Mission trees are a curse

[A Pink Duck]

We could go back to the Prussia example, Prussian national identity is heavily tied to its heavy militarization, and going 'merchant Prussia' defeats the entire point of this national identity.

IRL Prussia was all about the military. But in the game we are allowed and supposed to do other things. Prussia is militaristic wasn't some divine proclamation of destiny. It was the culmination of numerous smaller decisions throughout their history.

I'm hearing an awful lot of 'I would likes' not a lot of 'players would enjoy'. Pretty much all the arguments I've heard are for why people on a personal level don't like mission trees, and not how they impact enjoyment of the player base writ-large. Which is why I'm skeptical this is really about making the game better for everyone.

I like mission trees. I like the railroading and the gameyness and the artificiality. Why would I, as someone else who plays Paradox games, be better off for the removal, why am I wrong to like mission trees, and how should my like of mission trees be weighted against your dislike of them when it comes to design philosophy?

We have no way of knowing what people other than ourselves like or dislike. For myself, mission trees made EU4 worse in nearly every way. I don't really understand it, but you are certainly not wrong for liking them.

I think the only compromise is to make them truly optional. Don't put any core uniqueness (reforms, laws, estates, etc) inside them and let people turn off the rewards or the entire tree as was in the game rule screenshot from earlier in this thread. By letting them be disabled, devs won't be able to make mission trees the only way of accomplishing things (resolving disasters, obtaining estate privileges, etc).

 

[Duchy-2]

I think what some people are missing is that mission trees aren't the only 'goal' you have in the game, nor are they detrimental in this role. What individial missions are, really, are glorified decisions. What most people have issue with, I think, would be the handholdy-restrictive nature that comes from the mission tree. Think of a decision for a formable: 'own these provinces, have this tech, etc etc', but there's nothing that tells you that you first need to do an unrelated X, then an unrelated Y, then conquer province Z1, and only then can you conquer province Z2, allowing you to take the decision. The decision to form Prussia for example doesn't require you to first ally Poland, then have 10k men in the field, then 15 galleys, then... You get my point.

For the people who want guidance in their playthroughs, that's what formables and decisions are for! It's almost the very first thing you -- or at least I -- look at when starting a new game in ck2 and eu4. They're a source of 'flavour' greatly dislike this term btw without impeding the player's freedom, or at least not as much as missions do. Whenever I don't have a goal for a country in mind already, I just look at the formables, and then I begin to strategize about how to achieve that mid/end goal. You don't have that with missions, they instead sketch out your entire playthrough for you. You can literally see the start and end of your entire playthrough in a single tab. Why would you strategize about what options you have for achieving a certain endgoal when the game already gives you the 'optimal' path, even sweetening the deal with extra rewards along the way? Mission trees don't give you 'guidance' for a playthrough, they hold your hand, lead you, and give you candy for not letting go.​

 

[lazprune]

I didn't really care about mission trees.

 

[Asheviere]

You don't have that with missions, they instead sketch out your entire playthrough for you. You can literally see the start and end of your entire playthrough in a single tab. Why would you strategize about what options you have for achieving a certain endgoal when the game already gives you the 'optimal' path, even sweetening the deal with extra rewards along the way? Mission trees don't give you 'guidance' for a playthrough, they hold your hand, lead you, and give you candy for not letting go.​

Even if you are following the trail of candy you are still the one taking step after step. Do you just ignore the entire process of doing the missions and act as though players aren't playing the game when they do so?

Why exactly is this bad simply because you, personally, dislike it? Explain please.

 

[Vlad123]

I'd like remember Johan himself said "initially i putted the MT(on eu4) because was a good idea...after i regretted it"

 

[JacceDON]

I'd like remember Johan himself said "initially i putted the MT(on eu4) because was a good idea...after i regretted it"

 

[Duchy-2]

Even if you are following the trail of candy you are still the one taking step after step. Do you just ignore the entire process of doing the missions and act as though players aren't playing the game when they do so?

Why exactly is this bad simply because you, personally, dislike it? Explain please.

I was specifically addressing the 'guidance'/'sense of direction' argument.
If you like being told what to do every step along the way then that's obviously a completely different avenue.

 

[Mike282]

As someone who has played even more hours of multiplayer EUIII and EUIV than single player I hope PDX goes ahead with having extensive options to turn features like missions and their rewards off and on. I found aiming for the most op rewards and deliberately trying to sabotage the ability of other players to achieve the letter of the terms they needed to get their most op rewards rather gamey.

They do, at least this comment said so and attached a screen from a stream Game Rule

 

[SAmaster]

We have no way of knowing what people other than ourselves like or dislike.

Have you tried talking to other people to get their opinions?

I think what some people are missing is that mission trees aren't the only 'goal' you have in the game, nor are they detrimental in this role. What individial missions are, really, are glorified decisions. What most people have issue with, I think, would be the handholdy-restrictive nature that comes from the mission tree. Think of a decision for a formable: 'own these provinces, have this tech, etc etc', but there's nothing that tells you that you first need to do an unrelated X, then an unrelated Y, then conquer province Z1, and only then can you conquer province Z2, allowing you to take the decision. The decision to form Prussia for example doesn't require you to first ally Poland, then have 10k men in the field, then 15 galleys, then... You get my point.

For the people who want guidance in their playthroughs, that's what formables and decisions are for! It's almost the very first thing you -- or at least I -- look at when starting a new game in ck2 and eu4. They're a source of 'flavour' greatly dislike this term btw without impeding the player's freedom, or at least not as much as missions do. Whenever I don't have a goal for a country in mind already, I just look at the formables, and then I begin to strategize about how to achieve that mid/end goal. You don't have that with missions, they instead sketch out your entire playthrough for you. You can literally see the start and end of your entire playthrough in a single tab. Why would you strategize about what options you have for achieving a certain endgoal when the game already gives you the 'optimal' path, even sweetening the deal with extra rewards along the way? Mission trees don't give you 'guidance' for a playthrough, they hold your hand, lead you, and give you candy for not letting go.​

Yeah, but I don't want to open up my decisions tab and have fifty different decisions I need to scroll through, hover the mouse over to see the requirements and effects, and then plan out my strategy from there.

Putting them in a tree is just pure QoL. You see with the start of the trees what you can do immedietely and focus on that. It's not perfect since sometimes you'll find a later tree that clearly you needed to prep ahead of time for (mods are particularly guilty of this), but that's better than the alternative.

 

[Duchy-2]

Yeah, but I don't want to open up my decisions tab and have fifty different decisions I need to scroll through, hover the mouse over to see the requirements and effects, and then plan out my strategy from there.

You misunderstand me. I don't believe that the current missions should be made into decisions. A majority of the missions should be culled in my opinion, especially the 'conquer x' ones. My point was that general guidance is adequately provided by existing formables, and only certain (major) missions should be made into decisions, like, for example, ending certain disasters or restoring Byzantine borders. Likewise, some missions should have just been events. There certainly shouldn't be fifty different decisions.

 

[SAmaster]

You misunderstand me. I don't believe that the current missions should be made into decisions. A majority of the missions should be culled in my opinion, especially the 'conquer x' ones. My point was that general guidance is adequately provided by existing formables, and only certain (major) missions should be made into decisions, like, for example, ending certain disasters or restoring Byzantine borders. Likewise, some missions should have just been events. There certainly shouldn't be fifty different decisions.

Yeah, but that's for taking more content out of the game, not adding more back in.

A few missions are probably redundant, but I'd prefer several small rewards for incremental progress than one big reward at the end- an example, say there's a 'form Germany' branch, with a small reward for conquering each sub-region of Germany. I'd rather get steady rewards for slowly conquering the different parts of Germany, than wait until every single province of Germany has been conquered before getting a reward.

Another good thing about missions- they provide a small goal to accomplish ever 5-15 years, a formable or something similar is more of a 50 year goal.

 

[Vlad123]

View attachment 1299714

I mean he regretted as DEV (PS: he not taked the money,PDX taked it XD )

 

[Arizal]

Yeah, but that's for taking more content out of the game, not adding more back in.

If you remove all the missions about conquest, you already removed a lot of missions. A generic mechanic about it which would be occasionally supplemented by appropriate text would certainly not reduce the scope of the game. It would expand it.

As for other types of missions, I'm sure we could find ways to generalize them, with brainstorming and good faith.

I spotted someone talking about Burgundian succession. There were a lot of discussions about that particular case a while ago. It goes beyond mission trees, but the way I see it, you could make generic application of mechanics that would be able to mimic this event, just like you could do it for a lot of other things (like the Netherland rebellion, for example).

Plus, having general mechanics would solve the widely recognized problem that content rarefies the further you go in the game.

 

[SAmaster]

A generic mechanic

So instead of say a mission about how the British would conquer the north-american colonies of France to reflect the French and Indian Wars, you want a generic 'colonial conquest' mission that just gives Britain claims to any colonial region the British would border.

That's why I don't buy into the philosophy of 'make everything generic and dynamic'. Not everything should be. I understand the philosophy that 'some/most things should be dyanmic/generic' but I mentioned before I don't think the goal is absolute simulation, simulation in and of itself isn't a fundamental good which I think a lot of people are missing. They idealize it as the solution to all problems without thinking of the issues that it can bring- IE making every nation play the same.

 

[Duchy-2]

So instead of say a mission about how the British would conquer the north-american colonies of France to reflect the French and Indian Wars

Why can't this be an event?

 

[uberjedi]

One of the worst examples from EUIV is the mission tree for the Teutonic Order.
It basically forces you to go to war with Poland. There is no way around it.

We dont need that "gameplay" in EUV.

 

[Palfouri]

So instead of say a mission about how the British would conquer the north-american colonies of France to reflect the French and Indian Wars, you want a generic 'colonial conquest' mission that just gives Britain claims to any colonial region the British would border.

And what happens if France doesn't colonize North America? Do you just go, "oops, the AI didn't follow the script, guess you don't get that content now!"? Or should the flavor of the mission just be written as if you're fighting France for those provinces even if you're actually fighting Castile, or you just colonized it all on your own?

 

[freshmakarons]

Am I getting the consensus that if mission trees were added, they should not be expansion/other-country dependent? It’s the extremes that are flawed.

 

[J_Master]

That should certainly be removed I agree. That said- I don't think there are too many cases in which a nation would claim land and then revoke those claims- as the English abandoned any continental aims after the Hundred Years War. That said- I figure having a PU with France (as should be the outcome of a successful hundred years war) works much better as the reward than the claims do- even if the English got the PU, the integration of France should prove its own hurdle after all.

To me it's pretty obvious. It's the historic narratives that pure 'dynamic simulation' cannot portray. The Hundred Years War should be more than just one of many wars you fight, it should be a climactic event. But a purely dynamic system isn't going to be able to determine which wars are the big important ones and which ones aren't. Hence it's something that should be tied to the narratives of both England and France, as in real life the Hundred Years War is built into their respective national identities to this day.

Actually, what EU5 in it's dynamic systems has presented can better represent a climactic conflict like the Hundred Years War with IO's and situations. This is exactly why PDX has gone for this very modular and moddable way of setting up the game: because it grants them more options as well. (On a sidenote this is also why sometimes descriptions of certain functions of the game are very strange, since it's a direct translation from code into normal language of the modularity.) The Hundred Years War is confirmed as a situation. You can represent the general alignment of factions through IO's. So you have the Plantagenet Camp and the Valois Camp IO. In Britanny's succesion war, both sides would then join opposing Camp's. The Valois Camp can fall into a civil war itself if a French vassal becomes powerfull enough to challenge current leadership, this to represent the civil war between the Armagnac's and Bourgignon's, or for example later to represent the League of the Public Wheal. It requires some elbow-grease and direct attention, but this way of setting up flavour is at the same time more tailored to actual gameplay and more engaging than linearly going through mission after mission.

In that case I think there should be a mild punishment for you not playing into the historical role- I would compare this to a colonial Kongo campaign. The Kongolese aren't prevented from focusing on colonies, just as Prussia isn't prevented from doing trade-focus. It's just they don't get the same bonuses to colonizing as historical colonizers do, just as Prussia wouldn't have the same bonuses as Venice or the Hansa would. And I think this should be the case- certain nations excelled at certain things than others, and I don't believe this is something that can be easily transferrable. I'm a materialist, so I don't think that say cultures are inherently superior over another or anything, but I do think there's a ton of compound factors that drive these things that an administration can't just push a few buttons to do just as well as.

In any case, you CAN do a merchant Prussia run. I just think it's silly you insister either A. you have to be rewarded for it, B. in the absence of rewards for merchant Prussia, rewards for historical militarist Prussia MUST be entirely removed.

This may be tied tangentialy to a liberal-conservative thing- liberals have the habit of discounting nationalism as a real force, as liberals tend to be materialists. I'm a liberal myself, but I think this is a chronic mistake that's made- nationalism is a real force that has tremendous impact, it's just also an intangible one you can't quantify (similar to morale in armies). A pure numbers simulation can't simulate nationalism really. By it's nature nationalism isn't something that you can just measure against each-other, who has a higher nationalism score? England or France? Well the answer is that it's not about who has more 'points', their nationhood is expressed in different ways that inform different decision making.

We could go back to the Prussia example, Prussian national identity is heavily tied to its heavy militarization, and going 'merchant Prussia' defeats the entire point of this national identity.

I suppose a question should be asked- what do you think the role of national identity is? Based on prior comments I'm going to assume you want it to be completely malleable, able to be transitioned from one state to another on the whim of the player. I'd argue that's entirely ahistorical, even rulers have had to bow to the national circumstances of their country, they persist even amongst massive regime changes. Again this is why I don't like Crusader Kings as that nationalist element is completely absent.

The general issue here is moreso that this is the timeframe in which these national identifiers we see today were formed. To take the Hundred Years War again, this is a strong former of the Franco-British hostility for the rest of the era. But if the Plantagenets come out on top, and continue to rule both kingdoms in relative peace and prosperity, why would a hostile attitude continue? Or my Prussian example. From what I know the idea that Prussian Militarism originated in Prussia is a misnomer. It traces its roots back to Brandenburg just after the Thirty Years War. Brandenburg was devestated by being overran by foreign armies multiple times, how does one prevent that? Well, just beat them. What I'm mostly imagining with Prussia would be the starting situation for the Teutons in EU4, they face a revolt by the Danzig tag backed up by Poland. This to represent the Prussian Confederation. My "merchantile Prussia" is the idea of them having a total victory over the Teutons. Sure, I agree that the "historical Prussian" flavour should be in, that's the unique advancements they can get plus some unique laws. But because of the way it is set up, it doesn't punish you picking the different option. You're gonna be getting advancements either way, you're just offered a unique one if you're playing as a certain country. You're gonna have laws either way, you just have the option to pick a law that only your tag has. To take a example from a more set in stone country already, think about the Iberian countries. They have gone through the Reconquista, that's very deciding to the national character already. It's a system that both allows a player to stick with the historical choices and step away from them on his own accord. It's PDX chosing to prioritize player agency, and that's the great part IMO, it's better than what mission trees have been offering in terms of tag specific flavour and bonusi

I'm fine with advances, I just don't think they should serve as a replacement for national ideas. For one on a purely gameplay level, ideas gave every tag a unique (or semi unique) buff that could inform their gameplay and thus starting strategy. And I'm not of the opinion that every tag should start on an even playing field at game start.

In no way is this a accusation towards you, but what you said reminds me of a piece of critique aimed at Ludi

Advancements are a great replacement for national ideas. If you want to be like the historical country, you have to put in the effort. Feeling different should mean playing different and the current setup does that

 

[JacceDON]

Am I getting the consensus that if mission trees were added, they should not be expansion/other-country dependent? It’s the extremes that are flawed.

The consensus in this thread/on this forum or the consensus among players in general?