Has power creep become an official dev policy for EU4?

[Mindel]

Its not power creep per se, it's the DLCtitis, the DLC creep that forces the devs to make the overhauled thing the next coolest stuff ever. Hence from dlc to dlc we are left with unbalanced mess of a country, that maybe, maybe get some balance patch months or a year afterwards.

I see at least one obstacle preventing the devs from doing more to address power creep, Because it was decided not to make major changes to the game anymore, many recent DLCs were largely based around mission trees. This means that PDX was, in effect, selling overpowered missions for cold hard cash. And this obliges them to stand by their product.

If the devs went back and seriously nerfed these missions, it might well anger customers who viewed their DLC purchases as a form of P2W.

 

[Jarvin]

very few can avoid it while updating and adding content to long-running games

Um.. huh?
Why can a few avoid it?


Thinking about games in the strategy genre.. I remember Shogun 2 was I think their first game to have nation DLCs, and both Otomo and Ikko-Iki were just incredibly interesting additions that changed up the base gameplay loop, and were actually in a lot of ways more challenging to play than most factions from the base game.

Age of Empires 2 has gone from like 17 civilizations to 42 over the course of like 8 different expansions and 20 years, and the balance is the best it's ever been.

Like sure you can make a valid argument that if you are going for easy monies above all else then, yeah, it's hard to avoid going into powercreeping stuff because that's just very simple to do, but that's not a very good defence for anyone who does this, is it?

EU4's issues IMO boil down to: far too great developer autonomy, who put way too much effort into "putting themselves out there", trying to one up each other in creating ze biggest, ze fanciest mission tree with ze greatest rewards, which is related to there seeminbly being 0 actual development guidelines on anything from mission tree structure, to numerical balance, anything.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^ very few was said because the number isn't 0. when compared against all games running 5-10+ years, it's a small %.

balance is also significantly easier or harder depending on game.

 

[Jarvin]

balance is also significantly easier or harder depending on game.

That is true.
And it's true and clear that the EU4 devs have never really had like a.. very deep and broad understanding of this game.
Which isn't to shit at them at all btw, because neither does the 99.99% of the playerbase(myself included largely)

But... it doesn't take a genius to tell that making a mission tree that gives you 7 personal unions might be on the stronger side, does it?
The problem isn't that we are at 90% of being "balanced" and people are complaining about the missing 10%, which - true - would be incredibly difficult to accomplish in a game like this

Whether the game still can feel somewhat challenging will depend on the country you play, but in some cases the challenge will be nearly entirely negated.
Most of these are easily avoidable, if you just consider keeping the gameplay interesting a goal of yours, instead of focusing on ahistorical memes (Polish hussars), some weird interpretation of history that doesn't really match the gameplay (Spanish MT with its "diplomatic control over Europe"), or.. any of the other things

 

[EarlKonrad]

Whether the game still can feel somewhat challenging will depend on the country you play, but in some cases the challenge will be nearly entirely negated.

Thats my main issue with mission trees for smaller nations and OPMs. To me part of the fun of playing this nations that stsrt in a difficult position is having to claw my way through a challeging start position.

Then they get mission trees grabting them claims, temporary buffs, free ducats and MP and the challenge goes down significantly. You are back at playing in a position of power in a short few decades.

 

[Sweeze]

Claims are fine IMO. Forcing players to wait longer for mana is mostly artificial difficulty, adm and dip points are not like mil where if you can't keep up you die. This is especially a problem early game when you don't have admin ideas and getting admin ideas requires adm but its easy to spend 100% of your adm on coring so you can't get admin without some kind of discount. Doubly so if you are cursed with a bad adm ruler.

If missions stayed strictly claims and minor boosts like prestige or culture/religion conversion bonuses on specific provinces or whatever then they'd be totally fine.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

Adding bonuses is easier than adding other ways to play, map updates, new mechanics. So yes, as long as people are happy with the bonuses and keep buying them, that's what we will keep getting.