Focus trees as a mechanic should not reappear in HOI5

[Danny5072]

1) Focus trees are inherently casual and unchallenging, contradictory to the spirit of high-end strategy genre. In general we expect any games to reward players for sound, well-informed and competent decisions, and punish them for rash, lazy, or unattentive decisions. That's how more experienced players outperform less experienced ones. In strategy games that consists of either strategical (duh) or tactical decisions. On an example of a HOI4-type WW2 war-centered grand strategy: what kind of war materiel should I focus on in production? what regions should I prioritize construction in? when do I need to lay down a new warship for it to be ready for war? actually, when do I go to war? who do I attack first? what theatre will be the priority? and, on a tactical level, where do I order my units and how do I make best use of their capabilities?
Focus trees do not provide any strategic depth to the player's decision-making and require very little planning. Generally speaking, focuses reward the player for doing nothing, i. e. give rewards when the player hasn't achieved anything or demonstrated any skillful decision-making. The only level of strategy with focus trees is to think in what order you want them completed (I'll give them that) but essentially you're choosing which free rewards to get, which is a game design principle straight out of autobattler mobile games whose brainrot ads YouTube spams you with.
There are better alternatives within the Paradox game series to the focus trees. HOI4 focuses, EU4 missions, and Vic3 journal entries are obviously the brainchildren of the same initial premise. However, the latter two usually set objectives for the player to complete and then give the reward. It creates a natural sense of not only progression but achievement, and gratifies the player in a much more justifiable manner. Some power creep has hit EU4 missions for sure but they don't allow small nations to balloon out of any reasonable premises: expansion opportunities provided by them (such as with permanent claims) are still limited by other game mechanics such as OE and AE and the ability to, well, win wars over a long time period; tall gameplay opportunities are also limited by the player's ability to funnel mana and ducats into the development. While in HOI4 Uruguay has an economy the size of Italy by mid game.

2) Focus trees enable and incentivize spaghetti code and parasitic game design. I'm referring to a phenomenon where tucking something away in a focus (or developing a one-off feature to code a specific focus) is more convenient for the developer (leaving no surprises when that is the route chosen for new content) which in the long term creates a pool of disunited and asymmetrical game mechanics for different nations. National focuses as such become a half-baked bandaid solution for a whole array of features that the game wants to represent but has no mechanics to do so. Here are some instances where this is observable:

• there is no unified coring or claiming mechanic, each nation has a unique coring mechanism (sometimes several) which are all actuated through selecting the respective focuses; the same applies to formable nations and especially the 'diplomatically formable' nations
• diplomatic mechanics are really shallow, each instance of 'demand land' in the game (of which there are now very many) has to be coded separately for an event that is called by a focus
• instead of a symmetrical and generalized political system there is a unique political mechanic for nearly any country with political content (Bulgaria has the factions, Italy and Finland have balance of power, Germany has the Inner Circle, USA has the parliament, Soviets have the paranoia, etc.)
• even the arms trading/donating (which DO have generalized mechanics in the game - market and lend-lease) is sometimes still represented by focuses that spawn equipment from nowhere at no cost for the supposed donor

A recent example of parasitic game design here is the 'contested ownership' mechanic from the last DLC. It was created specifically for the needs of Reichskommissariats, specifically to solve a problem that a rework of German focus tree created. It will likely not be revisited again for any other instance. It will not lead to a broader rework of puppets or occupations, or consequences of acquiring land mid-war. And I bet some of you failed to immediately remember what this 'contested ownership' even is.

The problem here is not merely that countries have an abundance of asymmetrical content. After all we want that sweet 'national flavor' don't we, especially considering that HOI4 moved towards more of a roleplay approach rather than railroaded WW2 wargame simulation (and HOI5 will too, I presume). The problem is that focus trees necessarily make said 'national flavor' the overwhelming (if not the only) development priority. This is a faulty set of incentives; the outcome is - making a new focus tree for a new nation is considered progress in the game development, while older bugs (see the equipment tags) and outdated mechanics (navy) may receive no attention for years.
Besides, this is inconvenient for the players (certain aspects of the game just need to be remembered by heart for each different focus tree), prone to bugs and nonsense outcomes (as it's not plausible to recheck all new focuses against all previous content to ensure it won't be broken), and susceptible to all kinds of clutter ('an artist knows that they achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away' - are we sure that HOI4 really needs all these 'air focuses' to give a '100% bonus to medium bomber tech'?).

3) Focuses are an unnecessary chore and a click-heavy interaction, and designing them otherwise would make them pointless. The player has to click focuses all the time to make best use of the system. They also have to spend time in the focus window to read and plan the focuses unless they know the tree by heart, and this window needs to be visited much more often than say a EU4 mission tree or Vic3 journal, making it a significant interruption in gameplay. This is a lot of player attention for a mechanic that doesn't actually contribute to the bread and butter of the game - the thing you're supposed to be doing the most - which is fighting wars. How many times did it happen to you that you're locked in microing an encirclement and now this huge notification appears suggesting you to go pick a focus for some 10% buff or a research bonus to trucks? And you do it because it's suboptimal not to?

This is fixable with queueing focuses or having some sort of automation setting, but implementing either of that would be contradictory to the whole narrative point of focuses (to provide content and immersion) and would be a recognition of developer's failure at making focus trees a compelling mechanic to be involved with. If we're making focus trees automatizable then it's not functionally different from automatically receiving rewards at a steady pace. Which a) bad in itself (see point 1), b) is not merely comparable to how construction and production mechanics work in HOI4 (after all you queue factories for them to be built later) but would actually replace them in particular instances (for focuses that give you industry). Why have several systems to do the same thing?

 

[coffeelingfine]

I agree. The introduction of the decisions mechanic should have made them redundant anyway

 

[Rycestealer]

Perfectly said my friend. I said something similar earlier today in another thread. Part of the issues could be resolved by changing how focus trees are designed, but ultimately, there is little financial incentive to go back and overhaul systems like diplomacy since a fleshed out system like EU would make focuses obsolete in many ways. Not good for business.

Much of the issues with plausibility lie directly with how focus trees are structured and put mutually exclusive alternative history paths right at the beginning of the focus tree. While this sort of design compartmentalizes alternative history focuses quite well from a design perspective and allow a designer to make each path stand apart from one another, this ultimately causes several issues. The first is that all of these alternative history branches branch off at the beginning of the game and immediately railroad a country down a certain path unless the country in question loses a civil war. The similar timing also makes the path of the world effectively set in stone after the first 70 days of the game regardless of player intervention.

This sort of gameplay design does empower minor nations as the player cannot be jolted off course by actions of major nations, but it also completely removes diplomacy and espionage as meaningful tools to get nations on your side during the game as said minor nation destinies are already set. Even countries like Switzerland have AI strategies that are set in stone and heavily favor certain paths even if it is not in their best interests and ultimately ruins emergent gameplay in what-if scenarios like Norway successfully resisting invasion leading to Sweden and in extension Finland joining the allies making a Berlin-Moscow axis possible, for example. This also ruins what I the 'power fantasy' of playing as major nations like the Britain, France, and the Soviets making demands upon minor nations to comply as well as really ruining the 'death and dishonor nations' of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania which all had attempted ceasefires with the Soviets or had their governments overthrown and had switched sides.

Ultimately, Hoi4s business model revolves around selling mechanics (especially country specific ones) and focus trees with diplomacy and espionage as features being largely on the back burner and a full expansion of these features to eu4 or hoi3 level would likely require a rework of pretty much every focus tree in the game, especially foreign policy branches, and ultimately disempower focus trees as a mechanic which would be contrary to the business model that is currently set for the game. At that point they might as well make hoi5 which hopefully will be a systems based game with mission trees to help guide the player to designed content with focuses being special types of missions that have running cost until fulfillment with powerful effects to match their exclusivity as opposed to the focus tree centered game that we have at the present.

 

[Coach Bud Kilmer]

Focuses trees are essential to HOI4 because most of the game fundamentals are rudimentary or inadequate. Diplomacy is nearly non-existent, economics is grossly oversimplified, internal politics are largely absent. The focus trees kept expanding to fill these gaps so that most of these things are done through focuses. Production stands out as the game's one great innovation, finally getting away from the I.C. model of tabletop days.

But it hardly matters as HOI4 long ago dropped its pretense as a WWII grand strategy game. It has followed other PDX titles in becoming an open-world playground, filled with "click-and-reward" functionality, like a colorful WW2-themed slot machine. And the huge numbers of long-time players show that this is popular, and so they will continue to do so.

I actually think PDX should go all-in on this gameplay for HOI5, expanding the timeframe from 1919-1949, giving a little more plausibility to the revolutions and changing ideologies that have become bread-and-butter with each new DLC. Then those of us who were looking for a challenging WWII strategy game can crawl off into a hole until a development team makes a game that lies somewhere between Gary Grigsby and AAA.

 

[Kazakk]

focus trees completely break diplomacy. HOI4 never had real diplomacy, and i hope this is a big point of focus in HOI5

 

[coffeelingfine]

Focuses trees are essential to HOI4 because most of the game fundamentals are rudimentary or inadequate. Diplomacy is nearly non-existent, economics is grossly oversimplified, internal politics are largely absent. The focus trees kept expanding to fill these gaps so that most of these things are done through focuses. Production stands out as the game's one great innovation, finally getting away from the I.C. model of tabletop days.

But it hardly matters as HOI4 long ago dropped its pretense as a WWII grand strategy game. It has followed other PDX titles in becoming an open-world playground, filled with "click-and-reward" functionality, like a colorful WW2-themed slot machine. And the huge numbers of long-time players show that this is popular, and so they will continue to do so.

I actually think PDX should go all-in on this gameplay for HOI5, expanding the timeframe from 1919-1949, giving a little more plausibility to the revolutions and changing ideologies that have become bread-and-butter with each new DLC. Then those of us who were looking for a challenging WWII strategy game can crawl off into a hole until a development team makes a game that lies somewhere between Gary Grigsby and AAA.

I'm pretty sure HOI4 is still advertised as a WWII grand strategy

 

[Coach Bud Kilmer]

I'm pretty sure HOI4 is still advertised as a WWII grand strategy

I thought of this when writing that sentence, coffeelingfine, but was thinking more de facto than how it is being presented in marketing and updates.

​

 

[Hoi Neuling]

I aggree with Coach Bud Kolmer. The prevoius Hoi-Versions as welll as other previous and modern History-Games from Paradox are only playable for Experts and Veterans. Means the Games were for normal Gamers unplayable, had no decissions and more negative then positive Things (no Modability, to high complexity etc). Shortly said 90% of the World couldn´t play them, the 10% Experts and Vertans instead could.

Means Paradox have to make the Hoi-Series playable for all, like they do with Stellaris and Milennia. Both have great Advantages to all prevoius and modern Paradox-Games (esp. the Hoi-Series and similar Series with Historys).

1. Hoi 4, Stellaris and Milennia are playable from the remaing 90% which couldn´t play the prevoius Paradox-Games from the 1990s up to 2015 as well as the complex modern History-Games. The Prevoius Games from Paradox were not playable for normal Gamers about to many Reasons. Paradox could survive with the 10% Expert- / Veteran-Gamers, but to get an Company like they are now (Helper for small Studios as Publisher and a global Player) they had to change the Games to an playability for Experts, normal Gamers and Veterans as well as important new Content / Features, which get shown in Hoi 4, Stellaris, Milennia, Battletech etc.

2. Hoi 4, Stellaris and Milennia have Focus-Trees, which give the Player the possibility to make big Decissions and not only playing Historic (Hoi 4, Milennia) or right straight (Stellaris). Similar Focuses you will have in Competitorproducts (like Civ 5 to 7, etc.). Some will have more, others less of them. Such Focuses are important for modern Games and get hardcoded in the Competitorproducts. Means: There are no Discussions about them allowed. Either you play them or go back to an 20 Year old game with bad Graphics.

3. We can be very lucky to get seperate Console-Versions and PC-Versions only from Paradox in the great Games they present us from their internal Studios (Hoi 4, Stellaris, Europa Universals etc.) and other Great Games from Partner-Studios (like Battletech as the best Example). Other very good Examples are: Firaxis, 2K, Frontier Developments, Goldhawk Interactive with Hooded Horse, Slitherine with the Panzer Corps-Games, Pavonis Interactive (the XCOM / XCOM2-Long War Modders) with Hooded Horse and Deep Water Studio (the U-Boat-Developers) with PlayWay S. A.

4. Be very happy not to get the Mobile- to Console-/PC-Shit, which is only an Upgrademodernisatzon form an scrapy Mobile-Game or for Consoles / PC produced one mobileplaying Game, which we get as a swarmplague on the Market on Steam, GoG and all other Gameplatforms. If the grumblers here wanna play that instead, then play it. But don´t nerve the great Developers / Publishers to make an step backwards which make more then great Games (like Hoi 4 since the first DLCs, Stellaris with the Base-Gameupgrades to 4.0 and DLCs, XCOM, Terra Invicta etc).

 

[Danny5072]

I aggree with Coach Bud Kolmer. The prevoius Hoi-Versions as welll as other previous and modern History-Games from Paradox are only playable for Experts and Veterans. Means the Games were for normal Gamers unplayable, had no decissions and more negative then positive Things (no Modability, to high complexity etc). Shortly said 90% of the World couldn´t play them, the 10% Experts and Vertans instead could.

Means Paradox have to make the Hoi-Series playable for all, like they do with Stellaris and Milennia. Both have great Advantages to all prevoius and modern Paradox-Games (esp. the Hoi-Series and similar Series with Historys).

1. Hoi 4, Stellaris and Milennia are playable from the remaing 90% which couldn´t play the prevoius Paradox-Games from the 1990s up to 2015 as well as the complex modern History-Games. The Prevoius Games from Paradox were not playable for normal Gamers about to many Reasons. Paradox could survive with the 10% Expert- / Veteran-Gamers, but to get an Company like they are now (Helper for small Studios as Publisher and a global Player) they had to change the Games to an playability for Experts, normal Gamers and Veterans as well as important new Content / Features, which get shown in Hoi 4, Stellaris, Milennia, Battletech etc.

2. Hoi 4, Stellaris and Milennia have Focus-Trees, which give the Player the possibility to make big Decissions and not only playing Historic (Hoi 4, Milennia) or right straight (Stellaris). Similar Focuses you will have in Competitorproducts (like Civ 5 to 7, etc.). Some will have more, others less of them. Such Focuses are important for modern Games and get hardcoded in the Competitorproducts. Means: There are no Discussions about them allowed. Either you play them or go back to an 20 Year old game with bad Graphics.

3. We can be very lucky to get seperate Console-Versions and PC-Versions only from Paradox in the great Games they present us from their internal Studios (Hoi 4, Stellaris, Europa Universals etc.) and other Great Games from Partner-Studios (like Battletech as the best Example). Other very good Examples are: Firaxis, 2K, Frontier Developments, Goldhawk Interactive with Hooded Horse, Slitherine with the Panzer Corps-Games, Pavonis Interactive (the XCOM / XCOM2-Long War Modders) with Hooded Horse and Deep Water Studio (the U-Boat-Developers) with PlayWay S. A.

4. Be very happy not to get the Mobile- to Console-/PC-Shit, which is only an Upgrademodernisatzon form an scrapy Mobile-Game or for Consoles / PC produced one mobileplaying Game, which we get as a swarmplague on the Market on Steam, GoG and all other Gameplatforms. If the grumblers here wanna play that instead, then play it. But don´t nerve the great Developers / Publishers to make an step backwards which make more then great Games (like Hoi 4 since the first DLCs, Stellaris with the Base-Gameupgrades to 4.0 and DLCs, XCOM, Terra Invicta etc).

The main problem I have with your reply is that it doesn't contradict my points at all.
You can have a casual, mass-market-oriented, althistory-enabling, narrative-driven role-playing game that is accessible to "90% of the world". I have long accepted that this is the direction Hearts of Iron series is moving in. And yet national focuses would still be a bad way to implement this.
You mentioned Stellaris so many times, does it have national focuses that give factories for free? No, you build factories and you spend resources to do so. Does Stellaris have crappy nation-specific diplomatic decisions that can break if another nation does a different decision from their own unique set? No, diplomatic options (except edge cases like genocidals) are completely symmetrical for each Stellaris empire, and there is a common logic of how AI accepts various diplomatic offers or maintains diplomatic treaties. These systems are not perfect but they are sufficiently detailed for the level that the game needs.
To think about it, Stellaris is an excellent example of how to make compelling mechanics without such bandaids as focuses, because every single Stellaris nation is completely fictional (not even based in any established lore) and functionally they have randomized traits. Because of that it is definitionally impossible to base the whole game development around 'national flavor'.
Some of the recent dev diaries mentioned some kind of focus-like system, basically a set of objectives as a guide for newer players. That's more similar to Vic3 journal although I wouldn't implement such system anyway in a game that's explicitly sandbox. But more importantly Stellaris right now is undergoing a, like, 3rd massive rework of its core economy mechanics, it wasn't a 'hardcore expert game' before that and it won't become such after that. See, you can have a casual strategy game with sound game design principles that are occasionally updated. Last time anything remotely similar happened to HOI4 is when supply system was added.

 

[herr anfsim]

I think focus trees have had the unfortunate consequence that in stead of expanding on the core mechanics and making the games systems more robust to allow for greater freedom and interesting scenarios to play out, the developers end up creating easy solutions through scripted events that either duplicate existing mechanics or ignores any kind of "rules" within the game. The result is the core mechanics becoming shallower, underused and often poorly maintaned, while the game is rife with national "minigames", modifiers and scripted events that often does not work or age too well.

Seeing as this approach allows the developers to keep pushing a huge number of paid DLCs without putting too much resources into maintaining said DLCs, my guess is that this is highly profitable. Adding to this, my guess is that focus trees require less "under the hood"-knowledge/skill than working on the core game itself, hence recruiting is probably easier and cheaper.

The sales figures for GoE and the next DLC(s) are probably going to be the deciding factor for whether or not we are going to see this approach brought ower to HOI5. Given that PDX added an extra team dedicated to pushing even more focus trees, I would be surprised if HOI5 does not build upon a similar "consumer unfriendly" approach.

 

[pro.gamer.69]

one important benefit of focus trees, which isn't exclusive to them but generally is missing from any alternative decision/event/special GUI supplements you see in mods, is that they allow you to see the range of choices available to your nation at the start of the game and often (though not always, there are more and more vanilla focuses with hidden/rng-based effects) make it easy to visualize a path for your country. I've never played any older HOIs but I understand that in Hoi3 to do something like Rhineland, you needed x deployed divisions, and some in one area and others in another along the border. If the entire game was like that it would require you to have a guide of the requirements for each action, and the actions are still just as hardcoded as a focus with requirements "have 500k men in the field" and "have an estimated border strength ratio of 20% or more with France."

I think that freebies are bad design though too. Instead the best focuses are ones with strict but clearly achievable requirements

 

[Danny5072]

I think focus trees have had the unfortunate consequence that in stead of expanding on the core mechanics and making the games systems more robust to allow for greater freedom and interesting scenarios to play out, the developers end up creating easy solutions through scripted events that either duplicate existing mechanics or ignores any kind of "rules" within the game. The result is the core mechanics becoming shallower, underused and often poorly maintaned, while the game is rife with national "minigames", modifiers and scripted events that often does not work or age too well.

Very true. You summed up my points pretty well. I was trying to say the same but you've put it in a more accessible manner.

Seeing as this approach allows the developers to keep pushing a huge number of paid DLCs without putting too much resources into maintaining said DLCs, my guess is that this is highly profitable. Adding to this, my guess is that focus trees require less "under the hood"-knowledge/skill than working on the core game itself, hence recruiting is probably easier and cheaper.

Well, it is profitable, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. And focus trees definitely require less skill. Any literate PC user can start modding focus trees, you need some time to get used to the syntax but otherwise it's very simple coding. You don't need any background in actual coding to start making focus trees. I imagine the most time consuming part of this is actually the art.
I don't want to make assumptions about the hiring though and in general the composition of developers team. I have no idea at all to be honest.

The sales figures for GoE and the next DLC(s) are probably going to be the deciding factor for whether or not we are going to see this approach brought ower to HOI5. Given that PDX added an extra team dedicated to pushing even more focus trees, I would be surprised if HOI5 does not build upon a similar "consumer unfriendly" approach.

It's a sensible idea but not a reasonable expectation. There is no competition on the market niche Paradox are occupying and as such they can do almost anything and still sell. Only Imperator was a flop so bad they discontinued development quickly.

 

[Lamartine]

Despite the developing news that the focus trees of this DLC are particularly poorly designed, I will make a lonely defence of focus trees as a concept. I can't in good faith defend the real, existing focus trees of GoE, but I will defend the concept.

Focus trees are a marked improvement on HoI, HoI2 and HoI3 which did not have them. I started this series in HoI2 before we even had reliable GameFAQ guides. Back then, planning your strategy without focus trees was impossible.

You want to remilitarise the Rhineland? Good luck guessing where you need to station your troops to fire the event. You want to trigger the Unholy Alliance event? Better open the game files in your text editor and start looking. You want to fire the Bitter Peace as Germany? Good luck figuring out all the prior stages in the chain of events to get there. At least with a focus tree I know exactly what each focus needs to trigger and where it's building up to. That clarity is a godsend for as complex a game as HOI4.

Focus trees also explain why the AI did something better than HoI2 often did. Say I'm playing Turkey and I flip Communist, but then the USSR DOWs me. What!? Why!? We're meant to be ideological allies. Of course, the real reason is because the USSR AI ran its computer algorithm and the result was to attack - ideological affinity would have been only one of many factors. There is no way to express that algorithmic assessment in human readable format, at least for any sufficiently complex algorithm - it's why mechanistic interpretability is one of the hardest, most important problems in AI Safety right now. At least with a focus tree I know why the AI did something - they did it because they competed a focus, that focus has condition X, and if I want to avoid this outcome in future I need to prevent X happening. It is not perfect, but it is better than the blind guessing of HoI2.

Lack of focus trees do not guarantee that the AI will behave rationally either. In the current game state, China can sign a Non Aggression Pact with Japan that Japan would have never, ever signed, and China does not need a focus to do it, just good old fashioned spies and improve relations to abuse the diplomacy mechanic. The USA can issue a historically implausible guarantee of Finland or Greece and end up in a defensive war against Russia and Germany - no focus required, just busted diplomacy. If you got rid of focusses, this cheese would not magically disappear with it.

Finally, be careful wishing to replace focuses with generic mechanics because they are often bland, repetitive and, well, generic. Suppose we replaced all focuses about rearmament with the production mechanic. How would the UK rearm? Assign ten factories on infantry equipment. How would France rearm? Assign ten factories on infantry equipment. How would Denmark rearm? Build some factories, then assign ten on infantry equipment. There are little to no unique challenges that the player must respond to. It's boring because every country plays the same.

All that said, I think focus trees could be implemented a lot better. I've defended alt history paths in the past, but GoE has broken me. I hate the new même paths. No one wanted three different flavours to ressurect the Persian Empire. No player thought this WWII simulation was good but what would make it better would be to fight Nazis and pay taxes as the East India Company. These are ridiculous focus paths that detract from the tone of the series and distract dev time from the WWII part of a WWII game.

 

[CaptainBruh]

focus trees completely break diplomacy. HOI4 never had real diplomacy, and i hope this is a big point of focus in HOI5

this is my biggest gripe with diplomacy: everything is either RNG or scripted.

For example, the French fascist alliance with Italy. Trade, relations, licenses, lend lease, mutual enemies, non aggression pacts, attaches, or having the same government has zero bearing on if Italy will accept. The only thing that matters if Italy is going monarchist or plans to have Dino Grandi (which they very rarely due either of). Even then, there is still a tiny chance they just say no for no reason.

Same with dominate the middle east, which demands iraq, saudi, and yemen become puppets of france. All of the previously mentioned factors, and your military strength, do not matter. Iraq can be in the middle of being invaded by the Soviets or Iraq can control the entire world. there is a 70 factor in ai_chance for acceptance and 30 factor in ai_chance for rejection. thats it, no consideration for anything else.

 

[klopkr]

The focus trees eat up sooo much dev time and the fact that they have to make multiple for very linear ahistorical stories in addition to often completely uninteresting historical ones means that the devs are spending a ton of time on content that is fundamentally not significant to most players.

Yes it serves the purpose of allowing certain historical events to happen outside of the games standard mechanics. But literally any events could do this. The only thing the focus tree adds is player agency to choose when a linear historical event happens for your country. Not that that is really something that comes up much. Usually you just do all the political focuses than whatever other ones you feel like.

The trade off is just not worth it. We're getting close to the whole map having unique focuses and often other than actual memes the generic one still does better than most. Even the 'best ones' don't usually have very much diversity, they usually just have a few neat one time mechanics or are silly and over powered.

And on the topic of things that should not come back. Balance of power is horrendous. I like the idea of having to balance factions in your nation but it's tucked away and invisible most of the time and for most nations with it there is very little you can do to adjust it within reasonable timeframes and often it just serves to lock you out of content and remind you that you should have picked advisor x 4 months ago and now it'll be 4 years until you can unlock focus Y that lets you do anything.

 

[billcorr]

Given that PDX added an extra team dedicated to pushing even more focus trees,

Is there an article or some other source about PDX adding an extra team?

I'd like to learn more.

Given that HOI4 is Paradox's #1 game (did I get that right?), it is good to see that Paradox HQ is providing more people to work on HoI4.

 

[NhanTNT]

1) Focus trees are inherently casual and unchallenging, contradictory to the spirit of high-end strategy genre. In general we expect any games to reward players for sound, well-informed and competent decisions, and punish them for rash, lazy, or unattentive decisions. That's how more experienced players outperform less experienced ones. In strategy games that consists of either strategical (duh) or tactical decisions. On an example of a HOI4-type WW2 war-centered grand strategy: what kind of war materiel should I focus on in production? what regions should I prioritize construction in? when do I need to lay down a new warship for it to be ready for war? actually, when do I go to war? who do I attack first? what theatre will be the priority? and, on a tactical level, where do I order my units and how do I make best use of their capabilities?
Focus trees do not provide any strategic depth to the player's decision-making and require very little planning. Generally speaking, focuses reward the player for doing nothing, i. e. give rewards when the player hasn't achieved anything or demonstrated any skillful decision-making. The only level of strategy with focus trees is to think in what order you want them completed (I'll give them that) but essentially you're choosing which free rewards to get, which is a game design principle straight out of autobattler mobile games whose brainrot ads YouTube spams you with.
There are better alternatives within the Paradox game series to the focus trees. HOI4 focuses, EU4 missions, and Vic3 journal entries are obviously the brainchildren of the same initial premise. However, the latter two usually set objectives for the player to complete and then give the reward. It creates a natural sense of not only progression but achievement, and gratifies the player in a much more justifiable manner. Some power creep has hit EU4 missions for sure but they don't allow small nations to balloon out of any reasonable premises: expansion opportunities provided by them (such as with permanent claims) are still limited by other game mechanics such as OE and AE and the ability to, well, win wars over a long time period; tall gameplay opportunities are also limited by the player's ability to funnel mana and ducats into the development. While in HOI4 Uruguay has an economy the size of Italy by mid game.

2) Focus trees enable and incentivize spaghetti code and parasitic game design. I'm referring to a phenomenon where tucking something away in a focus (or developing a one-off feature to code a specific focus) is more convenient for the developer (leaving no surprises when that is the route chosen for new content) which in the long term creates a pool of disunited and asymmetrical game mechanics for different nations. National focuses as such become a half-baked bandaid solution for a whole array of features that the game wants to represent but has no mechanics to do so. Here are some instances where this is observable:

• there is no unified coring or claiming mechanic, each nation has a unique coring mechanism (sometimes several) which are all actuated through selecting the respective focuses; the same applies to formable nations and especially the 'diplomatically formable' nations
• diplomatic mechanics are really shallow, each instance of 'demand land' in the game (of which there are now very many) has to be coded separately for an event that is called by a focus
• instead of a symmetrical and generalized political system there is a unique political mechanic for nearly any country with political content (Bulgaria has the factions, Italy and Finland have balance of power, Germany has the Inner Circle, USA has the parliament, Soviets have the paranoia, etc.)
• even the arms trading/donating (which DO have generalized mechanics in the game - market and lend-lease) is sometimes still represented by focuses that spawn equipment from nowhere at no cost for the supposed donor

A recent example of parasitic game design here is the 'contested ownership' mechanic from the last DLC. It was created specifically for the needs of Reichskommissariats, specifically to solve a problem that a rework of German focus tree created. It will likely not be revisited again for any other instance. It will not lead to a broader rework of puppets or occupations, or consequences of acquiring land mid-war. And I bet some of you failed to immediately remember what this 'contested ownership' even is.

The problem here is not merely that countries have an abundance of asymmetrical content. After all we want that sweet 'national flavor' don't we, especially considering that HOI4 moved towards more of a roleplay approach rather than railroaded WW2 wargame simulation (and HOI5 will too, I presume). The problem is that focus trees necessarily make said 'national flavor' the overwhelming (if not the only) development priority. This is a faulty set of incentives; the outcome is - making a new focus tree for a new nation is considered progress in the game development, while older bugs (see the equipment tags) and outdated mechanics (navy) may receive no attention for years.
Besides, this is inconvenient for the players (certain aspects of the game just need to be remembered by heart for each different focus tree), prone to bugs and nonsense outcomes (as it's not plausible to recheck all new focuses against all previous content to ensure it won't be broken), and susceptible to all kinds of clutter ('an artist knows that they achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away' - are we sure that HOI4 really needs all these 'air focuses' to give a '100% bonus to medium bomber tech'?).

3) Focuses are an unnecessary chore and a click-heavy interaction, and designing them otherwise would make them pointless. The player has to click focuses all the time to make best use of the system. They also have to spend time in the focus window to read and plan the focuses unless they know the tree by heart, and this window needs to be visited much more often than say a EU4 mission tree or Vic3 journal, making it a significant interruption in gameplay. This is a lot of player attention for a mechanic that doesn't actually contribute to the bread and butter of the game - the thing you're supposed to be doing the most - which is fighting wars. How many times did it happen to you that you're locked in microing an encirclement and now this huge notification appears suggesting you to go pick a focus for some 10% buff or a research bonus to trucks? And you do it because it's suboptimal not to?

This is fixable with queueing focuses or having some sort of automation setting, but implementing either of that would be contradictory to the whole narrative point of focuses (to provide content and immersion) and would be a recognition of developer's failure at making focus trees a compelling mechanic to be involved with. If we're making focus trees automatizable then it's not functionally different from automatically receiving rewards at a steady pace. Which a) bad in itself (see point 1), b) is not merely comparable to how construction and production mechanics work in HOI4 (after all you queue factories for them to be built later) but would actually replace them in particular instances (for focuses that give you industry). Why have several systems to do the same thing?

This is the reason why i dont like having focus trees in my mod, they fucks up with pretty much everything i want to do (Ex. A dynamic election system is completely fucked up by the static focus trees). It makes it really hard to make a dynamic mod with both the choose-your-own-adventure kind of vanilla and the high-qualtiy stuff that most alt-hist mods have. Every single "good" mod out there (The New Order, The Fire Rises, Thousand Week Reich,...) requires pretty much everything to be scripted in order for you to do anything. After you finish the scripted content, there's nothing left. You can't declare war, create puppets, get new cores, or anything. Because with the focus tree system, EVERYTHING has to be coded according to the focuses.
I originally thought that I might somehow be able to combine focus trees with my stupid improved quality-of-life alt-world mod, but thanks to this thread, I now know that it's better to NOT do that. Thank you.
(sorry for the grammar, i'm kinda not focused rn)

 

[herr anfsim]

Is there an article or some other source about PDX adding an extra team?

I'd like to learn more.

Given that HOI4 is Paradox's #1 game (did I get that right?), it is good to see that Paradox HQ is providing more people to work on HoI4.

I dont have any links handy but I believe it was announced around the same time as ToA.

While I agree that adding resources to the development could be a great thing, I think adding a team dedicated to doubling the amount of yearly produced focus trees rather, than inproving the ‘base game’ and existing content, will have negative effects on the overall health of the game.

 

[NeomerArcana]

I like the focus trees, the concept is far better than whatever you call the hidden event system on HOI3.

In general, showing the reasons for decisions, and what you can and can't do and why, is really good. Just how the tooltips explain why you're gaining 0.1 political points every day, the focus trees give you that for events.

However, some of the bits irk me. Like, I can "focus" for 70 days and suddenly have 4 new factories in Manchukuo? Shouldn't that have been a years-long decision, and taken far longer to build? To me, it seems more sensible for it to be a decision, that takes X days to happen.

Overall, the dividing line between a decision vs a focus is a bit off. But, I still prefer it to alternatives.

 

[Bailing_Out]

Newby perspective
Been playing maybe 3 months.

I used to try to complete the focuses. Now I got a mod that has different, perma focuses. I usually play Japan, I get the extra research slot, most of the factories, maybe all I don't know. I don't bother with the Zero cause I can research the same plane, takes a little longer maybe but by then I can use one of the perma focuses to build factories faster or infrastructure. DON'T GO FAR DOWN THAT TREE WITH THE EXTRA RESEARCH SLOT IT LEADS TO CIVIL WAR!

Now I don't know this but I think maybe not finishing the focuses that have to do with Manchukuo causes them to turn Qing and attack me but that works for me cause then I get to take the entire country and get all its resources and factories. I think thats called coring but I haven't gotten all the terms down yet., the acronyms are even harder .

Mods allow you the make your own game in a way. "Cheats" let you give yourself the things you should have started with, ROIC the pre 36 heavy tank cause it doesn't make sense you don't have it researched already in 36. I don't use it but without ROIC I'd have to spend days researching it.

From what I've read here 5 will have the focuses, if I buy it, not likely but maybe, I will use mods an stuff to get around the ones I don't care for. I've never considered playing Ironman and the way I play I will likely never play multiplayer. The way I sleep that wouldn't work anyway. HES NOT HERE AGAIN!!

Stop rambling, Okay I'm done