What can HoI4 learn from Pillars of Eternity? Ending screens.

[Buladelu]

What Hearts of Iron 4 have in common with Pillars of Eternity? They're both published by Paradox, true. What else?

They're both roleplaying games with multiple endings.

I'm not joking. People often define roleplaying games my meaningful choices and visible consequences. Paradox games were always good on choices. Consequences were great too but lacked flavour. I always talk about flavour here.

So here's an idea: finish each game of HoI4 with an ending word. A description of what to come. A word about player's country, his neighbours and most important countries in the end of playthrough. Tell us if the boring Cold War follows or is it Man in High Castle. Tell me if I played Britain good enough to keep an empire. Confirm that I've played Sweden good enough to create my own poerful faction defining politics of XX centuries. Add postgame consequences to thigns like loans and having a nuke. Make me feel that factory I build in 1945 is still viable cause it defines the country I leave behind.

Yeah, it needs text and maybe art. But think of immersion. Think how you can build promo on getting to some obscure alternate history endings.

 

[Hamof]

This... actually seems like a pretty good idea, something similar to what was used in CK2. (If you don't know, at the end of the game it would tell you how well you did in comparison to real life dynasties.)

 

[WSnova]

Seems like a good idea, I don´t see it being too expensive to implement, especially if they use text only.

Even if it was something more Generic for minors (i.e. Mexico became the leading North American power after WWII, what followed was a conflict between X power and Mexico because....)

Could have tons of potential, especially if they get somegood writers to do them.

 

[romothecus]

This... actually seems like a pretty good idea, something similar to what was used in CK2. (If you don't know, at the end of the game it would tell you how well you did in comparison to real life dynasties.)

Actually I was just thinking of how bad the CK2 end screen was as an example of how bad Paradox the studio (not the publisher) is at ending screens. Even Civilization 1 had a vastly superior system, where you could watch a timelapse world map and look at various charts.

For example, why doesn't EU4 let you flip through the various charts and graphs for each country at the end of the game? Sure, there's a quick set of rankings, but why not let the player look through more data? (In CK2, this would mean letting the player browse dynasty trees). This is the kind of user-centered decision that Paradox fails to make over and over again.

 

[Buladelu]

Actually I was just thinking of how bad the CK2 end screen was as an example of how bad Paradox the studio (not the publisher) is at ending screens. Even Civilization 1 had a vastly superior system, where you could watch a timelapse world map and look at various charts.

It's indeed beyond me why you can't open ledger in Europa Universalis 4 in the ending screen. I mean unless you have a low resolution it's right there on the screen, just blocked. It has graphs and stats and history and all the staff.

CK2 comparison to static values is indeed a little bit boring especially cause players has a very good chance to be better than any dynasty would be in game terms. There it would be harder to implement an idea like mine cause in seven centuries of gameplay everything changes so much you can only have a very basic evaluation of a situation. In HoI4 though you have a very short period and the world can't change that much, most players won't conquer Europe as Switzerland. So you can relatively easily have a world description based on power balance of existing factions and the scale of WW2 as well as specific countries based on ruling party, power, loss in war etc.

 

[Dagda]

Ah, the age ole 'what is a rpg?'

The vast majority didn't even finish PoE, a true cRPG in the classical sense. Paradox games are infamous for people not actually finishing the campaign (like 1% or something absurd ). My point is, there are more important things to divert development resources to like actually releasing it as bug free and stable as possible. Sounds like a neat mod idea though.

Also, if I'm roleplaying a nation ahistorically I don't want to be railroaded into pre-written ahistorical ending thank you very much. I'd rather tell my own story.

 

[dav77-b]

I think it could be stuff for a small DLC. But I would not underestimate the cost behind such things.

 

[Gre]

I would love something like this, but it would be very difficult to implement, especially because of all the alternate-history options the national focus system brings. I can remember the Operational Art of War would end each scenario with a little blurb about the significance of the victory - or loss - that had just occurred. But each scenario really only had two outcomes - on side or the other wins - so the developer only needed to write two blurbs.
Even though it only covers 10 years, a Hearts of Iron game has a very large number of possible end states. Either the developer has to pay someone to write an end-game summary for each of them or they have to spend time developing a scripting system that can generate summaries based on the situation. Either way it's money and hours that could be used to make the gameplay itself better.
GalCiv2 tried to implement something like this, but the feature never got out of Beta. The automatically-generated summaries ended up being disjointed and often illogical, and the developer just gave up on it.
I think it's up to the player to write the summary of what the world will be like after his or her game.
Of course, it would be nice to have be able to look at the end game stats, and I would be interested in a Civilization-like video showing the changing borders over time. Doesn't the game save a log with the date of province owner changes, victories, and other events? It shouldn't be too difficult to use that to make a little animation.