EU5 will most likely be a failure

[Tibi088]

I extremely dislike inherent buffs that last for centuries because of things that happened in real life for a short time period, especially so when that time period occurred in the late 18th and early 19th century. Makes every game feel the same.

Thats why I proposed a way where you have to work for it. You could still get prussian space marines, and only as Prussia, but you would have to actively work for them.

 

[Workiwork]

i kind of like a middle ground between only one nation can get it and every nation can get a version of it. the french strong duchies privilege with plus 3 dip slots and plus 2 for everyone else comes to mind.

plus dynamic stuff like said before. french is accepted and core part of your empire? get french strong duchies as an option. (only as an example, eu5 will look different anyway)

 

[Brynjar]

Thats why I proposed a way where you have to work for it. You could still get prussian space marines, and only as Prussia, but you would have to actively work for them.

Guiding players down a pre-determined path with mission trees does not solve the "problem". All that does is "force" the direction the player takes, which reinforces the feel of every game being the same.

 

[Blk82]

Transition from EU3 to EU4 was pretty smooth IIRC. Unlike Ck2->CK3 where a lot of content was cut and not replaced with anything even years later.

Further Johan's comments in this thread - especially about liking the mission system in IR - are very encouraging for me. That would be a great way to form your countries. Prussia woul not be determined to become a military powerhause because of modifiers it will attain with time. Instead it would have the option to become the army with the state it went with OTL but if it goes lets say a naval route it could end up with a completely different character, like a naval power house. Or a trade focused nation. With some region and country specific mission threes addition to some general ones we could have much more freedom to shape our nation to be what we would like.

Another aspect of the game I hope they do more with is the age systems. I think it could be used way more radically, with more, stronger age specific mechanics.

Without some degree of railroading, the game loses its connection to reality. I think this gets back to realistic/challenging/winnable incompatibility. The player wants to engage in an ahistorical path, but expected the AI to play normally. Without some degree of railroading or buffs, it is difficult to have an end-boss, or ensure that the world looks "plausible."

 

[Lazy Sorcerer]

I feel like it'll do just aswell as CK3 and Vic3 has done.

There is curretnly this exact problem with Vic 3 where some players wanted deeper and more complex autonomous POPs and more mechanics that take advantage of that and those that just wanted to see their numbers go up and hate everything that slows that down (the devs lean hard towards the second group).

 

[Tibi088]

Guiding players down a pre-determined path with mission trees does not solve the "problem". All that does is "force" the direction the player takes, which reinforces the feel of every game being the same.

Than you have completely misunderstood me. There is no 1 determined path - there are a lot of paths (mission trees - see IR mission system). You can decide which path you take your country into. Some paths - mission trees - would be only available to certain nations. Others would be available to anyone who fullfills some criteria - having provinces in a certain region for example. Finally there would be generic ones available to anyone.

To remain at the prussian example: You could go down the path that leads you to have your space marines - a path only allowed to Prussia. But you could choose to focusinstead on something other: colonization for example. You would not simply have space marines because you are Prussia, but you would have the chance.

 

[Tibi088]

Without some degree of railroading, the game loses its connection to reality. I think this gets back to realistic/challenging/winnable incompatibility. The player wants to engage in an historical path, but expected the AI to play normally. Without some degree of railroading or buffs, it is difficult to have an end-boss, or ensure that the world looks "plausible."

Im not a programmer but I would think that you could make the AI pursue some paths more often than other. So AI Prussia will go the Space Marine route 9 of 10 games. France becomes the BBB, the Ottoman take half of the Mediterranean etc.

 

[Ixal]

Without some degree of railroading, the game loses its connection to reality. I think this gets back to realistic/challenging/winnable incompatibility. The player wants to engage in an historical path, but expected the AI to play normally. Without some degree of railroading or buffs, it is difficult to have an end-boss, or ensure that the world looks "plausible."

The game played out quite historical before the mission trees were added.
I would even say it was more historical back then, but thats also because of institutions letting Asia catch up more easily.

 

[Brynjar]

Than you have completely misunderstood me. There is no 1 determined path - there are a lot of paths (mission trees - see IR mission system). You can decide which path you take your country into. Some paths - mission trees - would be only available to certain nations.

It doesn't matter if you have 50 different paths. Any objective that steers the direction of the game for no other reason than to obtain a reward will result in games following more or less pre-defined paths. That is in my opinion bad by design, not due to the way it is implemented. IR mission trees are almost as bad as the ones in EU4, they are not some magic solution to the core problem with mission trees.

To remain at the prussian example: You could go down the path that leads you to have your space marines - a path only allowed to Prussia. But you could choose to focusinstead on something other: colonization for example. You would not simply have space marines because you are Prussia, but you would have the chance.

I can already do this without mission trees. Why would I want someone at Paradox to decide my ingame actions instead of leaving it to how the game develops? I'm fine with bonuses based on my choice of nation to play, that is part of what makes me pick a country to play, or even bonuses you pay a basic resource for. What I don't want to see at all is any kind of mission that requires me to have any sort of interaction with pre-defined provinces, countries etc. From the moment the time starts ticking those kinds of interactions should be entirely up to me, not what the devs tells me I should do. I also should not lose out on a bunch of huge bonuses just because I choose not to press a button to change my name from the Teutonic Order to Prussia.

 

[Promethium555]

EU5 needs to have uniquness and i'm not talking about mechanics, features or other sort of content that would be presented later in the game via DLCs but instead when you launch the product that it can feel unique. What i'm talking about is lets say that EU5 is launched, for what ever reason you play as Brandenburg/Prussia, well B/P imidiatly needs to have unique gameplay instead of making a mistake and making country feel generic. And when i say generic i by that mean that there won't be any difference between lets say B/P or France for example. Don't get me wrong i'm all for DLCs to come for potentional EU5 but game quality really needs to be high. Take for example Government Reforms that were introduced with Dharma, well GR in the case of EU5 should be day 1 thing instead of being introduced by DLC.

I feel like solid core mechanics should take precedence over flavor. When unique mechanics do get added for prussia in eu5 I don't want it to be another "click a button to get x militarization points". Without a solid core "flavor" is just a band-aid.

 

[brantodb01]

EU5 will be crap on release just like all of their games. They launch with no flavour and it sucks because every nation is the same

 

[Kapi96]

If every nation can do the same it hurts the replayability of the game. Its why I stopped playing CK3 even if its a good game.
The asymmetrical start is key to the massive replayability eu4 has. I dont want every nation to be able to be prussia.

Couldn't agree more with this!

The push for "everybody can do anything" in CK3 just makes every country/religion feel incredibly generic and boring. After 1 game there's no real reason to play anybody else, they can do all the same things. I saw on the Steam recap thing that 100% of my CK3 playtime last year was the month the Iberia DLC released. Actually releasing some unique content for a region gave me a reason to come back to the game. But after I'd played in Iberia once there was no reason to keep playing again.

EU4 has the opposite problem. I don't finish games because I want to move on and play somebody else in a different way. I love that about EU and I don't want them to ruin it in EU5 by making everything "customisable" and generic.

 

[gianlucad]

Why would that be the case?

EU4 shipped with all the good EU3 content and we added more before launch.


Of course, some content always have to change between sequels, as they would no longer fit.

If we made an EU5 with another mission system than EU4, or without a mission system, of course the missions could not be reused...

Wouldn't that be because EU4 was developed from EU3 divine wind as a starting point? I feel like you guys are in a bind at the moment since it's doubtful you would even be allowed to start working on EU5 directly from EU4 without having to re-code most things for the newer jomini:clausewitz system.

This use to be the PDS modus operandi for but has been dropped in more recent titles, which is why the general feeling is that new games are devoid of content now. Instead of just continuing from what has already been done, every new game attempts to reinvent the series and falls flat on release. CK3 should have first and foremost been a 1:1 feature port from CK2, same for Victoria 3. I understand it's not what the higher ups would want as they prefer a blank slate for long-term DLC production (à la The Sims) and that being able to start from scratch means an easier time developing the game. Unfortunately, this makes it so I just don't buy anything at all now. I will probably have to wait an entire decade after release for ck3 and victoria 3 since my intention is to get the same enjoyment I already have from the older titles. It's a shame really.

 

[Promethium555]

Couldn't agree more with this!

The push for "everybody can do anything" in CK3 just makes every country/religion feel incredibly generic and boring. After 1 game there's no real reason to play anybody else, they can do all the same things. I saw on the Steam recap thing that 100% of my CK3 playtime last year was the month the Iberia DLC released. Actually releasing some unique content for a region gave me a reason to come back to the game. But after I'd played in Iberia once there was no reason to keep playing again.

EU4 has the opposite problem. I don't finish games because I want to move on and play somebody else in a different way. I love that about EU and I don't want them to ruin it in EU5 by making everything "customisable" and generic.

I half agree with you. CK3 makes every culture feels the same not because it tries to be modular, but because in its current state it simply isn't good at it. For example, every religion has three traits, which ideally should simulate the differences in how they play, right? Well nope, because none of those traits do much besides provide minor buffs or debuffs like "-20% cost to build in forests" or stuff like that. A shallow game with "unique flavor" is just a game that you can play 6 or 8 more times before you get bored of it. CK3 is flawed in its current state, yes, but saying that it's "just" because of a lack of flavor makes it seem like the game is solid in its core gameplay loop, which I don't believe to be true.

 

[Pellucid]

They just need to make it feel more like a simulation than EU4. It needs to feel like a different game.

 

[Ivashanko]

I don't like the current mission system in EU4 at all. The UI is unwieldly, and its very "unscaleable", as in a country only ever has one tree.

I much prefer the mission system in Imperator.

I'm really happy to read this! I think another huge issue is that, in my experience, few of the mission trees interact with other nations and/or estates. By that I mean starting, pursuing, and completing mission doesn't usually launch events that other affected nations (and estates) can respond to. If the actions of other nations affected your missions, it'd be a much more engaging system.

EU5 has a pretty easy way to differentiate itself from EU4: deeper internal mechanics. They might be rejected by a portion of the playerbase, but internal mechanics would instantly kill most content comparisons between EU4 and EU5.

 

[cjhoser]

If EU5 comes as unfleshed out and unfinished as CK3 and then takes years to develop basic systems the prior game has then yes EU5 will be a complete failure.

 

[arctus]

I am not even sure there will be an eu5 they just seem to milk eu4 forever

 

[Johan]

This use to be the PDS modus operandi for but has been dropped in more recent titles, which is why the general feeling is that new games are devoid of content now. Instead of just continuing from what has already been done, every new game attempts to reinvent the series and falls flat on release. CK3 should have first and foremost been a 1:1 feature port from CK2, same for Victoria 3. I understand it's not what the higher ups would want as they prefer a blank slate for long-term DLC production (à la The Sims) and that being able to start from scratch means an easier time developing the game. Unfortunately, this makes it so I just don't buy anything at all now. I will probably have to wait an entire decade after release for ck3 and victoria 3 since my intention is to get the same enjoyment I already have from the older titles. It's a shame really.

There is no "higher ups" that demand these things. Every team and project does their own decisions with their own creative control. I used to have the role of being boss of all projects, and having final creative say over everything at PDS until end of 2019, a role that Henrik Fåhraeus now has, and nobody micromanages a project in that detail.

Nowaways, most of the projects are created by people who used to be fans, and got hired to work for us, and they make ambitious new things.

Back in the day when we did a sequel.. Like HoI2 or Eu4, we took the previous game, added a few "big" features, upgraded the graphics a bit, changed some UI, and called it a sequel.

 

[cjhoser]

Back in the day when we did a sequel.. Like HoI2 or Eu4, we took the previous game, added a few "big" features, upgraded the graphics a bit, changed some UI, and called it a sequel.

This is what we want lol Just keep adding those features over the life of the game, it shouldn't take 5 years post release to get it even with prior release...