Dev Diary #140 - Legacy of Persia & 1.11 'Peacock' Free Update

[Werther]

Bit sad that harm events are tuned down (and not for players on default, the option most players use) as I had lot of fun in my 867-1453 campaign thanks to that (no more 80 years characters, but a lot of... hum... surprises, and fun with succession).

They should have at least nerf it but kept it as the default option, so players who only play casually and don't look at game rules can enjoy a surprised death from time to time.

 

[tilly]

• Character modifiers can be now clicked and display an expanded view of all existing modifiers. Players can now see all modifiers on the character, and not only the first 10 items.

this is excellent. this is a really solid ui change, one ive been begging for for yonks

is getting something like this for traits on the cards at all? or better yet, some kind of scroll bar? since toto its relatively easy to pick up more traits than the ui can display and its kind of a pain when you want to check a lifestyle trait for xp and stuff

 

[SanicK]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ghts-cause-ai-to-50-50-event-options.1578209/

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ent-other-than-default.1589630/#post-29113110

Unfortunately as it seems from the patch notes that this 2 bugs were not fixed.

Sad, because they feel pretty if not gamebreaking but definitely fun breaking.

Thank you for bringing these bugs to the attention of Devs and the community. Hopefully, if they didn't fix it in this patch, they will fix it in the post-launch patch.

 

[Tschobo]

Love the Umayyad and Darius Achievement. A lot of the achievements look fun.

And I am surprised about the anger of the harm event changes. You still can activate them and for players new to PDX-Games they could be seen as a wrench thrown into their game If they don't know about it

But anyways. Off I go to play today.

 

[CallMeZiz]

To me, the default game rule say:
* This is what the game is balanced around.
* This is the experience the developers intend.

So it bothers me that the default, developer-intended, balanced experience is one in which the player is sent out into the game world dressed in bubble wrap. I'm not against game rules as a concept, but I think the defaults should be a strong playing experience, not tutorial mode.

I think the problem with this attitude towards these games is that the only people who are guaranteed to be playing the game on default rules are new or casual players, since they are unfamiliar/unskilled with the game mechanics and won’t know what to change. These types of players coincidentally also happen to be the most likely to complain when the game randomly gives them an event where their character has an 80% risk of dying. Since veteran players will just choose the rules they want, why shouldn’t the CK3 team save themselves from the headache of having players rushing to the forums to complain about this mechanic if they can just change the default configuration of the rules.

 

[grumphie]

i wish they'd keep harm events for players on, they mostly just needed some tuning so you don't get multiple every character. some of my most memorable characters have been due to random bad luck.

i think they'd do a lot better were they more integrated with events in general. right now you get an event around a lake and you know you're at risk of drowning. if there were other event(s) and chains related to the harm starting event, it'd feel a lot less like a deathflag getting one when odds are it might be something else entirely.

 

[PDXOxycoon]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ghts-cause-ai-to-50-50-event-options.1578209/

Pretty sure I fixed that one... *looks up my list of commits on this patch* Yep, I did.

 

[ck3enjoyer]

Pretty sure I fixed that one... *looks up my list of commits on this patch* Yep, I did.

That's great news! Now I feel awkward


What about my bug report about guests not interacting with activities? I don't want to pressure you guys, but it's such an obvious bug and Herennius made a great post with multiple save files, it's very easy to reproduce!

 

[SanicK]

Pretty sure I fixed that one... *looks up my list of commits on this patch* Yep, I did.

Thanks for the quick response. Keep up the good work!

 

[PDXOxycoon]

That's great news! Now I feel awkward

Don't feel awkward, some times our changelog tool feels moody. Here is the entry I made at least.
- Bugfix: AI event options will now treat negatively weighted options with a weight of zero

What about my bug report about guests not interacting with a activities?

I haven't looked at this one at least. I have personally have limited involvement with Legacy of Persia, so cannot say anything on this one.

 

[Danon2]

Great!

Does this fix the problem with the link?

Starting/Participating in tournaments will cause the ambience sound to bug indefinitely, even when the activity is over.

Information I have verifed my game files (Steam only) Yes I have disabled all mods Yes I am running the latest game update Yes Required Summary Starting/Participating in tournaments will cause the ambience sound to bug indefinitely, even when...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Kami-sama]

All Your Caliphate Are Belong To Us​

View attachment 1044703
Take the Dominate the Caliph foundation as part of the Abbasid Humiliation ending in the Iranian Intermezzo Struggle.

In A.D. 867 Iranian Intermezzo Was Beginning.
Caliph: What happen?
Vizier: Somebody declared on us the war.
Vizier: We get letter.
Caliph: What!
Vizier: Letter envelope cut.
Caliph: It's them!!
Player: How are you gentlemen!!
Player: All Your Caliphate Are Belong to Us.
Player: You are on the way to destruction.
Caliph: What you say!!
Player: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Player: Ha ha ha ha....
Vizier: Caliph!
Caliph: Raise all armies!!
Caliph: You know what you doing.
Caliph: Move armies.
Caliph: For Great Justice.

 

[Werther]

I think the problem with this attitude towards these games is that the only people who are guaranteed to be playing the game on default rules are new or casual players, since they are unfamiliar/unskilled with the game mechanics and won’t know what to change. These types of players coincidentally also happen to be the most likely to complain when the game randomly gives them an event where their character has an 80% risk of dying. Since veteran players will just choose the rules they want, why shouldn’t the CK3 team save themselves from the headache of having players rushing to the forums to complain about this mecahnic if they can just change the default configuration of the rules.

Why nerfing harm events then? If they are not by default anymore, those who enable the rule wants to play with them. Why lowering their chance?

In my campaign, one of my characters didn't escaped his 80% chance dying and it started a 20 years period of anarchy and mess that ended with a new branch on the throne. I still remember this period. Another one survived (only 20% chance) and as always without harm event, he died 65 years later. I was so bored that I almost wanted him to have died (and I don't remember his reign except that I didn't fear for him even once). Now even poor chance of survival is 40%.

 

[Andrzej2]

I was pleasantly surprised by the addition of harm events. Random deaths was one of the main things which made Ck2 much more interesting than Ck3 - sudden successions, civil wars, sometimes rulers dying one after another - those situations create a great story and greatly contribute to interesting, challenging gameplay.

I hoped that it's maybe just a first step in a right direction to revisit difficulty of Ck3 and maybe once again open up a little to the old playerbase instead of designing everything with casuals in mind.

It's sad to see that not only default option was set to no harm to players but also chances of actually getting harmed from the event were lowered.

 

[Cassilda]

Has the random switches between government form been solved with the new clan overhaul?

Random feudal to clan switch

 

[CallMeZiz]

Why nerfing harm events then? If they are not by default anymore, those who enable the rule wants to play with them. Why lowering their chance?

In my campaign, one of my characters didn't escaped his 80% chance dying and it started a 20 years period of anarchy and mess that ended with a new branch on the throne. I still remember this period. Another one survived (only 20% chance) and as always without harm event, he died 65 years later. I was so bored that I almost wanted him to have died (and I don't remember his reign except that I didn't fear for him even once). Now even poor chance of survival is 40%.

At no point am I arguing for the nerfing of all harm events. Personally, I thought they were fine as they were, at least for the harshest rule. I just think it’s entirely reasonable for them to change which gamerule they defaulted to.

 

[Wokeg]

Cool!

Now onwards to the big 2024 DLC.

Waaaaaaay ahead of you .

Man, harm events got nerfed heavily. I know, I shouldn't knock something without trying it (and you can probably turn harm events back on for the player), but I think it was a little heavy-handed. (I'm not a huge fan of the harm events but I see them a necessary evil considering rulers much longer natural lifespans in CK3 compared to CKII...at least until map-wide disease outbreaks come back. But even then, death via old age in your late thirties solely because RNG hated you was possible in II if you were very unlucky.)

I'd rather be incapable then dead, personally. Incapable still enables the suicide decision (so you can "upgrade" from a incapable ruler in a regency to your successor) and regencies are a bit rare. For the odds of coming out unscathed, I'd rather they make it a spectrum instead of all or nothing. I.E. it being possible to survive, but end up badly injured + random maimed/one-legged/one-eyed/blind/eunuch/disfigured. (They'd have to set it up per-event though. Slipping in the tub and getting one-eyed because you fell eye-first onto something makes sense, almost drowning and winding up becoming an eunuch doesn't.)

Glad the AI will have a better time forming the HRE. I'm a bit of a "historical accuracy nut" and it was always a bit disappointing how 867 starts never had the HRE form, but to be fair, I think it was like that in CKII, too. (I felt the same way about that one part of CK3's patch history where William The Conqueror would be Conqueror No More, with Godwinson nearly always winning because he'd form allies with the HRE and stuff.)

Can you please stop treating players with kid gloves? PLEASE?!

But why?

Bit sad that harm events are tuned down (and not for players on default, the option most players use) as I had lot of fun in my 867-1453 campaign thanks to that (no more 80 years characters, but a lot of... hum... surprises, and fun with succession).

They should have at least nerf it but kept it as the default option, so players who only play casually and don't look at game rules can enjoy a surprised death from time to time.

Heya folks! Harm events designer & axer here, and I can see we've got some people upset, so I'll give little context on why this was done: harm events weren't actually an intended part of EP2. They weren't an intended part of anything. They were something I made in my own time because there seemed to be a clear dislike from a vocal part of the community (whose size I think I probably overestimated) for ruler longevity, and I thought I had a good way to help start addressing that.

Problem is, though they really worked for certain types of players, it's rapidly become clear that they're a huge net negative for many more. They're materially unpopular with most players, something reflected in a lot of the feedback we've had since Tours & Tournaments launched: I frequently see them described as misguided at best, often lazy or badly designed, sometimes as just a plaster over deeper gameplay problems or as a rush job thrown in with no real care, and worst of all, as a huge source of quit moments for new players. Though I don't really agree with the harsher criticisms, they definitely ended up a markedly larger pain point than the one they were trying to solve, and for many more people.

So they're now adjusted for wider taste odds-wise and disabled for players by default. If folks still want them, they're there, they can be turned back on as easily as they could be turned off before, but they were an idea that just didn't work out how I'd hoped. Sucks but it happens. We've not abandoned the idea of making characters less long-lived or providing more setbacks and player friction, but we (or I, here, I suppose) don't think that harm events are actually such a good way to do that.

We'll continue to look at other ways to address health and longevity issues, and modifier stacking generally, but likely aiming for stuff that's a bit subtler/more broadly applicable. I'm just not expecting to see the list expanded or get the time allocated to make the generic health loss harm events that I'd hoped to get to do at some point.

If there proves to be sufficient appetite for it, we might add a game rule to revert the survival chances to the original values, but if I'm being frank then even within the small minority of people who liked harm events, the vast majority of those seemed to want increased odds too, so I'm afraid that folks who want harsh chances and random death (at least, in this specific way: again we'll be trying other stuff in future, just not this) are in something of a super-minority.

To me, the default game rule say:
* This is what the game is balanced around.
* This is the experience the developers intend.

So it bothers me that the default, developer-intended, balanced experience is one in which the player is sent out into the game world dressed in bubble wrap. I'm not against game rules as a concept, but I think the defaults should be a strong playing experience, not tutorial mode.

Honestly, I'd personally agree with that assessment of game rule configuration.

I think the problem with this attitude towards these games is that the only people who are guaranteed to be playing the game on default rules are new or casual players, since they are unfamiliar/unskilled with the game mechanics and won’t know what to change. These types of players coincidentally also happen to be the most likely to complain when the game randomly gives them an event where their character has an 80% risk of dying. Since veteran players will just choose the rules they want, why shouldn’t the CK3 team save themselves from the headache of having players rushing to the forums to complain about this mecahnic if they can just change the default configuration of the rules.

Hit a good deal of the nail on the head there, though I will stress that we've also had a lot of complaints from non-newbs too. I suspect that a portion of it comes down to what's realistic not necessarily being immersive and vice versa, as well as immersion varying between player types — sometimes substantially.

 

[Pistike]

There are some good changes here.

Please can we have a game rule to turn off struggles without the need for disabling DLCs?

 

[Luka031]

Harm events should stay unchanged ngl. I liked the randomnes

 

[Luka031]

I like the create cadet branch option