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Will this be another I:R situation?

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Red_warning said:
Don't video game COEs usually just deal with finance and project oversight, not design choice?
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Not in the software companies that I have worked for.

Do you consider the CEOs of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. to be non-technical people?
 
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Jayavarman said:
Not in the software companies that I have worked for.

Do you consider the CEOs of Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. to be non-technical people?
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It's not that they're necessarily completely removed from the technical aspect of the company, it's that the role they tend to play outside of smaller companies like startups tends be one far more focused on strategic vision for the company and its initiatives than the nitty-gritty details of implementation of specific projects. One would not expect to see Bill Gates in an ideation session for an iteration on a feature for Teams nor Jeff Bezos defining specifications of the latest EC2 instance types. Similarly, we've not been given an indication that the CEO of Paradox is involved in the actual design aspect of their games. Indeed, dev diaries where folk go over their roles and responsibility on a given game's team, such as Jamor's a few weeks ago, very conspicuously do not mention the CEO as being part of the game design teams
 
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jumbi said:
It's not that they're necessarily completely removed from the technical aspect of the company, it's that the role they tend to play outside of smaller companies like startups tends be one far more focused on strategic vision for the company and its initiatives than the nitty-gritty details of implementation of specific projects. One would not expect to see Bill Gates in an ideation session for an iteration on a feature for Teams nor Jeff Bezos defining specifications of the latest EC2 instance types. Similarly, we've not been given an indication that the CEO of Paradox is involved in the actual design aspect of their games. Indeed, dev diaries where folk go over their roles and responsibility on a given game's team, such as Jamor's a few weeks ago, very conspicuously do not mention the CEO as being part of the game design teams
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Exactly. Watch from 0:40 to 1:00 were the former CEO of Paradox Interactive and the current chairman of the board, Fredrik Wester (who also owns roughly a third of the company shares), talks about his role in game development in this GDC talk.
 
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the_atm said:
First off, I bought I:R at launch and sunk 12 hours into it then just stopped playing because I just wanted to move onto different games. I have started playing again and love it! From what I've seen from groups, the reddit ect. a lot of content was put on standby till they got the main game mechanics, like mana, figured out and the overall game fleshed out. The past year, again just from what I've heard, has been catch up and fixing up.

So I guess my question is, from what we've seen through dev diaries and game-play I may have missed and interviews, will CK3 have the same launch issues?

I don't mean this as a dig at PDX, I love everything they do I am just curious if there's been a statement about this general... idea.
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I:R suffered from severe design problems. It's no coincidence that EU:Rome and I:R are the only two main Paradox releases to crash and burn so hard. PDX games are only as strong as their strongest element, and not only did I:R have the same problem EU:R had of being a hash of gimped mechanics from other PDX titles, it's big innovation was importing some of the worst elements of recent PDX (gating everything around mana, for one).

CKIII is the successor to the PDX game with by far the strongest core gameplay, and from the DDs it looks like they're doing everything possible to enhance that core gameplay. CKII numbers are like 10x that of I:R, despite being almost ten years old. CKIII will at least match EUIV in terms of regular players.
 
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From my understanding, I don't think CKIII will be like Imperator: Rome. Paradox has been working on CKIII for a much longer time. I think it will be a solid release.
 
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CK3 is CK2 with a new paint job, I:R was very similar to EU: R but the lack of people having played that game meant none of the people who are not good at learning new mechanics were unprepared for it. Paradox then, I would argue, made it worse by being overly cautious with content updating. The largest problem (and I'm guessing they'll have realized this for CK3) is that the 'traditional' paradox method was to release a half-finished game and then over time have free content updates to fix it. And this was all well and good in 2009 but since then the DLCification of Paradox and the greater 'strategic' family of games like CIV and Total War means that the free content updates are now mostly accompanied by DLC. In many cases the DLC actually creates new bugs after the patches fix the game- something that can be seen with Total War's Warden and Paunch DLC which patched in new things but horribly broke the game in other fundamental ways. The corporate management, I would guess, is the main problem here as they'd obviously prefer to not put resources into quickly fixing something for free when they wager they can probably make a sale off something broken (but as we see with CA adding Troy to the epic store presumably in exchange for epic paying them, this is clearly a dumb idea- in fact CA has repeatedly made idiotic decisions since 2013 so it's a wonder they haven't bankrupted themselves).

In any case releasing a game missing mechanics with the assumption you can just patch it in later isn't a good strategy in 2020, paradox's fanbase has grown 100fold in 10 years and it's no longer a comfy club of a few people building their neoroman empire in V2 by using advanced technology to bamboozle the dumb AI and conquer Europe in spite of badboy/infamy points and thus the demands of a wider audience are for a more polished game.
 
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Imperator's problem is that it was trying to be all things to all people. While the *idea* of combining CK2's character system with Vic2's pop system and EU4's nation management sounds good, in practice it meant that none of those systems was deep enough to be interesting. The characters, pops, etc. were essentially ignorable, interchangeable cogs. It wasn't a game about anything, just clicking various buttons (and with what remains the worst UI of any Paradox game I've ever played) which was the problem.

Add that it was built around a EU4-style mana system which caused great criticism and was eventually scrapped shortly after release (meaning that the core system that most release mechanics revolved around was suddenly gone), and you have a disaster. I'm cautiously optimistic things are improving, but it's still a game with very real issues.

CK3, whatever else it may lack, appears to have a very tight focus around the characters. It may still be a disaster (no one can predict the future), but if so it will be for very different reasons than Imperator.
 
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Rubidium said:
Imperator's problem is that it was trying to be all things to all people.
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Imperator Rome wanted to be a game that is more than the sum of its parts. But turned out to be much, much less than the sum of its parts. Or any single one of them.

I'm sure they put in the same amount of effort into it as they usually do for a game. But I feel like putting in the effort of 1 part for 4 parts is just going to result in it being underdeveloped. Hence why it it was less than the sum of its parts. They even started development after CK3 but released before it? Should have been released year or two after it.

anomanderus said:
I:R was very similar to EU: R
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One goal of I:R was to make EU:R without it being EU:R, if I remember the presentation slide well.

They sort of succeeded in this, but not in the way they wanted.
 
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I think this game will be fine. Like others have said, a lot of us saw I:R's problems coming a mile away. Really, the biggest issue that Crusader Kings 3 needs to worry about is the game being too easy on release and the late game. Because at the very least, it'll have enough features to keep us entertained in the early-mid stages.
 
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Revshawn said:
I think this game will be fine. Like others have said, a lot of us saw I:R's problems coming a mile away. Really, the biggest issue that Crusader Kings 3 needs to worry about is the game being too easy on release and the late game. Because at the very least, it'll have enough features to keep us entertained in the early-mid stages.
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This. If the preview builds are any indication - from count to king in a single generation.

Another point is I:R was streaming 4 months before release and we all got a clear picture what it was like.
Ck3 will stream 2 weeks before release.
They seem to have learned from the I:R.

2 weeks is still pleanty of time to get an impression.
 
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