Was there undue pressure to realease the game while not ready?

[Johan]

The game was ready when it was released. We had fixed all reported bugs, and were convinced that it was great. However, we did not play every single country in all campaigns ourselves, so we had to acknowledge that there would be imbalances at times.

However, it does not seem that we were right, as the reviewers disliked the game, and hardly anyone bought it.

So from now on, we'll focus on games easier to play, and where we can put down enough inhouse testing time to make the games super-balanced before release.

I suspect that the policy we have had of patching games, extending the game with features hurt us more in the eyes of the masses. Of course hardcore fans like it, but average joe just sees patch = broken.

ps. basically, only the sales the first 2 months matter for a game to the developer. The fraction recieved from games in bargain-bin is <0.01$ for us.

 

[Johan]

I didn't say that we would never do another EU2-complexity game again. I said that it was more likely we would aim for that complexity than for Victoria complexity.

And this thread shows exactly why its not worth it to make super-detail, since there's always someone bringing up some little detail from his nations past we were not aware off.

And no, the game was not released in US first It hit Scandinavia and Russia first.

 

[Darkrenown]

Actually my personally opinion on the value of Vicky is that it is my favourite Paradox game bar none. Once the colonisation thing is sorted - either in this patch or the next, I think it will be about as good as it gets as a game engine. Which isn't to say that there can't be tweaks and changes to the set up but I sincerely believe it was a much more robust and elegant piece of software than EU2.

100% agreed. Vic is by far the best Paradox game yet. I don't say that lightly, EUII and HOI are my 2nd and 3rd favorite games respectivly. When I first got EUII it was during the summer holidays and I played it for 72 hours straight. When I got HoI I was constanly playing and adding to the undocumented featureds list in the forum. But when I first Played Victoria I knew my two favorite games were now far, far outclassed.

 

[Darkrenown]

I have NEVER seen it in more then 30 playings of Victoria with many powers, including the USA, and Spain.

FYI, I see it in about half my games. Have you been looking out for it in every game? No offence meant, but in the "Vic got trashed" thread you did show that you had missed a couple of features I thought were fairly obvious.

 

[Darkrenown]

I have been, yes.

Odd. Here is the event for the USA's files:

#########################################################################
#  Yellow Press and the sinking of BB Maine
#########################################################################
event = {
	id = 14193
	random = no
	country = USA

	trigger = {
		event = 7707
		NOT = { exists = CSA }
		NOT = {
			peace_treaty = { country = USA country = SPA }
		}
	}

	name = "EVT_7707_NAME"
	desc = "EVT_7707_DESC"
	style = 0

	date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1898 }
	offset = 31
	deathdate = { day = 1 month = january year = 1900 }

	action_a = {
		name = "ACTIONNAME14193A" # Declare War on Spain
		command = { type = war which = SPA }
		# Cuba
		command = { type = addcore which = 1728 }
		command = { type = addcore which = 1729 }
		command = { type = addcore which = 1730 }
		# Puerto Rico
		command = { type = addcore which = 1749 }
		# Phillipenes
		command = { type = addcore which = 2038 }
		command = { type = addcore which = 2039 }
		command = { type = addcore which = 2040 }
		command = { type = addcore which = 2340 }
		command = { type = addcore which = 2341 }
		command = { type = addcore which = 2342 }
	}
	action_b = {
		name = "ACTIONNAME14193B" # Investigate
		command = { type = prestige value = -20 }
	}
}

Action A is the one the AI will pick most of the time. Of course this event does depend on there not being a CSA and most of the time there isn't in my games. Do you see the CSA surviving a lot?

As an aside, the two things I mentioned in the other thread, one was a misunderstanding (worded poorly by myself, about production queue) the other, I simply never saw before.

Actually I was counting the F1 key and page one of the ledger, were you aware you can sort in either direction of by any of the colum headers? That seems to be just that you were looking for.

In my games I always set the messages for pop-ups when a new war begins, just to keep abreast of what is going on in-game, and I tell you in all honesty, I still have never seen a USA/Spain war.

All I can say is the event exists and I have certainly seen it.

 

[Darkrenown]

And pop management is what I think killed the game for most players.

I think the pop system is one of the best new ideas in Vic.

 

[Darkrenown]

Future complaints, let's see . . . . What did people complain about in regard to Civilization? (Since this seems to be the preferred complexity level for many people.)

The corruptions system ruined civ 3 for me. Not to mention the AI cheated horribly and you had to pay extra to get the other half of the game(MP).

 

[Darkrenown]

Still, I don't think it's a good idea. If you're making an AI event for it, why satellite Mexico at all? That one makes no sense - that's not what happened in historically.... :wacko:

Well it'd be easy to do and would come pretty close to being historical. If you just take the land as opposed to satiliting it then you are likely to see ahistorical multiple mex-us wars.

 

[Johan]

That thread was moved to cleanup..

And its back at..

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=128710

 

[Darkrenown]

Is copy protection really that viable? I was under the impression even the best can be broken.

Yup. A) Most companys just buy safe-disk or something so there's already 100 programs you can download to break it. B) When someone makes a new copy-protection system hackers see it as a challange and break it in hours, days or weeks, but pretty damn fast. Plus a lot of cd drives have problems with certain types of copy protection, so it tends to cause more problems than it solves.

 

[Darkrenown]

True, but it'd a lot less interesting to play.

 

[Darkrenown]

I presume you mean the hse is the development team. I have to tell you I dont know, but many of the guys that worked on MooI and Moo2 worked on Moo3.

That's not true. Alan emrich (Lead Moo3 designer) wrote the strat guide for moo1. that's about the only connection.

 

[Chaingun]

Yes Paradox should find a way to sell it directly to their customers on the Internet. I'd glady make sure that the 30 of 40 $ dollars (or more) I pay for a title go directly to Paradox instead of different inefficient publishers.

 

[Darkrenown]

However even today we who download patches are a minority of the customer base a large minority but still more people dont download patches....
Now when you consider that MOST people dont patch their games eitehr because they are unaware of the patches, dont have acess or cant be bothered downloading a 5 meg plus patch using dial up.

I don't know about that, here in the UK 80% of homes with PCs have an internet connection, assuming the patches aren't too big (like BF1942's half gig patches, but then you need broadband to play it anyway) I don't see why they wouldn't get patches for their games. And who plays PC games and doesn't know about patches? Even console players can get patches nowadays with Xbox live etc.

Victoria was complete but she was buggy as hell and buggy with CTD critical bugs as well as fundementaly UNBALANCED. This is not what many of us except from a game.

Well Johan has said Paradox will focus on simpler, more polished games. If people aren't happy with patched games fine, but they can't have a game a complex as Vic without them. So there won't be a bigger, better Vic2 with more factories and country to country trade. Maybe they'll be an EUIII and we can click on CoTs over and over again untill we get a monopoly. But wait, EUII needed patches too, so it'll have to be simplier still, CotNII perhaps?
The no patch whiners win, it's the end of an era

 

[Darkrenown]

True, but if Paradox can't spend more time on a game they only way to have more testing time is to reduce the time taken to design and code the game.

 

[Darkrenown]

Galciv, also published by strategy first could be bought direct from the devs. They had an agreement not to sell it cheaper than the retail version.

Edit: This was in reply to Fiendix.

 

[Darkrenown]

Sapper, I think Johan posted a while ago that he gets ~$28,000 US PA

 

[Johan]

Also, Johan probably doesn't earn as much as some programmers, but if i were him i would be happy just from the sheer fact i was working on something i love, while earning enough to have a good life, of course he could work for some totally boring joint that programs something insanely boring....

I currently have a salary of 30,000SEK each month. The other guys are around 25,000SEK/monthly.

And no, the enjoyment of what I do does not weigh it up completely..
Not when..
a) I gotta work unpaid overtime for months at the end of each project.
b) when people dislike the games and dont buy them.


And I'm soon at the age where I'd rather do something else without the constant rush and pressure. Over ten years of game-development, and its always the same...

 

[Darkrenown]

Going back to the original question (more or less), how would (could) this game be different were the another six months, or perhaps a year of development time given?

Well the title screen would probably be changed to a picture of Johan with a huge grin over the £100,000 that magicly appeared to allow Paradox to do that

 

[Darkrenown]

Great post Mr T. I pity the fool that disagrees with it!