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EU4 - Development Diary - 18th of December 2018

Good day all and welcome to this week's Dev Diary for EUIV. It's also our final one of the year and as such it's going to be a meaty one. Indeed today is my last day in the office before I take a decadently long Christmas and New Year vacation. I'll be burning some whisky barrels on the open fireplace and melting to my sofa while my cats and dog lay with me in the freezing wastes of the Scottish Highlands. With that to look forward to, I'll get on with today's matter at hand: we're going to talk about reflections on the year, including Rule Britannia, Dharma and Golden Century, how we use forum feedback and suggestions, as well as our plans going forward into 2019. This'll be a big one, so buckle up.


2018_recap.jpg



This year started strong with the release of Rule Britannia in March. It was our second Immersion pack and our way of confirming if we wanted to keep going forward with the Immersion Pack model for EU4. We had released Third Rome as an Immersion Pack before, and while both its sales and reception were lukewarm, its release was right alongside our price change debacle. With Rule Britannia, we were able to try an Immersion Pack again in clearer conditions. Again, we wanted to make a DLC for the game, smaller and tighter in scope, where we focused on Britain, and making features and content which was lighter on Code, and heavier on Script and Art. To this end, it pioneered the new Mission Trees, came with unit models and music as well as some new gameplay features for half the price of a regular expansion.


Rule Britannia exceeded all our expectations, performing record-breakingly well in sales for EUIV, while also gaining favourable reception. It was clear to us that there was a place for these types of DLC. While the sales and reception were great, there was still feedback by way of the content not being deep or meaningful enough, particularly for our core fanbase (If you're reading this, then that's you guys) So our decision was to produce both large expansions and tighter Immersion Packs, meaning Dharma was up next.


Ah Dharma. I remember standing up on the stage at PDXCon, having been asked to do a presentation about it. I don't remember what I said up there and I certainly didn't know what I was going to say. I knew I wanted to just say the word “Dharma” with conviction, and the rest would probably follow. I don't recall the audience getting up and leaving, so the presentation probably went well.


Dharma released in September and was a typical $20 expansion with the usual array of features and an Indian focus. It came with an unusual level of re-working old features, but also took the unorthodox (for EU4) direction of taking old content and making it free. We freed up the Estates feature, shook it up a touch and this, I feel, comes with the unspoken promise of continuing to support and work on this feature.


All well and good, but how do we look at the release from our perspective at Paradox? While Rule Britannia set some records for EUIV, Dharma came and broke them again. It proved to sell extremely well, but it then opened up some interesting discussion, because it reviewed fairly terribly, at (another record-breaking) 35% on Steam at time of writing.


Now the honest truth here from my perspective is that reviews weigh ounces while sales weigh pounds. One cannot put food on the table with a good review, but they can with good sales. If I was asked if I want a release to sell well or I want it to review well, I'll ask for both, but if I may only have one, I'll take the sales numbers. I'm telling you that not (only) because I am a terribly greedy individual, but because that is how we weigh up success and I'd rather be clear with you on that than give some fuzzy, corporate response.


This comes with one massive however. This is not to say that we do not take feedback and reviews into account. Far from it. I've personally read every single review we've had on this year's releases, positive, negative, even Google Translated if need be. We do set aside some real time to check what people enjoyed, what they did not and address what we can. Case in point, there was a huge amount of feedback, both before release and in reviews, slamming the free patch that shipped with Dharma, particularly with the Corruption from Territories and Religious Conversion changes. In this case, we made a redesign of the conversions, making a small change in the followup 1.27 Poland Update to allow conversions with Religious Ideas, then when time was more permitting, making a change to how conversions cost for 1.28. There is still dissatisfaction about how corruption in territories work, I've certainly been reading the threads with interest, but this is in line with our vision for the game. Complaints are not without merit, but it's unlikely that the mechanic will change any time soon.


After Dharma we put out the 1.27 Poland Update, and fittingly had one of our biggest events of the year for the game at the Polish LAN party. It was an amazing time and the absolute most fun one can have playing the game in my humble opinion, I'll cast the limelight over to others who have covered the event in their own ways


EU IV event 2018 (12 of 18).jpg
This beat the office Streaming Studio in terms of grandeur solidly

EU IV event 2018 (16 of 18).jpg

Flags, props and amazing cosplay all around

EU IV event 2018 (18 of 18).jpg

Groogy wore some of his casual attire for the event

After the aforementioned Poland update came Golden Century, another Immersion Pack, so the same vein as Rule Britannia and Third Rome. This went live just 7 days ago, and while that's a pretty short timeframe to draw many conclusions on a DLC release, I'm going to live dangerously and draw them anyway.


Let's not beat around the bush, there has been plenty of dissatisfaction in the community on Golden Century. We've not been blind to the plethora of comments, posts, threads and ratings showing that the Immersion Pack we've been making and delivered is not what you have been anticipating, and there's no amount of fancy talking I can do to dismiss that. There have been particular concerns about lacking focus on Spain/Portugal, wanting deeper changes to Colonization, overall feeling that the Immersion Pack is feature-light, feedback being ignored and plenty others.


Certainly, I put my hands up and say that yes, there were certainly some ill-placed priorities on Golden Century. Most glaring of these were that we talked about what we were doing and planning with you, the community, much too late. It compounded most other issues, so that expectations about what we were going to do were not set from the start, our design and features were too locked-in for much iteration, and the feedback and suggestions that we got, many of which were really good were just not implemented, not because we didn't like them, but because we'd already gotten to a point where we weren't in a position to act on them. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on which side of verification&QA you're on) we don't tend to keep working on a release up to the week/day/hour of release.


That doesn't account for all things though. There are certainly those who feel that they weren't getting what they wanted in terms of deep mechanical reworks or large changes to the game. On this I have to put up a defense. Immersion Packs are designed to deliver content for the focus regions and specifically not large gameplay reworks. You'll not see a Government Overhaul or an Empire of China+Tributaries in an Immersion Pack. In an Immersion Pack you'll certainly find new Music for the region, new unit models, Dynamic Historical Events, features for the focused nation, map changes and other revisions. If what you're wanting from an Immersion Pack are the features of the magnitude that we put in our larger expansions, then we will not be able to meet that expectation. With that said, Golden Century did not match up to the level of quality that you've come to expect, and for that we need to do better.


I don't want to completely drop the point about feedback and suggestions though. A sad outcome from this is that people are feeling their suggestions are just not listened to. This couldn't be much farther from the truth, and I'll be getting back to this just a little further down.


All said and done though, Golden Century was released last week and, while the reviews are not so hot, it's performing admirably as releases go, telling us that we can continue to deliver successful Immersion Packs, but we absolutely need to handle development and communication better.


From now though, there are precious few days before the company as a whole shuts down and only the bravest of souls march into the office to keep the gears of development turning. That'll bring a wrap to 2018, which has been a pretty great year for the EUIV Team. Said team has seen its members come and go, but remain in high spirits and committed to delivering exciting content for the game. In particular this year we have seen the swelling of our ranks with new blood, either new to the company or new to the project (people can and do switch from project to project) while giving bittersweet farewells to those who have left the project such as @Trin Tragula who slipped into a time vortex and ended up long before the Birth of Christ, to live out his Roman fantasies in Imperator.


With that as a reflection on 2018, let's turn to the topic of Suggestions and Feedback. Recently I spied a post which went along the lines of “can we have a dev diary on suggestions” and I think that's a great idea.


So we have a suggestions subforum here where many threads get put up. Users post their ideas on how the game can be improved and what features or balances they would like to see in the game. It's a wonderful place where, regardless if the proposed solution is something we want to directly implement, gives us inspiration and ideas and also highlights what people see as issues in our game in a highly constructive manner.


A considerably chunk of my time, as well as @Groogy and @neondt 's is spent looking through these suggestions. We don't give feedback on everything we read there, and indeed it would be criminal mismanagement of time to do so, but we do read and read often. Suggestions there, both big and small get made and sometimes result in tangible change for the game. A question we've had before is “What does it take for a suggestion to be implemented”. There's hardly a single answer to this, and a variety of ways things get implemented. Sometimes a suggestion can result in a different inspired solution to a problem that's being cited, sometimes mechanics emerge which are similar to those posted. In rare cases, entire suggestions are so good they get face-lifted straight into the game. Let's take a look at some examples, and talk best practices.



Here is an example of a suggestion so good they we had to implement it near enough as-is. A remarkably well constructed post, highlighting all necessary changes that should be made, including province layout, trade goods, city placement and more, as well as containing local information that is harder for us to source to back them up.


Another great and well constructed proposal which covers nearly all bases. It contains a plethora of ideas, not all of which are likely to make it into the game, but a solid suggestion which will no doubt see some manifestation in the game.


Of course, these are fairly massive suggestion post examples, and are not what everyone is expecting or expected to bring the table. We also have lots of smaller suggestions and compilation suggestions which prove useful. A notable example is the achievement compilation thread


Often the smaller gameplay suggestions such as events you could see being improved are great for us to see. The important thing in any suggestion is to Identify the issue and then explain what your improvement is. Often it’s getting the finger on exactly what needs improvement is more important than the fine details on what should be done, as the latter often has many different approaches.


@neondt recently posted a good framework for such suggestions, particularly for events:

Example:
Event name:
Clergy condemns philosopher as heretic

Event ID (if known):
724

Perceived Issue:
Event essentially unchanged from EU3. Unavoidable stability hit is overly punishing and doesn't necessarily fit the flavour.

Suggested Improvement:
Remove stabhit, make penalties better/harsher for each opposed choice


Now, one particular comment that I've been chewing on over the last few weeks was (paraphrased) thus: “I feel like I cannot make the best suggestions I can in a meaningful time when we don't know what the EUIV team is working on until they're pretty much done with it” Now this is something that ties wonderfully into our next topic for today's monster dev diary: Our plans going forward. Previously I've been hesitant to post much of a public roadmap of what EUIV has planned or has ambition for, but I'll not have it said that I'm too hard-headed to change my mind.


Taking it from the top, 2019 will be a very different year of development for EUIV. We will be slowing down development of new features and expansions, at least for the first half of the year. We shall be taking time to focus on two main things in EUIV: Tech Debt and Quality of Life


Tech Debt covers all sorts of things that accumulate over time when we develop our games. It's things like bugs that accumulate (truce timers not lining up with the tooltip? That's tech debt), performance (new features and map updates slowing the game down? That's tech debt) systems that we put in place being cumbersome to work with and slowing down other development? That's tech debt. Generally we set time aside every release to tackle this, but over the past 5+ years of post-release development, we have accumulated more than we've chewed through. To this end, we will be taking a very serious stab at issues and working through the issues that have been building up over this time.


Quality of Life are those usability issues that make you stop for a moment and glare at the game. It's when the tooltip for taking gold covers the green checkmark in the peace deal screen, or when you want to tell your auto-diplomats to deal with a specific bunch of nations but you cannot specify them. We get many suggestions of these in the forums, we have many ideas on them internally, and we get subtly reminded of them in fangatherings. Indeed, those who were at the Polish LAN party were kind enough to give me one or two game suggestions themselves, which will no doubt find their way on our internal list to work through. We will be making a list of the most pressing QoL issues, and working through them with reckless abandon.


suggestions 01.jpg

Me reading suggestions from the Poland event. First I saw the auto trade company toggle suggestion

suggestions 02.jpg

Then I saw the Balkan Cultures suggestion


This tech debt and quality of life work will manifest themselves in an expansion release we are planning towards the end of the year. We will be working on a massive European expansion, with a scope of pretty much everything from Bretton Brest to Byzantine Constantinople. While it'll be some time before we go into detail on what we want to do with this expansion, we have our own internal wishlist of things to tackle. This is not a guarantee that all will be dealt with in said expansion, but it is what we wish to achieve.

  • Endless, immortal mercenaries need to be reigned in
  • the HRE system, which is largely unchanged from EU3 needs to evolve
  • Expand Estates mechanic
  • Make Catholicism and the Pope feel like a force to be reckoned with, rather than just another colour of Christianity and country
  • Flesh out mission trees for more countries.
  • Make manpower and attrition more meaningful
  • Improve custom nation options.
  • Up the standard of the map across Europe, including Balkans, Italy, France and Germany.
There will no doubt be more to come, but I want to give a general idea of what we're looking at in 2019. Tech Debt, Quality of Life and a massive European Expansion. There will be some smaller patches along the way, likely bugfixes and perhaps a small content update along the way, as well as some new surprises, but the bulk of 2019 is going towards this one big release.


And we want to make sure that you are involved along the way. No doubt there will be people with their own fixes, quality of life features or European changes they want to see in the game. We'll be taking in feedback and suggestions moreso than ever, and hopefully clarifying that this will be a long development cycle will ensure that changes and iteration can take place in a timely manner. I encourage such quality of life requests and longstanding bugs to be posted up or brought forward to us, and we shall be doing our utmost to crush the bugs and implement the QoLs (hopefully in that order)


Of course, this means that, particularly in early 2019, we're going to see some quieter dev diaries, where we may just highlight some particular fixes and QoL changes we make, before we ramp up towards the meat of what's coming in the European Expansion. There'll also be some other surprise things that we'll be talking about as we start picking up steam again next year.


And that's our final, and likely longest dev diary for the year. I hope we've managed to shed some light on previously nebulous places, and before I jet off to the cold and unforgiving Highlands I'll stick around to field any questions you may have for the rest of the day, listing them below.

I have compiled my chief complaints here.

Thanks. It's a good concise list of actionable improvements. I'll review what can be done with them.

will be anything added to Iberian countries or changed, especially to Portugal, or it is completely done and critique of GC will be completely unanswered

So I've seen this concern that, since we've done Golden Century, we'll not touch or look at Iberia again. This is not the case: if we feel like making further improvements to the region we will, and given 1.28 reception, I think that's quite likely.

Can we expect ai improvements? I feel the ai is lacking putting up much of a fight even compared to Eu3

AI improvements is a very vague vague term, with different people having very different ideas on what would be an improvement. If you have clear reports with savefiles of where the AI acted in a dis-satisfactory way, then that is something we can definitely look into.

Of course, AI improvements are on our to-do list, but they tend to be specifics, such as "Improve AI's homeland defense in times of war" or "stop AI from dragging out wars which are already won"

Well what can I say, reading this made me happy.
And if it happens like it was outlined here, it will make me even more happy.

I've been putting together 2019 plans for a wee while. I certainly expect them to happen as outlined and it will make me happy too.

I feel a Europe-map suggestion thread coming.

Now would certainly be the time. I've been impressed with the quality of your map suggestions (and putting together the SEA compilation)

Well, it seems that the massive Central Italy focused thread and Papacy overhaul that I’ll be posting this afternoon will drop at the right time after all ;)

The time has never been riper.

So no new big expansion till the end of next year? wow.

This is the plan. Disappointing perhaps for those always hungry for more content, but we have a large scope for this one, and will take the time it needs.

- Improve Vassals. I believe there was already a great vassal topic made some time ago in suggestion forum so I wont go into to much detail but this one is important for an European expansion

If you have the link to such, I'd like to give it a read.

EU4: DUES VULT coming December 2019?

There's not yet a name for such an expansion, but I think it won't be that.

I'll give the devs all my money if they finally put belgium into the game

Previously Belgium has been a hard "no" but...how much money are we talking?

Will there be free patch like Hungary and Denmark for Golden century?

Between now and the release of our big 2019 expansion, there is likely to be at least one free update, if nothing else to clear up some outstanding 2018 bugs. The bulk of work, fixes and improvements will be coming with the big expansions and update at the end of the year.

@DDRJake good thread :) as a fellow Briton. Could we introduce shires into Britain? Cambridgeshire rather than Cambridge etc?? Please ? Thank you.

I know I can change it each game but it’s a bit of a pain in the arse

I do personally prefer such names like Aberdeenshire but it is contrary to our naming convention. I had this discussion with our content designers at the time.

So, probably another year without DLC for Southeast Asia. Well, as a person with Half-full Glass view, I am still going to appreciate your update on Burma, make Palembang playable, and the monsoon system (plus the elephants

Yes, much as SEA needs attention, Europe is the main focus for 2019

In perfect world, your content should be that good no suggestions should appear. But this is not the case.

We may have to agree to disagree on that point. No product on the complexity level of a videogame, no matter how brilliant, is beyond refinement.

A good dev diary with lots of good goals, but I will remain sceptical until I see the results.

Healthy scepticism is exactly that: healthy. We have stated our goals, and expect to be held accountable towards reaching them.

It might seem impatient, but almost a year for bug fixes and an expansion seems like a very long time. Will we see patch(es) that will iron out the current

While the number of them and their scope is still to be decided, we will see one or two free updates along the way, primarily with bugfixes. The focus for 2019 remain on the big expansion though.

Byzantine Constantinople? Is it just me, or did the community actually manage to make a byzaboo out of Jake?:D

Never.

Jake, you missed out on a crucial part: Starting 2019, will there be another dev clash?

While I'd love to get back into the swing of things with the EU4 Dev Clash, it seems that the Imperator Signup has just led to the confirmation of an Imperator dev clash. Since our limiting factor on clashes is sheer manpower&time, rather than willpower, the Romans will likely steal the limelight, as Stellaris have done.

Kinda off-topic- but DDRJake sort of looks like my cousin.

Please, I need fewer people thinking me German, rather than more.

Any plans for improved text rendering / high resolution display support as part of the QoL changes in 2019?

This is on a (my) wishlist for 2019 too.

***** writing style
****- humor
memes, check.
being the main focus of discontent but still wear the right attire for the right situation, check.
****- statement/information given in dev diary

now go and follow through with your word. i am excited for the first time since mare nostrum.

I dread to ask, but how many stars am I rated out of here?

This could be as simple as adding a natural habour modifier to New York and a few other provinces that suffer from the same deficiency (e.g. Charleston and Quebec), this is what you did for New Orleans when the update was released and would certainly be warranted for New York which has one of the best natural habours in the world, in fact, that was the reason why the dutch settled there in the first place. Alternatively, it would be very interesting to have a feature whereby you could found a CoT anywhere if certain conditions where met. This could be e.g. no other trade centre in the state, minimum diplomatic development level of 10 and minimum total development of say 25, as well as a cost of 1000 gold.

Good suggestions here, thanks.

I'm quite looking forward to seeing various bugs etc resolved, even it means no new content. If anything gives me a proper chance to catch up on doing my mod.

I've got a few ideas on how to improve the govt reforms which I'll make a thread for in a few days. Would it be worth me remaking some of my old suggestions for various small fixes? Things like name/trade good fixes for Britain or my suggestion for how to make it so that colonial nations don't expand a ridiculous amount into other colonial regions.

In addition, how would you feel about suggestions on opening up certain bits of hardcoded DLC content (or even non-DLC content like the HRE mechanics) to be modded? I've had some great ideas but they'd basically involve making a copy of the Native American confederations/trade leagues/HRE and then changing certain things so as to not disrupt the originals but it's all hardcoded.

Government Reform suggestions are certainly welcome, and when it comes to suggestions which touch on "hardcoded DLC content" there's nothing wrong with being bold. We may even make those changes if they seem right for the game, or at least provide inspiration for other avenues to address what you are suggesting.

+1 is disgusting watching how a relevant nation for the period like Hungary uses vanilla skins

I completely agree.

Boy, does this exites me.
Estates are, to me, the mechanic with the biggest untapped potential in the game.

Yes they are. I'm just thinking out loud here, but Imagine if calling a diet..called an actual diet.

Speaking about QoL changes, do you plan to improve the launcher? I've made couple of suggestions about it here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ns-changelogs-and-tweaks-in-launcher.1040670/
(Yeah, I know "modlist/mod list" is rather better name than "mod playlist".)

Thanks. Without giving to much away: yes the launcher is in scope.

It's one thing to say it, and another thing to see it, so I don't want to hand out cookies just yet, but - but! - this is a good step. I do think it's concerning that you've had so many things that were received as misses. I know it's selling well, but do you have figures for how many people keep playing the game after, say, the first week of purchase? My worry is that Steam only gives you 2 hours with a product before you can choose to return it, and 2 hours in any Paradox game is not a long time. My fear is that you are pleased based on sales of games that aren't being played when people find that they lack depth.

You may have more information than me on this though, and if so feel free to disregard that. But it's niggling in the back of my mind too much to leave it unsaid.



I'm glad that you recognize that being free wasn't enough. I would personally love an attempt to start reining in the more shallow, 4x-esque elements of the game and putting in more fun, deep, even roleplayish aspects into the game, and I think this is a great place to start. The game's fellow Paradox releases are, generally speaking, leagues ahead of EU4 in that respect, largely because they aren't afraid to go back and look at extremely core, fundamental aspects of the game and think "well, we can do that better". I hope this willingness by the EU4 team to admit they, too, can do better doesn't go away.

Does community engagement extend to more fundamental changes than what the map should look like, or what achievements there should be? Does it reach all the way to fundamental design choices? I assume you cited those two choices because those were the two where you lifted most directly, but honestly I would love a random dev diary to just illustrate the process by which a suggestion someone makes gets morphed into something completely else in the game.

These were indeed some of the easier suggestion posts to cite, but the suggestions we look into and take on extend to every facet of the game.

As for player information, we do see player patterns, and track the active playerbase, allowing me to confirm things like "more people are playing EUIV in 2018 than ever before"

On a different note, with a massive Holy Fury-esque update being planned, what about the artists? Will there just be a similarly sized content pack at the end of the year alongside it or is there a possibility of some smaller unit pack or vanilla model improvements released separately?

Almost every release is accompanied with unit packs in some manner. How this will manifest in 2019 is not yet nailed down. Traditionally we have released Content Packs alongside expansions, and Immersion Packs include such unit models.

Here's my question. You've said that you plan to rework the HRE and I am wondering what ideas you have for this? I understand if this is too early to ask about it, however I was curious.

It is our ambition to do so. Exactly how is not yet decided. That'll be down to what myself and @Groogy come up with, alongside input from other team members and, quite possible, input we get from community suggestions.

Does this mean that the bulk of the changes will come later in the year with the large expansion? As in, paid for?

The bulk of what we talk about this year will be coming at the release at the end of the year, although it will follow the typical structure of a free update with bug fixes and free content (like Mughals Update) and paid content+mechanics in the accompanying expansion (like Dharma)

I f I may make a suggestion, maybe add a fourth reaction to the forum, something like "thank you for the feedback" or "read", "noted", "acknowledge"... that kind of things. While not giving feedback on our feedback, it would at least help alleviate the feeling of being ignored some feels and take only the time of a button click.

I have poked the Forum team to add such a mechanism. I shall continue my poking.
 
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It's not the DLC content it's the accompanying patch, what +50% development to the country which shouldn't even be a great power in 1444 but already was, and then a mission tree which gives them claims to half the world.
Oh, who cares. The border between DLC and the patch is extremely vague. They are designed as a whole and split only when it comes to selling. It shouldn't be surprising when people review the DLC and the patch simultaneously.
 
Make Catholicism and the Pope feel like a force to be reckoned with, rather than just another colour of Christianity and country
the HRE system, which is largely unchanged from EU3 needs to evolve
Up the standard of the map across Europe, including Balkans, Italy, France and Germany.
Why do I foresee an expansion which has a misguided Voltaire quote as it's name and main mechanic? And which improves the map but not the functionality of most of germany because it insists on sticking north germany in bed with south germany and a HRE rework?

I'd much rather the HRE and papal reworks went into one DLC and north germany got an immersion pack down the line.
 
This is the plan. Disappointing perhaps for those always hungry for more content, but we have a large scope for this one, and will take the time it needs.
The right decision, imo.
Take the time you need to make this expansion as great as you can.
 
I LOVE this dd! Slowing down DLCs and focusing on bugfixes, QOL etc. was what i was asking for. I really like your vision for the game as well. Really excited about manpower/attrition and estates improvements especially.

A big "Thank you!" for still caring and improving this wonderful game. Looks like Eu4 will take back its number one place for me next year. Also i am guessing this game project will continue at least two years(2019 and 2020) before Eu5.

Lastly;
particularly for our core fanbase (If you're reading this, then that's you guys)
this was nice.
 
So no, steam reviews are not always negative, and seem to match fairly well with the mood in the forum here (no doubt there is a significant overlap). We are told that sales are good despite the reviews, but the real question the business managers will be asking is how much better could the sales be if the reviews were actually good? How much would GC be selling if the reception was as good as CoC?

Honest question here, how much attention do you actually pay to Steam reviews when buying a game? Because personally, I pay basically no attention to them at all. My pre-purchase research might include reading reviews from game journalists I'm familiar with, watching videos on YouTube or Twitch, reading up on features, speaking with friends who have played a game, and so on. It will never under any circumstances involving looking at reviews on Steam. This is mostly because most of the people who are motivated to leave reviews do so because of polarised opinions -- either strongly positive or strongly negative -- which are often not representative of opinions as a whole. From speaking with friends, I know they are mostly of a like mind; I don't think I personally know anyone who actually pays attention to Steam reviews. Hence my original question: do you pay attention to them? Is my social circle in a minority for finding them completely worthless?
 
Oh, who cares. The border between DLC and the patch is extremely vague. They are designed as a whole and split only when it comes to selling. It shouldn't be surprising when people review the DLC and the patch simultaneously.
...
Yeah that's my point. My main complaints with RB is the buff they got in the patch not in the DLC itself
 
People disliked Dharma? It was great if you ask me. And liked RB? It was terrible a super buff to an already overpowered country.

As for GC, you could have had doing spain and portugal properly in your scope if you had not done central america for some reason.

I like Dharma, loving the new Indian mechanics and flavour. My only disappointments with it are the lack of new Indian DHE's and I would also prefer more depth and consequences with the government reforms.

Haven't really played much with GC, I don't like to play the same nations more than once or twice and the area doesn't appeal to me as much as others, maybe I will try a Moroccan campaign after finishing my current Stellaris campaign.

I was hoping the HRE and Italy would be next and I'm glad that the focus will be on one big expansion for 2019, I feel Holy Fury was a wonderful addition to CK2 and the long wait was very much worth it.
 
Great dev diary.
I am particularly pleased to know you are planning on spending time on bug hunt and QoL improvement. It is much much needed.
And that big extension plan do have some interesting ideas. I hope you would use the occasion to give some much needed love to Iberian countries, they are part of europe after all :p

e don't give feedback on everything we read there, and indeed it would be criminal mismanagement of time to do so, but we do read and read often.
I f I may make a suggestion, maybe add a fourth reaction to the forum, something like "thank you for the feedback" or "read", "noted", "acknowledge"... that kind of things. While not giving feedback on our feedback, it would at least help alleviate the feeling of being ignored some feels and take only the time of a button click. I know you guys love button clicking :p
 
Honest question here, how much attention do you actually pay to Steam reviews when buying a game? Because personally, I pay basically no attention to them at all. My pre-purchase research might include reading reviews from game journalists I'm familiar with, watching videos on YouTube or Twitch, reading up on features, speaking with friends who have played a game, and so on. It will never under any circumstances involving looking at reviews on Steam. This is mostly because most of the people who are motivated to leave reviews do so because of polarised opinions -- either strongly positive or strongly negative -- which are often not representative of opinions as a whole. From speaking with friends, I know they are mostly of a like mind; I don't think I personally know anyone who actually pays attention to Steam reviews. Hence my original question: do you pay attention to them? Is my social circle in a minority for finding them completely worthless?
Depends on the game, but yes, I usually at least glance at what the reviews are saying. If I see that a game has clearly negative reviews I will definitely double check again how confident I am before buying it, and try to figure out why people are so pissed. If the purchase would be one of impulse (which is fairly typical for small or cheap digital games for me), thinking twice usually converts to forgetting about it and not looking at the game ever again. For more expensive/AAA games I agree that I am usually already well enough informed from other sources that I can safely ignore Steam reviews. But that's just my personal experience, I wouldn't expect it to be generalisable.
 
While I like the fact that they go out and talk and show transparency, I still feel the insult that was Golden Century for all the Spanish and Portuguese people. It was supposed to be about them, but it was about anything else that was not Spanish or Portuguese, nations that are never going to be seen on the map, the expulsion of minorities doesn't have nothing of Spanish so I wonder if they did an adequate investigation, the same with the map. Even so, I hope that when they make the next DLC they represent well the countries that decide to change and I wish them the best.
 
Great dev diary.
I am particularly pleased to know you are planning on spending time on bug hunt and QoL improvement. It is much much needed.
And that big extension plan do have some interesting ideas. I hope you would use the occasion to give some much needed love to Iberian countries, they are part of europe after all :p


I f I may make a suggestion, maybe add a fourth reaction to the forum, something like "thank you for the feedback" or "read", "noted", "acknowledge"... that kind of things. While not giving feedback on our feedback, it would at least help alleviate the feeling of being ignored some feels and take only the time of a button click. I know you guys love button clicking :p
A fourth button that leaves a little platypus skeleton that can only be left by a developer would be nice :)

But at the same time, they will use helpful as a mark. Jake did so with the thread I just posted, and compounded by his response in this thread I know he’s read it.
 
  • Endless, immortal mercenaries need to be reigned in
As it stands, the incentives to prioritize professionalism or mercenaries remain constant throughout the game. The only real decision is when (or whether) to begin the long process of fully professionalizing your army. I'd like to see a mechanic or mechanics that incentivize mercenary use in the early game more than in the late game. The only mechanic that accomplishes this at present is a decision made the player (or AI) to prioritize professionalism - the only opportunity costs on mercenary use are self-imposed in the form of accumulated professionalism which can be lost by recruiting mercenaries.

  • the HRE system, which is largely unchanged from EU3 needs to evolve
Please rework trade leagues to be more sensible when working on the HRE. Right now the AI treats them like glorified defensive leagues, which make them less efficient both militarily and economically. Trade league leaders invite nations that are too far away to effectively defend in wars or in trade nodes whose trade can't be steered to the home trade node of the league leader. Genoa and Venice are the worst offenders here: both frequently invite nations from the northern HRE (in the Lubeck and English Channel trade nodes) to their trade leagues even though those nations' trade power and militaries will be of little strategic use.

The simplest fix would be to add AI logic that strongly discourages nations from joining or inviting others to trade leagues unless members are very close to one another over land or moderately close to one another by sea and can steer trade in sensible ways (e.g. Genoa and Venice should only care about Mediterranean and southern HRE trade, Lubeck should only care about northern HRE trade).

It would also be nice to see a Hanseatic League that is more stable and focuses on trade and naval dominance in the North and Baltic Seas instead of one that frequently disintegrates in the face of Lubeck's often risky focus on conquering its neighbors. Ideally an AI Lubekc would focus on trade and trade-oriented military campaigns (as opposed to conquest-oriented military campaigns).

  • Flesh out mission trees for more countries.
In general, please flesh out untouched mission trees or revise existing mission trees to prioritize things beyond conquest. Potential rewards besides claims could be:
  • Modifiers, including permanent or long-lasting ones - province modifiers, trade power boosts in specific trade zones, reductions on interest rate, etc.
  • Boosts to variable stats - professionalism, army/naval tradition, money, innovativeness, spy network increases in neighbors or rivals, absolutism, splendor, etc.
  • Upgrades to specific provinces - new buildings, upgrades to centers of trade, development, terrain changes, etc.

Of course, this means that, particularly in early 2019, we're going to see some quieter dev diaries, where we may just highlight some particular fixes and QoL changes we make, before we ramp up towards the meat of what's coming in the European Expansion. There'll also be some other surprise things that we'll be talking about as we start picking up steam again next year.
If you take nothing else away from the Golden Century feedback, please remember that the core player base on the forums does not like surprises. There's nothing wrong with refraining from announcing things until you're sure you want to do them, but there is little or no value in surprises for their own sake when it comes to substantive changes to EUIV.



You asked for quality of life requests so here goes. There is something that has been bothering me quite a bit since the introduction of the new CoT mechanic with different levels of centres of trade, and that is the absence of the ability to spawn centres of trade in a number of provinces that historically was very important centres of trade. The best example is New York which has an estuary modifier but no natural habour modifier. Before the introduction of multiple levels of trade centres (which I greatly enjoy btw) this left New York no worse off than Massachusetts or New Orleans. However, now, New York is dwarfed by these in terms of importance, since the two aforementioned provinces can see their natural habour modifier upgraded to higher levels of CoTs. The inability (without modding and thus precluding going for any achievements) of building New York into a World Port is something that does annoy me greatly whenever I play and for me it would be a great quality of life improvement if this could be fixed.

This could be as simple as adding a natural habour modifier to New York and a few other provinces that suffer from the same deficiency (e.g. Charleston and Quebec), this is what you did for New Orleans when the update was released and would certainly be warranted for New York which has one of the best natural habours in the world, in fact, that was the reason why the dutch settled there in the first place. Alternatively, it would be very interesting to have a feature whereby you could found a CoT anywhere if certain conditions where met. This could be e.g. no other trade centre in the state, minimum diplomatic development level of 10 and minimum total development of say 25, as well as a cost of 1000 gold.
The easiest way to address this problem is to halve the value of estuaries from +10 trade power to +5 trade power and add Level 1 Centers of Trade to the estuary provinces that merit them. Then provinces like New York could be upgraded as the game progresses and estuaries that don't become pivotal trade provinces will still have +10 trade power.
 
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This sounds quite encouraging. Glad the team managed to persuade management to look towards the longer life of the game. Disappointed there wasn't any mention of mod-ability. Though hopefully some modding stuff is implied under tech debt.
 
Why do I foresee an expansion which has a misguided Voltaire quote as it's name and main mechanic? And which improves the map but not the functionality of most of germany because it insists on sticking north germany in bed with south germany and a HRE rework?

I'd much rather the HRE and papal reworks went into one DLC and north germany got an immersion pack down the line.

This. And then it will be GC all over again, people complaining its just tributtons, missions, provinces, but no gameplay changes.
 
Well, it's good to see that your reading players' suggestions. I am generally dissapointed in Paradox and their development of this game. Expansions are really expensive and they add almost nothing. It's hard to say that they're trying their best, when you can download Meiou and Taxes ( made by fans ) and see how many interesting changes, mechanics and new options you can add to this game. There are so many things to re-do in this game and now they announce, that for a long time there won't be any major expansions, only bug fixes and tweaks. For me, this is just pure disappointment.

It's only my opinion, of course.
 
Awesome dev diary. Keep up the good work on the game that is still by far my most favorite strategy game!

The plan for next year sounds awesome. While I appreciate that you can play nations from all over the globe in EU4, I still enjoy European nations the most. After playing basically every nation in Europe (well, not every single HRE minor of course) though, I really hoped for some major changes to make the game feel "fresh" again. Seems like it could be happening now. The HRE rework is what I look forward to the most.
 
Thank you for this post, it's very helpful to understand what is going on behind the scenes.

I'm particularly glad that significant time is going to be spent on improving quality of life and paying down tech debt.

I would like to add a few additional thoughts:

1: The most lacking aspect of the game of EU4 is the relative unimportance of Trade and Sea Control, along with the factual inaccuracy of how trade works. Maybe I'll post an extensive suggestion post on this, but I'd point out the following:

A: Access to Trade Routes and Trade Goods were a major aspect of warfare in this time period. There should be commonly used CBs that link trade to warfare, and the current CBs are not sufficient. Wars over access to specific valuable trade goods like Sugar or Silk ought to be available.

B: Trade does not flow from one point to another. Trade is about flows that go both ways. Nor does it make sense to have "End Nodes" this is simply factually inaccurate depiction of trade economics. I recommend instead the introduction of using Merchants to establish trade routes between nodes rather than having them steer trade along pre-defined routes.

C: Sea Control ought to be more important, particularly in controlling Trade.​

2: A major issue is the tension between those that want to conquer the world in a sandbox game, and those that want more historical outcomes. I think the recent debacle with religious conversions being blocked in territories could be particularly instructive on this. Once Religious Ideas was changed to make religious conversions in territories possible again it was much more acceptable of a change. As it just wasn't right that a nation focused on religious conversion couldn't convert territories. I would suggest that adding base aspects to discourage world conquest is okay as long as you provide some way to overcome this with the investment of enough resources. For example, adding corruption reduction to an idea group/policy as a way to counter territorial corruption, etc. That way people who want to conquer the world can, and those that want to play a more historical world also can.