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Giving access to streamers is a slap in the face.

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Kuantum said:
It's a good idea to have "advisors" outside the company to help guide development in the "right" direction.

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to release the content to the public at this stage, as it opened the door to what was probably unfair criticism, given the game's current state - though constructive criticism is always valuable.
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The whole point of this was precisely to let people see the footage and provide feedback, as confirmed by Johan. I think that it was a very good decision, and the criticism was constructive for the most part. Some unfounded criticism? It's unavoidable. It's always bound to happen, just like some people mindlessly downvoting posts for the sake of downvoting, without providing any reason. If you filter out that rather limited criticism, there's ton of valuable feedback from the community.

I think that limiting access to see the gameplay only to content creators would be far more risky, as the feedback could be biased in a content creation-driven perspective.
 
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ero_sk said:
The whole point of this was precisely to let people see the footage and provide feedback, as confirmed by Johan. I think that it was a very good decision, and the criticism was constructive for the most part. Some unfounded criticism? It's unavoidable. It's always bound to happen, just like some people mindlessly downvoting posts for the sake of downvoting, without providing any reason. If you filter out that rather limited criticism, there's ton of valuable feedback from the community.

I think that limiting access to see the gameplay only to content creators would be far more risky, as the feedback could be biased in a content creation-driven perspective.
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For feedback I think that youtubers aren't actually a good source. Simply because they are rather limited in what they can show. 30 minutes and then add their own style upon it. And they seek to be entertaining and have a incentive to get clicks. For hype, it's great. And that's fine, because this was a announcement decision. I'd prefer if PDX starts to show off some unedited gameplay themselves if they seek gameplay feedback from the playerbase.
 
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J_Master said:
For feedback I think that youtubers aren't actually a good source. Simply because they are rather limited in what they can show. 30 minutes and then add their own style upon it. And they seek to be entertaining and have a incentive to get clicks. For hype, it's great. And that's fine, because this was a announcement decision. I'd prefer if PDX starts to show off some unedited gameplay themselves if they seek gameplay feedback from the playerbase.
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There's a place for both, and the feedback received from creators who are known to already play and mostly understand Paradox games is also fine. Even if they might not be able to provide feedback about a lot of complexities of systems (which not a lot of people without 500+ hours into the game will be), having people from an "outside" (if that's what you want to go with) perspective, can result in useful feedback in other areas, such as UI looking terrible, the game being completely un-intuitive to pick up by a newer/less experienced user.

My understanding is that's also part of the reason why the Tinto Talks series happened in the first place. Johan & team wanted to gather more feedback, but the game was had not had enough time to bake for people to directly exposed to it.

We're all excited about the game, content creator or not. Just got to remember not to turn into a massive gatekeeper in the process (not saying you are being one right now, this is more of a general point, including a reminder for myself).

On the topic of unedited gameplay with devs, Paradox has done this for other games (although mostly expansions/DLC) on their streams, it would be great if that continued.
 
Sanny said:
I've been on the forum for about 15 years, I see this same thread pop up every time Paradox shows off their latest project.
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15 years ago, video game streaming was in its infancy and I don't recall Paradox doing this for EUIV.

Lord Lambert said:
They would cry and moan and whinge and curse and bitch and scream


just like I did.. :(
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Says the guy who got early access.
 
solamyas said:
2k hours in an old paradox game is quite common. You see this as a reward to streamers but it is just marketing
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What percentage of players who bought the game hit 2k hours? Most of us have lives. I didn't when EUIV was released. I do now, hence my dropoff.

My guess is it's less than 1%. Hence why I'd put it in the "elite" tier of level scarcity. If it's 5%, I'll go with the rare tier.

But if there are stats, and there probably is with Steam, feel free to prove me wrong.
 
WhiskyGlen said:
What percentage of players who bought the game hit 2k hours? Most of us have lives. I didn't when EUIV was released. I do now, hence my dropoff.

My guess is it's less than 1%. Hence why I'd put it in the "elite" tier of level scarcity. If it's 5%, I'll go with the rare tier.

But if there are stats, and there probably is with Steam, feel free to prove me wrong.
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This forum at least skews towards that demographic, which is also why many here have drastically different views on things like mission trees or WC than the "average" player. If you exclusively read the forums here youd think that a world conquest is something you just stumble into in your first playthrough.
 
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As someone who works in the software industry, and also has some modicum of understanding of how PDX themselves do things, I'm fairly confident in saying that most people who ask for Tinto to give them early access to the game to provide feedback wouldn't actually enjoy providing the kind of feedback that the game actually needs.

When people think of testing, they will usually think of "I will play the game, and then explain my feelings about the experience". In current standard way of developing software, the vast majority of testing actually being done is functional tests, and these are literally a checklist.

In terms of something like website design these would entail things like "I can click on the 'Log in' button, which will navigate me to a panel where I can input my details and be correctly authenticated". In the context of game development it'd probably be things like "I can boot-up the game, select a country, open that country's mission trees and see that all icons are loaded properly, don't repeat themselves and the tooltip localization doesn't contain major spelling issues"

The kind of exploratory testing, that actually checks the qualitative experience of using a product, i.e. "This particular mission tree doesn't feel great as it doesn't interact nearly enough with other systems the game has" as if it was finished is something that has limited value until the product is actually very close to being finished. In this case, I'm sure the feedback that content creators have provided PDX is going to be useful to them, but it's not like increasing the quantity of that feedback 10 fold would also correspond with its value increasing to the selfsame degree.

And to the people who say "but I'd love to do the checklist testing too!", sure you do, but they probably have people who do that already that have been fully onboarded with their processes and don't need a detailed guide on how to test things
 
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Jarvin said:
As someone who works in the software industry, and also has some modicum of understanding of how PDX themselves do things, I'm fairly confident in saying that most people who ask for Tinto to give them early access to the game to provide feedback wouldn't actually enjoy providing the kind of feedback that the game actually needs.



And to the people who say "but I'd love to do the checklist testing too!", sure you do, but they probably have people who do that already that have been fully onboarded with their processes and don't need a detailed guide on how to test things
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I agree. I have seen feedback in those YouTube video and forums… and 99% of it is completely useless!
”I like this” I don`t like” ” why this is not the same as in EU4…”… some example I have read. They are not constructive, they offer no direction or take account even simple things like game scaling to different devices and platforms.
If I would be game developer I would not put and could not use those to develop the game. Too much trouble, very Little if none benefit.
UI for example is mainly functionality, the from may help funtinality but that is not the main purpose of UI. It is the interface between the game engine and player. It should allow player to see and do certain things, be easy to read, easy to navigate and even be scaleable. Everything else is clitter. Nothing bad in clitter as long as it does not hinder the first three things.
 
Signthe said:
It’s a slap in the face but I want more
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I mean, I'm sure someone would pay good money to have laith slap them in the face repeatedly.

Edit: travel costs might prevent it from being profitable though.
 
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Jarvin said:
As someone who works in the software industry, and also has some modicum of understanding of how PDX themselves do things, I'm fairly confident in saying that most people who ask for Tinto to give them early access to the game to provide feedback wouldn't actually enjoy providing the kind of feedback that the game actually needs.
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Yup. It's less "play the game," and more "start the game, open the mission trees, then without closing the mission tree click this other button that changes your tag" to see if you can still finish those missions and if it counts towards the new tag tree or whatever similar nonsense exists in EU5. Click these buttons in this order, now do it with this window open, then do it with a game restart in the middle."

I only do a very minimal sort of webapp design and puzzling out why things aren't working as expected in this specific edge case is maddening. I would rather do almost anything else than try and do that sort of QA testing in a game.
 
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Jarvin said:
As someone who works in the software industry, and also has some modicum of understanding of how PDX themselves do things, I'm fairly confident in saying that most people who ask for Tinto to give them early access to the game to provide feedback wouldn't actually enjoy providing the kind of feedback that the game actually needs.
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People say this to sound smart always like its something super technical and difficult and us plebs would not understand. The reality is that the actual good feedback that does change the game and does actually find balance issues, exploits and bugs, and design issues, as always with PDX games releases, is the one players give once the game releases and everyone can actually test it.

Yes, QA might be good at catching bugs that would otherwise cause crashes so that is what counts to them as a "polished release". But the issues which mud PDX releases are usually the ones brought up by the actual players which "magically", nobody found before despite running "betas" and having QA and what not.

So having 5 guys giving supper well thought out technical reports is very useful. It will never be as useful as 5,000 people finding all the bugs, balance, and design issues that no professional team could ever just because of lack of capacity and scale.

I just hope this time is right and we dont get yet another release mudded with issues because, once again they refused to give access. I really hope that the only issues with the game are the ones being reported by the youtubers and the community, for the first time in a PDX release and it is super smooth and there cannot be negative feedback after release. But I doubt it.

And im not saying the game won't be good. I know I will love it no matter the balance issues or bugs it has. I just know they will get a shitstorm because of it because other people dont see past that and are looking for any excuse to crap on PDX and review bomb their products and be proven right on their crusade against "Paradox shitty practices". I know releasing games as a beta/alpha does not look "professional" or "flashy" or like a "respectable triple AAA company". But it is a safe bet.

I just reaaaally hope I am wrong and with just the few people they have they find all the balance issues and bugs by release and its super smooth. But after seeing the state the the game was given to youtubers with GLARING issues that anyone playing 10 hours would have picked up, forgive me if i lose a bit of confidence in their strategy of "only a super small tight circle of people will test the game".
 
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Álvaro Núñez de Lara said:
And im not saying the game won't be good. I know I will love it no matter the balance issues or bugs it has. I just know they will get a shitstorm because of it because other people dont see past that and are looking for any excuse to crap on PDX and review bomb their products and be proven right on their crusade against "Paradox shitty practices". I know releasing games as a beta/alpha does not look "professional" or "flashy" or like a "respectable triple AAA company". But it is a safe bet.
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There is one assumption here that I dislike. The question we must ask is: who are the type of people that cause negative reviews ratings on steam? Yeah sure individuals may troll, but they don't cause anything that really affects a "mostly positive" to slide down. The people who do that turn up in masses because they're PDX's own fans. Disinterested people don't reviewbomb, only the passionate do, PDX's and EU5's own playerbase.
 
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Marz343 said:
Looks like a CK re-skin

Eu4 forever!
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I have been told I need to insult people less on these forums and sometimes that is very difficult...
 
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Álvaro Núñez de Lara said:
People say this to sound smart always like its something super technical and difficult and us plebs would not understand. The reality is that the actual good feedback that does change the game and does actually find balance issues, exploits and bugs, and design issues, as always with PDX games releases, is the one players give once the game releases and everyone can actually test it.

Yes, QA might be good at catching bugs that would otherwise cause crashes so that is what counts to them as a "polished release". But the issues which mud PDX releases are usually the ones brought up by the actual players which "magically", nobody found before despite running "betas" and having QA and what not.

So having 5 guys giving supper well thought out technical reports is very useful. It will never be as useful as 5,000 people finding all the bugs, balance, and design issues that no professional team could ever just because of lack of capacity and scale.

I just hope this time is right and we dont get yet another release mudded with issues because, once again they refused to give access. I really hope that the only issues with the game are the ones being reported by the youtubers and the community, for the first time in a PDX release and it is super smooth and there cannot be negative feedback after release. But I doubt it.

And im not saying the game won't be good. I know I will love it no matter the balance issues or bugs it has. I just know they will get a shitstorm because of it because other people dont see past that and are looking for any excuse to crap on PDX and review bomb their products and be proven right on their crusade against "Paradox shitty practices". I know releasing games as a beta/alpha does not look "professional" or "flashy" or like a "respectable triple AAA company". But it is a safe bet.

I just reaaaally hope I am wrong and with just the few people they have they find all the balance issues and bugs by release and its super smooth. But after seeing the state the the game was given to youtubers with GLARING issues that anyone playing 10 hours would have picked up, forgive me if i lose a bit of confidence in their strategy of "only a super small tight circle of people will test the game".
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I mean they probably got burned by the Vicky3 leak.

There releasing infos on the game for a year already.
Recently they are spreading more and more information for feedback through youtubers/streamers and their communities.
There has been already a ton and very outspoken feedback from the community and this way they have more control over the process.
Obviously there will be some issues that wont be found until release but they are being more transparent and reactive to feedback I welcome that.

Also, not doing early access is consumer friendly thing to do.
 
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