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

[Dojo704]

Hey all,

We currently have a lot of reported bugs, in my view a positive sign of our active and responsive hoi4 community. However lots of them get no visible response and once they are on the second, third, fourth page, they seem to be off the map completely. Is this only my impression or reality?

I dont want to sound too negative or demanding but there are some very important ones in my eyes, like the ones showing that some existing modifiers do not work (which always has the taste of wondering if there are more of that kind), non land casualties not being counted, focus tree landgrabs not checking the actual current owners and so on...

It sure seems a little disappointing to see many bugs with a 2022 or 2023 posting-date to reappear on the front page because no one took care of them.

Thank you for reading

 

[Cornutus]

That seems to be the stance PDX has taken. If they can get away with either "good enough" or "some people like it", then why bother trying to make a 9/10 product when a 4/10 will not only sell just as well but requires far less effort to pump out. The player numbers aren't dropping, but they aren't really growing either. Much as I would say that it is just business leading to their decision making, stagnation is not a promising outlook.

Kind of a side note, back when I was a kid in small-town Canada, my classmates from elementary school would discuss NHL/National Hockey League teams.

Back then (and probably now), the biggest jokes were about the "Toronto Maple Leafs" team from Toronto.

But nevertheless people still continued buying tickets to their games, as they were mediocre, but not the worst, and were based in one of the biggest cities in Canada.

There was no alternative to them, so if people wanted to go to a hockey game in Toronto, they were forced to watch "The Leafs".

I once wondered why that was the case, and the answer was: they were a business: they could get into a battle of getting best players and coaches, but it wouldn't necessarily get them the Stanley Cup, while seriously increasing their expenses.

They were just "good enough" to draw interest without spending too much to make their game better.

I have the suspicion HOI4 is following the same policy.

It may be they believe that 20% of effort gets 80% of profits, so why bother with the other 80% if profits will only increase by 20%?

And it is indeed kind of hard to argue with that.

But then again, I question whether people who need "20% of the effort" are really willing to pay for new DLCs, especially those without extra mechanics. Or even with extra mechanics that don't matter much.

Also, (and this is NOT personal at you in any way, shape, or form, @Cornutus ) game forums are usually negative places. People out there playing the game, by and large are not posting here. They come here to complain, or see if they can find someone else with issue X, or help understanding Y.

Game forums are rarely happy happy joy joy places.

So, just because the forum is leaning negative, is not necessarily reflecting the playerbase at large's attitudes.

Before someone jumps on my head, I'll acknowledge that GoE is/was not the best DLC ever released.

In the end we're just customers. You can give feedback on the forums, but that doesn't give you control over how the game is run or designed. We don't design the game, nor are we in control of how or when things are fixed if they're not right, and in some things, whether it is actually 'wrong' or 'right'.

The only *real* choice we get is to spend our money on the game...or not spend our money on the game.

If you choose the 'not' option that is very much your choice to do so, but it's also ok for someone else to use the 'yes' option.

Completely agree.

I would also add that most participants in game forums tend to be "Sophisticated" players that spend considerable time on the game.

People who barely grasped how to play on civilian difficulty, are unlikely to make posts.

 

[51states]

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.

So every year I've reported the AI has never done Operation Catapult or that the Equipment tags for US navy ships are wrong from Jan 1 1936 they didn't get tested because I did not upload a save every time I reported it?

 

[benb41]

I am well aware how budget works; I directly addressed this when I said

Game devs are salaried employees; once you hire one, you'll be paying them constantly until they leave the company. Unless you work them overtime, they'll cost the same whether you give them 10 or 40 hours of work to do per week. I'm assuming that PDX studio gold did not hire an entirely new artist(s) specifically for this minor cosmetic pack; if I'm correct, then they were already paying this person to make art, and it is simply a matter of what art they are making. As I said, PDX could fire this artist to make more budget for programmers, but then if they make an art heavy project in the future they will need to re-hire a new artist; unless they're confident that won't happen for a long time, its probably less expensive to keep that artist around and have them do something.

Not a MR, btw.

Maybe get part time employees or contract it out? I'm sure there are plenty of programers outside Sweden they can hire... the problem is the high wages and the vacation time

 

[benb41]

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


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

 

[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.

 

[ZeDoctor1918]

But then again, I question whether people who need "20% of the effort" are really willing to pay for new DLCs, especially those without extra mechanics. Or even with extra mechanics that don't matter much.

Thats why I bring up the player numbers being mainly stagnant. The new content certainly isn't drawing in many, if any, new players. Which would tell me that its the base group of fans who upon seeing a new dlc, out of either loyalty to the series or genuine interest in the new content, are whos buying it. And when people start to feel ignored, its easy to imagine those numbers will slowly start to drop. For such a niche series, its probably applicable to also say that 80% of their revenue comes from 20% of their players. So while we can be constantly told its only the forums/a vocal minority lodging complaints about the current state of the game, I *personally* would be hesitant to take that gamble if I'm thinking about the long term health of the game.

Sidenote; as a Toronto Blue Jays fan I suppose I ought to be used to disappointment

 

[benb41]

At the end of the day, Paradox chooses to put resources into new DLC rather than fix existing bugs.

 

[Eruth]

Maybe get part time employees or contract it out? I'm sure there are plenty of programers outside Sweden they can hire... the problem is the high wages and the vacation time

If they did all their work on a contract basis, then yes, the budget argument would hold more weight. However, relying on contract labor has its own upsides & downsides, and PDX teams are mostly composed of on-site employees. That's the model they've gone with; speculating about 'what if they used a completely different labor system' doesn't seem constructive. My original point-- that the cosmetic tank pack likely didn't divert any resources from bugfixing-- remains.

 

[herr anfsim]

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.

I think a lot of us would appreciate learning what went wrong and what you intend to do to avoid repeating the same mistakes yet again. Particularly as previous post mortems failed to prevent GoE’ unfortunate release. The problem looks systemic and should be explained as such, no fingerpointing required.

As an example, I remember thinking the poor quality of AATs Norwegian content had to be a systemic issue, as so much slipped without anyone in more senior positions seemingly knowing pre release. Back then, I thought this would cause a ‘self reflective internal post mortem’ to avoid making the same mistakes again. Even though you choose to sweep it under the rug back then.

Yet, the most recent DLC appears to have the same level of quality as Norway in AAT for all nations, and again, it comes as a surprise to PDX leadership. To me that indicates that little actually was learned and that the same systemic issues remains. It also does not inspire too much confidence in these post mortems, henche why you might want to be a bit more public about it if you have indeed identified what went wrong and are making meaningful meassures to avoid them yet again.

 

[Cornutus]

Thats why I bring up the player numbers being mainly stagnant. The new content certainly isn't drawing in many, if any, new players.

March 2025: 38,764.8 average players, 69,391 peak players
March 2024: 35,261.2 average players, 65,944 peak players
March 2023: 28,920.1 average players, 52,687 peak players
March 2022: 32,787.3 average players, 57,684 peak players
March 2021: 23,973.9 average players, 41,869 peak players

I don't like these numbers, but increasing average players by 62% over 4 years as well as peak players by 66% is not really stagnation.

Even the 2024-2025 increased average players by 10% and peak players by 5%.

It actually kind of does prove that these bugs aren't meaningful enough to reduce the number of engaged players.

In short: the vast majority simply don't care that one of their trade laws doesn't work.


The question is "could HOI4 do better" and I'd argue that yes, it can.

NSB raised average player numbers from 23,973.9 to 32,787.3, a whopping 37% increase because it addressed a lot of fundamental issues.

Gotterdammerung on the other hand, seems like a success by sentiment, but only increased numbers by about 10%.

Which would tell me that its the base group of fans who upon seeing a new dlc, out of either loyalty to the series or genuine interest in the new content, are whos buying it. And when people start to feel ignored, its easy to imagine those numbers will slowly start to drop. For such a niche series, its probably applicable to also say that 80% of their revenue comes from 20% of their players.

I seriously doubt 80% of HOI4 revenue comes from 20% of players. If it would, then we'd see a "high-quality" strategy for DLC that would actively seek to avoid blatantly rough edges.

Instead it's a "minimal effort for mass market" situation, when sometimes you have the same focus tree get designed for multiple countries.

Moreover, the direction that was taken since 2016 did everything to dissuade "long-term fans" from investing into this game (ignoring AI, prioritizing new releases, not addressing fundamental plausibility issues like 3-width artillery or poorly working systerms like frontlines). Now it's just become more obvious than before.

So while we can be constantly told its only the forums/a vocal minority lodging complaints about the current state of the game, I *personally* would be hesitant to take that gamble if I'm thinking about the long term health of the game.

Come on, like over the past 9 years did anyone care about long-term health? Maybe except when they added the arms market and railroads.

If that was an actual concern, do you seriously think "War elephants" would be made viable?

The whole idea would be put down at first mention, as a threat to long-term health.

Same with land cruisers.

These fairly minor bugs are nowhere near as threatening. If I would want to scare a person away from HOI4, I would just tell that "Rattes, Motherships and war elephants are what wins in HOI4", and he would run away.

Long-term health was long sold out for "fun implausible stuff" which sold well: not sure how much fuel/market is left for that though.

The bugs you would start to see only after 100+ hours.

 

[him_15]

I would definitely buy a DLC that focus solely on bugs fixing and game balance.

 

[Brumes Wolf]

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.

From my POV the reason you engaging makes things worse is that you very often seem to misunderstand what people mean, or seem very dismissive of things they see as a big deal. Or only respond to one very specific post in a thread instead of to the OP or general subject of the thread, which makes it seem like you are reading it but purposefully ignore it and only respond to someone who is "wrong", your first post in this thread is a good example.

If someone makes a post that the game is filled with (old) bugs and maintenance is not being given enough priority coming into the thread and saying "No everything is pretty much fine actually" is unlikely to make people go "Damn, hes right, guess my personal experiences with the game were wrong actually".

For me personally there is an ocean of difference between "Things are mostly fine", or "The game does indeed have many old bugs/old subpar mechanics and there are lots of things we would love to improve, but we are a business and as a team simply don't have the resources to work on these older things, so we try and do what we can when we can", your responses almost always read as the former to me.

If this seems rather focussed on you as a person, that is correct. While I am sure you have the best intentions I think your personal communications style is a (small) part of the problem because of the issues I mentioned above.

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.

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

If the packaging/style of delivery of updates is the only difference, and lots of people ask specifically for the stellaris style, isn't it maybe an idea to try that to see if sentiment improves? You can be 100% right but if no one sees it that way that does not matter, people clearly perceive stellaris as having a better maintenance regime.

Outside of that I would argue that HOI IV has lots of mechanics and gameplay that is pretty directly comparable to the stuff stellaris custodian updates touch, so I don't buy the excuse that focus trees are the reason that many old mechanics cannot be touched.

I also feel that if you compare the "output" of the stellaris custodian updates/normal updates it seems significantly higher than HOI4 maintenance updates (Same for vic3), so while HOI might very well be harder to work on, and maybe the stellaris and HOI teams put the same amount of resources into maintenance and reworks the outcome as visible to the player is that Stellaris does a way better job upkeeping than HOI, and because the HOI team has IMHO the most closed communications style of any PDX game I follow this is unlikely to breed much understanding in the community, they can at this point only judge by what is delivered, because so little insight is given.

 

[Vengirni]

I would definitely buy a DLC that focus solely on bugs fixing and game balance.

The backlash for that kind of DLC would be immense. Imagine the gaming news outlets' reaction if they heard that Paradox started charging money for bug fixes.

 

[gaeliel]

The backlash for that kind of DLC would be immense. Imagine the gaming news outlets' reaction if they heard that Paradox started charging money for bug fixes.

I'd still like to see them try it

 

[Cornutus]

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.

Sorry for tagging, but I guess might as well contribute a bit here.

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.

Hard to disagree.

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.

Honestly, not really.

Absence of a response triggers a lot more irritation.

You're dealing with people who have posted about this for years (long before you came on board), and now someone is addressing their concerns. It's like a surgeon dealing with a constantly infecting wound.

Maybe not in the way they like, but still.


While being uncommunicative on pressing issues amplified the whole "China review bombing". It's perceived as ignoring issues.


And something constructive is; ok, I get that expanding maintenance beyond what's going on right now isn't viable. I don't like but ok, I can understand you may have a better picture.

The question then becomes "What will be done instead?"

The big problem that you're seeing is that it's perceived that instead of fixing core issues, we get new TOA/GOE level/scope DLCs.

Most people here bring up Norway from AAT as another good example, or even USSR from NSB, which shows that this whole topic brewed up long before you had engaged in the level of open communication you currently have. It's basically perceived as "Too little, too late".

It's obvious there will be "part mechanics/part focus tree DLC later this year", but it's safe to say there will be major AAT-level bugs with that too, and likely existing ones will not be weeded out for another few years.

So you're seeing the steam while it has a recent event, in anticipation of future events.

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.

You're kind of carrying a lot of history passed down from Podcat here.

Thing is, everything that the lead developers for HOI4 said "didn't fit HOI4" got introduced.

Railroads, designers, althistory was first rejected, then tested and embraced.

Even the whole idea of "saving design presets between playthroughs" I believe was first rejected (I believe by you personally as it was too difficult) then embraced and well received.

Money is still being rejected, along with a bunch of other stuff that has zero communication from you on why it's so (3 width artillery).

If anything, based on experience, I would probably argue that lead developers had a history of getting priorities completely wrong for HOI4, and thankfully they were able to at least partially correct them.

And maybe I'm not the only one here with that opinion. Or maybe I'm wrong completely, which is also possible.

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.*

Just on a side note, it is very much possible that "Forum haters" like myself are completely wrong and you're right. After all, we don't have the metrics data that you have, we can only guess on what sells.

But that's a gamble. If that's a hill you're willing to take a stand on, well, we'll see how that plays out.

So far numbers are on your side based on public data. So far GDR and AAT did much better than "forum haters" could expect.

But even then the question becomes, "what played the lead role, long-requested forum-hater stuff (arms market, updated German focus tree) or the extra stuff".

I'd still like to see them try it

Does someone still care about gaming news outlets?

 

[51states]

Slightly off topic but I just l remembered a feedback loop bug from the arms market. Contracts being canceled lead to relations malus. So when China cancels weapons shipments (can't lend lease to China as the USA because of 0 ports) you get a continuous negative malus loop which makes it really hard for the AI to get the US historical focuses done.