What happens with 2/3 of the reported bugs (the ones without visible response)?

[Arheo]

I know that... but a lot of moderators (not you in particular afaik) seem to stiffle criticism of the devs. If you post anything critical the comments are shutdown and some users banned.

The right to critique a game, its publication, and its approach to any given issue is fine. You’ll note we don’t really get in the way of threads like this that are discussing a specific point in a reasonable manner.

That right isn’t a blank cheque though; criticism on the net very quickly and easily gets personal pretty fast, and it doesn’t really matter if there’s truth in there too - if stuff gets toxic this is the one and only place we can come to interact with our community with the knowledge that we won’t be subjected to that.

 

[Arheo]

I’m going to do my best to answer the original question of the thread here, but with a caveat: we don’t usually talk much about the development process for a bunch of reasons. A relevant reason here is that we’re unable (this can be anything from resources to finance to individuals schedules to privileged information etc) to talk about half the things folks would need to know in order to have an informed discussion on changing approaches or the practicalities of solutions to issues or perceived issues.

So, “what happens to 2/3 of the bug reports (the ones without visible response)”?

First thing’s first, we have an internal tracking database. It’s used for bugs, tasks, suggestions etc. The bug report forum and our internal database are not automatically connected (and shouldn’t be; you’ll see why shortly).

Both the internal database and forum have issues logged stretching back to the launch of the game and (internally) beyond.

Internally, we have quite a strict system for bug reports that requires detailed repro steps, save files, version numbering, disciplines, specialisms etc. you see some of that also in the bug report forum, but you’ll also notice just by browsing that those fields (especially repro steps and save files) are often omitted.

That’s ok! Not everyone will have time to do those things, we don’t really expect every forum report to be super actionable, but on the other hand it creates orders of magnitude more verification work for someone to reproduce and log an issue if there are no steps to reproduce or a save to load and see the problem. This is because we don’t just assume that reported bugs are true. And that’s because the reality is that they’re not. As an informed guess, I’d say about half of them are misunderstandings over mechanics (this decision didn’t do what I expected/the war started a few weeks earlier than historically), opinions (this historical general isn’t represented properly/this mechanic should be made X way instead), or mod-related (a large number of issues that state no mods were active did, in fact, have mods active.

So given limited time and resources (reality is a thing), these are usually not given more than a cursory glance.

Then there’s old stuff. Acting on reported issues for older versions of the game is difficult - save files won’t load, the issue might be gone or different, and adjacent stuff has likely changed making it hard to verify. This affects our internal database too, and yep, there are a whole bunch of similarly ‘abandoned’ issues there that are difficult to justify tackling when the likelihood is that most of them aren’t even still there at all. Still, we try to keep the cupboards clean from time to time.

And that, honestly, accounts for most of the problem you’re seeing I think. Our problem is more one of visibility than ignored problems; you don’t see our internal database, and the issues resolved or handled in it don’t get reflected onto the forum - that’s twice the work for no gain. Nearly every part of connecting the forum and our internal database is redundant work with little gain; issues are duplicated, the end user receives no game-benefit, etc. We can assign QA (as we do) to leave comments on forum issues, but really every part of the process of handling an issue is relevant here, not just the reporting and verification. Design needs to step in and prioritize it or even close it as WAD, someone needs to fix it, and that is all balanced against other tasks. But here I’m not trying to defend the process - I think the visibility challenge is real, and is something I want to find a way to solve. I have some ideas, but this project turns like a battleship not a dinghy. Some of you have noticed I pop in and do some fixing in the forum, but that’s not really something everyone can do. By virtue of my role I’m able to perform all those steps: decide if it’s a bug that should be addressed, prioritize it, fix it, and communicate outwardly about it. But it isn’t scalable.

 

[Arheo]

It's genuinely helpful to have that kind of longform insight into the process, and I do appreciate your engagement here. That said, at the risk of sounding like a broken record (and of you getting tired of seeing my username)...



This is where you start to lose me a bit. I think the OP is, whether intentionally or not, using the number of reported bugs both literally and symbolically, as a reflection of broader frustration with the bugfixing process. It’s much easier to point to a backlog of untouched bug reports than to repeatedly say, "I’ve run into old bugs, why hasn’t Paradox fixed them?" even though we see that sentiment often.

If, as you say, most of those reports are invalid due to duplication, missing detail, or user error, that should be reflected in the overall player experience. But the growing number of upvoted posts and comments in dev diaries highlighting persistent problems tells a different story. The perception that bugfixing is slow or inconsistent is not coming out of nowhere. It shows up in the above bug metrics, the forums, Reddit, and elsewhere. And frankly, it’s hard to trust that the same team who thought GoE was ready for release is thoroughly vetting and addressing bug reports behind the scenes accurately.

Take Italy’s broken balance of power system as an example. It took 2+ years to fix, despite being tied to a major DLC and affecting one of the major WW2 nations. Players spotted the issue immediately, as would anyone who played it for more than a few minutes. I remember posts about it shortly after release. One bug report from March 2023 was confirmed about six months later, and the fix didn’t arrive until mid-2024. That’s a long time for a fundamental and widely known issue to go unaddressed. I’m sure most players could list several similar examples just as frustrating.

I appreciate that the development process is complex. But at the end of the day, something clearly isn’t working. It’s hard to accept that the growing frustration from players is simply a misunderstanding. We are the ones playing the game. We see the bugs, read the forums, and participate in these communities. The disconnect between the developers and the players is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Communication helps, but only if it leads to meaningful action. Otherwise, it just feels performative. GoE was the flashing warning sign that a real pause and reevaluation was needed. Instead, the response was underwhelming.

As I’ve said before, these issues aren’t isolated. They compound. little to no QoL updates, obvious bugs are missed, fixes take too long, underwhelming and overpriced DLCs release while core problems remain unresolved, and promises to address concerns often go unfulfilled. There’s a saying: good, fast, cheap - pick two. Right now, it feels like we’re getting none.

I think what I mostly disagree with is the "all or nothing" interpretation of how things are doing. Here you point out some specifics and use them to consistently justify the assertion that nothing is working, and that everything has failed.

Building on HoI is difficult because the aspects that make the game so compelling also make it extremely fault-prone - it's a deep and complex simulation (other GSGs also do this!) with the expectation of extreme timeline and historical railroading (no other GSGs do this to our level). To put it in your terms, that makes it expensive, slow, and difficult to make content for. And like other games, sometimes we just get it wrong. And then it's expensive, slow, difficult, and disappointing. I wouldn't try to defend that - it shouldn't happen. But to conflate all of those things as examples of the same problem is, in my view, reductive.

 

[Arheo]

Has it ever even been considered that maybe you, the dev team, interpret things incorrectly? At what stage of constant issues, disappointing releases, and general negative community sentiment do you have to face the fire and do an honest to goodness self-evaluation that maybe. just maybe, PDX is the ones who are wrong? I've said it numerous times, but what ever happened to that post-GoE postmortem? Assuming that wasn't just a smoke screen to divert criticism, which I believe to be the case but I digress, there still has been no roadmap, no admission of guilt beyond the content being lacking, and no accountability. Surely, eventually, after all else has failed, you have to admit that the community can't be entirely mistaken, and maybe they make some valid points. I do love HoI IV, as I think most of us do otherwise we wouldn't care so much, but this entire situation has torpedoed any faith I have in this game or company and I do not intend to spend any more money on it until there is a serious overhaul. Not just words or promises of such, but until there is very tangible evidence and actions.

I'm not really sure what you want to hear. If I'm honest it sounds like you want to see heads roll or us pointing the finger at our staff and blaming - that's not going to happen; post-mortems are internal, self-reflective, and driven by a purpose to ensure that we do better. I think it should be pretty clear why the details of that don't happen in the public eye, even if the outcome and intent are: we should do better than GoE's launch state.

But GoE is only one part of HoI's story, and from our perspective, HoI's landscape is not one of "constant issues, disappointing releases, and general negative community sentiment", even if that's the perspective you have on it. That doesn't excuse when things go poorly, but that's why post-mortems and patches happen. There are folks out there actually having a good time with the game, enjoying recent QoL changes and content, or who are disappointed and want it to be improved. None of them are wrong.

 

[Arheo]

Alrighty, I'm going to log off now. Thanks to those with constructive comments: change is always better as cooperation.

 

[Arheo]

This issue is getting worse every month. More and more people are getting fed up over it.

I'm not seeing that really. I'm seeing the same people get more annoyed (about the same things), but that doesn't amount to the wider picture.

Edit: On that note, me engaging with those people actually seems to make the problem worse, if anything. I'm not sure how to balance that really.

I'd also add that it literally (using the word as intended) isn't getting worse every month. There continue to be monthly updates and patches, the last two of which added some pretty major QoL beats as well as the regular fixes.*

Can @Arheo at least answer why there isn't a custodian team for this? Be transparent please Paradox!

At the core, "Custodian Team" is another way of saying "put resources on maintenance". And we do, though it looks different due to the different types of game. I've explained this in a few places before, but Stellaris does not have the same landscape as HoI: focus trees (the cause of most gameplay 'issues') are monolithic and very gamestate-dependent. Stellaris does not have that sort of content, and thus their solutions are going to look different to ours.

I will also add that I put this topic down because it has ceased to be constructive in my view, and frankly that becomes quite mentally taxing to engage with. I'll keep checking in when I'm feeling ready, but I'd really appreciate it if you avoid tagging me directly.

*Which is effectively what a Custodian Team does but packaged differently.