What could EU5 learn/take from recent Pdx games

[Johan]

Nested tooltips is what i miss the most from the newer games when I play eu4.

 

[Johan]

EU5 will be the same. On release, EU5 will be very barebones and it'll take some time for it to get to the point we all want it at. Hopefully we as fans remain patient.

This is against my philosophy. Maybe some people may have disliked design changes from eu3 to eu4, we included pretty much every content from eu3 included in eu4.

While a fair amount of people were unsatisifed with the amount of content Imperator had compared to other games, it did have all features from EU:Rome that worked, and many more added.

 

[PDXBigBoss]

Honest take here, as a player I like the idea of having a game such as EU4 with very high skill ceiling, that requires real effort to master but at the same time in an ideal world it must also have a very accessible and easy-to-comprehend tutorial around the basics.

What would be the most glaring, long-ongoing, antiquated and/or big problems of EU4?
Things that should be addressed in the future game without fail.

And in the other note, what would be the best features, mechanics and accomplishments of EU4?
That should be updated, improved, and kept in the game.

My most favorite feature for EU4 is probably missions (and flavor in general, such as events and what not) because that's what I have spent my time the most as a modder and as a feature it only reinforced my love for the game. That's not to say that the system cannot be improved, for example I sometimes feel bad having missions being the primary factor of narration / playthrough. I feel like MTs sometimes dictate too much of the pace of the game. They sure are awesome to play with, and clicking the button after completing a mission feels great, I can even say that I love love love reading event rewards, descriptions buuuut there comes a point where I would love to see some more weight being shifted to other gameplay/narrative aspects such as reforms, estate privileges, events etc. And I feel like this is one of the contributing factors to Lions' success, the addition of new reforms etc

 

[Johan]

Ck3 lost much of ck2s content

yes? I was not in charge for that, so its not my philosophy there.

 

[Johan]

While this is a fantastic philosophy to have I hope to Gods this doesn't mean that mission trees will have to be transplanted to EU5

I don't think the current mission tree design we have in eu4 is very good. There are lots of great gameplay experiences that our content designers have created with it that many many people like to play though.

Me personally, I think that the Imperator Mission System is far superior and would make for a more adaptive, more immersive and more expandable experience.

 

[Johan]

Its only been recently (Origins really) that the missions have been used to create actualy interesting gameplay
that isnt just "chains of perma claims".

There might be a few reasons for this..

When the system was originally created by DDRJake, I am not sure anyone knew what to do with it. and now almost 5 years later, both developers and modders are far more advanced with it.

Also when we recruited people for Paradox Tinto, we actively looked for people with lots of modding experience.

 

[Aldaron]

I appreciate the efforts from the studio to offer more historical accurate contents. Even if there is still a lot to be done in this area. As I understand the devs still rely heavily on wikipedia. Which is a shame. I think it would do a great service to the devs if the studio brought some general history manuals. You may ask directly to university teachers searchers. I am sure they would gladly answer.

I cannot speak for the teams that developed this wonderful game before us, but among the Content Design Team we have not only people with lots of historical knowledge, but one of us has a PHD in History. We are not precisely in the dark here.

Wikipedia is a great starting point for several things and it is very convenient because everything is collected in the same place. It is specially useful if you check stuff in several languages (as we do). That's not to say that it is our only source, because it is not. We do own lots of specialized books in several topics that we use for our job and we do also meet together to discuss future content so historicity is respected in a fun way, sharing our historical knowledge among us. We do also have regular contacts with university researchers.

 

[Johan]

The direction that Paradox games in general has taken with DLC's that I dislike the most is a patchwork approach to upgrading content and the map. I get why this happens, but the end result is you basically have a game that is never balanced worldwide--there's always a region somewhere that's either overpowered because these changes have just started, or underpowered because you haven't gotten to it yet. You get one area that's got an OP mission tree compared to others or another that has no map density because it hasn't gotten a pass yet.

I really don't think changing the map constantly is a good idea, partly for the reason you mention, and partly because it keeps breaking savegames for people.