HOI4 Dev Diary - Bag of Tricks #1

[Duke_Dave]

The DLC will feature much more than the mini-map, which is only useful in MP, so let the host be somebody who has the DLC.
It will feature new Sprites, NF, events, etc.
The free features alone should make one buy the DLC.

 

[adam_grif]

If we have stuff in the DLC that people want, they will call it a greedy cashgrab. If we don't, they will complain that there is no value. Some people claim that we should only be selling Focus trees, others consider this to be the height of greed and that all focus trees should be free. Some say that they will happily pay for new mechanics, others demand that core mechanics should not be paywalled. Making mechanics that don't interact with the game at large will piss off both groups. There is no good move here from a PR perspective. Any paid feature "should have been in the base game" as far as the community is concerned. I have never seen a community consensus on what type of stuff should be paid, and i suspect I never will. So saying that the community is upset about having to pay for content is a non-statement.

I'm aware you can't please everybody simultaneously. As I said, I've been hanging out here and on the subreddits since before launch and I've been arguing against some of the more unreasonable types (the kind that as you say think literally everything should be free then also complain that they think the DLC aren't good value). The subreddit threads about the dev diaries leading up to Death or Dishonor was like wading through a sewer a lot of the time - the "winter of their discontent" you might say.

The reason I reported this initially is because it seems to have riled up more people than just any random announcement. Sure you had a few people angry that tech sharing was DLC last year, but a minimap is such a basic feature that this seems to have struck a nerve. It's especially surprising to me coming off the back of about 3 weeks of people being pretty much happy with what you were showing universally, as the community is usually more forgiving when they're happy. It was reminiscent of the mood around the announcement of Spearhead being paid last year, which wound up being the focal point for a lot of community frustration. And I think for similar reason. The visceral reaction for a lot of hoi and paradox vets is "wait what ? The minimap is DLC?"

 

[XYN]

I'm aware you can't please everybody simultaneously. As I said, I've been hanging out here and on the subreddits since before launch and I've been arguing against some of the more unreasonable types (the kind that as you say think literally everything should be free then also complain that they think the DLC aren't good value). The subreddit threads about the dev diaries leading up to Death or Dishonor was like wading through a sewer a lot of the time - the "winter of their discontent" you might say.

The reason I reported this initially is because it seems to have riled up more people than just any random announcement. Sure you had a few people angry that tech sharing was DLC last year, but a minimap is such a basic feature that this seems to have struck a nerve. It's especially surprising to me coming off the back of about 3 weeks of people being pretty much happy with what you were showing universally, as the community is usually more forgiving when they're happy. It was reminiscent of the mood around the announcement of Spearhead being paid last year, which wound up being the focal point for a lot of community frustration. And I think for similar reason. The visceral reaction for a lot of hoi and paradox vets is "wait what ? The minimap is DLC?"

I am pretty sure the minimap was 95% copypaste (and maybe was done by some intern who works there for food), but it doesn't matter - at this point the boundary between paid and free content is largely imaginary. They both are essentially part of the DLC. That's the fundamental issue with these modular DLCs and there is no way around it - some features have to be free with this model, and it leads to such insignificance becoming paid part of the DLC.

 

[Gamer_1745]

Why would I, as a consumer, be happy about buying functionality that all previous games in the series had, and even the company's other competing series have? It appears as if they stripped something out of the game and then charged me to add it back.

You should not. HOI IV at release was a major disappointment for me & many others.

Since this seems the day for me to collect a lot of 'Respectfully Disagree' I will collect a few more (I just wish people would post why more often).

Paradox has stated that they announced HOI IV way too early & there were delays in release. I think HOI IV was rushed in release and it was not released when ready but released when it was 'playable' and I don't think (I truly don't know) it was up to the Devs. Now if they had waited until more features were 'added' (and I use that word carefully as HOI IV is a complete new game, not an improved version of HoI 3) the game may have been more expensive. Was the lack of these features hidden or misrepresented? Clearly not with the mini-map, they promoted it as not having it as an improvement. Should these 'features' be free? No. They cost money to be added/integrated into the game. At this point I think only 'bug fixes' & AI improvements should be free.

So I share your disappointment in HOI IV which is at the core of people's complaints. I am just fine with paying for improvements to the game. This game has so much potential and I want it to reach it & it is going to cost to get it there.

 

[Malickhoi]

In my opinion, your business model is not clear for your customer base.

For example, in air transportation, you have 2 types of companies :
- big, historical companies, such as Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways... : you pay a high price for your seat, but everything else is included.
- 'low cost' companies, such as Ryan Air, Easy Jet... : you pay a very small price for your seat, but everything else is considered additional, including your luggage and your meal.

Your business model stands somewhere between the 'big ones' and the 'low cost' : we pay a relatively high price for the base game (around 40€) and have to pay for rather small DLC (TFV 15€, DOD 9€).
I am used to a different model : pay a high price for the base game (around 50€), get all the patches and DLC for free, pay only for complete Expansions (around 20€).
I usually refer to a game company I know quite well : Bohemia Interactive Studio. They released Operation Flashpoint, then Resistance expansion 1 year later. Armed Assault and Queen's Gambit. ArmA2 and Arrowhead. Arma3 and Apex. Each expansion introduced completely new mechanics, models, stories, locations and can even be considered new games. At the time of Flashpoint and Resistance (2001 and 2002), BIS were only a handful of employees (12 coders, devs, artists...), working in Prague, with little audience and limited sales. Which is not the case for PDX when HOI4 was released in 2016 (around 60M€ income, with nearly 200 employees).

The blame comes when you re-introduce basic features in the game in your DLC, which in other business models are part of the base content.
So please clarify your business model, state it loud and clear, so that your customers know. If we know and still buy your products, there would be no more reasons to complain.

I love your titles and I love what you're doing in general. I'm happy HOI4 has nearly no bug compared to previous titles. However, you can build upon the work you've done for previous title, instead of re-inventing the wheel, specially if you decide to remove the tire and the axle because... reasons.
I'm disappointed that HOI4 lacks several basic features HOI1, HOI2 and HOI3 had : minimap, CoC, politics, spying / intelligence, fuel, ledgers, message settings, events, a whole database of leaders and generals with portraits and names, names for provinces, icons and pictures for each unit...

Malick

 

[fabius]

Suffice to say that the people on the team who argued for the Chain of Command feature to be free (which it really shouldn't, given the development time it took) instead of the damn minimap have a lot of egg on their face now.

Woah, I can only imagine that it's in us players interests to have the Chain of Command free so that it's more likely to get updated, tweaked, expanded upon in the future right ?
Plus pretty essential if it interacts with Battle Plans, either now or future.

 

[fighting_falcon93]

Or say you are in allies and randomly declare war on ppl, the others may boot you and possibly even attack you.

Although I like this feature, this got me a little bit worried. Will there be some kind of warning, for example "Britain has decided to kick you if you decide to attack country X", or, will it not say anything and then when you declare war they just kick you out? I'm thinking about the problem from a planning perspective, for instance, "I will attack country X if that doesn't result in a kick from allies"

 

[REDDQ]

I do not understand why people don't want a minimap. but it is what it is.

It is not that needed feature. World ain't big enough to make moving about difficult, there are not that many places spread sufficiently afar you need to take care of and minimap is too mini to show anything useful while the main map is pretty good at getting your attention to the troublesome areas.

But hey, if people need it, fine by me. Gonna buy DLC anyway.

 

[Nimbuß]

In which month do you expect to release the new DLC? Hopefully in 2017 yet...i cant play hoi4 anymore until the new DLC since i know about the cool new future features. The current game state seems lame compared to the new stuff.

 

[Alex_brunius]

At the time of Flashpoint and Resistance (2001 and 2002), BIS were only a handful of employees (12 coders, devs, artists...), working in Prague, with little audience and limited sales. Which is not the case for PDX when HOI4 was released in 2016 (around 60M€ income, with nearly 200 employees).

How large all of PDX is has no importance in the discussion when they work on so many different games at once though.

It's like saying that since EA employs 8800 they should be able to make a Plants vs Zombies 3 that have as 800 times as many features as a game developer / publisher that employ 10 people...

The team working on HoI4 is not larger then 12 people AFAIK from what they have written previously on the forums.

 

[REDDQ]

Suffice to say that the people on the team who argued for the Chain of Command feature to be free (which it really shouldn't, given the development time it took) instead of the damn minimap have a lot of egg on their face now.

Big thanks to those brave people for their stance of this issue! It probably has some game development related advantages but thanks anyway. CoC feature really had that DLC vibe.

Things like "we hear your concerns" go a long way instead of saying "you're a bunch of ungrateful sods we can't satisfy whatever we do" - though to be honest I'd rather have your answer than some corporate-speak. .

Archangel85 was polite. You are lucky, there is at least one who woudn't be far off from telling you "you're a bunch of ungrateful sods we can't satisfy whatever we do". Thankfully different game.

 

[Zarkaro]

What about an auto deployement function for air wings on selected air bases, like the one it exist for carriers?

 

[Riekopo]

Can the minimap be resized like in Total War battles?

 

[B.Alp]

Another paid dlc with features that was in the base game of the previous titles and should have been in the game to start with.I am so done with your moneygrab dlc's and not buying any more of disappointment

 

[Heracli]

Mazette that shitstorm! I understand people saying "minimap is universal in all video game it should have been here from the beginning and free!" But damn! It's not like you could'nt play the game without! I mean is it too hard to pause the game and scroll 2 time? It's not like it was taking years to go from japan to UK with the damn camera! It's nice from them to add it, it will spare us 2 second from now on!
Plus the merge function, it's cool to have another strategic option but it's not like it will be that usefull! I can see the point to have full strengh division during an encirclement (even tho they will still be easily cleaned without supply) but it's not like our troop are always encircled or our country in a defence desperate enough to merge it's force by reducing it's number of division by 4 or 5 (even tho if that stage is reached, if your not russia I doubt you will have the time to regroup your army to merge and then reorganise a coherent frontline before the theater collapse).
Those are nice add in the game for people who love macro but they are convenient, not necessary so please stop complaining about it
Hype for the patch tho, keep up the good work!

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

I just compared the 'Cornflakes' dev diaries with the 'to-do' list that was posted a couple of months ago and it really looks like we're getting a huge amount of quality content in the free patch. The earlier patches felt like they were largely fixing things that hadn't quite worked at launch (e.g. 1.4 reworking air warfare, which was already in the game), but 1.5 contains significant new features for HoI4, and ones that were high on the community's wish list. Good work, ladies & gentlemen! I have no idea what's coming in the DLC, but if it's a $25 DLC then it must really contain quite a lot.

On the minimap: putting it in the DLC isn't an unreasonable decision, especially given how convenient it must be for the programmers to have something in DLC that doesn't impinge on any other system. But I think it's the wrong decision to charge for a UI element that's included in pretty much every other game of this genre.

It would be cool if you could have the country borders in the minimap with each corresponding colour. When you take a province it will show that on the minimap too.

That sounds like the minimap becomes a macromap. I realize that's probably nice for rich people with 40" screens and the very latest GPU, but I'd be concerned that it means worse performance for most players with the DLC.

I am glad you are fixing the land game. There are two other engines that require your attention as well, air and naval.

The fourth engine that affects all the other engines, land, sea and air is the logistics engine. It also requires attention.

The devs have explicitly stated that naval warfare and logistics are on their 'to do' list. Not necessarily for Cornflakes, but over the next year or so. Happily, I think you're preaching to the choir here.

An important point to keep in mind is that, technically speaking, people relying on the free patches are free riding off those buying the DLC. Given this, I'm not sure they have a particularly strong foundation upon which to base a principles-based argument. I doubt Paradox would go down this path, but there would be noting wrong, ethically, with them charging for everything that was produced, outside of 'game is broken and needs fixing' patches. The current model is good PR, and very generous (unless you're one of the people buying the DLC and subsidising the free riders), and I think a sound business model, but if the complaints got so loud it became bad PR, the rational (and perfectly fair) decision may look like putting everything behind DLC again. ... At the end of the day, I don't see how the "Minimaps should be free" camp isn't, in effect, arguing "you should be giving me what I want for free and if you're not you're in the wrong" - which when applied more broadly to the production and distribution of goods and services is unlikely to work terribly well.

As always, there is a great deal of good sense in this post. But there are two reasons why I'd disagree with the portion quoted.

Firstly, I bought HoI 4 on the understanding that PDX's business model includes free content patches and it's likely that many of the players did. Maybe it's not a contractual obligation, but it's clearly now part of the offer to provide some improvements with patches. My views on this assume that PDX, as they are run by smart businesspeople, are allowing for that in the business plan for the base game. Certainly, if you look at their profit data, their 2016 game launches seems to have brought in revenue far, far above their 2016 costs (though we'll never know such commercially sensitive information for sure). We know that some of that revenue will be needed to cover the investment in developing HoI in 2013-15, but it's not unreasonable to assume that some of it's set aside for the future too.

Secondly, even if you disagree with the reasoning above, we know for a fact that PDX releases free stuff with patches. And therefore the "Minimaps should be free" camp can reasonably debate what should be free without implying that everything, always should be free.

I never care about which new feature is belong to DLC or free update, as I am going to but it anyway. For anyone who has a proper job the cost is just effectively a couple of hours salary.

When I worked in a developing country, the middle-aged guy who sold cigarettes & drinks in the corner shop had a desktop PC on which he spent many, many hours a day playing a wargame. It turns out you can sell soft drinks with one hand and half a brain, so why not?! I'm pretty certain that he's a potential HoI customer and US$25 would be rather more than a couple of hours salary to him. Your point was true and relevant for the vast majority of people on this forum, but let's remember the others too.

 

[Alex_brunius]

When I worked in a developing country, the middle-aged guy who sold cigarettes & drinks in the corner shop had a desktop PC on which he spent many, many hours a day playing a wargame. It turns out you can sell soft drinks with one hand and half a brain, so why not?! I'm pretty certain that he's a potential HoI customer and US$25 would be rather more than a couple of hours salary to him. Your point was true and relevant for the vast majority of people on this forum, but let's remember the others too.

Well prices of games are lower in developing countries as well...

If you look at steam prices Russia, China and India basically get a ~ 60-70% discount meaning if the base price is US$25 their price is more like US$8. That is what support staff in India earns per day roughly, and ~2 days salary for low wage workers so it's still not totally unreasonable.

I think the customers that can't afford the game or it's expansions will be in much greater trouble affording a computer modern enough to run it, meaning they are not even potential customers to begin with.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Well prices of games are lower in developing countries as well...

If you look at steam prices Russia, China and India basically get a ~ 60-70% discount meaning if the base price is US$25 their price is more like US$8. That is what support staff in India earns per day roughly, and ~2 days salary for low wage workers so it's still not totally unreasonable.

I think the customers that can't afford the game or it's expansions will be in much greater trouble affording a computer modern enough to run it.

Good points, though I seem to remember a large number of Brazilians arguing otherwise during the price raise debacle.

 

[LiberiusX]

In which month do you expect to release the new DLC? Hopefully in 2017 yet...i cant play hoi4 anymore until the new DLC since i know about the cool new future features. The current game state seems lame compared to the new stuff.

I'm not so sure that it will be released in 2017. We've had 6 Dev Diaries focused on HOI4 since the summer vacation. Everything up to this DD was free content and it is significant in value alone. Now we're catching glimpses of paid content. There are 10 Wednesdays between now and Xmas(so 11 until New Year's Day). To meet their goal, they've got to give this DLC at least $20 of value, with the bar being set high by the free content already covered.

That means that almost every DD between now and the end of November has to be focused primarily on paid content that will add significant value to the game(i'm tentatively alotting a couple of weeks to patch notes and DLC press releases etc.). Unfortunately, it also means that a Naval Mechanics revision is probably not going to make it into cornflakes, as that would have to be yet another free feature, due to the fact that it is a fundamental system.

In summary, There is a lot of free content coming in cornflakes, and I think PDS is going to have to make a tough decision: Either release before Xmas with paid content that pales in comparison to the free content that EVERYONE gets and leave DLC purchasers feeling shortchanged, or postpone to Q1 2018. I hope I'm wrong, and PDS has an arsenal of game changers up their sleeve for people that support the game financially.

 

[SrgChris]

This is Paradox digging its own grave in effect. Since DLCs need to leave behind a base game that can pick and choose between them, or can run completely satisfactorily without them, you're left in this shitty situation where you have to try to officially sell us things that someone who isn't aware of the Paradox model (that a free extensive patch comes out with the DLC) would simply laugh at.

What's going to be the Steam page description of the feature list for this $25 DLC?

• Consolidation: You can now merge damaged units
• Map mode: The map mode makes a return and you can now ping it for the benefit of other players (even though most MP games use discord/ts for communication) (most people play single player)
  
• ........................ new sprites?

For anyone saying the Chain of Command should be DLC-paid, I wouldn't get the DLC specifically because of that. The idea of having +20 generals rather than 1 FM who can control infinite units, is just too damn clunky and inefficient. But if it's forced on us, then it's something I and players used to the ease of FMs will have to deal with and learn to appreciate.