Sure. This is a perfectly valid response (for you and me both). It's either this, or @TheMeInTeam comes along and deconstructs "good gameplay" from the Original Poster's thread title.
- 6
-
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.
I remember that when I first tried getting into EU 3 I had one hell of a hard time understanding the game by just playing it. So many of what makes the series unique also made it harder for people to pick it up and play, as the UI was so clutered and things were poorly or never explained in the game. You'd either have to have the manual with you at all times, open the wiki or go read/watch guides.
Then EU 4 comes along and does a great job on making the game clearer. Hey your unrest is high! Here is how you can solve it. You have uncored provinces! Here is how you can deal with it. Sure it wasn't perfect at giving all the information you needed in-game, but as time passed and more and more stuff was added into it, the more opaque the game became and the more pre-planning you had to do.
Nowadays we have ever more complex mission treea that are clearly designed with a set goal in mind of how they will be completed and how a player will go down it, but they are awful at conveying this design intention. At most you can follow their pre-requesites and rewards to get an idea of what you are supposed to do (anyone who says they are optional is delusional), and the black box that are mission fired events are so annoying.
EU4 looks ever more like an MMO. I hope you like having to alt+tab every so often to the wiki to read on all the things the game doesnt tell you about.
Then EU 4 comes along and does a great job on making the game clearer. Hey your unrest is high! Here is how you can solve it. You have uncored provinces! Here is how you can deal with it. Sure it wasn't perfect at giving all the information you needed in-game, but as time passed and more and more stuff was added into it, the more opaque the game became and the more pre-planning you had to do.
Nowadays we have ever more complex mission treea that are clearly designed with a set goal in mind of how they will be completed and how a player will go down it, but they are awful at conveying this design intention. At most you can follow their pre-requesites and rewards to get an idea of what you are supposed to do (anyone who says they are optional is delusional), and the black box that are mission fired events are so annoying.
EU4 looks ever more like an MMO. I hope you like having to alt+tab every so often to the wiki to read on all the things the game doesnt tell you about.
- 14
- 1
Either mission trees are to powerful or they force you to play suboptimally. What is it going to be? Also again you can follow a mission tree and still do your own thing along the way. When I play a casual MP game I barely ever completed a mission tree since it would often result in having to eat an ally.
How is the mission tree preventing you from looking at the area to see if its worth of going there? The mission tree will give you claims to go there (something that wouldn't be possible otherwise unless you go no-CB or hop along the coast).
The missions also usually have shorts texts giving context to the mission. So there is even more context to it if you actually read it than before.
- 5
- 4
It's both. Mission rewards are so powerful that not doing missions feels bad. However, this means that you're no longer setting your own goals for the campaign but rather simply executing whatever goals Paradox graced your tag with, which also feels bad. If mission rewards were much weaker (eg, only small amounts of prestige), ignoring them wouldn't be a big deal.
- 20
- 1
The complaint was that following a mission tree is resulting in suboptimal gameplay since you need to do them and at the same time they are so incredibly strong that you can't ignore them. Not that you can't play according to your own plans. I am pointing out how that is not possible in my opinion.
- 4
- 1
I could not agree with this more. My main complaint with the mission trees so well summarized. Thank you
Both. It at the same time punishes you for doing things out of order the devs intended for you but rewards you for doing things in their order, with something big like a PU casus belli on a major power at the end, one that allows you to ignore a mechanic of the game (the dynastic one in case of this example, it's a weaker mechanic, but still there).
Not true. Last I checked, the colonial idea set ends with allowing to claim any province inside of a colonial region and the expansion idea set end with the same but for trade company regions. What this allows for is the ability of the player to build up their country in a way that allows them to achieve the goals they're setting out for themselves instead of the designers creating tags with certain inherent abilities to achieve the goals they set up for it. Instead of "Portugal builds a Indian Ocean trading empire because it has the inherent toolset to do so" it's "Norway builds a Indian Ocean trading empire because it has built up the toolset to do so"
- 5
- 3
- 1
They lead you to pursue grand-strategy that would be suboptimal were it not for the arbitrary bonuses they give you (eg.: getting Hormuz while Timurids are strong). They bring down the grand-strategy aspect of EU4 and force you to rely more on strategic and operational skills.
Last edited:
- 3
- 2
- 1
This is why I hate France's tree. I have no desire to conquer Italy or Israel or be involved with the HRE beyond the low countries.
- 3
- 3
Fair, I seemed to recall it did. Colonisation still has it tho. But it does not take away from my point, having such abilities inherent to certain tags instead of having it be something you chose, organize and build for is just inherently inferior game design
- 4
- 1
Either the country you're playing has a mission to railroad you into what the developers intended you to do, with all kinds of bonuses and/or buffs to make it sub-optimal NOT to do so, or else you have to spend the additional points to do what would make more sense under the actual in-game circumstances. The missions generally feel out of place and detached from the in-game situation, if not totally contradictory to it. If not for the sweet mission rewards, I wouldn't follow that course of action.
I get it that some players, particularly new ones, like the "guidance", but after you've played a country once or twice, you want to try something different, in which case the static mission trees tend to drag you back into the same course of action in every game, because it's hard to refuse those powerful rewards.
In a couple of cases, I didn't WANT to expand in a particular direction, but the mission tree made it almost mandatory, by giving perma-claims on the provinces I DID want if I did the missions I didn't want. Then there are the ones to attack what's currently your best ally, the only reason your country hasn't been gobbled up by some larger power on your opposite border. Yes, let's put larger enemies on BOTH sides....and you can't move on to the next mission on the list unless you do so.
I went back to playing EU3, in spite of all of its flaws and limitations, because the course of events seems to unfold a lot more naturally than EU4, and I dislike the "rat in a maze, earning treats" feeling I get when playing EU4.
I get it that some players, particularly new ones, like the "guidance", but after you've played a country once or twice, you want to try something different, in which case the static mission trees tend to drag you back into the same course of action in every game, because it's hard to refuse those powerful rewards.
In a couple of cases, I didn't WANT to expand in a particular direction, but the mission tree made it almost mandatory, by giving perma-claims on the provinces I DID want if I did the missions I didn't want. Then there are the ones to attack what's currently your best ally, the only reason your country hasn't been gobbled up by some larger power on your opposite border. Yes, let's put larger enemies on BOTH sides....and you can't move on to the next mission on the list unless you do so.
I went back to playing EU3, in spite of all of its flaws and limitations, because the course of events seems to unfold a lot more naturally than EU4, and I dislike the "rat in a maze, earning treats" feeling I get when playing EU4.
- 8
- 3
- 2
Mission trees were a mistake and Johan himself agrees, but it makes them money and extended EU4's lifespan much longer than the usual, so they're doing it until it turns unprofitable.
Which means it's the playerbase's fault.
Which means it's the playerbase's fault.
- 12
- 3
- 2
- 1
I ignored all missions in a mod and the game is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better without them. It feels like actually playing EU4 instead of random crap happening all over without knowing why or how. Balance is improved, strategy is improved...everything is just better. I am not joking when I say that if they made a DLC that just removed all missions I would buy it just to put some money where my mouth is and maybe the people who keep hawking DLC mission packs like pay-to-win microtransactions would see that there's a decent amount of players who want to play an actual strategy game.
- 6
It's a repeat from HoI4 in that regard, where initially it was made as a crutch for the AI since they removed decisions for the 1.0 version of the game. It's a easy thing to sell as a "content pack" and they'll keep doing it as long as it makes money. But I'd like to see where Johan claimed that, since I seem to recall that he would want something like I:R's system for a EU5, but afaik that's just smaller trees you choose to complete one at a time.
- 2
- 1
That's a lot of effort, and there are plenty better qualified for it than me.
I don't think it's really warranted here, though. OP is pointing out that some mission requirement/reward sequences come off as false choices or traps...enough that disregarding the chain and just expanding like you don't have a MT for that part of it tends to either strictly dominate following it step by step, or close enough. IMO that's broadly true in some cases, and the Scotland example is reasonable to illustrate it. You're not saving that much ADM taking piecemeal, and the cost of 2nd war vs England is going to be higher if you take less clay in 1st war, most likely.
I wouldn't want to be the one trying to design MT where this doesn't crop up, though. If you forced me, I'd take it in a different direction entirely (no unique MT at all, instead using dynamic/situational based system like a more reliable and fleshed out version of the decision-based system). At least, if I were making the game to my personal preferences. It's hard to ignore the reality of players wanting MT, or focus trees in HOI 4. Like, players will refuse to play a generic tree nation in a total conversion mod with a novel position, novel unit, and terrain/war situation you can't get in vanilla because it doesn't have a focus tree and therefore "doesn't have content". Players do the same thing with nations in Anbennar. MT or bust, anything else "has no content". This annoys me, but it's the apparent reality.
I'd be very, very surprised if the devs didn't notice. And so we get this stuff. I guess try to make it align to things players should want to do, generally? But if you do that all the time, you're going to get a lot of similar-looking MT. Even more so than we already observe. There are only so many variations of "econ bonus", or "here have claims, on provinces or for a subject", and a massive incentive to power creep to keep selling them.
- 4
- 1
- 1
Ok maybe I put a couple words in Johan's mouth (fingers), but the gist is that he doesn't really like EU4 mission trees but the players love it, so they keep adding new ones.
Just want to point out that the OP has about 50:50 likes to dislikes. So some players is somewhat underselling the popularity of MT or at least the agreement with them being bad.
- 3
- 1
It would not be the first time that a mechanic that seemd good on paper or at first
got less popular as time went or as Pdx tried to 1up itself Patch after Patch.
With a 5050 split right now is a good time to have discussions about this.
- 9
- 1
Not saying there isn't room for improvement or a discussion. Just that some players like it is misleading considering the OP and the fact that Johan stated they are fairly popular.
- 1
Players on this forum are notoriously unrepresentative on the playerbase writ large, so while I think discussing things like this is good I hate to use forum likes and dislikes as a proxy for how something has been received by the wider playerbase
- 5
- 5
- 1
- 1