Dev Diary - Prototype Vehicles Unit Pack

[mecanojavi99]

Honestly, I have 0 issues with the content of this DLC, I play World of Tanks so the idea of seeing paper tanks brought to life doesn't annoy me in the slightest, I even find it interesting.

But I can understand and even share the sentiment of those that are fed up with the HoI team right now, this DLC isn't bad, but it comes at a time where the communities faith on the team is at an all time low and the promised "we'll make sure GoE is good and won't stop until it is" speech turned out to be "we'll make India good, but the rest will remain lackluster".

 

[Kosaki MacTavish]

What a waste of development time!

It's on the artists' side, not the content designers', but i get your sentiment.

At least Marmot Herrington is there.

 

[Arheo]

I hadn't imagined the tin that says 'prototype vehicles' meant an immediately (?) available and viable helicopter tank in a World War 2 sim where the tech tree is over in '43 and doesn't require a special project.

These don’t have any gameplay connotations, to be clear.

What's next, a prototype ship pack that includes the avenger's carrie-

Oh god.


Why not just include it in Special Projects? Why did you guys feel like we needed more of this very fantastical content beyond that at this moment? Why not just the more grounded stuff?

Because some people want different things. These are visual-only, opt-in 3D models that you will not see if you don’t choose to engage with them.

I can accept that breaking immersion could be an argument against having them there, though the extent of interacting with models you don’t like is seeing them and deciding you don’t want to use them.

 

[Arieswolf]

Lots of wasted time on stuff that no one is ever going to use or even see. Historical units would be been appreciated and even a few semi-historical but these are pretty off the wall.

 

[Coach Bud Kilmer]

Feels like you missed a golden opportunity here...

 

[Helicopter200]

I recognize some of them from world of tanks like FV4005 aka shitbarn, STG, M-V-Yoh, Steyr Pak 43, T43E1, Alecto, AMX Tank destroyer aka CDC, MTLS-1GI4 and T82

 

[ZeDoctor1918]

Because some people want different things. These are visual-only, opt-in 3D models that you will not see if you don’t choose to engage with them.

I can accept that breaking immersion could be an argument against having them there, though the extent of interacting with models you don’t like is seeing them and deciding you don’t want to use them.

Did you guys do some focus group where a plethora of the people in it said they wanted this? People do want different things, what about the people who want Hoi4 to return to at least being a semi-plausible WW2 game, or the ones who want some of the yearslong bugs to get fixed that have been reported numerous times? What it really looks like is GoE bombed so hard that this seemed like a quick way to get, what I'm assuming will be at least $4.99 out of a few players to try and offset that.

What happened to "Collectively, and personally, we were quite clearly wrong. As an organization we were unaware of the issues present in this release, and this represents a serious need for some inward thinking on how we arrived at this decision, and how we reorganize ourselves to prevent it occurring again. I have few answers for you right now as we’re focusing on the short-term goals for putting Graveyard of Empires right, but we have no intention of sweeping this under the rug."? Since now the line is "We have no plans to revisit old DLC at the moment, same for GoE"?

 

[Teo41]

I honestly don't get all the hate towards this vehicle pack. I mean, it was pre-announced already way before the EP1 became available, so people could already decide back then if to buy the EP or not.

 

[hannibal_pjv]

+1 for ship models. Such wasted potential

Maybe ICE made aircraft Carrier…

 

[Kosaki MacTavish]

I honestly don't get all the hate towards this vehicle pack. I mean, it was pre-announced already way before the EP1 became available, so people could already decide back then if to buy the EP or not.

Perception that development time was spent to create this instead of fully fixing Graveyard of Empires. Not helped by the devs actually saying this:

We have some good news! Prototype Vehicles are almost ready to roll out, so instead of releasing them in Q3 as initially announced, we will launch them in Q2! Yes, the Prototype vehicle pack will be dropping soon, and you’ll find some juicy details below.

...which does imply that somehow they're able to be finished with this DLC's contents first rather than additional models for GoE countries.

This cosmetic pack would not get as large protest as this if GoE was on a better release state than the March 4th one.

Again, i'm glad they added some prototype-level tanks like Marmot-Herrington one (obviously due to my Indies bias), but for the far-fetched, 1950s+ tanks, maybe the time to draw them can be spent on making more models for GoE nations.

 

[lilcritt]

I can accept that breaking immersion could be an argument against having them there, though the extent of interacting with models you don’t like is seeing them and deciding you don’t want to use them.

I'd love to use many of them, most look excellent, I'd love to just have more realistic designs - or even more actual designs. But having an immediate helicopter tank next to more grounded designs is still immersion breaking. Especially when in multiplayer. This is stuff you see in mobile games or their ads. It's also strange to be adjacent to special projects, rather than building on them - being in the same expansion pass.

Again, to my point about going from 0-90 on the more prominent and unserious parts of the game, this is just contributing to that, and where the direction/focus of the game is going.

What makes this all worse is the timing. This unnecessary and fanciful addition comes right after a poorly received release and serious building concerns of the games support. Just like with previous content packs, we were told that issues would be seriously addressed and communication would improve. Yet here we are again - no meaningful responses from the developers in the dev diary thread, and once again, quickly moved on to its next release. We still don't know what went wrong with GoE.

Why should anyone ever do (frankly, your job) in the fantastic research that you invited, if only to get largely ignored? Why have any faith? Why should we overlook all of this? Debt keeps piling up, the war efforts unfocused and feel like the bare minimum support anyone else would provide, and each new release seems to be declining in quality while becoming increasingly fantastical. It's another thing to have some fun meme content in a different environment or context.

 

[Duke_Dave]

I honestly don't get all the hate towards this vehicle pack. I mean, it was pre-announced already way before the EP1 became available, so people could already decide back then if to buy the EP or not.

Because GoE wasn't fixed.

 

[lilcritt]

I honestly don't get all the hate towards this vehicle pack. I mean, it was pre-announced already way before the EP1 became available, so people could already decide back then if to buy the EP or not.

I would be more willing to ignore the goofiness and price if GoE was actually addressed, communication was actually improved and war efforts were actually an effort. If some promises were actually kept.

 

[Arheo]

Did you guys do some focus group where a plethora of the people in it said they wanted this? People do want different things, what about the people who want Hoi4 to return to at least being a semi-plausible WW2 game

Supporting different player fantasies means providing for them all; not cutting other people's fun out of the game in order to appeal to any given subgroup. There are different ways to do this though, but I feel like making potentially divisive stuff opt-in is generally one of the better ones.

What it really looks like is GoE bombed so hard that this seemed like a quick way to get, what I'm assuming will be at least $4.99 out of a few players to try and offset that.

This was announced along with GoE back in October(or whenever it was - time hasn't been the same since COVID). I don't see how this could be true even if we assume that actually we're all evil.

I'd love to use many of them, most look excellent, I'd love to just have more realistic designs - or even more actual designs. But having an immediate helicopter tank next to more grounded designs is still immersion breaking. Especially when in multiplayer. This is stuff you see in mobile games or their ads. It's also strange to be adjacent to special projects, rather than building on them - being in the same expansion pass.

Again, to my point about going from 0-90 on the more prominent and unserious parts of the game, this is just contributing to that, and where the direction/focus of the game is going.

What makes this all worse is the timing. This unnecessary and fanciful addition comes right after a poorly received release and serious building concerns of the games support. Just like with previous content packs, we were told that issues would be seriously addressed and communication would improve. Yet here we are again - no meaningful responses from the developers in the dev diary thread, and once again, quickly moved on to its next release. We still don't know what went wrong with GoE.

I won't argue the timing has been an issue here. But timing doesn't release us from an obligation to release something we've openly announced. Outside of that problems with GoE, I think the connection between special projects and prototype vehicles makes thematic sense, even though we might disagree on the extents. I hear you on them being adjacent to SPs though - unit packs have always been cosmetic, but this does give me some ideas.

 

[hannibal_pjv]

Nice!

And something to artists to do while the rest of the team is doing bug fixes and next big expansions…
More of these! Thank you!

Maybe graphic pack for famous planes, tanks etc. At the different time periods of the war and/or different theathers.
I would like to see 10 different 109 models. Afrikan camo 109d, Late war western front 109g and so on.
Somehing to graphic designers do when that department is quiet!
Not everyone would buy these, but I like bling in my game… and would be nice to see Afrikan camo, in africa etc. It would give me some pleasure to see historical model at different versions!

 

[Kosaki MacTavish]

At least these are actually from WW2, even if absurd.

Some of them, that's why it's excused.

The ones from 1950s+? Not so much.

 

[stingray20]

We have no plans to revisit old DLC at the moment, same for GoE, except through future war effort patches, so if you do make a very helpful research post, this could insprite our content designers to pick up some of that stuff for said future war effort patch!

This is a strange stance to take that you don’t plan on revisiting the older content to update it to work with the current game. Maybe I’m misunderstanding but do you mean you don’t want to retroactively update it or you just don’t want to take care of the game. Most of the original DLC’s are showing their age; they need to be upkept with a custodian team. It just seems like you don’t care for the game anymore

 

[Louco doido]

Do you have any plans to update some tank models in the game? Tiger 1 and 2 look like chrome toys.

 

[KopiG]

Okay seriously this is getting out of hand, please stop. For example Closed Economy actually doesnt work ruining half of my games and they are joking with these stuffs? I very rarely "respecfully disagree" but now they earned it.

 

[Barron of Gondor]

Wait wait wait.

One dev used “Hobart’s Funnies” to justify a helicopter tank.

Ok Hobart’s funnies wasn’t a special project. Hobart’s Funnies wasn’t an engineering challenge that required years of research done by paid scientists making a groundbreaking discovery.

Hobart’s Funnies was a collection of modifications made to existing tank designs, to overcome terrain problems… a bulldozer plow welded onto a Sherman. A mine flail put on a Churchill etc. they were called funny because they looked funny. But they made mass use because of the military modicum of “if it looks stupid but works; it ain’t stupid”.

They were innovative designs for Macgyvering things from existing technology.

It’s concerning that a very prominent WW2 game development team has this misunderstanding.