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HOI4 Dev Diary - Merry Christmas

As is traditional christmas time means 2 things: The dev team all disappear off on holidays and I make some beutifulhorrible holiday art... so, merry Christmas everyone!
doggos_2018.jpg


As I said we now go off on a much needed break, so expect diaries to resume again when we get back after new years :)

I figured I'd also give a little summary of the year from out point of view. This year saw the release of Waking the Tiger back in march which we are proud of and seems to have been received really well. Then during the summer we hit a new record on amount of active monthly users playing HOI (540k!!). Otherwise we have been hard at work on probably our most ambitious expansion yet - Man the Guns, which we announced (very early) at PdxCon. I expect a lot of people wanna ask me for a release date, but it is what it always is: when its ready. I can promise that we'll tell you early next year though.

As is customary I usually drop some cool statistics as well. so 'ere we go:
  • We investigated tutorials a bit and found that the HOI one actually seems to work the best of the ones we have. a whole 89% of people who start it actually complete it, and people who do complete it have a much higher chance to stick around and play the game (I am not much of a tutorial man myself, preferring to get watch lets plays and the like, but this still makes me happy :))
  • We broke all our player records during summer. I dunno if the weather was extra bad this year or not, but people seem to have been spending their vacation charging across Europe in tanks.
  • Constructive Engineering and Training continuous focuses are the most popular by a wide margin
  • The most popular total conversion mod is Road to 56 (12%) followed by Kaiserreich (8%). 3rd spot is held by Millennium Dawn at 5.5%. The most popular non TC mods are Colored Buttons and player led peace conferences.
  • Multiplayer games sit at 11% (daily unique players) and 17% use ironman

Oh yeah, we were pretty excited to hear that HOI4 had been nominated for the 2018 steam awards under Best Alternative History. I'm not gonna beg you to go vote at all. Totally up to you!

I also figured we'd highlight my 2 favorite bugs that have popped up during development. Smoke launchers let submarines lay down smoke to escape... somehow without revealing their position ;D also we had a great one where whenever we iterated on stats for a ship design it would double the stats of those modules, and also double the amount of module slots. @YaBoy_Bobby was the undisputed king of the seas in this abomination:
upload_2018-12-19_14-8-41.png

(its a while ago, so its an older iteration of the UI). I have no idea what -75% reliability mean, but I suspect it just explodes if you try to train with it.

See you all next year and have a merry Christmas and a happy new year - HOI4 Dev Team
 
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335.5 knots. Gotta go fast I guess. Though at those speeds, who even needs 600 torpedo attack when you can just blaze past the sides of ships and let cavitation rip their hulls apart for you.
 
I think the reason for the big surge in players this summer was the game's appearance in Humble Monthly. That's not a bad thing, that's where I got it then picked up the expansions and have been playing steadily since.
 
mmm you think that those popies in the photo will be killed by a catalina plane...
 
Iskulya said:
Still no word on release, but it sounds like with bugs like that you still have a ways to go. As much as I'd love to be playing this right now, take as much time as you need so we can have a nice, polished release with a passable AI.

Enjoy your vacation!
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This guy. This guy gets it.
 
Are you really serious with that award? "Best alternative history game of 2018." Common Paradox where the hell has the direction gone for this title. If your getting praised/recognized more for you alternative history aspect as opposed to the supposed dynamic grand strategy representative take on the 2nd world war that the game was initially marketed as. That is pretty telling if you ask me. Can we come back to the 2nd world war please? Can we fix the AI in the production and unit management sphere? Can we update economics and Politics? Can we get refinement on the current trends the computer takes in-game that disrupts WW2 from happening in a smooth manner? Can we get China Fixed? That would be swell, id give ya a golden globe for that.

Anyways have a good Christmas.
 
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Yeah enjoy your break HoI Team, and all HoI player have a great Christmas.
 
Robosoldier1 said:
Are you really serious with that award? "Best alternative history game of 2018." Common Paradox where the hell has the direction gone for this title. If your getting praised/recognized more for you alternative history aspect as opposed to the supposed dynamic grand strategy representative take on the 2nd world war that the game was initially marketed as. That is pretty telling if you ask me. Can we come back to the 2nd world war please? Can we fix the AI in the production and unit management sphere? Can we update economics and Politics? Can we get refinement on the current trends the computer takes in-game that disrupts WW2 from happening in a smooth manner? Can we get China Fixed? That would be swell, id give ya a golden globe for that.

Anyways have a good Christmas.
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YMBODuz.gif


You're persistent, I'll give you that much.

Merry Christmas, Paradox! I'll be voting for you tomorrow! Great work on the game so far!
 
Cheers for the DD and the ever-so-cool Christmas art Podcat :cool:. A big thanks to you and the team for all the work you've done this year, MtG is looking really tops, and I can't wait to play it when it releases next year :D.

Here's hoping all the devs and everyone here has a more spacious seasonal celebration than this u-boat crew* :)


* I'm 99% sure this is free of any dodgy symbols, given it a good look, but mods please kill it with fire if I've missed anything.

podcat said:
I usually do those right before release as we enable them in steam. I can hint that we got 21 new ones this time and they are pretty cool :)
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Arctic weather achievement confirmed!
 
Robosoldier1 said:
Are you really serious with that award? "Best alternative history game of 2018." Common Paradox where the hell has the direction gone for this title. If your getting praised/recognized more for you alternative history aspect as opposed to the supposed dynamic grand strategy representative take on the 2nd world war that the game was initially marketed as. That is pretty telling if you ask me. Can we come back to the 2nd world war please? Can we fix the AI in the production and unit management sphere? Can we update economics and Politics? Can we get refinement on the current trends the computer takes in-game that disrupts WW2 from happening in a smooth manner? Can we get China Fixed? That would be swell, id give ya a golden globe for that.
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That's what we're already getting? The bulk of the DLC's content revolves around mechanics that if nothing else will add more depth to gameplay, and hopefully lead to a more involved and historical war if you're playing with historical mode on. You seem to be demanding that they overhaul to every aspect of the game and that simply isn't realistic to expect from any sized expansion, let alone a single DLC. Furthermore you keep repeating this blatantly false dichtomy that the alternate history content of some branches of focus trees comes at the expense of mechanics. This is blatantly false.

The people that do the focus trees aren't the people that write the AI. A software development house, like any modern business, involves a division of labor. What you're asking is for the janitor to fill in for the surgeon and perform a heart bypass surgery with the reasoning that since they both work at a hospital, they must both be capable of doing the same things. When content designers finish the historical portion of a focus tree, then they either have to expand it with alternate history content or move on to a new country. Since there is a policy of 'no dlc for dlc', this means that if alternate history content is not done in the same release as historical content for a given country that it will never receive additional content, or that the content it will receive is done in a patchwork manner with little cross interactivity with other countries.

Your post mostly seems like melodramatic and disingenuous grandstanding for your pet issue of disliking alternate history even when it's not coming at the expense of other things. Almost everything you're asking for are things that are being worked on. If you don't feel it's being done quickly enough, then I'm sure nobody mind if you were to personally finance Paradox so they could afford to hire more staff to work on it.
 
Iskulya said:
That's what we're already getting? The bulk of the DLC's content revolves around mechanics that if nothing else will add more depth to gameplay, and hopefully lead to a more involved and historical war if you're playing with historical mode on. You seem to be demanding that they overhaul to every aspect of the game and that simply isn't realistic to expect from any sized expansion, let alone a single DLC. Furthermore you keep repeating this blatantly false dichtomy that the alternate history content of some branches of focus trees comes at the expense of mechanics. This is blatantly false.

The people that do the focus trees aren't the people that write the AI. A software development house, like any modern business, involves a division of labor. What you're asking is for the janitor to fill in for the surgeon and perform a heart bypass surgery with the reasoning that since they both work at a hospital, they must both be capable of doing the same things. When content designers finish the historical portion of a focus tree, then they either have to expand it with alternate history content or move on to a new country. Since there is a policy of 'no dlc for dlc', this means that if alternate history content is not done in the same release as historical content for a given country that it will never receive additional content, or that the content it will receive is done in a patchwork manner with little cross interactivity with other countries.

Your post mostly seems like melodramatic and disingenuous grandstanding for your pet issue of disliking alternate history even when it's not coming at the expense of other things. Almost everything you're asking for are things that are being worked on. If you don't feel it's being done quickly enough, then I'm sure nobody mind if you were to personally finance Paradox so they could afford to hire more staff to work on it.
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Sadly enough If I respond to this in the normal fashion to relate the innate silliness of this identity crisis this game and its developers seem to be going through for development. I prob would just get cited for the crime of wrong think like many people seem to enjoy doing for the sake of nowadays. As if they aren't undermining their own well being in terms of having an actual fullfilling WW2 game not just in combat but dynamic and complex in management. Ultimately I just cant believe I forgot the chapter in my history book where Genghis Khan rose from the dead and took back the mongol empire in the 1930s or when the Falkland islands broke free from the British with its army of elite trained attack penguins. I sure hope Paradox doesn't forget to include those. Maybe we will also see the mole men arise as well that will be a treat for sure.

Ultimately the flaw is everytime we seem to be taking a step in content it feels like half an inch for WW2 while we take a mile for alternative fantasy. Geez I can't wait for the expansion in Hearts of Chromium 4: stellaris rise of the Rajas addition just gonna be a big one.

(Oh also before I get banned by someone accusing me of trolling or something this is clearly satire and exaggeration the thing we humans tend to do)
 
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