but actual AI that can plan and react and surprise the player

All of these games like EU3, HOI2&3, all of the Total War series, Sins of a Solar Empire etc, they are all fantastic fun to play, but every single one of them falls short in the AI department. The AI in these games is not actually AI at all but just a bunch of very very basic logic routines, and apart from the multitude of obvious bugs involved in the programming of those routines they are, more than anything else, predictable

When someone does eventually come up with real, challenging, interesting AI, it won't matter how shiny the graphics are, or how realistic the historical background, it will be an instant huge massive success that will take these types of games to a whole new level - and make the people who designed that AI system a LOT of money in the process

So my personal plea to developers like Paradox Interactive is - Please, before thinking of another gaming concept, or polishing an existing franchise title, use your obvious talents and come up with the holy grail of strategy gaming - A Real AI

Thanks

You are not asking for much there.

There is a very good reason why there isn't a 'real AI' it is because it is so bloody difficult to do. AI is something we do constantly refine though to make it better. Doomdark is a dedicated AI programmer for the 1.04 patch, with Johan on game play fixes and another on optimisation. Even then there will be always room for improvements. Some of this is simple observation of how the AI behaves. Take the HttT AI, it is now more likely ot go after major threats if they are exhausted in a long war. Why did we not think of this before you may ask? It simply took many hours of observing and refining the AI behavour to add this nifty little feature which players like. The same is true for the HoI3 AI. There will be various AI improvements, some small which you may not ever notice, but all together make the AI a more challenging oponent. The AI is a process of evolution rather than revolution.

 

[King]

I'm guessing that less historical play makes the AI harder to program because it can have more and diverser goals.

Yes and no, it some ways it acutally makes it easier because you do not have to have the AI constantly diverge from its best plan to go do something historical but, in the current game context, stupid. However in HoI3 we added steering scripts and refined them and will continue to do so.

 

[King]

Is any one aspect of AI behaviour harder to program than other, King? I imagine diplomacy might be the hardest

I am not a programmer, but as a tester I feedback to the programmers. With any aspect of AI behavour it is articulating why it should do something. If we take HttT, it is all very well saying the AI should seek to check blobbing countries but what does that mean? It becomes the country you rate as a threat and then check its war exhaustion and things like that. So it moves from a general statement of intent into a clear rule that an AI can follow.

 

[King]

How far in advance can an AI plan? Can it think far ahead, i.e. could Sweden at the start of a 1399 EU3 game foresee that it's not in its interests to let Muscovy get too big?

Also, can the AI think 'on behalf' of other countries? Can Prussia in Vicky realise that keeping AH reasonably strong could eventually be to its advantage, even if at that stage it isnt?

There is a long term and a short term component to the AI behavour. The works between the two goals. The debug information in EU3 is very interesting in that regard, you can see a list of provinces the AI wants to conquer, although could conquer might more accurate, and a value. This then feeds into the AIs decision making logic on who to ally with and who to decalre war on. The province might not be the most valuable but the defender is one of the weaker ones.

The AI can also read decision triggers, the Castile AI weights the provinces it needs to from Spain much higher than other provinces because it complete a decision with them.

However 20-20 historical hindsight is much harder. the Swedish AI cannot rate the threat of a strong Muscovy in 1399 because it cannot know how strong Muscovy will be. The Prussia AI cannot rate the long term value of a freindship with AH, because it cannot know if France and Russia will ally against it.

 

[King]

King: Istead of ranting the game I will try to turn this into a positive thread by humblily suggesting a way to improve the AI. In my opinion the tactical behaviour of the AI is already quite good, of course there is always space for improvements, like programming the AI to use paratroopers for example. In terms of global strategy the AI is quite bad at the moment. For example a hungarian AI does little more than taking a few provinces from the enemy nations, whereas a human player controlling Hungary ends up with a huge Balkan empire stretching all the way to Persia. Improving the strategical aspect of the AI can only be done by using what I call behaviour patterns. Every nation should have several preprogrammed behaviour patterns that trigger given certain circumstances. For example, Germany AI is really bad at invading the UK, but for human players it is quite easy. This is because human players follow certain patterns that the AI ignores. Japan failures in China have been reported many times. This is because Japan AI doesn´t know how to cope with the limited port capacity in China. Then simlply give the AI the pattern to cope with it. If the pattern is to take several ports at the same time, teach the AI to do so, instead of sending everything to the same port to end stuck in a supply trap.

Strategic AIs are harder than you think but there are a couple of things we are working on. With regards to the UK, we are currenlty looking at not sending the entire UK home forces off to the Chanel Islands in a death glory style defence. If the UK AI can stop doing that then hopefully the UK will be a tougher nut to crack, Doomdark is on this. Regarding Japan in China there is the two part problem that the AI reinforces beachheads without regard to port capcity, Doomdark is on this too, however there is also the interesting little issue that once you sieze a port in China the supply net stops trying to draw supply from Manchuria, I have sent a save game off to Johan and he is looking into this one.

 

[King]

I think the important thing is to get a good overview off past and present games. And ask the question, how and where can we implement more/better gameplay without adding complexity or to much new features(potential bugs).

An example of a feature in HoI3 as a compairson to HoI2.

The slider system in HoI2 is less complex (or at least already working), and imo better because the number of possible good or desired combinations are higher. In HoI3 there is only a single best combination of slider/law settings. The only law I really like atm is training law were all choices are relevant and interesting due to good bonuses on both sides (like most sliders in HoI2). Another fact is that you can change all laws off you nation in HoI3 from full oppressive dictatorship to peace loving democracy in a single day without any resistance from neither the ministers nor the military.

Here you have clearly reworked an entire mechanics from the ground up to be able to combine gearing up for war with sliders, and the result is well, not that impressive imho. Something important to remember is, if its not broken, don't try to fix it.

The when of law changing is a seperate thing. However I would argue if we went for the attitude if ain't broke don't fix we would never of made Hearts of Iron 3. Is anything absolutely truly broken in Hearts of Iron 2 or are there things that could be made better?

 

[King]

Perhaps the solution is extending the release date for any game. I'm not positive of the begin date to the end date. Lets just say it's 12 months. Why not extend that by 3 months and use that as a beta & fix phase. Currently the beta phase is to short... based on my own experience with HOI 2. For budgeting purposes the development can still remain the same. Just "pretend" you released it, patch & play behind the scenes. This will also allow more beta AARs so the fans don't feel left out.

This is my idea for a compromise. PI stays on budget, Fans get a better product on release date. The only downside is that funds for the new game get delayed for the additional 3 months. Just bake that in to the planning and you should be fine.

From my perspective I would love to be able to exactly as you suggest. However I also like to get paid. We always budget for time at the end to polish and balance the game. However what happens is that things take longer than planned. So this gets eaten into. Hearts of Iron 3 could of done with more time to develop what we planned to develop. We should of been less ambitious to give ourselves more time for polish at the end. We did however finish every feature we planned for, so from that regard we did deliver on our promises.

 

[King]

Perhaps that explains it right there. I mean yes, it makes business sense to develop a plan with a budget and then try to adhere to it. However if right from the start the objective has been "releasing whatever we have once we reach the budget", the game is bound to be full of errors, flaws, and other issues. Like construction - the answer is always "it will be done in two weeks" and it will always cost at least 50% more than what you expected. Budgets MUST be created to allow for this.

I might suggest that in the case of HOI3 either the budget or the people responsible for drawing it up were completely unrealistic, considering the state of the product upon release. Now without actually being involved in your company, I don't know if it's a case of the people responsible for the money insisting that the developers try to do their job with as little resources as possible, or the developers shooting way too far for the budget they were assigned. Either way, however, it seems to reflect a general failure in effective communication between the ones who hold the purse-strings, and the ones who write the code.

Unfortunately this sort of problem only hurts the brand as a whole. If, after the many years in the game development industry Paradox has enjoyed, it still has people who have no idea what developing a game costs OR it has project leaders who aren't capable of ensuring objectives are met, it doesn't bode well for the future. Certainly as a customer I expect less from brand new companies; and more from established ones who are, after all, supposed to be experienced in their industry.

The other idea that nags me is the concept (which to be fair hasn't been expressed here) that collectively the gaming industry seems to be looking for the lowest common denominator. "At least our game isn't as bad/buggy/incomplete as XXXX". It should be the other way around - everyone should at least strive for excellence in their professional field, not merely try to be better than the worst.

I do sometimes wonder why we post here. I think we have stated on several occasions that the game we reached for with Hearts of Iron 3 was too ambitious. We are doing two things about this, one is patching Hearts of Iron 3 to give you a better game than you did get and two learning the lessons from this to enusre future games are in better shape. However I disagree with lowest common demoninator comment. Hearts of Iron 3 was released the way it was because we wanted to aim higher. We didn't want the slogan Hearts of Iron 3 it is a bit better than Hearts of Iron 2. Perhaps we should of aimed for the lowest common denomator?

 

[King]

People whine a lot. Even what some would consider the greatest games of all time you can find a forum with some random guy whining about how it sucks. It's usually the minority populations which tend to whine the loudest. Also, it's usually the case that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

So my biggest fear when I read threads like this and see King or Johan getting frustrated by a few comments is that these squeaky wheels get their wish and they alter Paradox's mindset. They influence a change where instead of Paradox striving to make awesome games as they have been they try and settle for something 'dumbed down' to try and please everybody, even the ones who frankly will never get tired of complaining.

If the feedback from Victoria 2 is anything to go by a more focussed approach is going to give both a more achievable game and something the fans like.

 

[King]

Screw that lesson. We get better end product and faster if you design the game from the start to be huge and revolutionary, run out of resources somewhere around 80% of finishing it, release it as a beta getting cash to work more, get lots of feedback and later patch it up according to what you read in that feedback.

It's easiest seen if you compare HoI3 with Rome, a small and not really ambitious game, tiny map, 5 types of units, gameplay vastly similar to Eu3, more a mod than a new title really, not much to build upon, a game we all loved for the era it was set in and for how it looked but abandoned after a couple of months to go back to EU3 which could offer much deeper gameplay and more replay value.

Now, do we want Vicky2 to be like Rome or like HoI3? I'd go with HoI3 all the way.

My proffesional pride says no, I want to make a great game that never needs a patch. That may be impossible, but that does not mean we shouldn't try. More realisitcally we want to make a great game, that is fun to play 1.00 and patched a bit to iron those few glitches, balance issues etc.

 

[King]

One more thing: when we are going to have an overall improvement?. First quarter 2010?, second quarter?.
I'm not adding pressure here, just asking in a friendly manner. By the way, if you need testers, you can count on me and my iMac running Windows XP, anytime.

Next patch should be out Q1 2010.

 

[King]

You guys didnt really think did you that when i started this post I was naive? I knew full well i would be sniped at, personally attacked, insulted whatever, its nothing new for mankind.

since the dawn of time men have been standing up and seperating themselves from the pack, speaking out theyre truths often to be abused, killed, whatever by the majority.

Nobody likse a boat rocker do they? nobody likes a whistleblower or whatever.

Im not going to identify myself here or what I do in the gaming industry ofc, what do you think I am stupid, id likely be fired if nothing else.

15-20 years ago during the reign of games like Jet Set Willy, Sabre Wulf or ELITE the gaming industry was in its infancy, still learning to walk and though there have been computer games for years it was not as it is now. The games may have been basic but they were produced to the best of the programmers abilites because they hadnt considered anything else and because the games made small amounts of profit and had a small client base (in comparison to now) but things have changed so dont be naive chaps.

it is not so now, im telling you. Now it is a huge multi-million dollar industry and why would you think it played by different rules than any other multi millio dollar industry producing sub-standard goods to maximise profit and re-profiting. Do you think microsoft dont deliberately relase a buggy product to insure people are upgrading for years? conspiracy theory? maybe, but what if its true.

there have been some great posts here, intelligent well thought out replies and i have nothing personal against men like yohan except and using HOI III as an example only and considering Kings replies, HOI III was not a trial run.

heres an analogy: if im a wedding cake maker would i rather make 10 cakes with 3 tiers that collpased and were a poor product or make 5 cakes with one tier that were stable and created a strong happy client base? You cant argue we tried to do to much in the game and we accept we over extended so that makes it alright. This isnt an amateur industry, not when your making millions of pounds from a huge worldwide client base. Not when your taking huge amounts of money from people.

what are game makers primary interests but to sell yes? and if thats the case networked and under pressures from banks, employee wages, acountancy, busienss deals etc etc are they not going to sell or are they going to push an unready product, i think the answers obvious look around at the world of capitalism.

yes as a game maker and player i was furious with paradox's HOI III why? because i have played their games since inception including all the previous HOI titles and when i started HOI III it was so glaringly obvious that it was substandard material that yes i felt insulted ofc. This is real life money were talking abt, peoples real life money they work hard for which they then spend. and many forum members have agreed it wasnt even working at a 'basic level'

Would any of you not be angry if you bought say a washing machine that didnt work properly? or a toaster even.

Your wrong im telling you. Paradox is a small company when compared with say Bethesda or Blizzard so you may excuse them certain things but theyre all doing the same thing, time will prove me right, go ahead insult me for an opinion based on knowledge and fact if it makes you feel better but:

the facts are that software companies now follow a remit which is to see what they can get away with selling and as someone else confirmed here quality will continue to decline, dont believe me observe for yourselves.

i held paradox in high regard for a long time because thoroughly dissecting HOI II told me they had worked hard to produce something that held together in the market place, I do not believe that is the case with HOI III and so I will buy no more games from paradox, nor encourage others to do so either.

Infact discovering that another game series i enjoy fallout had been given a green remit to sell it when it wasnt ready to be sold has simply put me off gaming in the main, and i suspect ill stop gaming in total tbh, now i know that as a customer im not respected by the game makers, has really put me off wanting to spend my money on them. And i will also leave the games industry at the right time because i dont want to be in good conscience part of a deliberate deception.

Bethesda released fallout 3 knowing full well it wasnt ready, the argument being that by the time people realised this the money would be already in the bank it doesnt matter how i know this, you must all decide for yourselves if you think your being duped.

as for myself the games industry has become so huge now with so much money involved its no longer honest belive or dont believe, its for you to decide.

curiously for your edification the only games that still will retain a strong principalled production mechanism are the online ones such as world of warcraft but this is because its a game made up of thousands of real people playing in real time and blizzard know they could never justify releasing something too substandard, they would never get away with it whereas the stand alone play at home games, well thats another deal entirely.

you make up your own minds...

I deny catagorically that Hearts of Iron 3 was no more than attempt by Paradox to see what we get away with. If you want to accuse us of that, prove it.

 

[King]

Thanks for the responses here King.

It's good to get some insight into the inner workings of a game company once in a while.

Unfortunately, there are some people you will never be able to please no matter how hard you try.

Some of these people will stop at nothing to cry foul for any reason and accuse you of everything under the sun.

HOI3 had very lofty goals, and while it didn't quite reach them to perfection upon release, I am confident it will get there next year.

There are a good majority of us who are critical of the game, but want it to succeed, and want it to do good.

So, I hope you take everything you read with a grain of salt, because it's not worth getting worked up over, especially during the holidays.

Enjoy your days off!

Critism I can take, from paying customers, that's one of the reasons why we like to register your game. We know those who we should be listening to.

 

[King]

Interesting post wolfson, with some good points. However there is one key detail I think is missing. As you probably know, paradox is currently developing Victoria II, which the ceo is so sure that it will not turn profitable that (IIRC) he will shave his head if it turns profitable.

So Paradox can't be motivated by profit if they are making Victoria II

Personally I think Fredrik jumped the gun with that promise. If I had been him I might of been tempted to wait until the first previews came out.