Is paradox really telling us all to quit the game?

[okawfj]

Abandoning complexity is the same as abandoning depth.

 

[EricArthur]

I appreciate your answer. May I ask what exactly are you doing or preparing in the context of chalenge for this year? I don't mean that in a bad way but whenever the topic of difficulty is discussed here or on reddit its remains usually unaswered or - when it gains a lot of likes - the statement is along the lines that you consider it an issue but want to come with meaningful way how to solve it without just buffing AI. Thats aproach I love in theory. But game was published in 2020 and situation is still the same, your answers are still the same while difficulty remains significantly below the average rpg/strategy you can find on the market. It makes me little sad because the concept of the game is such unique and great... so why not to tailor difficulty for each group of players as they would like??

Don't ask that question; we've been waiting for an answer for over a year now.

 

[El-Tapicero]

Abandoning complexity is the same as abandoning depth.

Extreme complexity is neither good nor necessary. Sometimes, a set of simple rules can result in a complex and fun game as a whole.


The best example of how extreme complexity is a bad thing is the accolade system.

1. The main reason it’s bad is that the AI itself doesn’t know how to use it (and would be very complex teaching it how to use it)
2. For players, it becomes tedious to manage, and many end up ignoring it entirely

 

[Greifental]

For players, it becomes tedious to manage, and many end up ignoring it entirely

I'm one of them.

 

[Chaotic_Good]

Extreme complexity is neither good nor necessary. Sometimes, a set of simple rules can result in a complex and fun game as a whole.


The best example of how extreme complexity is a bad thing is the accolade system.

1. The main reason it’s bad is that the AI itself doesn’t know how to use it (and would be very complex teaching it how to use it)
2. For players, it becomes tedious to manage, and many end up ignoring it entirely

Imho is not a problem of complexity, is a problem of bad design and very bad interface.

 

[SpiritRiven]

I was thinking about designing a mod that forces player to play within the same limitations as the AI when it comes to selecting events and having to make more limited ,impactful and meaningful choices when it comes to dynasty management. I think if you can limit gaming the eugenics system where you don't completely have all the information to make the right choices for finding spouses and alliances, you can make the game more challenging without fundementally changing it so much.

No, I don't like how Obfuskate does it.

 

[El-Tapicero]

Imho is not a problem of complexity, is a problem of bad design and very bad interface.

If I may, this is also a matter of complexity. There are 50 different types of accolades, and a player has to spend hours studying all the available ones — considering the primary attribute, the secondary, and sometimes dealing with rather unusual requirements to obtain a specific accolade. Don’t get me wrong, personally I can manage it, but the AI not and many players find it tedious.

And of course, with so many accolades, achieving proper balance becomes nearly impossible. There should be, at most, five types of accolades — one for each lifestyle — and their acquisition should be far more accessible, both for new players and for the AI.

 

[El-Tapicero]

I'm one of them.

And my brother, one friend... tons of people complaining about them.

I personally stoped to use them because I saw that AI didn´t use them properly.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Just because something is complex doesn't mean it has a lot of depth and, quite frankly, I think simple systems tend to have a lot more depth because they are simple. Like, ship design in Stellaris is fairly complex but doesn't have a lot of depth because you just use the meta builds while districts in Civ 6/7 are fairly simply but have a lot of depth because you have to put in a lot of thought about how you are going to maximize your district yields because there are real trade offs you have to consider.

 

[Chaotic_Good]

And my brother, one friend... tons of people complaining about them.

I personally stoped to use them because I saw that AI didn´t use them properly.

If the AI cant manage a mechanic, then that mechanic is useless, at least for sp.
Imho, AI must be capable of use properly all the game mechanics, if ai can't manage them, is like not having that mechanics.

I think is time to stop develop new features and fix and repair the old features.

 

[Voidian]

If I may, this is also a matter of complexity. There are 50 different types of accolades, and a player has to spend hours studying all the available ones — considering the primary attribute, the secondary, and sometimes dealing with rather unusual requirements to obtain a specific accolade. Don’t get me wrong, personally I can manage it, but the AI not and many players find it tedious.

That's a very good example of why the feature is bad, because of UI.

This was something people were bringing up ever since the release of accolades, the entire Ck3 UI was designed to be at one click's reach, every tab, every menu, every piece of information was either right in your screen most of the time, or just one button away.

Then they started adding new features, completely forgetting what made the original CK3 UI so praised, and Accolades (along with court positions) were some of the "best" examples of this, these menus are hidden behind menus, and open even more menus, it's tabs within tabs within tabs, and if something wrong happens (like your accolade's "heir" moves away) you won't even know it happened before you start digging through those menus, it really isn't a complexity issue, it's an UI issue.

Ck2 had a --very-- complex battle system, with different unit types having different values in different combat phases, which could be greatly boosted, or hindered, by the formations being used, and those formations had requirements of culture types, personal commander traits, warfare skill level, and flank composition, flanks which were also used to dilute the individual impact of everything I listed before as you didn't just have to set up one army, you had to set up 3 to have equal effects in battle, the game was so complex that some people, failing to understand what was going on simply didn't engage with it, thinking "having bigger numbers", a very common, very wrong criticism against CK2, had anything to do with winning more battles.

Yet, people unwilling or incapable of learning the nuances of the old system could simply play the game as if those systems didn't exist, it didn't require any micromanagement at all, the game was perfectly serviceable even though it had extreme depth, and people could enjoy simply reading the battlefield actions and seeing what they were doing, like when your army stopped firing back during skirmish phase and decided to create a shield wall to resist the enemy arrows, while another commander suddenly charged and initiated the melee phase earlier, which gave the advantage to feudal armies (heavier compositions) over hordes & tribals, etc...

Meanwhile in CK3 all mechanics related to combat & warfare were butchered, we removed combat phases, flanks, formations, not to mention all the adjacent mechanics like the individual banners from your vassals, managing the gathering of armies before warfare, etc... Have we gained anything, at all, from losing depth? The idea of the game is still the same, it still plays in the same way, it's just an all around lesser system, there's just less to learn, less to do, less to make things interesting, and even for those that don't want to learn and micromanage anything, there's less to see as there's nothing interesting going on in battles, it's just blob A throwing damage at blob B until one side is defeated, there are no neat stories being told about great battlefield duels, no drama from rulers getting shot by a stray arrow in battle, no formations being used & countered by either side, noone is comming to the rescue of a struggling flank turning the tide of battle, nothing, just blob A vs Blob B.

 

[Benismann]

I was thinking about designing a mod that forces player to play within the same limitations as the AI when it comes to selecting events

There're very few instances where AI can't select certain option tho, so what do u mean by that?...

 

[Breebelbox]

Because it has been asked in the beginning of the thread what kind of difficulty people are asking for, here are my 2 cents.

For me the missing difficulty is clearly shown by three examples, of course there are much more underlying issues.

1. I never get war declared on me.

That's maybe an exaggeration but the most times I got wars declared on me are maybe once in the early game when I'm still comparatively weak and then maybe one more time in a crusade in the late game if I took some holy sites.

Both of those situations are easily solvable. The first situation in the early game is solved by just getting a lot of strong alliances who will completely sacrifice themselves to protect me.

The second situation in the late game isn't an issue at all since at that point I'm usually so strong that I can take on the combined forces of Europe, especially if they are landing on a coast with ships. This is also due to the terrible crusade AI, the attrition system for large armies, the AI not using the stationing system properly, the AI not being able to keep their heritage together and the AIs inability to have an economy that can rival the one of the player.

This means that I'm left alone for hundreds of years to do whatever I want. That's boring, not realistic and leads to my second point.

2. No defensive pacts.

The AI just sits there like a frog in the warming pot while I gobble up all the territory around them. Again, not realistic at all, especially if my faith is hostile to theirs. There have been big alliances throughout history, especially if it was against different faiths. Again it's boring and makes the game too easy. Thanks to all the stacking modifiers the AI even has + 100 opinion of me when they should hate me for what I'm doing to their brothers in faith.

3. The AI doesn't take advantage of me.

If I'm already fighting a war, maybe even on two fronts, the AI doesn't see this as an opportunity to carve up some pieces of my territory. In the game Knights of Honour 2, the AI will definitely do that. If you declare a war, you can be sure that the AI will pile on you to get a piece of your territory. That means two things. First, that offensive wars are risky, they let you open for attacks. Second, you have to be able to end wars quickly, otherwise you might loose (almost) everything. This makes declaring wars much more interesting and more of a strategic decision. It also makes diplomacy and defensive alliances much more important.

So once you have learned the basics at least for me there is nothing to do anymore in CK3. The events aren't that good that they could make up for the complete lack of strategic depth. Also roleplaying is much more interesting and rewarding when there is friction, struggle and challenges.

That's why I stopped playing and buying the dlcs. More content is nice but if I already know how every single game will end (I will achieve everything I want), there is no point in starting a new run.

 

[giorgosth128]

That was... very poor phrasing on my part, and the criticism it's caused is completely justified.

The question as posed in the Q&A suggests that increased difficulty is an easy fix that we're just choosing not to do. What I was trying to say is that it's not that straightforward; it's hard to make content that's challenging for veteran players without wiping new players out, but that doesn't mean we're not trying. We just want difficulty that's fun to engage with, and not frustrating.

We want to make the player lose in ways that encourages them to adapt their strategy and try again, rather than sit there looking at a game over screen feeling like the game screwed them over with mechanics that were incomprehensible or completely out of their control. There's already a variety of ways to crank the difficulty up by artificially boosting the AI or hobbling the player themselves via game rules, but given that the discussion around difficulty persists I think it's safe to say that even the veteran players feel that's not an acceptable solution to the problem. And to be clear, I do consider it a problem.

Please please just this once tell us what you have in mind to fix this maybe the players would be more at peace knowing,

 

[Citizen Caen]

Please please just this once tell us what you have in mind to fix this maybe the players would be more at peace knowing,

They can’t tell you that, because they have exactly zero plans to address it.
They are about to release an extremely OP and broken nomad Government type, that will be a power fantasy right out of the gate, no challenge required. They will then follow it up with a China dlc that is guaranteed to be at least as broken as admin government, if not more so.
Somewhere along the way they’ll throw in a coronation activity which will provide additional pay2win buffs to prestige and legitimacy, only exacerbating all the modifier stacking issues

And that will be this year of development.

 

[giorgosth128]

someone's cranky.

 

[giorgosth128]

to me if they think it a problem they will andress it maybe not in the timely manner we want but it will happen.

 

[Citizen Caen]

to me if they think it a problem they will andress it maybe not in the timely manner we want but it will happen.

Really when’s that supposed to be? Because it was obviously not a priority for the first five years of development.

 

[giorgosth128]

I do not know as I have said I have faith that it will happen and to me the AI is already improving. and the devs are proven to listen to feedback so I am not pesemistic about it

 

[Bisonmask]

If I may, this is also a matter of complexity. There are 50 different types of accolades, and a player has to spend hours studying all the available ones — considering the primary attribute, the secondary, and sometimes dealing with rather unusual requirements to obtain a specific accolade. Don’t get me wrong, personally I can manage it, but the AI not and many players find it tedious.

The problem is a lack of a squiring system and how you can't get a list of possible accolades to decide what you want ahead of time. The fact a "roleplay" and character focused game has no squires is honestly just funny