HOI4 Dev Diary - Reflections and Romania

[Gwydion5]

If Podcat straight-out tells you there are two options, and one doesn't make sense without the Romanian focus tree first, there's not much more he can do.

The difference between you and I is how much credibility Podcat has with us. I for one have doubt and skepticism simply because he has said things in the past that don't add up.

For example :
Here is his first response about the issues being reported about AI Germany losing consistently in 41/42 in 1.3.3.

Also I am not sure that things have changed that much on the macro level. germany loses slightly earlier now to the stronger soviets but they have been losing to soviets on average in every patch since release basically. To give you an idea on what we aim for "average outcome"-balance wise before releasing patches (this is minimum 20 test games or so):

So let's apply some deductive reasoning here.

• They ran around 20 simulation games and did not notice AI Germany being beaten by Russia in most games by 41, definitely by 42.
• They ran around 20 simulation games, did notice AI Germany being beaten by Russia in most games by 41, definitely by 42 and published 1.3.3 anyway.
• They ran significantly less than 20 games, so few that they took AI Germany losing in 41/42 as a fluke instead of a consistent outcome.
• They did not run any simulation games.

Now I for one believe PDS as a software game development company has enough experience developing software to have good enough QA processes to catch something as big as AI Germany losing consistently to Russia in 41. So the 1st line of deductive reasoning just doesn't make sense. Which leaves us with the last three options as being possible, which one do you think it is? You could add another option if you think there is one.

This is but one of a few examples where Podcat has basically created an irreconcilable situation for me to just take him at his word. If you want to believe him, that's cool. I think I've provided enough evidence to warrant doubt that there were only 2 possible polling options for a dev diary topic. You basically need to say that of the 5 things I listed, not enough progress has been made, not enough of the design has been completed, not enough of the code has been implemented to be a viable polling option for a dev diary topic. I don't believe that. If that makes me a bad guy, so be it. Trust and respect are two way streets.

 

[Gwydion5]

@Gwydion5 Thanks for the support. I knew I was going to be the skunk at the garden party but sometimes you have to stand up and yell "the emperor has no clothes".

I kind of Leeroy Jenkins'd the thread today. Must be stronger next time. It just bothers me that your post was dog piled and you didn't say anything that bad. Oh well.

 

[wildbillhdmax01]

Are you saying EU4's AI hasn't improved? Also, keep in mind EU4 launched in August 2013 - that's three and a half years ago. Early on, there was painful issues with ping-ponging armies, armies making very poor decisions about when to siege and not to siege, naval AI was also much choppier. I repeatedly had to not do things to give the AI a chance (something that's far less of a thing in EU4 these days). EU4 still had 'front abandonment' as well - in that it would ignore whole theatres - it's just there were so few armies no-one really noticed.

This is in the context of a game with a far less complex AI to deal with in the first place. Like I wrote, EU4 launched well (I'd argue of HoI4, Stellaris and EU4, EU4 had the best launch by some margin in terms of reception - and the stats I crunched in another thread somewhere had the 'drop off' in player numbers after launch highest for Stellaris, in the middle for HoI4 and least for EU4, backing this up), but it's AI had issues. Indeed, despite the AI being in much better shape now, if you head over to the EU forums and do a search for threads with "AI" in the title, plenty come up in the last couple of months (searching for old threads is pretty painful - I tried to do a search around the time of the launch, but it's beyond my forum-fu).

So at this point Paradox had never once released working or fairly working game? Hahaha! And I'm one who gets called a hater by other people? So Paradox is just shoveling garbage for a long time now? Is that was we're saying now? Everytime I talk about an older PI game, someone comes and whispers in my ear "that game was broken too you know" "that game was garbage". What? So I guess they never learn, or changed huh? Just one broken release after another?

I'm sure I've had an argument for something like this somewhere, but I can't. I'm mentally exhausted at this point...

As @Number 7 said, and I've said. EU4's AI work pretty good out of the gate, sure it may have some problems, but It worked pretty good. Yes of course it improved yada yada yada blah blah blah... (Make sure read that in a monotone disinterested voice). I just can't go on. @Number 7 carry on wayward...

 

[Akaisol]

Oh boy.

Thanks podcat for the dev diary and thank the team a lot for working hard on the game despite the forum's negativity.

I'm sure that even if HoI4 had the most advanced AI on the world, people would still quickly find something else to complain about.

 

[Winterwolf00]

China NF Tree when?

 

[Axe99]

No, speaking for the discontented rabble, I would have been much happier with a DD that started out with "this is where we stand, this is what we plan, and these are the major game play issues we acknowledge we need to address."

Now this is a fair point (something I'm not surprised about, as you're a fair poster ) - if, instead of features, the diary had focussed on a roadmap along these lines that would definitely have been useful and a good approach. We got hints of it (the DD mentions air rework, and a couple of big AI jobs) but nothing comprehensive, and I think you're spot on in that something comprehensive would be helpful. I'm not sure there'd be any fewer people complaining (it's the internet, and I'm still surprised by the things people complain about - although people may also wonder why I go on about corvettes ) but I think this is a great suggestion. If Podcat had the time, I think it'd even be worth having a special 'bonus' roadmap DD, or to bump next week's content to put this in.

The big difference is that EU 4 AI was serviceable from day 1. it did the job.

Not if you wanted anything resembling a historical game. It was serviceable if you wanted Risk with army ping-pong*, but it had issues. The difficulty HoI4 has is that the level of scrutiny the AI performance has placed on it is much greater, so it can perform better (which it does, historically, than EU4's does now) and that what HoI4 does is over such a short period that the AI messing up one front can tarnish the entire game (@Krafty argues these points much better). EU4 messes up entire fronts all the time, 3+ years from release, despite having many fewer units to coordinate, simpler logistics, very basic production and no aircraft, but no-one cares because they've got 300 more years and the next war to enjoy.

So you end up with a situation where HoI4's AI in many ways (and don't get me wrong, it still has a ton of issues, and there's a reason Steelvolt's working full-time on it (with at least one helper IIRC) and has a long list of things to do) but at launch it's AI wasn't "worse" than EU4's (on the contrary, I'd argue it was far better than EU4's at launch), it's just a whole 'nother game and the AI can be both better and the game experience less fulfilling (which is my view of what's happened).

*Note - I love EU4, it's my most played PDS game at this point, I think it's their most polished game yet released, and I think it was their best release as a game (as opposed to a historical sim) to date.

So at this point Paradox had never once released working or fairly working game? Hahaha! And I'm gets called a hater by other people? So Paradox is just shoveling garbage for a long time now? Is that was we're saying now? Everytime I talk about an older PI game, someone comes and whispers in my ear "that game was broken too you know" "that game was garbage". What? So I guess they never learn, or changed huh? Just one broken release after another?

Actually, if you go back prior to CK2, they did, almost every game - and we're talking properly broken, not "the AI abandons fronts" broken, but flat-out refusing to work on a number of occasions in certain (and not entirely uncommon) situations. They worked to tight deadlines and had to launch or get in all sorts of financial trouble (I can't recall the details). Then there was Magicka, which made PI a tonne of money and allowed them to polish CK2, which launched better and sold better and the rest was history. That will, of course, be a horrendous simplification, but that's the general impression I've got over the years. I'm not sure if you were around for HoI1, but with HoI1 every day was a CTD day (of real-world, not in-game playtime, thankfully) early on . Back then, a buggy game often meant it didn't work at all, or CTD'd regularly (Vicky 2 wouldn't run on my machine until the first expansion was released).

I never suggested EU4 launched badly (in both my posts I said it launched well!) However, every computer strategy game I've every played in the internet era (and some in the pre-internet era - fixing those was hard/impossible) has had issues at launch, so what qualifies as good needs to be kept in context. Do we hope for better in the future? Absolutely. But it's worth keeping in mind what we're getting is much better than what we've had in the past (When HoI3 launched I bought it at launch to support the devs, but didn't bother launch it until patch 1.3*, and still had limited expectations then. There was a reason for that . HoI4 is much, much better, and launched much, much better, than any HoI prior).

* In my second-last game of HoI3, as Germany, on TfH 4.02 (or whatever the 'final' patch is), when I invaded India, the game CTD'd in a way that was repeatable and unavoidable - ie, you could reload your autosaves but it'd still crash every time, nothing you could do about it. Now that's what I call broken.

Edit: Sorry if I sound short, a bit rough around the edges - all of the above meant in the spirit of discussing the issues and finding common ground/perspective, not trying to have a go .

 

[Gefallener_Held]

This pretty well sums it up.

As someone who has played HOI since the beginning, who preordered HOI4 and has by now put close to 300 hours into it -- I'm frankly pretty dismayed at the direction this game has gone in, in terms of ongoing development, since launch back in June 2016. I figured any DLC would be day-one purchases for me -- but I was so underwhelmed by Together for Victory that I didn't buy it when it came out and still haven't. The national focus stuff just feels like so much window dressing. It's nice, sure, but there are still so many fundamental issues with HOI4 that remain unaddressed -- above all the AI -- that it's hard for me to get very excited about it.

And so to come back to the forums after months away, wanting to check in on the status of HOI4 in the hope that some real progress was being made -- and to see the first dev diary be about: Romania... wow. Pretty deflating.

I honestly believe HOI4 has the potential to be the best game in this series -- it does many things well and I agree with many of the design changes over HOI3 -- but like I say, man, the direction this game is going in seems completely wrong to me. Almost a year since launch, and not a single compelling DLC that has pushed the game forward in important ways.

Focusing on the finer points of Romanian foreign and domestic policy circa 1939 is not moving the ball up the field, fellas.

Thanks. You make excellent comments as well. If you care, check out the thread I started asserting that Germany is in far greater need of DLC than Romania....

 

[jamesd]

I'll add my voice to those dismayed by this dev diary. A new focus tree for a minor, now matter how nice, or even a whole new expansion isn't the most pressing issue right now - its the AI. After not really playing the game since January, and taking a detour back to HOI3, I jumped back in recently. After figuring out a way to produce a somewhat reasonable German army by Sep 39 with the new resource rules, which entailed building Germany's synthetic industry up to the point where Germany produces as much oil as Romania in late 39, I went to war and was frustrated all over again by the idiotic AI division shuffle, and the return of the never ending naval invasions. Of course it had to be Germany, as the test games I ran after the last patch showed Germany capitulating to Russia in 1941, and if I want to play the US or UK I want to be fighting a tough campaign against Germany rather than just watching the Soviets beat them quickly.

The last patch was about 2 months ago with the devs falling silent soon after. I understand that silence so that we could be spared filler diaries and get something substantial upon return, but this isn't substantial. I would have much preferred a diary that said these are the issues we're trying to fix, even if the fixes aren't 100% yet. That would have given me hope that Paradox really understood the problems and was working to fix them. As it is I just have to cross my fingers and pray that the next patch does improve the AI. If it doesn't then I'll probably go back to HOI3 for the next 6-12 months, or dive into WITE properly, and check in again after the 3rd expansion. That will be the final one I've already paid for under the Field Marshal package, and Paradox's last chance re HOI4.

 

[slayan]

YEAH! Romania is my favorite minor to play

 

[Sunnywind]

I'm so glad to see you back on track. Looking forward!

 

[calagon1]

I quite like this DD on the whole. I am curious however, if this will affect playing as France and going for the Little Entente focus branch.

Will Romania be less likely to accept membership in the French Entente-alliance as a result of this, and more likely to jump ship?

 

[RforRush]

Why ask for China DLC if no one plays minor nations?

 

[adam_grif]

I actually dislike the new trade interface more than the old one. QoL would be automatic trading with favored nations, not showing me how many convoys it takes to ship resources. Not really impressed by that, sorry. If they've mentioned adding auto trading then I must have missed it.

What do you mean by favored nations? You can sort by who you're buying from already, or any of the other columns, as well as filtering the list by location and subject status. IMO they should just add filtering by faction or ideology as an extra button on the filter list.

The other QoL improvements they told us about so far were adding radar ranges on the map, letting you select all unassigned divs from the warning and showing manpower on the intel screen. None of them earth shattering, but hey, that's why they revealed them on twitter instead of bothering with a dev diary. I was just trying to say that they didn't truly leave us in the dark for 7 weeks. They told us the rough direction they were going in, told us that they considered stuff like div shuffling their top priority with AI improvements, and showed QOL improvements on twitter. It's not like they just went fully dark with no contact for 2 months.

 

[Meglok]

I kind of Leeroy Jenkins'd the thread today. Must be stronger next time. It just bothers me that your post was dog piled and you didn't say anything that bad. Oh well.

Leeroy Jenkins, now there is a blast from the past. Remember when it hit Wow back in 2005, still freaking hilarious.

Keep beating the drum, perhaps at some point Podcat will have a discussion about where he feels the game still needs issues addressed so we can see if we are in agreement. Feel free to go tilt at HOI4 windmills anytime, I will be your Sancho. Sometimes forlorn hopes do breach the gates.

 

[C-Breeze]

No, speaking for the discontented rabble, I would have been much happier with a DD that started out with "this is where we stand, this is what we plan, and these are the major game play issues we acknowledge we need to address..."

...Is it that hard to be responsive to your customers?

It is when your company is structured in such a way that you don't have a PR/communications specialist who acts as liaison between the dev team and the customer base. IMO, Paradox is struggling with a bit of a communication crisis. We've just had 7 weeks of silence, with no dev diaries, largely because the team says they needed the time to work on improvements. Fair enough, but with over 500k copies sold, surely PDX can afford to hire a communications guy so the team can stay busy AND the customers don't have to feel cut off from the process. That way even if certain improvements aren't ready to be revealed, the communications officer can still keep the flow of information moving by acknowledging that the team is aware of, (and planning to tackle), various issues and thereby ease customer concerns (much as you suggested).

 

[Alex_brunius]

It is when your company is structured in such a way that you don't have a PR/communications specialist who acts as liaison between the dev team and the customer base. IMO, Paradox is struggling with a bit of a communication crisis. We've just had 7 weeks of silence, with no dev diaries, largely because the team says they needed the time to work on improvements. Fair enough, but with over 500k copies sold, surely PDX can afford to hire a communications guy so the team can stay busy AND the customers don't have to feel cut off from the process. That way even if certain improvements aren't ready to be revealed, the communications officer can still keep the flow of information moving by acknowledging that the team is aware of, (and planning to tackle), various issues and thereby ease customer concerns (much as you suggested).

I think it's a deliberate tradeoff they choose actually.

It's very valuable for any software development to have the people heavily involved in the project out there communicating, interacting and getting a direct contact with the customers & end users as well.

 

[Archangel85]

On the contrary, I think it is a major boon that devs are allowed and supposed to interact with the community directly, rather than getting the reader's digest version through an intermediary. We do have a community manager in @BjornB, but I'm not too sure if it will help people if he just comes by every now and then and nods politely while you tell him what we already know. There is only so many times you can tell people "It's being worked on" before they stop believing you.

 

[C-Breeze]

I think it's a deliberate tradeoff they choose actually.

It's very valuable for any software development to have the people heavily involved in the project out there communicating, interacting and getting a direct contact with the customers & end users as well.

Agree there are a lot of positives in having the devs exposed to direct customer feedback, but as seems fairly evident in this case, there's also a lot of gaps. Therefore, a middle of the road solution that incorporates both the devs and a designated communication person might be a better way to go to improve the flow.

Edit:

On the contrary, I think it is a major boon that devs are allowed and supposed to interact with the community directly, rather than getting the reader's digest version through an intermediary.

Sometimes even Reader's Digest is better than prolonged silence.

We do have a community manager in @BjornB, but I'm not too sure if it will help people if he just comes by every now and then and nods politely while you tell him what we already know.

If I read the frustration correctly, it's not so much a case of us telling him what you already know, but rather him telling us what you already know. I was responding to a post that basically said there is no central repository where people can see a list of issues that the dev team has already acknowledged. As a result, we keep getting similar threads where people are complaining about the same issues over and over. Which, as far as I know, nobody likes to read.

There is only so many times you can tell people "It's being worked on" before they stop believing you.

Which suggests to me there's some sort of disconnect between the team and the customers. Please don't get me wrong, I want you guys to succeed. If you do well, it's good for me - so win-win. If anything I want to encourage you in your work, though sometimes constructive criticism is called for.

 

[Aodhan_]

Thanks for the DD Podcat glad to see them back looking forward to reading more. And I hope now that the Axis is getting a little love , that you haven't forgot about Italy send it's troops on a tour up through Germany and back home via a cruise.
This for me has to be one of the most annoying things at present, one that has made me set the game to the side till fixed unfortunately. Can't wait to see what changes you have made to air, hopefully teleporting has been done away with and who ever thought of it sent to the Eastern Front.

 

[Johuotar]

We actually considered the generic tree to be baseline for where we want the country specific trees to be, balance wise 8unless we think the country should be weaker or stronger than generic, see Indian manpower)

That is under balance discussion. Personally, I would like countries to be more limited in research slots because it forces the player to make harder choices on where to put their focus, but if 4 is too harsh, we will go with 5

Seems unfun to prevent Romania from getting 5 slots if generic gives you 5 with 50 factories (though some need to join faction to reach 5). I would make the fifth require certain amount of factories so it would not be much weaker than the generic focus. Perhaps around 60 factories? Other option would be to nerf the generic focus. It does not make sense that Romania can never get 5 slots but Tibet can.