Casual question to developers/testers who play EU4 in their own time

[ero_sk]

Hi team. I'm a software developer myself and from the day one I got into this craft the software never looked the same to me anymore. This is especially true for the software that I'm directly involved in, but I also look through different lenses at the other software I use- even though I really try to avoid it!

Hence I'm curious- if you play EU4 in your free time, how badly (or positively if you're a weirdo ) affected is your perception of the game? Are you able to fully enjoy the game, or is the experience skewed by your insight knowledge and seeing the game through different lenses? For example, where a casual player sees armies and their interactions, you might "see" AI, it's logic flows and algorithms.

 

[bokorthedust]

I'm happy to say I still enjoy it, even though I have been playing it since release. At first there was the git gud phase, where I've learnt the kinks and the ins and outs of the game, and after that came the true enjoyment. After eight years I can say I know it by heart, including AI behaviour, but even that can't put me off, and I am not ashamed to say that I even exploit or induce said behaviour to achieve my goals, but it never put me off. There are quirks I get sometimes annoyed with, mostly related to the RNG stuff, but that's life in a way. Even though I sometimes take breaks for a week or two (sometimes more if life or IRL fun gets in the way), but it has been my main game for the last nearly 9 years, to the point where I rarely play other games or even if I do I get bored with them after a while and return to good, old, EU4.

 

[Ryagi]

Not a developer, but as a community team member (And a fairly new one at that), it can feel more like "Work" compared to playing other games. That's not necessarily a bad feeling though ;p I certainly still enjoy it, just in a different and new way.

A lot of my enjoyment now comes from seeing a cool feature in the game and being like "Oh the community is going to LOVE this I can't wait to see posts about it".
Overall EU4 is still one of my favorite games to play though, and it'll likely stay that way for a while

 

[annulen]

I see a lot of minor bugs which I (hope) wouldn't ever make if I was developing that feature myself. I see some obvious UX issues in new interfaces which would be obvious to any competent UI/UX designer (I'm not one of these folks but I know a couple of things about their job). I see lack of development culture when working with numbers (truncated FP numbers everywhere instead of rounding; unsafe arithmetics that allows overflows, which are fixed only when it happens), and when working with persistent data (I've posted a large rant here).

 

[Ogele]

Hi team. I'm a software developer myself and from the day one I got into this craft the software never looked the same to me anymore. This is especially true for the software that I'm directly involved in, but I also look through different lenses at the other software I use- even though I really try to avoid it!

Hence I'm curious- if you play EU4 in your free time, how badly (or positively if you're a weirdo ) affected is your perception of the game? Are you able to fully enjoy the game, or is the experience skewed by your insight knowledge and seeing the game through different lenses? For example, where a casual player sees armies and their interactions, you might "see" AI, it's logic flows and algorithms.

That's... actually a rather difficult to answer to be honest.
I genuinely enjoy playing the game. But whenever a patch is on the horizon and I start EU4 on my private account I always have this voice in my head asking me where all the stuff went which I worked on in the past months - 1.33 is especially badly affected by it for me when I open the government reforms.
With that being said, I can "turn off the developer brain" and just have a good time with EU4.

 

[Runite Drill]

I'm not a dev, but I get similar vibes making music for the game's mods.
By the time I release an OST I've heard it 100+ times and am just sick of it. But then usually after a little break I can enjoy it again.

Also, my most recent song is always my most favourite