In addition to powercreep I would also like to draw attention to the addition of modifiers when existing modifiers could do the same work.
For example the new "morale damage dealt" and "morale damage received", army morale already increases morale damage, and increases max morale so would do the same job of those two new modifiers functionally. But it can be argued "morale damage dealt" represents units that are fearsome but aren't that resistant to breaking formation or panicking (cough cough... elephants... cough). But morale damage received is functionally similar to increase in max morale.
The worst offender is the "increased effect from absolutism". 80% of the benefit of absolutism is the administrative efficiency, and other 20% is the discipline. Do anyone care about the foreign core decay? Now "+20% increased effect of absolutism" would give 6 extra AE, and 1 discipline at max absolutism. So what is the point of this modifier? Could a mission reward of 5 AE, which is common, not suffice? Just modifiers for modifiers' sake. All this does is make it difficult to make out the usefulness of various modifiers relative to each others, and in turn gauge the power of various nations.
Also, the new reworks for different nations are limited to just three things. Overpowered missions trees, estate bonuses or government reforms. From emperor dlc onwards I have difficulties remembering any other area that got changed other than these three, besides monuments, which I feel make the game too much like CIV.
And now we see the return of old removed concepts in new packages like, westernisation or protectorates or the tributtons. There are so many areas the game need a touch up. Like improving trade, finding a use for cavalry for every nation and not only those that have +20% or more CCA, reduce feature bloat from related systems like "protect trade" and "hunt pirates", revamp trade goods.
And it's not like that paradox lacks good ideas. They introduced a new role for skirmish cavalry, but only for some Swedish mercenaries, They introduced trade ships that can ferry troops (as it should be ) but only for the Dutch. The new modifier of cavalry having some chance of doing damage to the back row didn't make it into the game, it could shake the lategame only inf-arty meta. Having some control of which goods your colony produces (like investing some cash, and it can be profitable or a disaster) could help colonial nations but is sadly limited to British.
You can say that I am advocating giving special DLC features to every nation, it can be somewhat true. But I am not saying give every feature to every nation. Holy orders for chinese nations make no sense and every nation don't need a equivalent for banners. What I am saying is not limit features that change gameplay fundamentally to a few tags. Like if they ever introduce elephant cavalry (I would love that) in the game it should not be limited to just Siam, because they have a elephant in their flag, but be available to all Indian and south-east asian tags. Now if the British colonises India they can make use of those too. Similarly if a Indian nation colonises the steppe, they could get access to cossacks or tatar cavalry or cultivate a home grown cavalry focused army.
I am lately finding very little of interest in the dev diaries, not only because these are about major nations I will not play. My reaction to the latest diary that introduced a new government reform tier for every nation was "meh, a bunch of modifiers, from overpowered to trash, will be given randomly", and I used yo like these sort of stuff. Too much modifiers and too few new mechanics is making the game boring for me.
