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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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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)

+1 Drifting so far afield they're getting award noms' for it..sigh..
 
+1 Drifting so far afield they're getting award noms' for it..sigh..
Its not that Alternative history can never be touched upon. But i always pictured it to be more of a fluff piece rather then a literal centerpiece of the title over the setting and the general theme of you being a leader steering your nation through such a pinnacle section of history. Not "hey wanna see a meme for 20 dollars!" I get it, it has a place and an obvious interest to many but not as an outright substitute for what the initial premise has and will forever be which is WW2.
 
I have no idea what -75% reliability mean, but I suspect it just explodes if you try to train with it.

Having spoken to someone who was in the soviet army, probably made in the soviet union.

Me "So you used to fire off rockets in exercises? That must have been cool"
Him "We drew straws"
Me "To see who'd get to fire it?"
Him "To see who'd be forced to fire it. 50/50 chance it would blow up on the rails"

Though now I also know that apparently the T-72 is an amazing ATV like vehicle masquerading as a tank....
 
Constructive Engineering and Training continuous focuses are the most popular by a wide margin
This surprises me. I would have thought Tech Sharing, Suppress Subjects or especially Suppress Partisans would be the most commonly used.

And Merry Christmas!

latest
 
Its not that Alternative history can never be touched upon. But i always pictured it to be more of a fluff piece rather then a literal centerpiece of the title over the setting and the general theme of you being a leader steering your nation through such a pinnacle section of history. Not "hey wanna see a meme for 20 dollars!" I get it, it has a place and an obvious interest to many but not as an outright substitute for what the initial premise has and will forever be which is WW2.

Yup :(
 
player led peace conferences.

This should be a wake up call. Peace is the worst mechanic in this game, and I usually just rage quit after seeing the result of a large war. I know it's not easy to handle, but I think it's critical that we can't really enjoy the results of our work when we win a large conflict.

Anyway, Merry Christmas!
 
Merry Christmas!

@podcat Are we going to see implementation of ships as part of peace treaties as part of MtG? We have the seizing of the French Fleet at Toulon (perhaps also a lend-lease type option to give away ships you no longer need or want to those that do need them?) so I'd personally love to snag the Prinz Eugen or Nagato as was done historically. Perhaps with a 50% chance on any given ship that it's crew scuttles it upon capitulation/peace treaty so it can't be seized? It would also give nations with no land grabbing interests something to actually do in the Peace Treaties. WW1 mods would love this too for seizing the Hochseeflotte tc.

Though if there's a peace treaty section of a future DLC that might be a better place for it.
 
In regards to the steam awards bit; I nominated all my PDX games and devs .... Found it a bit strange EU4 wasn't chosen for "Best game of the year" or "Labour of love" but still very happy HOI4 is running for "Best alternate history"!

Merry xmas PDX Staff!
 
Reliability - 75%. I am guessing this means that the ship breaks down a week before the mission starts? Lol.

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!
View attachment 432178

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:
View attachment 432193
(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
 
Please change unit AI so that if i don't controll oceans my units wont suicide into destroyers because of garrison order
 
Looking forward to the first YouTube MTG let's play videos. The day Quill18 gets his copy I will be a happy panda