Development Update | When to expect Dev Diaries

[PDXKatten]

Hello there! Your Community Manager, Katten, here.

Let's get right into it; we haven't talked about our upcoming expansion since all the way back in June. Let's change that and dive right in!

The Hearts of Iron Development team has been hard at work since the end of last year on this upcoming expansion. But I’m here to give you a rundown of what we have planned and when to expect it!

We begin releasing Developer Diaries October 3rd, so mark the date! But don’t worry—we’ll give you plenty of reminders as it approaches. This time around, we’re trying something different. Compared to last year, our upcoming campaign will be shorter, but we've planned it to be highly intense, with something happening almost every single day. We currently plan to have two developer diaries per week, a weekly feature video, a biweekly stream and Q&A, and, of course, plenty of YouTube Shorts and other fun social media content related to the expansion.

Before I go, I want to thank you for being so patient with us. Tomorrow, we have a surprise for you: we’re releasing the next War Effort update for the game. I want to mention in advance that it’s not a massive update, but patch notes will be available tomorrow.

Until later!
Katten

 

[PDXKatten]

I prefer more spaced outs DDs, just cramping everything means I probably have to miss something.

If it helps, we have videos that summarize the information and shorts that provide a high-level summary if you don't have much time to read.

 

[Arheo]

Quick question, does this shorted release cycle mean less time for community feedback and for the devs to iterate on their ideas based on what the community think of them? In the past it was planned to give updates earlier in the release schedule to give the community time to feedback about changes but this has seem to have disappeared in recent updates.

We're structuring (or ordering, at least) this in a way that maximizes the time we will have to iterate on feedback.

 

[PDXKatten]

Very glad to have more info about the roadmap of the next dev diaries and the global development cycle (as well as the next War Effort patch) : it changes form previous DLC so its intriguing and exciting to see how it will go.

Quick question though: do you have plans for the return of the teasers that arrived on the day before a dev diary? It always gave some sort of hype before the dev diary so I wonder if you wish to go back to this direction or not.

I am not against mini teasers for whats coming next, so maybe?

 

[PDXKatten]

There ya go guys. Definitive proof ToA did NOT take the place of a proper expansion. It was just something to tide us over while the team works on a full DLC, hense why it was almost exclusively flavor.

We have two teams in the larger Hearts of Iron team, one is working on country packs, the other on expansions. So the Country pack Trial of Allegiance was not the only content this year, there is still our upcoming expansion left.

Is it gonna be weekly or biweekly stream?

Seems there was some misstype there, ooops. It will be weekly!

Is this "Blitzkrieg"-Release really the way to go? While fully recognizing that HoI4 is one of the best computer games on the market, it has its issues - and at least some of these issues could have been fixed with more testing and more feedback.

Based on that, I would go the other direction: Make semi-closed Betas and use the feedback as early as possible. Make open-betas and use the feedback as early as possible. And with "beta" I do not mean a commercial teaser-beta for 2 weeks, but something that is long enough to find issues, to report issues and to fix issues. Test, communicate, fix, test, communicate, fix. Yes, there is a lot of bu**sh** in the forum, but between the bu**sh** there are really valuable contributions which could make the game a lot better.

We agree, we do on normal occasions have an open beta after our internal closed beta for our war effort patches, but due to the size of this one and the areas it touches and our time available. We saw it best to just release it as no major issues were discovered by internal testing.

 

[C0RAX]

Is this "Blitzkrieg"-Release really the way to go? While fully recognizing that HoI4 is one of the best computer games on the market, it has its issues - and at least some of these issues could have been fixed with more testing and more feedback.

Based on that, I would go the other direction: Make semi-closed Betas and use the feedback as early as possible. Make open-betas and use the feedback as early as possible. And with "beta" I do not mean a commercial teaser-beta for 2 weeks, but something that is long enough to find issues, to report issues and to fix issues. Test, communicate, fix, test, communicate, fix. Yes, there is a lot of bu**sh** in the forum, but between the bu**sh** there are really valuable contributions which could make the game a lot better.

We already have a closed beta program comprised of community members and modders, they consistently provide feedback during development. last year I also ran an open beta for some of the changes we wanted wider community feedback on before release of AAT.

 

[C0RAX]

That's good to hear. Will there also be such a program for the upcoming Germany/Wunderwaffels DLC? Will this program start early enough to give the people you mentioned - which are exactly the right people in my humble opinion - enough time to provide feedback and the developers enough time to implement this feedback?

the closed beta program is always running, open beta is not likely this time round as there aren't changes like those that needed it for AAT.

 

[C0RAX]

So we can assume that there will be no new mechanics or drastic changes in the new add-on? If I misunderstood you, please correct me.

Not what I meant, the open beta last year was because there was specific changes to base game I wanted to get wider community testing on. not every change needs this and most of the time there is no open beta for any expansion changes.

 

[Arheo]

I hope this is the last major DLC for HOI4. I am ready for HOI5 or the next step in the more modern day grand strategy game. I have done everything I can possibly do in HOI4 100x over.

It will definitely not be the last major expansion for HoI4. There are other games out there, HoI will still be there if you feel like picking it up again