I'm not sure if this has already been addressed, but to some level, it's a mismatch between the expectations of what we had in the past, and what is happening going forward. It used to be that you could come here, and write a post to Johan or Wiz, and they might respond because they had the power to fix the design in a fundamental way. Now that was never an expectation, but there was an expectation that if a lot of people come in and all talk about the same issue, the team leads would actually respond to it. It's much harder to do that now that there are comms teams who have to respond to these posts, but don't actually have the power to make those decisions. I feel kind of bad for you guys because you're caught between a rock and a hard place, trying to do a job you don't have the power to do, because people expect a somewhat direct line to the team leads. The last time I really felt that old kind of community engagement was at PDX Con, when you could go sit down and have a beer with the devs, and Johan made an apology for how Imperator was turning out, and promised to make things better (which turned out as the Marius update). And the responsiveness was really unusual among game devs - how many other places have the dev teams been able to get their game designs fundamentally swapped out, often multiple times, like in Paradox games? At any other studio, Stellaris 2.0 or Marius would have just been a sequel.
There are definitely things that can be done to address the toxicity in the forum posts, but more fundamentally, the hurt feelings on both sides feel like they are driven by the devs being given impossible deadlines, and not having resources to be able to actually address all the issues they can (but also not being able to actually say that publicly), and then players being upset that the releases have all kinds of issues. I can't imagine the devs being very happy about being forced to release products that have really big issues either, but they aren't able to express that (because their jobs depend on them defending their work), and that anger gets compounded when people blame them for issues beyond their control. At the very least, there needs to be more time given to QA issues, even if it means doing an early beta (either public or semi-public, but on a much larger scale than is being done now), and then taking the time to really ensure that game-breaking crashes at least are sorted out (which of course, would involve the team leads being able to unilaterally push back the release dates - I imagine that's not a power that the corporate side would be too happy with, but presumably the quality of release also affects the bottom line as much as the date of release).
Yeah, wiz got tossed into the oubliette years ago.
I joke, but whatever wiz is doing I think doesn't allow him to talk about it until it is announced. I imagine he'll be roaring back once that get announced. He's always shown in the limelight, as it were. I mean unless Pdox is afraid he might go too keyboard warrior, Wiz takes the least amount of crap of the devs I think, which can be a double sided sword, as it were.
And Johan isn't a communication guy. Just, he never seems comfortable speaking unless he's diving into technical details where he has the expertise, where he can go on eloquently and at length. I think he's rather shy, at least at public mass communication. Which often leads to gaffs and misunderstandings, and even trying to walk that back pisses people off. I feel for Johan for all the casual hate he gets. And he gets a lot.
I couldn't care less for this hollow PR apology, you've done this too many times now. We want to know WHY you released this sorry excuse for a dlc, WHY you thought this would be okay and WHY the person responsible for this still has a job. What's going on with PDX? Is upper management really filled with such incompetent people? Worrying.
Here is an issue with toxicity. A demand for apology, and then a refusal to accept it. Like, no apology is good enough, and no apology can be good enough. Why apologize? People will call it fake. Welcome to the twitter meta for forums.
I would advise you to not try and read between the lines because you'll always end up missing the facts and speculating on baseless assumptions. I understand it might be frustrating to not get as many details and information as you'd like and to not be able to know the exact details of what went right or wrong. But as I said above, it is how it is, and to some extent, you'll have to accept that some questions won't always get answers. I'm however sure that Tinto and the EU4 team will eventually share more info on their plans moving forward. Also, just on a general note, I know the narrative of big evil corporate overlord vs. poor innocent creative studio is very compelling but take from someone who's worked in this industry for a decade, the world is never this black & white.
Also, I've said that people who resorted to personal attacks were definitely showcasing toxic behavior, I didn't say that only this kind of behavior was toxic. That's actually pretty much the opposite of what I've been saying all along, so please don't twist my words. I've also not said our intention was to start banning every snarky comment on the forum or to police the tone here to an extreme. What I've been saying all along is that there is a balance to be found, between allowing people to express themselves; sometimes with a lot of passion and little filter, while also making sure this is an environment where our devs, and all our teams feel can be welcoming and constructive. I don't have a magical answer of how we find that balance, and we draw the line, yet. That's very much what we're intending to work on in the upcoming weeks/months.
Also, just to be clear, arguments like "just don't read the negative content", "this is how the internet is", or "trying to define toxicity will only anger fans more" aren't strong points to me. This is our platform, we own it and are free to define how we want to administrate and moderate it. I'm not discussing here to win an argument or getting everyone to agree with me, I'm bringing you some perspective on what I hope to achieve with our forums, and this community, and how I hope me and my team can help improve things here. At the end of the day, probably some people will end up disagreeing with the route we take, and that's fine, there is no such thing as pleasing everyone!
My defenses aside, Paradox as a company has a very poor track record with studios outside PDS, often ending with unfinished, unsupported products and ceasation of any business relations shortly there after. Paradox has just... not been good with managing its developers outside PDS and a scant handful of others (I will forever be grumbly about Tyranny. I love that game and wanted more). And, like, the news out of V:TM2 is super concerning right now. So the evil corporate overlord vs the innocent creative isn't totally unwarranted. And, no, it's never black and white, for example Obsidian had its own dirty laundry aired very publicly by a former employee with an axe to grind. But the amount of broken relationships and incomplete or broken games in the wake of Paradox publishing is telling. And any time I hope for the future, something like bad news out of V:TM happens, or the jank release like surviving the aftermath happens.
I know you can't really talk about these things, but like nothing is black and white, Paradox the company is not black and white either. And in general, corporations tend to bend towards certain practices anyways.
I am definitely sympathetic and you guys definitely put up with an extraordinary amount of abuse. However, your expectations might be a little naive. With Paradox being a company from northern Europe, I sometimes wonder if people there forget that they have a very international community. How many of you have actually met Americans? I'm from Newfoundland. If two people bump into each other here, both apologize to each other, no matter who is at fault. If you have a dispute with a vendor, you resolve it in a quiet and dignified manner. If you were to throw a tantrum at a vendor, the assumption would be some kind of mental health issue. That's our culture. Americans have their own culture. In America, consumers are a form of deity. If there is a grievance with a vendor, managers are expected to come out in rags on their hands and knees and beg for forgiveness while the consumers scream, wave their arms, and issue threats.
What makes it a little naive is that your company wants those big American dollars but also doesn't want to deal with Americans being Americans. A large amount of them are always going to fight you, no matter how reasonable your requests are. You can't expect them to become completely different people just for you. That's silly. I don't mean to generalize too much here, either. Americans are diverse as anyone else and I'm sure plenty of them are nice. But many of them are not! When building expectations you have to weigh them against reality. You should keep pushing for more mutual-respect and calm discussions but you also need to keep your goals realistic and grounded. The community will always be toxic to a somewhat large extent.
No one should deal with Americans being americans. Cause Americans being stereotypes is actually toxic and super gross. As an American, we should strive to be better than the last four years showed us to be.
I think the very simple solution is delaying shipping games or DLC that are obviously buggy, broken or generally dysfunctional. Toxicity does not rise in a vacuum, but the Internet definitely provides that very anonymous environment which spurs on hostile comments people would not dare spew out face to face. If the Internet is the kindling, broken releases are the gasoline and fuse.
The former PDS can do very little about (I think requiring registering a game before posting would help because suddenly getting banned for shitty behaviour has a kind of cost) but the latter they are directly responsible for. Release better games, patches and DLC and people will complain less. Shigeru Miyamoto's classic adage is perhaps no longer true the way it once was, but it is no excuse for shipping broken software.
The problem is that anything can be the subject of toxicity (Which is never justified no matter how justified criticism is). From things deserving criticism like the leviathen release, to things that are utterly insane and driven by madmen and liars like the deus vult controversy (A thing that was fake and driven by bad actors and, well, bad people).
Also, this original article was by a member of the HoI staff, not Leviathen, and, like, HoI has to deal with all the literal fascists trying to wriggle on and rant about the things they want in the game, and I can only imagine how exhausting dealing with these people is for anyone. And, I mean, heck, we got someone in this very thread flying the confederate battle flag as their avatar (and promising to never buy again, so, here's hoping right?). These are the king of bad actors that drag things down the most.
