You're mistaken. I was not arguing with you. I don't care to convince you of anything. I was answering your questions. But evidently, I didn't get through to you. No big deal.
- 2
- 1
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
To me, mission trees add so much flavor and replayability that it would be sad to not have them. Yet, I can understand them being annoying and bad for just stacking modifiers and adding power creep across DLCs.
To me, the perfect system would be if we had huge sprawling mission trees like EU4, even with unrealistic and outlandish missions like restoring the Roman Empire as Byzantium, but we don't get any modifiers as rewards.
You do your mission, conquer land, build some buildings, maybe do some religious and cultural stuff and in reward you get to read some paragraphs of flavor, a poem or historical reports and that's it. No actual buffs, just text to read that adds to the experience. That would be enough for me.
I don't like making my own goals, which is why I play countries with big mission trees so much, and getting the validation of clicking a button for achieving that goal and having the game acknowledge it in some way feels good.
To me, the perfect system would be if we had huge sprawling mission trees like EU4, even with unrealistic and outlandish missions like restoring the Roman Empire as Byzantium, but we don't get any modifiers as rewards.
You do your mission, conquer land, build some buildings, maybe do some religious and cultural stuff and in reward you get to read some paragraphs of flavor, a poem or historical reports and that's it. No actual buffs, just text to read that adds to the experience. That would be enough for me.
I don't like making my own goals, which is why I play countries with big mission trees so much, and getting the validation of clicking a button for achieving that goal and having the game acknowledge it in some way feels good.
- 6
- 1
- 1
Reading
The fact that you are arguing that the entire base gameplay of every paradox game is just random numbers without context when mission trees are literally just gathering a set of numbers to achieve a number condition to get as a reward more numbers to gather a set of numbers to achieve a number condition to get as a reward more numbers to.. shows a lack of self awareness.
- 5
- 2
I don't object to the mission trees, but just don't want them to provide too many OP buffs (like permanent rewards). I do hope the mission tree is just a suggestion for various game ways and directions. If the missions give flavor rewards like titles, special forces, temporary boost, or maybe some interesting events (like giving a debuff to your old enemy), it will be more reasonable.
Last edited:
- 4
- 1
I'm ignoring all of the shitflinging above but I'm seeing a lot of
>dynamic outcomes
>organic gameplay
And the like and I'd like to remind that from the get-go EUV (formerly Project Caeser) spurned that kind of gameplay design as PDX feel it's doesn't work and isn't as played. It's something often requested but the clamouring for it never seems to turn into actual player numbers.
forum.paradoxplaza.com
It's why they've gone whole hog on flavour in general this time round.
>dynamic outcomes
>organic gameplay
And the like and I'd like to remind that from the get-go EUV (formerly Project Caeser) spurned that kind of gameplay design as PDX feel it's doesn't work and isn't as played. It's something often requested but the clamouring for it never seems to turn into actual player numbers.
Tinto Talks #14 - 29th of May 2024
Welcome everyone to where we talk about our completely secret, not yet announced game. In today's Tinto Talks we will delve into a completely new feature. A small reminder, this is very much a WiP, and nothing is final. The core of this...
- 4
- 1
- 1
I don't use missions in EU4 and I don't think I am too bothered by their existence so I am fairly neutral in this discussion. (As long as missions don't take away events and flavor from non-mission-players) I have just one question to those that do use them: Why do you need them? If I play the game I set my own goals for the game, and if I need to adapt, I'll adapt and change the goals. I am curious why others feel like they need PDX to set the goals for them? Or is it the rewards you receive?
- 1
Thanks for the honest question.
First, for any country, I would look into their past and see which empire they could claim to attach their past to. This could be a multi-tiered system linked to how far away they are from the empire they claim a filiation to. For example, France, could claim to reform Charlemagne empire, and further in history they could claim to reform the Roman empire.
I'm not saying they should have a mission tree asking them exactly to do that, but that if they get conquest missions, they should be geared towards reclaiming land in those areas before going to conquer Britain or Spain. That way you keep the imprint of history without sacrificing the possibility for a less fortunate country to get the exact same advantages. For example, Lituania, who as far as I know doesn't have such a past, would keep getting generic missions about expanding in its immediate vicinity while France would be turned towards Italy.
You could also imagine giving a choice between reclaiming the old empire and building something new. I mean by that each time you complete a "page", a "tree" or whatever, you could choose between the glorious past or a new objective. That way France wouldn't be locked into conquering Italy, but could instead go with Spain or England or anything else making sense in their situation.
As for the Mughals, well, they didn't exist at game start. They were a contingency of history. You could have them as a formable, since in my ideal TAGs would just be TAGs without any special destiny or bonuses. If then a mongol based empire came to conquer parts of India, you could name that empire the Moghol empire. What the "Timurids" could do as a shadow claimed country would be to reclaim Genghis Khan empire, though. This is an empire that existed in history, ever so briefly, and Timur was someone of mongol descent.
But I hear you about steering the "timurids" to do exactly that : get in India. Maybe instead of asking you how the timurids came to conquer India, you should ask yourself why did they do it historically? From what I understand, Babur didn't go to India because he had a divine call, but rather because his position in Afghanistan was untenable. He was threatened by the Uzbeks and, most importantly, the Delhi sultanate was collapsing.
Basically, Babur exploited a power vacuum. This is the type of situation you could see in-game if a big empire collapses and you find yourself in a position where you can quickly sweep in. There is no need for mission trees asking specific regions. Instead, you could get missions aimed to exploit such opportunities.
As Babur, you are threatened on your west flank. Your dream of restoring the mongol, or even Timurid empire, is shattered. Then comes the new that the Delhi sultanate is crumbling. You receive a prompt informing you of that general situation, and the nobles of your country support the endeavor of exploiting the situation. You go.
That's, I think, what most people talking about "dynamic gameplay" in this thread are about. They want the player to react to the in-game history, not to recreate ours without agency. And that's how Babur might have felt. He wasn't going there to restore a glorious empire of the past. He seized the day.
Last edited:
- 4
- 1
- 1
I wrote a few comments on this a few pages back you could read. Tldr, I played eu4 on release, and the game is 100% more fun with them than without.
- 3
- 1
The rewards and optimum play is a fair point. And it's also just annoying to see the AI use the rewards (permaclaims are the most obvious example) when you try to ignore them, so you have to totally mod them out. But that will also introduce troubles since there are for example disasters that are coupled to mission trees. I'm thinking about the Majapahit, or the Byzantine starting situation. Anyways, that's all peanuts compared to my central objection. GSG's are a type of roleplaying game. The player is in charge of crafting a historical narrative. Which is why PDX hoping to better simulate imperial downfall is a good thing. The problem with mission trees is that they get in the way of the creativity of the player. PDX designs certain countries around them, preseting the player with a non-dynamic, right way to play that country. I want to be left free. I want to be able to push certain countries in certain directions. Yes, you are still incentivized to go certain ways with certain countries. Advances are a good example of this. They are the replacement for ideas, and countries have certain unique advances so you are incentivized to pick a certain advancement group to advance in in a certain age. But you can ignore it, and gain the same amount of bonuses still, since there is something else to do. It's flavour, it pushes newer players who may want the handholding in a certain direction, but I won't be worse off for choosing to say "no PDX, thanks for the offer, but I'm a big boy and I make big boy decisions".
To reject the "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" accusation, let's think up a compromise, because as much as I despise them, I do still think they have a place. PDX has long struggled with providing players with tutorials, and mission trees offer up a great way to new players to recieve guidance throughout a game. What is best done is to make a selection of countries and build a tree around focussing on a certain aspect of the game. Choose a country and make that the "generic" tutorial, let's say a Irish minor, which would be a bit of everything. Then, construct a Portuguese tutorial focussed around the trade, exploration and naval aspects of the game. Austria? Diplomacy and religion. Choose maybe some 5 to 10 countries around the world with perhaps a minor European bias, and give them mission trees. And keep it at that. I think new players would benefit greatly from the handholding and the goalsetting, and in the future they can set their own goals and know how to achieve them. What this also allows is for modders to use this form of mission trees. Are you a player that does want each country to have a mission tree? Go for it, download that mod! They work great in complete overhaul mods as well. Why? Because mods are something we, the players, ourselves go out to look for. They fit completely with that vision of "gsg's as a roleplaying game". PDX games are at their best when players are allowed to customize their experience
Events by their very nature can be a lot more dynamic, but yes you can also effectively design them as constraining as mission trees. What is mainly required on PDX's side is a willingness and a capability to design flavour keeping the different states of the world in mind. Simple example: Anglicanism must spawn. Who does my king of England want to marry? Does he want to marry a generated woman, or does he want to marry a woman named Anne Boleyn every game?
Sure, but this can be tied in directly with the tag can it not? We can recognize these spaces being tied to these entities. That kind of "national unification" is very natural. But why should Russia get permaclaims on the steppe? That kind of connection is not there. Certainly, they may want to expand there and may have very good reasons to want to, but does it warrant the kind of recognition that a permaclaim gives? I would say not.
I don't care for the majority opinion. The purpose of this forum is feedback, here is mine. Plus, a argument can be made that if you present flavour systems better than missions, that number would collapse. It simply represents the current status quo in the community and PDX's design philosophy.
Do not pretend as if missions are the only flavour there is.
You're strawmanning here
Yes. In this example: the difference in colonisation should be down to colonial policy, not down to tag = SPA
To larp. The benifit of playing Prussia in that scenario is to larp. Which is "gsg's as rpg's" as I described them above, but in a more crude manner.
It is completely fair to argue fully from one own's perspective. Just like you believe that your gameplay preference is more important than his.
I prefer to be the one writing the greatest story ever told, not to have it spoon fed to me by PDX
The issue with the HoI series is its limited scope. It has always heavily relied on scripting to achieve a conflict that feels like WW2. Japan attacks China in 1937. Germany makes a deal with the USSR to attack and devide Eastern Europe in a particular way, only to go on to backstab them in 1941. The game is about combat in a very limited timeframe and must hit specific beats to feel right. PDX has never achieved that with dynamic sytems, thus the scripting. Heck, a often repeated complaint is about the unrealism of economic growth that each HoI game has one way or another. But that doesn't matter because of the game's scope. You do not need to deal with the aftermath of the war, the moment you achieve victory you close the game. The Europa Universalis series has always had a much wider timeframe. A war is but a blip on the map and your considerations are always much wider. Because of this, it has always relied more on emergent systems because scripting and railroading creates greater dissonance. Scripting and the flavour text and modifiers that goes along with that have a tendency to increase in distance from the actual state of the world the further you get from the start date. Scripting and railroading are more contentious issues in EU than in HoI because of the scope and what the game tries to depict. HoI is a series about war, in EU war is but one tool at your disposal, this is why these games set out to achieve enjoyable experiences in different ways. This is also why EU5 and CK should have different character systems. In CK, the state is made up of different characters and their personal and feudal relationships. In EU, they are moreso tools for the state to use. Different games have different considerations
This feels like dissonance. An admittance that what PDX is trying to do is trying to statisfy the playerbase's urge to have its cake and eat it too. "Yes, I want to change history, but I want to have it in this little bubble and not affect the rest of the world." At what point do we have to admit that this is a balancing act that will not hold, and that if the player wants to fight the Ottomans at the gates of Vienna, perhaps they should pick the startdate where the Ottomans are at the gates of Vienna, instead of starting back in 1337?I'm ignoring all of the shitflinging above but I'm seeing a lot of
>dynamic outcomes
>organic gameplay
And the like and I'd like to remind that from the get-go EUV (formerly Project Caeser) spurned that kind of gameplay design as PDX feel it's doesn't work and isn't as played. It's something often requested but the clamouring for it never seems to turn into actual player numbers.
It's why they've gone whole hog on flavour in general this time round.Tinto Talks #14 - 29th of May 2024
Welcome everyone to where we talk about our completely secret, not yet announced game. In today's Tinto Talks we will delve into a completely new feature. A small reminder, this is very much a WiP, and nothing is final. The core of this...
- 9
- 2
- 1
Trying to create a narrative that is more interesting than actual history is a fools errand. I don't want to have to find meaning in the AI-slop that the algorithm generates for me (being forced to fill in the blanks as I go along like a small child pretending that pine cones are hand granades), only irl history is good enough for a historical GSG.
- 16
- 1
I have as well, and I think that mission trees, especially the newer ones, have made the game worse. Nations that I used to enjoy playing are no longer fun because the mission trees strongly encourage you to play in a specific way. It doesn't feel like I'm playing a game where I have agency anymore. I'm just rotely following directions. Conquer here, develop this, ally this nation. It's boring.
- 8
- 1
- 1
Then why don't you go read a history book? It's more immersive than the Paraslop you are begging for. I would do so if only real history was good enough for me. Why are you playing a game if you don't want the choices you make to matter? Plus, it's pretty funny that you choose to focus on but one sentence out of my entire post. Yes, it is the one directly adressing you, but I like to think that in the rest I've taken a pretty reasonable stance. I think flavour should be in, but there are better ways for PDX to handle them, especially better than mission trees
- 9
- 3
I didn't buy any EUIV expansion after Emperor. I used to preorder them.
- 1
I read quite a lot of history, buy I also want to be able to immerse myself in history in other ways - if I wanted to write my own story I would fire up Word on my computer and start writing. Paradox GSGs are far from perfect, but they are the closest thing to a simulation of actual history the format has ever seen. I take what I can get, I'm only human.
Of course I won't engage with your entire comment, I'm at work and don't have time to bash my head into a brick wall. I won't change my mind, you won't change your mind, we who are in favour of mission trees at least offer two options for how to play the game (with or without the missions) while you (and all who agree with you) insist on absolute purity.
It's a tiring debate, and I thank my lucky stars that I have a ridiculous majority of the playerbase on my side.
- 8
- 2
Excuse me? In the first segment of my post I made a suggestion for how PDX could best include mission trees as a compromise between purists on both sides. I'd reccomend you give that a read first before you make such assumptions
- 2
- 1
Not trying to be argumentative or dismissive, just curious
How do you see the "game" part (i.e. the world is interactive and therefore can change) combine with the "history" part (we want to experience historical narratives because alternatives are boring)?
Do you see any conflict? If so, what's a good way in your mind of resolving it? If not, care to elaborate on the why too?
Is retreading historical narratives always superior, or is there n repetitions you can do before you start being interested in exploring some alternative scenarios?
Last edited:
- 6
As I wrote, I don't use mission trees in EUIV, so why can't you just ignore them? It works fine for me. As long as the events aren't put behind the mission-tree-"paywall" what is the problem?
- 3
They are though. Government reforms, estate privileges, disasters, and more are all locked behind the mission trees. For many nations the mission tree is non-optional. Especially if you want access to the national flavor or even the ability to survive for more than 5 years (like Mali)
- 9
- 2
- 1
Not necessarily, I'm not as dogmatic as to bemoan every minute deviation from history. We are decades away from the technology that would allow us to create a perfect historical simulation, right now Paradox GSGs are as good as it gets. They are games at the end of the day, and their purposes is to allow players to live out historical narratives in entertaing ways.
Despite how I might appear I'm no savant who autistically arranges my playthroughs to exactly mimic irl history, I just want there to be some effort from PDX to have the setting be somewhat reminiscent of actual history - and to orient the core gameplay around it. Mission trees offer reasonable direction both for the AI and the player to accomplish this, but still it is only a component in a greater whole.
I am a working adult, I will only have time to play a certain amount of playthroughs within the lifecycle of the game. I might want something different in time, and for that purpose I would probably play another game or a mod of some sort.
- 2
- 1
That's horrible and then I am wholeheartedly against mission trees in EU5. (I haven't played EU4 since Emperor, and I think up to then no crucial game features were locked behind the mission trees. )
- 2
- 2