EU4 - Development Diary - 12th of February 2019

[NaiveCarto]

While, you should not say nothing else...

 

[NaiveCarto]

My concern is the lack of map moddability of that game...

This old game's map size limit even be more huge than Divine Winds, what a pity...

 

[RAID186]

For those wondering... moving to 64-bit mostly just means they can use more memory, there are other side functions, but it won't magically improve the game performance or anything like that.

All in all, a very minor- but promising for future titles- change.

 

[RAID186]

For those wondering... moving to 64-bit mostly just means they can use more memory, there are other side functions, but it won't magically improve the game performance or anything like that.

All in all, a very minor- but promising for future titles- change.

 

[AlexandruRadu]

Well this was a complete disappointment.

I get that they're early into development and don't have much to show off, but if we're going to get a diary, then at the very least the team could provide some insight into what that work constitutes or how they're going to address community concerns. Instead we're promised a dev diary and rather than break the rash of pretty terrible ones we've gotten in the last ~1 month, we get Jake shilling for a board game. (I would assume since they couldn't find anything else to talk about.) At the end of the day EU4, is a product which I have to decide if I'm spending money on and if this is the sort of response we get to costumer feedback, especially after the way Golden Century was handled, its going to be pretty hard to justify that purchase. And talking about a different game with its own separate team and communication just makes no sense. If your going to hawk me anything, hawk me the product who's subforum I am on.

Or just don't release a dev diary at all and write a small blurb as to why, maybe addressing some of the feedback that's been kicking around for months. (Mingmung's stuff, the feedback on GC, more or less anything Portugal related since before GC dropped etc.) You promised us more communication was going to be the trend at the end of 2018 and now we're 2 months into the new year with next to nothing to show for it. I do hope this expansion turns out to be worth it, because I'm certainly not convinced right now.

 

[Ruian]

The diary could at least say we are working on this country. Here's a thing about this country we are working on. Or we are working on solving this problem that has been bothering the community. It's challenging.

It would generate a lot less dislikes than saying nothing.

 

[Djambo]

Well, at least these 'crybabies' are usually constructive and point out issues and make suggestions for the game.

...One would think that fans with enough passion to come on these boards and post, talk, and discuss about the game would be a good thing and not the people you’d want to ridicule. They are here because they love the product and want it to be the best it can be.
All while being infinitely more helpful than your post.

Just to mention: The following took me nearly four hours to write, when I'm done working I just want to relax and don't want to fry my brain. But everybody is different, has different timetables and so on.

Me and 99,999998% of people on this subforum don't have a clue how many Golden Centuries Paradox sold since its release on December 11th. Let's assume it was just 10k copies, then 200 "Respectfully disagree" on a DD and 500 Reviewbombs on Steam are really just a mere vocal minority (I don't give a flying fart about Reddit), because the other 9000+ people don't care to voice their opinion whether they agree or are disgusted. The higher the sales the less goes the number of people raising their voice.

I tremendously do appreciate and enjoy reading the work Non-Paradox people invest in their spare time to show off to other players what they would like to see being implemented, fixed, improved, corrected and whatever in the game. But that is their vision and not the vision of those responsible. I would assume there are just 3 people really directly involved in the vision and the direction EU4 is heading: First and foremost Jake as Game Director, XYZ (right now I guess Groogy) as his Lieutenant/XO and the EVP of Creative Direction Johan as his boss. That's most likely it.

What in whatever shape and form is being developed is a group effort together with the team they have at their disposal brainstorming over their ideas and the suggestions made by the creative people on the forums. But the final say is made by the boss, no matter if we like it or not.

The group thread for Iberia is an astounding piece of work, the problem is just: The map proposals came too late in the development cycle to have been implemented, save for a few straits, renaming of provinces or placements of cities. That stuff was most likely finished a few weeks earlier. You could argue that Paradox should have postponed the launch of GC for some weeks, in that case well into the February because of the holiday break and the complete overhaul of the maps of Iberia and the Americas but a) is Paradox a business b) the development of GC is on a monetary and manpower budget and c) it's not the vision of players that matters when it differs from that of the GD.

On the tech debt and bugfixing: It should be clear that bugs are being categorized in an order of severity and appearance. First In -> First Out. In the case of the naming of an obscure province in Poland or the position of a town in one, this is more likely around #3891 on the list of things to do. And each of the fixes #1 to #3890 has to be verified and checked. That takes time, meaning you are running against a budget. The reasoning of the placement of cities is described here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-of-october-2018.1122972/page-2#post-24733325

We as players have a simple tool to voice our opinion: Our wallet. If a potential customer thinks that a company delivers bullshit, why in the sane world should he buy the product?

On this DD: He could have skipped it altogether, or written that the team fixed the bugs #136 - #255. In any case he couldn't win when he has nothing to report.

 

[Malecord]

I don't understand all these negatives votes to the dd. It should be clear that if the team is working on tech debpt and bug issues there isn't nothing new to show/discuss.

And if your issue is with the team working on getting rid of tech debt instead of implementing new features then try play Stellaris and enjoy some real tech debt.

 

[Pete0714]

Good day all. After last week's announcement that EU4 will be switching to 64-bit we saw a lot of comments about what people thought this means and does not mean. To clear up misconceptions we'd like to present a more tech-focused dev diary, but wouldn't be able to do such a topic justice by today, so we'll dive into it next week and today let the Europa Universalis Board Game take today's spotlight.

Going full circle, EU, which started as a board game before entering the digital age, returns to its roots. Those who were at PDXCon last year had an opportunity to get first-hand experience with it, so for more information

Europa Universalis the Board Game DD#6

You can also find their previous Dev Diaries here: EU the Board Game forum

As for the development of the Europa Universalis video game, we continue to work through tech debt, a topic deserving of its own dev diary. It'll be a while before we have content from the game to discuss and show off, but it'll be more than worth the wait.

Might have been better to give a raw list of items worked on this week rather than say "nothing to see here, go look at a board game forum". Just a thought. I am sure you are busy on some good work, so keep it up and just be transparent about the work you do.

 

[Mingmung]

Just to mention: The following took me nearly four hours to write, when I'm done working I just want to relax and don't want to fry my brain. But everybody is different, has different timetables and so on.

Me and 99,999998% of people on this subforum don't have a clue how many Golden Centuries Paradox sold since its release on December 11th. Let's assume it was just 10k copies, then 200 "Respectfully disagree" on a DD and 500 Reviewbombs on Steam are really just a mere vocal minority (I don't give a flying fart about Reddit), because the other 9000+ people don't care to voice their opinion whether they agree or are disgusted. The higher the sales the less goes the number of people raising their voice.

I tremendously do appreciate and enjoy reading the work Non-Paradox people invest in their spare time to show off to other players what they would like to see being implemented, fixed, improved, corrected and whatever in the game. But that is their vision and not the vision of those responsible. I would assume there are just 3 people really directly involved in the vision and the direction EU4 is heading: First and foremost Jake as Game Director, XYZ (right now I guess Groogy) as his Lieutenant/XO and the EVP of Creative Direction Johan as his boss. That's most likely it.

What in whatever shape and form is being developed is a group effort together with the team they have at their disposal brainstorming over their ideas and the suggestions made by the creative people on the forums. But the final say is made by the boss, no matter if we like it or not.

The group thread for Iberia is an astounding piece of work, the problem is just: The map proposals came too late in the development cycle to have been implemented, save for a few straits, renaming of provinces or placements of cities. That stuff was most likely finished a few weeks earlier. You could argue that Paradox should have postponed the launch of GC for some weeks, in that case well into the February because of the holiday break and the complete overhaul of the maps of Iberia and the Americas but a) is Paradox a business b) the development of GC is on a monetary and manpower budget and c) it's not the vision of players that matters when it differs from that of the GD.

On the tech debt and bugfixing: It should be clear that bugs are being categorized in an order of severity and appearance. First In -> First Out. In the case of the naming of an obscure province in Poland or the position of a town in one, this is more likely around #3891 on the list of things to do. And each of the fixes #1 to #3890 has to be verified and checked. That takes time, meaning you are running against a budget. The reasoning of the placement of cities is described here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-of-october-2018.1122972/page-2#post-24733325

We as players have a simple tool to voice our opinion: Our wallet. If a potential customer thinks that a company delivers bullshit, why in the sane world should he buy the product?

On this DD: He could have skipped it altogether, or written that the team fixed the bugs #136 - #255. In any case he couldn't win when he has nothing to report.

Except for the fact that map-stuff, like corrections and additions, aren't fixed by the bug-guys, but by the content-creator.

Which is taking his time this year because of a longer cycle, but still hasn't replied whether he wants to fix the many mistakes or not. It's not only about the obscure province of Notec; there are many more mistakes in the last two patches which have been pointed out. During and after the development-cycles of these respective patches. Even now, 5 months after the Poland-patch, with no word about it and a fix which doesn't even cover half the mistakes and even ruined something even more, we still haven't heard a substantial thing.

And where's the enthusiasm from the devs to make this a history-game again instead of a numbers-generator? The map is like the juice of this game; the playing field. Where's the drive to make this correct and fix the mistakes they've made themselves?

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Poor devs just can't win whatever they do.

Keep going, guys and girls, and have fun on your board game nights!

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

Meanwhile Portugal national ideas are really weak

Praeterea, Portugal est scriptor nationalibus ideas realiter esse mala.

 

[Skyfus]

Please fix trade companies, culture conversion and primitives. More below.

 

[JCivX]

DDRJake said it a while ago (if I recall correctly), he (and by extension, we can say Paradox) preffer making money to making a good videogame.

Comments like these always make my eyes roll. Jake said they measure the success of the DLC in sales revenue (crazy right??) and I'm paraphrasing, if he had to choose between a DLC that sold well or a DLC that did not sell well but did not get a lot of criticism from the die hard fans, he would choose the first option. And that makes complete sense both from a business perspective and a customer satisfaction perspective.

Businesses are in the business of making money. It's not evil, it's not corrupt, it makes 100% sense. And they make the most money in the long run by making good video games. Sure, you can coast on your previous reputation for a DLC or two or maybe a full title or two but if the actual content is shitty, it will be reflected in the sales revenue before too long. That's just the way it goes. If it didn't, the Paradox people are some sort of geniuses who have found a way to "force" people to buy garbage content.

If the DLCs constantly sell well and break previous records, clearly they are doing something right in terms of the content because the players keep playing the game and purchasing the new content. Sales figures are a great barometer for how the general customer base, i.e. players, are enjoying the content. Another is the amount of hours people play the game in a month. Again, they could get away with a few shitty releases and still probably get great sales records just based on built up trust and reputation, but that vanishes fairly quickly.

So bottom line - there are obviously a lot of ways EU4 could be better and how Paradox could be better, but to imply that they have admitted they are some soulless corporation that has somehow found a way to make increasing amounts of money without caring about creating good content is just childish. Good content + happy fans = more revenue and profits.

 

[Mingmung]

It seems Neondt was ill. That might explain the lacklustre dev-diary; let's see in the future.

Anyway, let's hope some more thorough rounds of bug/issue-fixing gets done this year.

Make me fall in love with this game again, please, paradox.

 

[Golladan]

Except for the fact that map-stuff, like corrections and additions, aren't fixed by the bug-guys, but by the content-creator.

What are bug-guys?

 

[Mingmung]

What are bug-guys?

Game-mechanics, and their issues, aren't fixed by the content-designers. They generally script and the like.

 

[Utik]

I, too, an outraged about the quality of a thing I never paid for. I haven't been this angry since the local accordion playing beggar didn't play any of my favourite songs, *even though he could clearly see me*. He didn't even apologize to me after I called him a selfish smelly hobo.

 

[Golladan]

Game-mechanics, and their issues, aren't fixed by the content-designers. They generally script and the like.

But content-designers fix script bugs. So they'd still be "bug-guys".

 

[Grif_E]

I'm not supposed to type in this box what I think about other fans of this game.