In my case, Victoria II was the Paradox game that I first learned. I couldn't get into EUIII after a thousand tries. However, Victoria seemed natural to me.
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Its true not every game should be dumbed down for mass appeal. Sometimes games should be difficult and taxing. Some games do only appeal to a certain type of person. Nothing wrong with that.
But then again you have Vic 2 and you will always have that game and there is no reason you cant go on playing that game in the same way many will continue to play HOI3 I am sure after HOI4 is released.
But that is no reason for new games not to be made and for good game ideas to not be reformed and moulded in other ways. Vic 2 has the basis of a good game, probably the best Paradox game ideas are in that game hidden away I think. It only needs a bit of work to smooth out the edges and enhance the concepts that dont quite work. Make it a bit more understandable.
Well dumbing down is one thing, but providing user interface that actually tells you things you should know instead of searching for them on the forums and still not understanding how it actually all works is something completely different.Paradox is going for the latter since CK2 quite successfully I think.
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CK2 does, indeed, keep a decent amount of depth. However, I think EU4 is a big "no" in terms of direction for any future Vic2 game. While the mechanics of Victoria 2 and to a lesser extent Crusader Kings 2 are reality transposed to the game sphere, I shudder at the idea of the EU4 direction of creating a "gamey" set of mechanics that result in "real" concepts replaced with stuff like monarch points, trade power, cultural conversion, etc.
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What I really hope for is eventually a paradox dev mega campaign multiplayer, CKII -> EUIV -> VIC3 -> HOI4
It's a lot to ask for and would take a few months, but would be amazing to see how the world looks like in the end. Of course they'd probably have to mod in/out certain things for the playthrough, I.E. the war of the roses in England would probably not happen in their timeline. Or it might, but my point being they'll have to take out events like that to make sure things don't go super-historically.
Abstraction that works is better than simulation that doesnt. And EU4 has more depth and meaningfull decisions than EU3 despite all of those "gamey" mechanics. Appearances are deceiving, the EU3 budget, despite being a "real" concept on the surface, was much more gamey in effect.
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Thats what sets Vicky apart. You don't have the press button and country stabilises. Even tech was semi random when it would appear after research. Your control was much more indirect and your decisions only had an effect down the line somewhere (if ever). Instant gratification wasn't there and decisions might have felt meaningless at the time you did them and sometimes they actually where.
Another thing was the lack of feedback. Unlike CKII or the newer games where you click a button and it will tell you you get X but opinion falls Y. Here you actually went in a bit blind into most decisions, pretty much like in real life.
Are these good things above? I'm sure many would argue that having decisions with a meaningful and immediate impact is good for gameplay. That hidden mechanics just confuse people. Etc. They'd have a valid point of course, but ultimately at the end of the day, that's a preference and my preference is different. It's very niche probably and that's why I'm fearful VicIII wouldn't be my thing.
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Well we are talking about something completely different it seems, and I get your point now. My point was that budget, while a more "real" concept than monarch points, was almost the same in effect (you accumulate stability budget and you get +1 stability when it hits treshold versus you accumulate monarch points and spend them on stability when you have enough) but could be gamed more when you knew how to exploit it.
I was not arguing about instant gratification and giving clear-cut binary choices, that is a matter of taste (and overall design vision). But there is a difference between going in blind, because the decision is meant to have indirect, hard to predict and long term effect, and going in blind because you have no idea what you just did because of interface issues (no tooltips, hard to find/hidden/missing/misleading important information, unintuitive mechanics etc.) or the mechanic is a thing that sounds great on paper but just does not work (HOI3 supply mechanic for example). Former is a conscious design decision, latter is just a design fail.
I was not arguing about instant gratification and giving clear-cut binary choices, that is a matter of taste (and overall design vision). But there is a difference between going in blind, because the decision is meant to have indirect, hard to predict and long term effect, and going in blind because you have no idea what you just did because of interface issues (no tooltips, hard to find/hidden/missing/misleading important information, unintuitive mechanics etc.) or the mechanic is a thing that sounds great on paper but just does not work (HOI3 supply mechanic for example). Former is a conscious design decision, latter is just a design fail.
I would dare say that the simulation in Victoria 2 worked quite well for most issues. Including the global resource market, factories, resource stockpiles, etc. I would shudder at the idea of "real" factories being replaced by "industrial power" or something along that line.
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I really dont like EU4 at all. Its just boring. There isnt any thing to do in it. Mind you I thought that about EU3 as well. Vic 2 is better than that.
I like the game, though I think the "new game smell" and appeal of the discovery dimension aid that. I like it less than Vic 2, CK2 and Rome and I think this is due to its "gamey" nature, for example unlimited movement (independent of distance from home), random alliances and the use of mechanics such as monarch points or trade power make it less appealing than it could have been.
I imagine Victoria 3 as ending badly, but I am biased. I do not like EU4 over EU3 (in fact so disgusted I refunded), and I am not liking the look of HOI4 over HOI3.
Maybe if they tried to stay with their vision in Victoria 2, did not create some really funny map, and stuck with older style controlled expansions, with grand visions, (rather than dlc spam like in CK2), I would probably enjoy it.
Maybe if they tried to stay with their vision in Victoria 2, did not create some really funny map, and stuck with older style controlled expansions, with grand visions, (rather than dlc spam like in CK2), I would probably enjoy it.
I would, but I want to see how Stellaris works out first.. there's only so many hundreds of dollars I can spend a year on grand strategy games..
Signed.
I would be surprised if they didn't already have it planned somewhere in the distant future (after HOI3, probably)
I would be surprised if they didn't already have it planned somewhere in the distant future (after HOI3, probably)
I do, Vicky is my favourite game - from empire to revolutions to II to AHD to HoD. That said, I want to see Stellaris completed first, and potentially a few expansions for Stellaris completed before Paradox start working on Vicky 3. I think there are some awesome features in Stellaris that will translate nicely to Vicky 3 and it'd be good to see them fleshed out first.
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