CK3 Dev Diary #87: Royal Modding

[Torredebelem]

As much as you have the right to think this is what the game is supposed to be and wish for it to go on that direction, what the game actually is will be defined by Paradox's vision for the product. I'm not Paradox but it's very obvious that CK series was never meant to be a 100% strict realistic medieval simulation. CK3 isn't, CK2 certainly wasn't (immortality, aztecs, demon cults etc), and I don't think CK4 will be.

My advice is to either change your expectations or look for another game that actually is what you envision otherwise you may be forever disappointed.

Certainly it is up to Paradox to define where to go with the game. I never claimed otherwise, isn't it? Mine is just one in a sea of different opinions that Paradox can take into account. But more on that later in my closing sentence.

It's curious that immortality, aztecs and demon cults were things I never delve into CK2, while having great fun playing and modding the game to my heart's (and thousands of other hearts) content. After all CK2 was much, much more than about fantasy scenarios and memes while having such content as totally optional.

Regarding CK3, I can also underscore the seminal interview of @Doomdark, the lead game designer of the game, where he claimed that things out of normal such as immortality (and I guess aztecs and demon cults also fit the bill) were not meant to be introduced in vanilla gameplay.

Regarding your advice I clearly will not follow it as CK3, conveniently modded, is my favourite game at the moment! So, quite wide of the mark on reading me, I guess...

Finally and going full circle addressing your subject matter, based on the recent poll and its content that Paradox launched to those that stopped playing the game, I can only point out that Paradox is still grasping for where the game will go from here.

 

[junassa]

The “Deviant” African Genders That Colonialism Condemned - JSTOR Daily

European travellers and anthropologists found that their gendered worldview didn’t easily map onto the societies they encountered.

daily.jstor.org

“Among the Langi of northern Uganda,” writes Sylvia Tamale, dean of the faculty of Law at Makerere University Uganda, “the mudoko dako, or effeminate males, were treated as women and could marry men.” There were also the Chibados or Quimbanda of Angola, male diviners whom, some scholars have argued, were believed to carry female spirits through anal sex.

For centuries, woman-to-woman marriages in pre-colonial African societies seemed to indicate to Europeans that the strong correspondence between male to man and female to woman was not prevalent in Africa. This practice of same-sex marriage was documented in more than 40 precolonial African societies: a woman could marry one or more women if she could secure the bridewealth necessary or was expected to uphold and augment kinship ties. The idea that a female could be a husband perplexed Europeans, and often lead to fantastical conclusions.

 

[pengoyo]

Which is simply an issue of testing and not the kind of the more intensive work described in blackninja's post. And changing a hard-coded element also requires plenty of testing, albeit more of the QA variety.

As for doing it via game rules, I don't see why Paradox shouldn't just keep the current one as the default if they went with this route to tackle this subject. They picked the current rate in the first place for a reason. And I'd wager the casual players are at this point a majority so the default would be aimed at them, while the minority asking for harder warfare wouldn't be overwhelmed with rules.

I was never arguing it was a monumental tasks, just that it isn't trivial (and more work for Paradox than a modder specifically). This was just to tie into the point of not wasting time redoing things.

As I already pointed out, what was actually being requested in the post blackninja replied to there was simply to make "warfare not terrible". Which is extremely vague and open to interpretation, because of how completely subjective it is. Which is precisely why such a demand could be technically fulfilled with even a small change like my example. Which, admittedly, is one of the plethora of reasons why there is little value in "X is terrible" as a criticism.

And I gave a reason for why your particular example doesn't make sense to do yet. The point is there are a lot of little things paradox could do, but doing them haphazardly would mean they'd have to spend time redoing things, and that time adds up. Like I personally would also like to see the effect of development increased. But as I also want to see the economy and trade overhauled, such a change makes more sense to do when reworking them, rather than doing the change twice.

Also your example change would make "warfare not terrible" as being requested, it would make warfare less terrible, which is an entirely different beast. If just arguing that Paradox should do something for war, than I'd argue that is already the case as they have add more culture specific feature for war (which gives some more variety) and added the ability to hire specific commanders (which gives more control). There probably are some bug fixes too. So if all you want is some kind of improvement to be done then that is already the case. But I highly doubt those complaining about the war system will be satisfied with just a tiny change.

Not how Paradox itself made it look like during Azure's development. And bug fixes are standard part of any version release and fixing bugs is pretty much expected of software developers, because customers are paying for software that works properly. So it's probably the worst comparison you could have made. Especially in context of Paradox, especially-ier in context of CK3 team in particular, which hadn't released even a minor bug patch in seven months. As such major patches are the only time left for them to release bug fixes.

Isolated as in mostly isolated for other systems that are being over hauled in the future. Obviously it is very integrated with the marriage system. But as I mentioned the marriage system seems to be okay in players' eyes and so an overhaul of it is unlikely any time soon, if ever.

Also I noticed you never responded to my points that culture is connected to gay marriage. So even if you don't think it's not isolated, that should make it connect in with DLC as you were ultimately complaining it wasn't. So I don't know why you are trying to argue just this aspect, when the other is also counter the argument that marriage doesn't make sense to work on for a culture focused update.

Also releasing separate patches versus what to work on in patch are two different beasts. Everything I'm talking about is related to working within a patch. Releasing things as separate patches create extra work (mainly for QA). But I'm not here to defend Paradox's decision on no bug patch since Azure's release, as I personally think it would have been worth the extra work given the amount of time between patches (though as a modder not having to worry about updating for patches is nice).

Like I said, I was just being thorough. If what you're saying is the case, things only revert to my previous point about how an argument about lack of complaints about non-modding parts of the upcoming update in a thread dedicated to the modding changes makes no sense. Because it relies on portarying people not posting off-topic as somehow something wrong. Which is not only a rather fallacious argument, but it'd require people to outright break forum rules. Which would be a weird sentiment coming from an employee of Paradox.

Edit: You also mention that blackninja9939 made points not related to the original comment that sparked the conversation, but I don't think the comment you were responding to was specifically talking about that one comment anymore.

For this part "Or about any other of the myriad of reworks and changes coming in 1.5 and Royal Court of which plenty enable incredibly ahistorical behaviour on top of the options already provided.", I viewed this as the one point he opened it up (but definitely not in terms of the type of complaint), but personally I took it to mean people talking outside this dev diary thread and complaining about the gay-marriage in this dev diary as being the cause of their desired feature missing, when they could have complained about anything. As I have seen, and assumed blacknija9939 has too. But I'll admit this is not the only way I think this could be read. But I don't think there is any interpretation where your example of people complaining about the implementation of a feature makes sense.

That one specific aspect of the culture overhaul? Sure. Other aspects of it, including the new system as a whole? I've seen criticism of them that essentially amounts to there being too much time spent on those compared to how much culture matters in game. And technically, there actually was a poster talking about devs wasting time in the dev diary about the change of direction in regards to changing existing cultures. It's just they portrayed the dev diary itself as a waste of time.

I don't read blacknija9939's comment as arguing against that existing, but sure if that's how you see it, then yes they were hyperbolic. The point still stands that gay marriage draws more hate for wasting time than when compared to other features given the amount of development time it took (the court scenes and culture rework definitely took a lot more time than gay marriage so they are not on comparable time scales).

And yet there's a post complaining about the court (or at least it's art aspect) being a waste of time without giving a reason as to why just two posts below your comment. Rather ironic coincidence.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if that post was crafted that way specifically because of my comment, as it reads as comment informed by the discussion at hand (also to be clear, I'm not calling that comment out; while I don't agree with everything they said, that's just difference of opinion). But either way I never said it doesn't happen, just that the rate of lack of reasoning is higher for gay marriage.

No, it's pretty much exactly what they said. Their claim was that gay marriage gets singled out for complaints about how dev time is allocated and that it's not for any genuine reason. Which, even putting aside how the claim about it being singled out is disproved even by the next DLC's very namesake, is pretty explicit. You can try to soften it with how it was about only posters who give no reasons as to why this is a waste of time while they give reasons in other cases or even how it was about only comments made by German albinos, during a blood moon, while the Wild Hunt was running through the sky, but that's not actually there in blackninja's post.

My point that bigots make gay marriage the topic of conversation for non-bigots with legitimate complaint, just now focused at gay marriage specifically, would still meet a harsh understanding of blacknija9939's as for why gay marriage gets singled out and still have it be rooted in bigotry. The key is blacknija9939 is talking about the process of it being singled out, not every comment. If you interpret it as referring to every comment, I can see more where you are coming from, but that is just your interpretation (you might be right, but if that was the case I think they would have just said that).

Also for someone whose problem with second to last paragraph is that a very literal interpretation of their comment is not strictly true, I find to weird that you seem to be willing to fill in a lot of gaps for the last paragraph.

The phrase "more likely" is also nowhere to be seen in their comment. If that was their actual claim, I wouldn't have objected to it, even if you can see more of bad faith criticism in the dev diary about same sex concubinage than this one (though to be fair, a handful of posts here had been removed and the one I did notice before it was gone was rather bad).

Okay, I think interpreting gets singled out, as the only thing people ever complain about is a bit uncharitable. But even, if I agree to that, their overall point still stands.

And you could have just said you thought he was being hyperbolic. But your comment reads more as his entire point is moot, especially since you never mention anywhere that gay-marriage or same-sex concubines have received undue hate like you are now or that it might make sense with in a specific context (despite the fact you have said you were just being through). So you are getting made at them for not including nuance when you yourself also failed to include nuance.

On the post being removed aspect, this actually happens a lot in threads with gay marriage/concubines and it's often more than a handful that end up being removed (as there are sometimes multiple waves of removal).

Edit: Also happens when some argue non-straight characters, historical or not, shouldn't even be in the game

edit: clarity

 

[Baron Bratwurst]

Just say you don't want gay people represented and be done with it.

Homosexual, bisexual and asexual people are already represented in the game.

 

[Riamus]

I ran out of time earlier when I posted because of having to go to work, so I'll just add this second part of my thoughts here...

I have an issue with the dev post earlier commenting that people didn't complain about the widgets and other modding features and suggesting that those were unimportant things and so people should be complaining about those like they were about gay marriage and stating that because they weren't, it was proof that the person who was being quoted was only complaining because it related to gays. This is a real problem coming from a dev to suggest that the modding features are equally unimportant in the scheme of things as gay marriage. Modding is an extremely important part of the game and the devs should know that. Either the post was from someone who doesn't understand how important modding is to the game or else they were purposefully being disingenuous.

Here's the thing with modding features. Will widgets have a huge impact for every player? No, especially if the player doesn't use any mods. However, if modding support wasn't part of this game, you'd have at least 25-50% less sales and that many fewer active players. Note that this is my estimate without actual data to back it up, but I'm sure it's accurate. If not, it is still a significant number. Whether or not gay marriage is in the game will not have any noticeable impact on sales or active players. So to suggest that if people want to complain about gay marriage that they can't be complaining about it because it's a minor thing that isn't really that important just because they aren't also complaining about modding features is ridiculous. Now, you may say that I'm referring to the entirety of modding and so it's an unfair comparison. The problem with that argument is that each and every modding feature that is added has an unknown value behind it until modders get ahold of it and start coming up with interesting ways of using it. Are window widgets going to end up offering much value to the game? We don't really know. They may end up being rarely used by any popular mods or they may end up being the one thing that lets a modder create a mod that is worlds above anything we've seen before. It will depend on what the modders come up with when they have access to that feature (and the others). We aren't able to judge how any individual modding feature will turn out until after they are made available, so the best option is to make them available and then see what comes of it. The only reason to complain about modding features being added to the game, no matter what they are, is if you never plan to use a mod. Otherwise, every single modding feature has potential to make this game significantly better if the modders come up with a good use for the feature.

In the end, few features have as much potential to improve the game than modding features. At least for people who use mods. And to be clear, I haven't really used mods in CK3 other than one that color-coded the sexuality icon to depict the gender because of the difficulty when the game first came out to differentiate genders in some cases. That's no longer needed with the improvements to the characters, but it was very helpful in the beginning. Other than that, I haven't used mods because I tried them in CK2 and never found any that I liked. But CK3 does offer so much more modding support that I'm sure I'll find some great mods that I will like once I decide to start looking for them (I'll definitely be adding in the community flavor pack!). So I'm not supporting modding features due to being a modder (I'm not one) or using mods all the time (as I said, I don't). I'm supporting modding features because without them, this game would very likely only have a few DLC before PDX stops updating the game due to lack of players. Modding is the reason that the game will receive a lot of improvements because it's what keeps a very significant number of players playing the game. So I really am not happy with the dev suggesting that modding features were unimportant or comparing their value with that of what really doesn't impact the game in any meaningful way.

As I said in my post earlier today, I'm fine with them adding this or similar types of minor features, especially if they are popularly requested features. But I think they need to save those for a couple years from now once the game itself is in a more playable state. Time now should be focused on improving the core game (that includes modding features) and not worrying about minor things like gay marriage. And as I said, I think RC would have been far better later as well as other than the culture changes, it really isn't doing anything to significantly improve the game compared to other DLC they could have started with. And I like RC and even like the court, which many are complaining about. I just think it's not the right time for something that will have little impact on the main gameplay (other than cultures). Of course, with cultures, it's left to be seen if they will be really that useful for the game. Faiths and custom faiths seemed to be amazing when we were told about them. But once you deal with being constantly holy warred and crusaded because you wanted a custom faith, it very quickly lost it's interest and ended up being a side note that really has little impact on the game. I'm hoping cultures won't turn out the same way.

 

[Jorlem]

On the subject of mods, how will the 3D court interact with mods that add 2D character images?

 

[pengoyo]

I think the question of whether or not something is considered a "waste of resources" is less a matter of "what I want" or "what I don't like" and more a matter of what will actually improve the game... at least for most people here. Yes, there will be some complaining because they don't like gays. Yes, there will be some complaining because they don't like feature X. But when it really comes down to it, most complaining aren't really complaining for those reasons, but instead because these changes really don't improve the game in a meaningful way. Yes, people who want gay marriage will consider it an improvement. And it is an improvement for them. However, will adding it draw in more players? Will it get more people playing the game again who have stopped playing? I'd say any increase in numbers due to that change will be minimal. On the other hand, features and changes that people list as reasons why they stopped playing the game or consider the game to be "shallow" will have a far greater impact on those very important numbers.

This is just your conjecture. Ironically I've already read comments mentioning same-sex marriage as a reason for them to get back into CK3. Now that might be anecdotal evidence, but so is yours.

The dev did point out that dev time for some of the important changes and features like improving AI warfare are far more time consuming to do and I get that. Many of these features and changes that will have a high impact on bringing players back to the game are going to take a lot of time and effort. However, one of the things that reviews of RC have brought up already are that the events aren't great and are repetitive (meaning not enough of them). Adding new events or reworking existing events to better use characters who make sense or to use characters that are meaningful to the player is really not that difficult or time consuming except if you talk about adding a lot of them as more = more time. That alone would have more impact on more players than gay marriage, which being as it is a rule will end up being used by a limited (though not necessarily small) number of players. Other changes can also be made in stages, allowing you to make a change that will improve, for example, AI warfare somewhat without having to take the time to completely rework it. There are certainly ways to take things that are keeping people from enjoying the game and adding them in without needing a significant amount of dev time to do so if they wanted to do it.

One of the points blackninja9939 made is that it only took two disciplines to add same-sex marriage, and that many of the features people are requesting require more than that. Now I don't know for sure what those disciplines are but they probably are the same ones that script in events. So you have to figure out a feature that the devs who worked on same-sex marriage could have done instead rather than just any feature you feel would make the game better.

Plus I find it interesting you mention they should have made more events. As other places on this forum, one of the complaints I commonly hear about RC is that it is too event focused. So even the feature you are arguing for is argued against else where. So I wouldn't be so quick to presume which features are the ones that would draw the most players back to the game.

And as was pointed out, the devs specifically said adding in gay marriage would be a challenge as it impacts a lot of parts of the game and would need a lot of testing and work to get it working properly. So the suggestion that it isn't a big deal to add by the dev is a bit inconsistent and probably not very accurate.

The thing you are referring to is a post about way back when same-sex concubines got removed as thing mods could do by 1.3 due to another dev's bug fix also disabling the feature for mods. That post just said it was too involved to be quick change and that as it was mod support, it was lower priority. Then sometime after that, it was announced that the ability to mod in same-sex concubines would be back in for 1.4 and in the future (if all went well) 1.5 would allow same-sex marriage to be modded in (no mention of it being difficulty).

Nothing in that thread mentioned it as a challenging problem that impacted lots of the game, just that there was more involved then just undoing a simple bug fix someone had done (especially since that would mean the bug they had fixed would be back in the game). So the area between quick change and overhauling an entire system is vast. So there is plenty of space for same-sex marriage to be in there. Plus most of the wait was mentioned being due to being low priority, rather than the time involved in fixing it, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was schedule as a task for them to do when they couldn't work on what you'd considered more impactful tasks. It's not uncommon for these more narrow scope tasks to be used to fill in the gaps for devs who otherwise don't have a larger project to work on because they either need someone earlier in the chain to finish working on it, or need another coworker(s) to finish their current task so they can work on the next major thing together (a common example of this is art assets unrelated to an expansion being added because the expansion didn't have enough art related work to keep the artists busy).

Personally, I think any feature (even highly requested ones) that does not actually improve gameplay value of the game should be held off until a later time while they work on getting the game up to a level where players don't get tired of it so quickly. And to be clear, just because gay marriage is a gameplay item doesn't mean it actually improves gameplay value. If that isn't in the game, will it prevent a player from enjoying the game? No. They may prefer it to be there, but if it's not there, they will either enjoy or not enjoy the game the same as if it was there because it really doesn't affect anything in gameplay unless they find it fun to try and convert the entire map to be gay or something. Otherwise it's just a "novelty" (and I am not meaning to use that in any rude way, but just as a definition of something that has little meaningful impact to the game). This is true for any similar feature that may be added. Compare this to adding in something (yes, this is a big feature) like regency in a way that's improved over CK2's regency mechanic, which would actually improve an aspect of gameplay and that's honestly a pretty minor issue in the game overall.

It might be a novelty for you, but it isn't for everyone. Also it does add a new way to play the game because it will add the challenge of a marriages with no children (and since your character is gay you can't easily seduce your way out of that issue either). And it's an interesting and new challenge I look forward to.

Also I don't think your idea of not adding requested features to the game, even highly requested ones, will bring players back. Especially since by virtue of being highly requested means it has gameplay value. They improve the game though the fact people wanted them in the game. And people having features in the game they like and find enjoyable will make them want to play the game for longer.

Also with your regencies, you have to find a task the devs who worked on same-sex marriage could have worked on instead and regency isn't one of them. Plus from my personal point of view, regencies are something that would be nice, but would not get me to start playing the game regularly again, unlike the culture update and gay marriage (heck I personally prefer court rooms and artifacts over regencies). So again different people will have different feature that will make them enjoy and play CK3 more.

Look at it this way, if you added gay marriage to the game separate from anything else so that you aren't impacting the results by other features, you might draw in some players who had stopped playing the game who want the feature, but they'll play a game or two and remember that the game itself gets old quickly because it's missing so much content that they'll put it down again because gay marriage doesn't actually fix any of the real issues in the game.

As a side note, I also think RC would have been far better off to be added at a later date as well. I like RC and it has some really interesting aspects to it (I even like the court even if many do not). But I really don't think anything other than cultures will bring people back to the game and it's yet to be seen how well they managed to get the cultures working. I think another DLC might have been better at this stage than RC... something that would add a significant boost to the gameplay value of the game.

Couple things to keep in mind is that the Paradox forums tend to be more negative and critical of the game then the average player (in part because forum posters make up a tiny portion of the fan base). And even with that there are plenty who on these forums have mentioned looking forward to having artifacts, courts and/or the culture update (or say there is no major problem with the game). I myself like the idea of the court and artifacts, but will admit it's not my first choice (but who knows maybe they will surprise me, but I'm not gonna judge them too harshly until I try it). But I am supper excited for the culture update.

Also even on these forums people who say there is a problem with the game can't agree what it is. I seen people argue it's warfare, economy, characters, lack of interactions, challenge level, content, variety, etc. and then argue it's not one of the other reasons I just mentioned (and some these the update/DLC will help address). My point is that Paradox has a juggling act they have to do as there are many different people who play CK3 for many different reasons. And so naturally people will want different things out of the game. And since you seem to be worried about the games overall players, why not rejoice that the game just added a reason that some people have said would get them to start playing again (and it's in an optional way so it won't detract from the game play of those who don't want it; which can't be said for something like a warfare overhaul, which can't be optional and there will surely be some who won't like the changes).

I ran out of time earlier when I posted because of having to go to work, so I'll just add this second part of my thoughts here...

I have an issue with the dev post earlier commenting that people didn't complain about the widgets and other modding features and suggesting that those were unimportant things and so people should be complaining about those like they were about gay marriage and stating that because they weren't, it was proof that the person who was being quoted was only complaining because it related to gays. This is a real problem coming from a dev to suggest that the modding features are equally unimportant in the scheme of things as gay marriage. Modding is an extremely important part of the game and the devs should know that. Either the post was from someone who doesn't understand how important modding is to the game or else they were purposefully being disingenuous.

Here's the thing with modding features. Will widgets have a huge impact for every player? No, especially if the player doesn't use any mods. However, if modding support wasn't part of this game, you'd have at least 25-50% less sales and that many fewer active players. Note that this is my estimate without actual data to back it up, but I'm sure it's accurate. If not, it is still a significant number. Whether or not gay marriage is in the game will not have any noticeable impact on sales or active players. So to suggest that if people want to complain about gay marriage that they can't be complaining about it because it's a minor thing that isn't really that important just because they aren't also complaining about modding features is ridiculous. Now, you may say that I'm referring to the entirety of modding and so it's an unfair comparison. The problem with that argument is that each and every modding feature that is added has an unknown value behind it until modders get ahold of it and start coming up with interesting ways of using it. Are window widgets going to end up offering much value to the game? We don't really know. They may end up being rarely used by any popular mods or they may end up being the one thing that lets a modder create a mod that is worlds above anything we've seen before. It will depend on what the modders come up with when they have access to that feature (and the others). We aren't able to judge how any individual modding feature will turn out until after they are made available, so the best option is to make them available and then see what comes of it. The only reason to complain about modding features being added to the game, no matter what they are, is if you never plan to use a mod. Otherwise, every single modding feature has potential to make this game significantly better if the modders come up with a good use for the feature.

In the end, few features have as much potential to improve the game than modding features. At least for people who use mods. And to be clear, I haven't really used mods in CK3 other than one that color-coded the sexuality icon to depict the gender because of the difficulty when the game first came out to differentiate genders in some cases. That's no longer needed with the improvements to the characters, but it was very helpful in the beginning. Other than that, I haven't used mods because I tried them in CK2 and never found any that I liked. But CK3 does offer so much more modding support that I'm sure I'll find some great mods that I will like once I decide to start looking for them (I'll definitely be adding in the community flavor pack!). So I'm not supporting modding features due to being a modder (I'm not one) or using mods all the time (as I said, I don't). I'm supporting modding features because without them, this game would very likely only have a few DLC before PDX stops updating the game due to lack of players. Modding is the reason that the game will receive a lot of improvements because it's what keeps a very significant number of players playing the game. So I really am not happy with the dev suggesting that modding features were unimportant or comparing their value with that of what really doesn't impact the game in any meaningful way.

As I said in my post earlier today, I'm fine with them adding this or similar types of minor features, especially if they are popularly requested features. But I think they need to save those for a couple years from now once the game itself is in a more playable state. Time now should be focused on improving the core game (that includes modding features) and not worrying about minor things like gay marriage. And as I said, I think RC would have been far better later as well as other than the culture changes, it really isn't doing anything to significantly improve the game compared to other DLC they could have started with. And I like RC and even like the court, which many are complaining about. I just think it's not the right time for something that will have little impact on the main gameplay (other than cultures). Of course, with cultures, it's left to be seen if they will be really that useful for the game. Faiths and custom faiths seemed to be amazing when we were told about them. But once you deal with being constantly holy warred and crusaded because you wanted a custom faith, it very quickly lost it's interest and ended up being a side note that really has little impact on the game. I'm hoping cultures won't turn out the same way.

I find this ironic since same-sex marriage was first announced as a mod feature (and it still was complained about). There's a reason the announcement of it was part of the modding dev diary. Also same-sex marriage is a feature many of the highly anticipated mods like Elder Scrolls, After the End, and Game of Thrones have mentioned wanting (I'll admit not their top choice, but I think you are down playing how many popular mods will make use of same-sex marriage). This is again another reason it was put in the modding dev diary, as it is seen as being an asset to mods.

Also blackninja9939 was definitely not dissing mods.

Also, since you are worried about player numbers, I should probably tell you that most players don't use mods. The most used mod on steam (The Community Flavor Pack) has less than 250,000 subscribers. There are estimated to be between 1.3 and 5 million people who own CK3. So even taking the generous low ball figure, that's less than a fifth of the fan base use the most popular mod. Now obviously not every one who uses mods uses the most popular one. But even if we add in the next 2 most popular mods (Nameplates and Daddy Pika's Cheat Menu) we still only get less than 600,000. This is assuming no one who use one of theses mods uses another one too. But even with that dubious assumption we still aren't even half way to the low ball estimate for the number of people who own CK3.

Now I'm not dissing mods either (I'm a modder myself after all). But the fact is, a feature being in the game makes it way more accessible to players than being in a mod (and makes it way easier for mods to use it and still be compatible). So the very fact same-sex marriage is an in game feature now gives it more impact than many modding only features.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

Adding in a fairly highly requested modding feature that only needs two disciplines and in very focused areas? Much less time.

Out of interest is this retroactive legitimation, or can a popular thread / change dot org petition get the developers to prioritise a desirable mechanic. E. G. Steppe nomads

And I'm gonna be incredibly blunt here, nobody is complaining we added scripted widgets as mod support. Or made a court scene editor that mods can use too. Or any of the other bits of mod support we added. Or about any other of the myriad of reworks and changes coming in 1.5 and Royal Court of which plenty enable incredibly ahistorical behaviour on top of the options already provided.

But gay marriage gets singled out for complaints? Lets not pretend that is for any remotely genuine reason or concern in where we spend our time developing the game, because we all know it isn't.

Why are you so dismissive of criticism when there are numerous threads and posts complaining about royal court as a whole and specifics like the 3d court room?
what-is-the-point-of-the-court.1507912 will give you a few examples

 

[DebbieElla]

Thread closed for moderation.

Edit: Thread cleaned up and opened again, but any further homophobia will result in more infractions, banning and a permanent closure of the thread. There will be no more discussion surrounding the validity of LGBT+ people, in-or-out of the game.

 

[Silversweeeper]

Out of interest is this retroactive legitimation, or can a popular thread / change dot org petition get the developers to prioritise a desirable mechanic. E. G. Steppe nomads

You can pretty easily find a thread asking for modding support for gay marriage (and a couple of extras) that:

- Has been around since less than a week after the game was released, and

- Has over 500 reactions, with a bit over 75 % of them being in favour (as of me writing this, there's 242 Agrees and 155 Likes to 118 Respectful Disagrees; there's also eight total reactions not belonging to any of those categories).

I'd say that qualifies as "Fairly highly requested", and that there's nothing retroactive about it... particularly as the thread in question has been on the devs' radar for a long time, with a statement that at least modding support for gay marriage was coming in 1.5 having been made quite far back (blackninja9939 personally posted about that in the relevant thread, so he'd most certainly know...).


As for the other half of the question, the devs tend to take note of popular suggestions (at least any that aren't deemed completely unfeasible and that don't cross any hard lines they don't want to cross...), and a popular and good suggestion could conceivably affect the likelihood of something happening sooner rather than later, if not necessarily right away; e.g. I'd imagine they already have narrowed down what the next content pack will focus on quite a bit, so even a truly outstanding suggestion related to something else would probably not take precedence over that. A popular suggestion that was less well-written or -researched would probably also have a decent shot, but less so.

I'd imagine the specific example you mentioned would involve more work and disciplines than gay marriage did -- at least assuming you're looking for art/interface stuff, flavour, unique mechanics, etc. as part of it -- and thus would be harder to find the time for alongside other stuff that's planned in an update, but a decently popular smaller suggestion -- or an important piece of the puzzle that's missing -- would be reasonably likely to end up on a "Do this in the next version!" list or reasonably high on a "Do this if there's time left!" list.

Why are you so dismissive of criticism when there are numerous threads and posts complaining about royal court as a whole and specifics like the 3d court room?
what-is-the-point-of-the-court.1507912 will give you a few examples

I think it's fair to grant that assorted things not in the dev diary have been complained about in various places... but as far as the contents of the dev diary goes the complaints have really been focused on the gay marriage, and even disregarding the homophobic phrasing in quite a lot of the posts that got deleted I don't think there's much doubt that many of the complaints about it have a lot more to do with it being gay marriage than it being ahistorical regardless of whether the latter is being brought up, particularly as other pretty ahistorical content isn't being complained about as much (or necessarily by the same people...) and as the dev diary that went over how sexuality was being modelled way back when also seemed to attract a good amount of complaints (at least some of them deleted...) along similar lines, which I rather doubt anyone honestly thinks is a random coincidence...

 

[IndigoRage]

People keep using Islam as an example here, but I seem to recall a very popular thread from when homosexuality being in the game was first announced regarding that male lovers were not uncommon in Andalucia.

Here are a couple of lengthy askhistorians comments on the topic:

Islam's historical relationship with homosexuality (This in particular is actually a good example of what IIRC @grommile was saying regarding historical practices not necessarily fitting cleanly into our modern definitional paradigm)

A response in the same thread regarding lesbianism in particular.

In other words: Stop using Islam as an example of how crazy and ahistorical certain features are.

Note: I'm not suggesting these were common, widespread, acceptable within religious law, or that marriages occurred. Simply that Islam isn't a universally fundamentalist bulwark you can throw up to discredit behavior we see as modern or which inherently makes certain things being in the game entirely implausible in any timeline.

EDIT: also doesn't make something like this being in the game unjustifiable, particularly when it was a much requested feature.

 

[Baron Bratwurst]

People keep using Islam as an example here, but I seem to recall a very popular thread from when homosexuality being in the game was first announced regarding that male lovers were not uncommon in Andalucia.

In other words: Stop using Islam as an example of how crazy and ahistorical certain features are.

Lovers, yes. How common were marriages?

 

[IndigoRage]

Lovers, yes. How common were marriages?

Note: I'm not suggesting these were common, widespread, acceptable within religious law, or that marriages occurred. Simply that Islam isn't a universally fundamentalist bulwark you can throw up to discredit behavior we see as modern or which inherently makes certain things being in the game entirely implausible in any timeline.

I mean the thread I brought up mentions varying punishments up to and including death for female homosexuality as well as completely ignoring it and letting it slide on the other end of the spectrum. With that in mind I don't think you're reading what I've said the way I've intended.

 

[Zewp]

Thread closed for moderation.

Edit: Thread cleaned up and opened again, but any further homophobia will result in more infractions, banning and a permanent closure of the thread. There will be no more discussion surrounding the validity of LGBT+ people, in-or-out of the game.

Any chance you could clean up the Steam forums a bit too? Some really extreme homophobia going on there, including people saying that homosexual people are basically animals.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Any chance you could clean up the Steam forums a bit too? Some really extreme homophobia going on there, including people saying that homosexual people are basically animals.

That might be a different moderation team, but it could certainly do with being brought to that team's attention if it's that bad.

 

[druez]

I would prefer you fix core issues with the game and not spend time on adding things that are not core to the experience of a historical game. The release was already behind, really trying to understand why you would think its a good idea to delay a release to add in non core features to the game.

 

[Flockingbird]

I would prefer you fix core issues with the game and not spend time on adding things that are not core to the experience of a historical game. The release was already behind, really trying to understand why you would think its a good idea to delay a release to add in non core features to the game.

What do you think caused the devs to delay the release of The Royal Court? Are you saying that you believe adding the features mentioned in this dev diary are what caused the delay?

Because that’s not what I understood to be the cause, at all. If I have time, I’ll dig up the relevant dev posts.

Edit: delay was due to stability & quality issues, & bugs.

 

[druez]

What do you think caused the devs to delay the release of The Royal Court? Are you saying that you believe adding the features mentioned in this dev diary are what caused the delay?

Because that’s not what I understood to be the cause, at all. If I have time, I’ll dig up the relevant dev posts.

What I'm saying is that there is only so much time. You can choose to spend that time how you want. I would prefer they spent the time on things that are core to the game. That is it. They said that originally that gay marriage was much more complex then people thought and it was one reason it wasn't included. They would have to have the ai modified for it and modify other systems as well.

So, yes obviously this took additional time, it would be naïve to think it didn't and they themselves said it would be complex to add. I also dont want them to spend time adding in glitterhoof or immortality etc...

All of these things are fine to add when we are years into the game, but right now there are still core features missing from the game and the AI still needs a ton of work, especially combat ai. We still don't have ai that plays differently based on their personality traits. We still don't have republics.

So, yes I do believe doing this feature added to their development and testing queues and helped to delay the game. No, I don't think they would ever come out and say adding this feature added to the backlog and helped to delay the game.

Just expressing my opinion. Overall, I love ck3 and thing long term it will be a great game but they still are missing core features and I would like for them to focus on that first.

 

[Flockingbird]

What I'm saying is that there is only so much time. You can choose to spend that time how you want. I would prefer they spent the time on things that are core to the game. That is it. They said that originally that gay marriage was much more complex then people thought and it was one reason it wasn't included. They would have to have the ai modified for it and modify other systems as well.

So, yes obviously this took additional time, it would be naïve to think it didn't and they themselves said it would be complex to add. I also dont want them to spend time adding in glitterhoof or immortality etc...

All of these things are fine to add when we are years into the game, but right now there are still core features missing from the game and the AI still needs a ton of work, especially combat ai. We still don't have ai that plays differently based on their personality traits. We still don't have republics.

So, yes I do believe doing this feature added to their development and testing queues and helped to delay the game. No, I don't think they would ever come out and say adding this feature added to the backlog and helped to delay the game.

Just expressing my opinion. Overall, I love ck3 and thing long term it will be a great game but they still are missing core features and I would like for them to focus on that first.

Did you read post#114? Or the subsequent discussion about the comparative difficulty of adding different features? Because the points you are making have been made earlier in the thread.

You're not thinking about scale, reworking some code and script to enable gay marriage is infinitely less time than any of the reworks you proposed. They require new designs, overhauling UIs, new art, plenty of new code and content. Spreading over the course of likely weeks for any larger rework.

Adding in a fairly highly requested modding feature that only needs two disciplines and in very focused areas? Much less time.

And I'm gonna be incredibly blunt here, nobody is complaining we added scripted widgets as mod support. Or made a court scene editor that mods can use too. Or any of the other bits of mod support we added. Or about any other of the myriad of reworks and changes coming in 1.5 and Royal Court of which plenty enable incredibly ahistorical behaviour on top of the options already provided.

But gay marriage gets singled out for complaints? Lets not pretend that is for any remotely genuine reason or concern in where we spend our time developing the game, because we all know it isn't.

Ask yourself, please, why you named gay marriage, out of all the things in this dev diary.

 

[druez]

Umm because it isn't core to the game. Mod support has always been core to paradox games.

If this dev diary would of been about the adding of glitterhoof, I would of said the same thing.

I would prefer they add things that are core to the game.

Anyway, I've made my point. Have a good day; we can just agree to disagree.