Dev Diary #108: Dev Diary Scheduling & Community Activities

[rageair]

Greetings!

It’s been (almost) two weeks since the release of Friends & Foes, and the sheer amount of reactions and feedback to it and the accompanying Bastion Update has been fantastic to see! From the many emergent stories that have been posted around the Internet (one about a peasant crush ascending to the position of councilor and subsequently being murdered by a noble out of spite comes to mind) to the impressive screenshots of vast Mongol Empires and powerful AI realms - it’s great to see how many of you returned to the game and think that it got a breath of new life. In fact, despite the smaller size of this update, more of you came back to the game and ran a longer campaign than ever before!

Of course, if you’re experiencing any issues, pop over to the Bug Forums and report them: Link
As of the newly released 1.7.1, we’ve concluded the planned updates for this release, though if something significant appears, we’ll look into fixing it before the next update.

As for the future, we’re hard at work on upcoming content, and we’ve been for quite some time. Previously we’ve explained that we run our projects in parallel - what we’re working on in the Stockholm studio has been in the works since before Friends & Foes (but it’s bound to take some time yet, do not expect anything too soon). Our sister studio in Thalassic is also hard at work heading up the work on upcoming content and updates, this too in parallel with work in Stockholm. While we can say that Friends & Foes was the last paid content of the year, we’re hoping to have another smaller free update out before the year is over (no ETA for now). Additional clues about what we’re working on might appear over the next few months…

A change we want to make going forward is to be more transparent with our Dev Diary schedule. We don’t want to post so-called ‘filler’ Dev Diaries, and with the cycles being longer between updates we instead want to use this time for other kinds of activities with the community. For the sake of full transparency, for smaller updates (such as free patches or event packs) we’ll have at most two Dev Diaries. For larger updates (such as Flavor Packs) we’ll have around four, while Expansions will have roughly 2-4 months' worth of Dev Diaries.

So what will we do instead? A variety of things - we might have Discord AMA’s, hangout streams with Devs, or sometimes we might post a Dev Diary about something not related to an update - for example, about how we work or plans we have for the future.

If you want to partake in some of this, here’s where you can find us:

Discord: Chat with your fellow Community members, staff members, Modders, and other Content Creators. Also a perfect place if you want tips or a game to join!

Twitch: We stream weekly and go through all the latest and greatest content that we have. This is also a great place to chat with others and ask questions of our team.

YouTube: If you haven’t happened to catch our Streams or just want to see a collection of all our videos, this is your one stop shop for all Crusader Kings III official videos.

Twitter: Our latest and greatest spot for news and interaction with our Community. We are always online, as they always say. Feel free to follow us and see what we have going on from day to day.

Facebook: Just a nice relaxed place to hang out and socialize with our Community and see what everyone is up to.

Reddit: If Facebook isn’t your speed, we also have a great resource in Reddit for conversations and more detailed threads regarding the game and any questions you might possibly have.

Steam Workshop: While we do not control the content of Steam Workshop, it does contain a great number of highly interesting and resourceful Mods from our Community and has a ton of troubleshooting and technical information.

 

[rageair]

i think the only genuinely serious bug they should hotfix is the performance hit for empires

anything else is just an annoyance that can wait

We're aware of this issue (and have made a fix). Interestingly enough the issue was caused by something deep in the opinion code, something that had been around for some time, and fixing it actually yields a slight performance gain in addition to fixing the stutter. It's unlikely that we'll make a 1.7.2 just for this issue though, but I'm not saying it's impossible - ideally we'd find a fix for the missing faces to go along with it.

Is it implies no dairy for a few weeks until it will be two weeks ahead of a minor update planned for this year or a few months ahead of a bigger one? A lot of pieces of information, but no clarity about the schedule. Especially given that two studios are working on things in parallel.

I guess the schedule is that eventually, we might see a diary, maybe on one of the 14 Tuesdays left this year. And once we see it we need to estimate how big what it talking about is and go back to try to crack this riddle.

We don't intend for it to be a riddle, whenever you see a DevDiary that details content (talking about features, detailing balance changes, etc.) then they're tied to an update, and we'll make clear what sort of update that's coming. We'll definitely have a few diaries connected to the free update later this year, and they'll make clear that it's a free update they're connected to.

What will be more sporadic are DevDiaries about other things than updates, of which we will have at least a few before the ones about the free update.

I appreciate the improved communication.
Did i understand correctly that we will have no dev diaries until we get close to the update that is supposed to come later this year?
That'd be unfortunate, because i really like dev diaries, but i get that they take some time to put together and you want to have something concrete to show for it.

Note:
In the summer break the Stellaris team decided to use some (normally skipped) dev diaries by talking about their in-progress experimental rebalancing of content.
While certainly not as brimming with new information or content, those have been received quite well by the community.
It got a lot of feedback and ideas to rebalance relics so they are more useful for more types of player empires, while still being strongly themed.
I personally would classify those types of dev diaries as successes, too. I like seeing a bit behind the scenes with unfinished content.

We won't have one every week, but there will be sporadic DevDiaries outside of the update cycles, we just want to do other activities too rather than only DevDiaries.

I guess your "oopsie" from Bastion that has caused a great number of Dukes to have no Counts whatsoever due to aggressive revocation is not a big enough deal, even though it makes your Feudal system look completely anachronistic...

It's not an 'oopsie' per see, but completely in line with the changes, that said I can see where this sentiment comes from. Now, there is something related that I've been thinking about, domain limit. In general, the average Domain Limit is very high - even if a ruler doesn't have high stewardship. If the limit was lower, there would be more Counts around, and I think there's a point in looking into the static permanent sources of domain limit. Specifically the limit you get from innovations, which adds up to quite a lot even in the midgame. A Duke would have a permanent +2 from innovations and +2 from rank, in addition to whatever they get from stewardship, for a minimum average of 5. Most Duchies in the game have 5 or less Counties (598 out of 676, only 78 have more than 5), which leads to a lot of consolidation.

There are of course other avenues that can be explored, but this is one I've been thinking of recently. Naturally, this creates other challenges, such as what to potentially replace bonuses to domain limit with, but it's all theoretical by this point anyway!

Not trying to be rude here, so please excuse me for being direct: after last week's "look forward to the next Update from us as it should have more information on the work we have been doing!", I expected a little bit more than basically "we're working on stuff, and it's not gonna release this year".

I'm well aware of the limitations you have regarding sharing the exact nature of the exciting new content you're working on, but this is the second week in a row that is a bit lacking content-wise.

It's a stark contrast to the Stellaris DevDiaries; they have more than one per week, and all full of new and upcoming content. When I think back to pre-RC times, when you guys even shared little sneak peeks during summer break with us, I can't help but notice the apparent drop in quality and quantity of CK3 DDs. Makes me wonder what happened between then and now.

Anyway, I appreciate the declaration of transparency and am looking forward to next week's DD.

"we’re hoping to have another smaller free update out before the year is over"

Three months and ten days left in the year. I get the feeling they're working on something big, and it won't be ready until next year. The small update is probably to keep us sated for now.

There are always problems with sharing things too early, and I don't think this is the time to start sharing specifics for what we're working on, as we want to nail everything down and make sure that the scope is set before we start. I can say that we're working on an expansion in the Stockholm studio, and that we'll probably start sharing specifics sometime within Q1 next year.

When you're in the DevDiary cycle for an expansion it's much easier to do meatier diaries and also sneak peeks, and it's very likely that the next cycle will be similar. In that sense nothing has happened really, except that we're being transparent about not wanting to start posting specifics too early.

Unfortunately, based on this DD, I’m not sure there will be a DD next week. If there is one, I don’t expect it to be substantial. Feels like this DD was trying to toe the line between “being transparent and communicative” and laying the groundwork for a pause in actual substantial information as it seems like they do not want to share plans for future content until that content is more firm.

In one sense, I appreciate the heads up that true substantial DD’s are going to become less frequent (helps manage expectations) but at the same time, it’s disappointing that true substantial DD’s are going to become less frequent (there is a joke in here somewhere about Paradox interactive inspiring this paradox in my feelings but I digress).

Anyway, thanks for the heads up. I imagine I’ll finish up my current campaign then take a break from the game and forums for a bit. Perfect timing to turn my attention to Vic3.

Even if the devs don't want to talk about what they are working on in detail yet, something along the lines of this post from the HOI4 lead were they layout their basic vision for the immediate and near future of the game would do wonders.

There will not be a DD next week, but there will be one in the coming few weeks. It won't be about any of the content updates, but I'd like to do something similar to the one Areho made for HoI, as mentioned in the above quote. Though I don't necessarily agree that it's explicitly about the 'immediate or near future', it's more long-term ambitions with some short-term ones mixed in.

Basically:
Dev diaries are canceled until the next expansion is announced, probably after winter break. If we're lucky we'll get a free patch before winter break. If you want to interact with CK3 devs, go anywhere but here.

That's an unfortunate way of interpreting what was written. We'll still be on the forums, there just won't be a DevDiary every week. And if you want, you can find devs elsewhere too - many devs have their own preferred places to be, some are here, some on discord, some on reddit, and so on.

First of all - thank you the info about future DD releases, its appreciated.

However, this...

...raises a question for me:

Reporting issues is one thing...but if there is likely no 1.7.2... Can we still expect to see some visible reaction to all the reports which have been made since the last patch/DLC? And new ones we make from now following your quoted call above ?

I don't expect that each bug gets immediately tagged and categorized; I know there is a flood coming in after each release and the poor QA people have to wade through all them, separating real ones from duplicates, mod issues or misunderstood rules of the game...so a backlog is understandable. I just have the impression that there is never enough time after an update to catch up with all the reports. If you look through the entire bug forum - most bugs never get visible attention. I'm not saying that no attached tag means inevitably that the bug hasn't made ii in your database; I'm pretty sure there are cases where exactly this happened: Silently noted, logged, maybe even stealth-fixed. But is that really true for all of those visually untouched bugs? I have my doubts.

I know that asking for each and every report getting a response/categorization is probably too much of a mountain of work and would probably actuall harm the attempt to fix bugs, too...but I really hope you can move at least a bit in said direction. It currently feels too much like a lottery, if a bug gets any attention.

Visually tagging and responding to every thread takes a lot of time, as you point out yourself. As with every discipline, QA works with different things at different times - if there's a lack of visual tagging on the bug forums, it just means that their main focus is somewhere else right now. I can with confidence say that anything really significant will get picked up regardless of where the focus lies though.

Ordinarily, I'd be in this thread pushing back against some of the more over-the-top negative posts and trying to encourage a bit of perspective.

But, honestly, what's the point?

We were told a couple of weeks back that there was a recognition that communication had been poor and plans were being put in place to improve. And now this.

Genuinely just feeling really disappointed and let down.

Plans take some time to set in motion, we're still discussing what we want to say, and when, but progress is being made. Hopefully you'll like what we have to say in the next diary. We appreciate what you do, but of course it's also on us to keep your trust.

 

[PDX_Pariah]

I said I wanted to be constructive, and those last few paragraphs weren't particularly, so I'll finish with a few questions/requests:

• Could we have a permanent pinned thread of upcoming Q&As and other off-forum stuff that is scheduled that's regularly updated?
  
  
• When Discord Q&As happen, could the questions and responses be retained and made available for people who weren't able to follow it in real-time?
  
  
• When Livestream Q&As happen, could the video be posted somewhere for people who weren't able to watch it live? It'd be amazing if questions and answers could be transcribed somewhere - but I understand that's not a small job and may not be possible.
  
  
• For any kind of "live" Q&A (Discord, Livestream etc.) could we have a way of submitting questions in advance? That would help people in different timezones, people who work when they usually happen or just people who aren't consistently online throughout the day to participate.
  
  
• Is there some way you could make recent dev/staff replies more visible on the Discord? A custom channel or something? Discord is really great for a lot of things - but it being a live chat means it's not easy to "catch up" on what's been recently discussed/answered/announced. e.g. If a Dev had posted something really cool on there this morning and I logged in now, there'd be no way of me knowing that had happened.

A solid post as always and I think the Game Director has answered most of the stuff that has to do with the game, but I would be more than happy to answer the Community facing concerns in order:

- Absolutely! As we get closer to this time frame, we will have not only a schedule, but a dedicated spot to ask Questions to get the Answers in the Q&A with a pinned post and a stickied thread for a good while afterwards.

- Yes, absolutely.

- The video will definitely be added not only to YouTube, but shared on social media and in a thread here on the Forums for all to enjoy.

- There will be threads well in advance of all Q&A activities with a chance for all to get their questions in not only ahead of time, but also live during the events if time permits.

- This would be more of Trinexx's realm of expertise than mine, but I can circle around and check with them on that subject in the morning.