EU4 - Development Diary - 4th of December 2018

[withche.07]

New achievements are great but I wish we had new achievement for Algiers under Barbarossa as well, as I remember now Algiers is a formable with pirate government (inform me if I am wrong).

New achievement related to privateering, raiding could be good.

 

[Shoo]

@DDRJake
Have you got anything to say in regards to the criticisms levelled at GC and EU4 in general in the past week? It's a good thing to let the community know what you plan to do with EU4 as you intend to do but a lot of people still have questions and concerns it would be good to clear up

 

[Tob.Ristlin]

Looking forward the American Inmersion Pack to get some love for the Iberian nations

 

[CMDR_HERNE]

Looking forward to patch 1.28

 

[Hrodbert]

@DDRJake really looking forward to the dlc but one question, will you still be able to get the spanish fly achievment if you form ireland or do you have to stay as offlay?

 

[SalivatingPanda]

I am happy that you are responding to the events of last week. My concern is that there were multiple other points made that I feel should get an official response.

My biggest current issue, is that are we ever going to get an Iberia patch with the love and work behind it, like the community expected?

 

[rho]

While I'm well aware that I'm going to be in a vanishingly small minority as I say this, I personally hope that you don't over-compensate and start giving undue weight to feedback and suggestions. Trying to please everyone is a certain route towards pleasing nobody. Trying to please exactly the people who shout and complain the loudest, even more so. I would much rather that you have your own vision for what you're trying to do with an expansion, that you commit to it, and that you communicate it clearly.

I'm not saying that there's no place at all for community feedback. There is. I just hope that it's kept small and proportionate.

 

[Kuantum]

Not even a new achievement for Portugal

 

[Lusitania]

While I'm well aware that I'm going to be in a vanishingly small minority as I say this, I personally hope that you don't over-compensate and start giving undue weight to feedback and suggestions. Trying to please everyone is a certain route towards pleasing nobody. Trying to please exactly the people who shout and complain the loudest, even more so. I would much rather that you have your own vision for what you're trying to do with an expansion, that you commit to it, and that you communicate it clearly.

I'm not saying that there's no place at all for community feedback. There is. I just hope that it's kept small and proportionate.

There's threads in the suggestion box compiling some of the most commonly made suggestions into bigger, composite propositions, so hopefully the devs will pay attention to those since they're more organised and stand a better chance at pleasing everyone.

 

[Tvarog]

I think a bit more provinces for Castile and Portugal (free patch) plus the ability to tell your Colonial Nations how to expand (restrict within colonial region for nice colonial borders) for Golden Century might have swung people to be more neutral about the immersion pack than negative.

But i just love them to expand organic, sometimes stilling provinces from rivaling CN. Why destroy it?

 

[Dalos]

Hope the promise of retrospective (what went well, what went bad and why) is still valid. I think it is as important as the future plans.

Thank you

 

[Mingmung]

I for one think it is wise for them not to react immediately to that kind of complaints, simply because the discussion in this subforum has become so unbearably aggressive, negative and toxic and because who shouts the loudest isn't necessarily right nor does he represent a majority.
There is just no winning in that kind of atmosphere - had they reacted directly to that negative feedback by saying "oh my, you dislike it, gosh, well then we shouldn't do this, we guess" they would probably have been called indecisive and spineless.
Therefore, considering the feedback and, after some internal discussion and testing, implementing a reasonable idea that in my opinion is quite a good compromise, was a very good way of dealing with the feedback.

I don't know what you've been reading, but you're not summarising the forums at all with that remark.

Lots and lots of long and small discussions were ongoing, but never truly listened to. Or it was already too late. That's bad, no matter how you put it. Almost none of the feedback got implemented.

So, don't play down on the way the suggestion forum has been doing lately and how that reflected itself on the general discussion board; your view is simply not true. One quick glance at the suggestion-forums would tell you enough.

There is no toxicism or whatsoever here. Yeah, some are quite pissed about the way things have been going, but it's okay for them to express that opinion and discuss their issues (which is what's happening).

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

So is it safe to assume there will be a new patch next year addressing at least some complaints about this patch?

 

[arendal30]

Will Basque culture remain in the Iberian culture-group?

 

[Mingmung]

I'm glad the feedback about transparency is being listened to.

Now I just hope that the developers will find a way to implement the feedback for 1.27 and 1.28 somewhere next year.

That will make me a happy and wallet-ready costumer again.

Butttttt, I want to see change first before I draw that wallet!

 

[DontHitDaddy]

Going to stop lurking and log in to "respectfully Disagree". None of the comments and complains have been heard THIS time around. There is 0 guarantee they will be heard later on. Changes could have been implemented, even price reduction on this DLC.

 

[WorldWarIV]

I'd like to point out that for me, even if the community has indeed great ideas, the problem is not necessarily that you don't listen to us, but more that you are creating underwhelming DLCs, while there are great ideas out there. If you were doing your own amazing thing and pouring out great content, I'd be happy too.

 

[Twoflower]

I don't know what you've been reading, but you're not summarising the suggestion forums at all with that remark.

Lots and lots of long and small discussions were ongoing, but never truly listened to. Or it was already too late. That's bad, no matter how you put it. Almost none of the feedback got implemented.

So, don't play down on the way the suggestion forum has been doing lately; your view is simply not true. One quick glance at those forums would tell you enough.

There is also no toxicism or whatsoever here.

I was not referring to the suggestion forum specifically, I was referring to the EU4 subforum in general and particularly to the main EU4 forum. The suggestion forum generally has a much friendlier atmosphere and there are quite a few really awesome ideas and a lot of impressive research and creativity presented there.

Just a few examples that are apparent from the currently active threads: On the first page of the main EU4 forum right now, there is a thread that calls a feature that of course can be questioned, but is still something a significant part of the player base agrees with "absolute garbage". There is a frequent poster with puerile "nicknames" for expansions that he doesn't like as his signature. In the discussion thread on the November 13th dev diary, people have just today openly expressed sympathy with a fascist party without any negative reaction whatsoever. Do I need to go on?

I am aware that the development process of EU4 and of recent DLCs does leave something to be desired, but it is still, at its core, an absolutely fantastic game with immense replayability, an amount of attention to historical detail second to no comparable game and an educational value that shouldn't be neglected. The devs certainly aren't always right and there a few things that I would agree they got wrong and should change, but they still give an impression of actually caring about the game and wanting to make it better rather than just grabbing money.
It should go without saying that everyone is entitled to expressing their opinion, especially since this forum is essentially a platform of contact between a company and its paying customers.
However, as someone who has been around the Paradox forum or quite a while (which doesn't make my point of view any more valid) and who appreciated the style and substance of discussion in the old EU2 forum as quite a breath of fresh air in comparison to other internet environments, it saddens me that discussions here have become so negative and unpleasant. Which is a subjective and personal perception, but something that keeps me from posting here a lot.

 

[Viriato0909]

Now, stepping aside from today's topic of Achievements, I'd like to take a moment to address some of the feedback we've been getting during the dev diaries for Golden Century. There have been plenty of concerns raised, indeed very fair ones, regarding Golden Century and the 1.28 Spain Update not matching up with expectations, not having community input taken into account and development generally not being in line with what the community is wanting. There are many other points that have been raised, but I want to draw light to these.

These are very fair points to bring up, and one comment in particular resonated with me, and that is that our plans and what we are developing are often shared so late in development with the community that feedback and suggestions they want to give can't or won't be able to be integrated. This has lead to a lot of people voicing suggestions for features or changes and getting very understandably frustrated when what is delivered does not take it into account.

So after Golden Century launches, we're going to talk a lot more about future plans and what we have in store for EU4 in 2019, sharing our vision of what we want to do with the game and what we want to bring to you, the player.

Far from me to be purposely cynical, but this isn't good enough. You say you'd like a moment to address the feedback and proceed to talk of future process changes, completely disregarding the feedback in question. Respectfully, that's disingenuous, IMO. It's great to know that you want to do better, but to address the criticism surrounding this immersion pack, you have to either explain why so much constructive feedback was simply ignored, or you explain why you chose to ignore it. Treat us like paying adults, man.

My single immediate question is - are you going to address some of the feedback post release, and if not, why not? As it stands, this will be the first DLC I won't buy. And I'm angry that PDX made it so I don't want to buy it.

 

[Hessian Mercenary]

While I'm well aware that I'm going to be in a vanishingly small minority as I say this, I personally hope that you don't over-compensate and start giving undue weight to feedback and suggestions. Trying to please everyone is a certain route towards pleasing nobody. Trying to please exactly the people who shout and complain the loudest, even more so. I would much rather that you have your own vision for what you're trying to do with an expansion, that you commit to it, and that you communicate it clearly.

I'm not saying that there's no place at all for community feedback. There is. I just hope that it's kept small and proportionate.

But there are tons of good suggestions in the subforum. Not to mention that Paradox vision of the game and their approaches to reach it seem somewhat disconnected with what the playerbase (at least the part represented by this forums) actually wants.

Saying they can't add more than one province to Portugal because of balance reasons while adding a lot of new provinces to Aragon, which was very decentralized and will be ahistorically strong in patch 1.28 and also while not a year ago in RB the british isles got a ridiculous development boost bringing them to Victorian era levels compared to other world regions in 1444, that's a questionable design choice for me.

Missionary change from 1.26 will be completely reverted in 1.28, instead a new formula to calculate missionary maintenance will be used. All this hassle could've been avoided by listening to initial feedback from the balance changes dev diary back then (2018-07-24, over a month before Dharma came out). Not to mention it nerfed the weaker option, Religious, instead of Humanist.

Same with corruption from territories. TC land was already far superior, no need to nerf territories in comparison. But no, Paradox also further buffed TCs with Dharma. Either they wanted to buff TCs as a selling point for Dharma, putting revenue over balance. Or worse, they really thought it was a good idea, showing a severe lack of understanding of the current gameplay meta of their own game.

So yeah, I for one really hope that Paradox will take their time to listen to constructive feedback, maybe take their time to engage in discussions on the suggestions subforum from time to time and overall, try to better explain why they want to implement certain balance changes, being more open to alternative solutions (instead of simply going through with it and having to revert it later).