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The real burning question isn't any of these things, it isn't even why Darkrenown feeds assorted animal parts to their doggie. The real questions is why they take pictures of it?! Or something.
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May 2, 2015 00:56
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Darkrenown posted:Nope. Can you point out the universal poll of CK2 players that proves no one likes it? I was mostly thinking of India when I made my previous post though, I haven't actually played a Catholic realm since SoA came out - and I don't work on CK, so I have no first hand experience of how the CoC plays. My point was just that it's dumb to say people who like certain aspects of a game are retards just because you (general you) don't like them yourself. If significant numbers of players didn't like map or timeline expansions then they wouldn't sell and we'd stop making them. Sunset invasion sold okay, right? You're going to make more like that, right?  (Myth & Magic DLC please)
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May 2, 2015 00:59
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Fintilgin posted:(Myth & Magic DLC please) e: Nevermind, brain fart not at all same thing.
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May 2, 2015 01:29
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Ghetto Prince posted:I liked how the CK1 tech tree had everything labeled, so you could see how you slowly progressed from leather armor to chain mail, or from ladders and rams to trebuchets , and especially the noble tree, where I think you were literally unlocking manners and court etiquette. The early game characters really felt like illiterate warlords squatting in hillforts. I agree with that. I also really miss the black plague mechanics from CK1. I'm sure I've played at least a couple of CK2 games to completion and don't ever really recall the plague happening. In the first game, when the blobs were starting to get really big and stable and dynasties were established and large, the plague kills off half the characters leading to regencies and rebellions and making the late game a lot more interesting. Those couple of games in CKII, I got to the end in just seemed like slogs and I've pretty much lost all interest in playing it since wiz stopped developing CK2+. I really liked the way factions and handing off land after a crusade were handled. Lately, I've just been playing a ton of EU4, even though I hardly ever get past 1750 in it.
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May 2, 2015 01:47
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Larry is being kind of a dick as he does but I mostly agree with him about CK2. I feel the tendency has been to stuff a bunch of mechanics into the game without really considering how they work together or even at all. Tribals are a big offender, they're cool in theory but there's a really big lull after the initial turmoil of reform where you're just super far behind cause you don't really have holdings at all. There's consistently been weird exploits and bugs, decadence has never really felt right, and lots of stuff feels kinda janky. And as for the 'too much LP' complaint; this is a personal thing but I do generally prefer to see a more historically grounded game. Sunset Invasion is a funny optional thing and there's a bunch of flavor events which are kinda fun but really I like a more grounded alt-history. Like shortly after WoL released someone had a screenshot of his character where he'd seduced the wife of literally everyone in the HRE and it's funny once but it's also kinda trivial to do if you put your mind to it. Ironically the thing that makes CK2 unique is its character focus but I think it's gone too far in that direction and needs to have a little more grounding, and also a pass to fix the various bugs and rebalance some of the more tacked-on mechanics.
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May 2, 2015 01:51
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BgRdMchne posted:I agree with that. I also really miss the black plague mechanics from CK1. I'm sure I've played at least a couple of CK2 games to completion and don't ever really recall the plague happening. In the first game, when the blobs were starting to get really big and stable and dynasties were established and large, the plague kills off half the characters leading to regencies and rebellions and making the late game a lot more interesting. Have no fear, for I have made further progress with the Black Death mod. Having finished the rough draft of the flavor events, I decided to play as the Emperor of Frankistan, ruling over Anatolia, Syria, Jerusalem, and Mesopotamia.  Emperor Geraud was the mighty ruler of this realm, possessing all the fine virtues a Christian knight ought to possess. Some said his abilities were unnatural, but he paid them no mind.  As the plague crept into Anatolia, he sought to put an end to the plague.  He decided to study the corpses of the plague victims, feeling that testing it on himself was a bit too much.  Sadly, he did not observe proper protocol...  ... and died, leaving the empire to his seven year old grandson, (Geraud's son having been slain by the plague.)
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May 2, 2015 02:02
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StashAugustine posted:Larry is being kind of a dick as he does but I mostly agree with him about CK2. I feel the tendency has been to stuff a bunch of mechanics into the game without really considering how they work together or even at all. Tribals are a big offender, they're cool in theory but there's a really big lull after the initial turmoil of reform where you're just super far behind cause you don't really have holdings at all. There's consistently been weird exploits and bugs, decadence has never really felt right, and lots of stuff feels kinda janky. And as for the 'too much LP' complaint; this is a personal thing but I do generally prefer to see a more historically grounded game. Sunset Invasion is a funny optional thing and there's a bunch of flavor events which are kinda fun but really I like a more grounded alt-history. Like shortly after WoL released someone had a screenshot of his character where he'd seduced the wife of literally everyone in the HRE and it's funny once but it's also kinda trivial to do if you put your mind to it. Ironically the thing that makes CK2 unique is its character focus but I think it's gone too far in that direction and needs to have a little more grounding, and also a pass to fix the various bugs and rebalance some of the more tacked-on mechanics. I really wanted to post exactly this but I couldn't phrase it quite right. The systems used to work together really smoothly and the numbers were tweaked to be just right, but the cumulative effect of all of the changes has been to disrupt that and make the game dependent on its narrative aspects rather than mechanical aspects for fun gameplay.
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May 2, 2015 03:09
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I think that is rose tinted glasses for a bit. Crusader Kings has always relied on making a narrative, its the thing that makes the game unique.
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May 2, 2015 03:12
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Jazerus posted:The systems used to work together really smoothly
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May 2, 2015 03:13
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It worked decently at launch. When it was kind of barebones.
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May 2, 2015 03:15
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Paradox games are the dwarf fortress of grand strategy. They're kind of crazy and they often don't make sense but there's also some genius there and if you can make your own fun you can make a lot of fun. No Paradox game has ever gelled perfectly (not even Svea Rike!). I am not convinced that it's possible to make an open-ended strategy sandbox gel perfectly.
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May 2, 2015 03:21
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Yeah but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good here- while CK2 has never quite been a display of mechanical perfection that doesn't mean it shouldn't at least attempt to do so.
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May 2, 2015 03:24
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Honestly, CK2's succession mechanic is top-notch. That is the singly most innovative, comprehensive, and well-designed unique driving mechanic in grand strategy. Other systems can span the spectrum, but succession as a gameplay mechanic is always what draws me back to CK2.
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May 2, 2015 03:26
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Given the patches coming out of the EU4 team I really hope CK2 will aim for something similar to stitch the disparate systems back together. Its kind of scary to think what the codebase is like though because so much is event driven, which seems like a huge monkey on the back to have with some of the patch bugs that have shown up in the past few dlc patches. Its probably more on the scope of a sequel than a dlc patch but I would really love to see some more transparency or determinism in event chains. As it is the most fun stuff is hidden behind arcane trait influenced mtth rolls while the decision tab is a list of chores you need to remember to hit once a year during specific parts of a reign. Something like a seasonal or annual focus that triggers singular events or occasional chains having to do with realm and familial administration at a known frequency would go far in deepening the peacetime game instead of the feast or famine of random events hitting too often or not at all while the decision page is ignored when you aren't distracting angry vassals with feasts.
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May 2, 2015 03:45
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Make all Paradox games computer card-driven games tia
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May 2, 2015 03:48
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Darkrenown posted:Nope. Can you point out the universal poll of CK2 players that proves no one likes it? I was mostly thinking of India when I made my previous post though, I haven't actually played a Catholic realm since SoA came out - and I don't work on CK, so I have no first hand experience of how the CoC plays. My point was just that it's dumb to say people who like certain aspects of a game are retards just because you (general you) don't like them yourself. If significant numbers of players didn't like map or timeline expansions then they wouldn't sell and we'd stop making them. It's like a more arcane and annoying version of the one from Medieval 2: TW without even any real benefit if you win. Jee willikers, after going through the huge hassle of getting my guys in, dominating the college and finally getting my pope in, I get to ask him twice for money! Oh, and if he was of my dynasty we all get +2 piety a month? It's not really a big deal, because it seems to be reusing the merchant republic stuff in new ways, which is admirable frugality, but it's just another example of something that serves as pointless depth. If the player could actually participate in it if they were outside Italy, if it actually had more depth to it, likem so you could ask for votes of other people like you could in M2:TW, dominating the pope or college gave you more concrete rewards and other stuff, it would actually be an interesting thing. Now, it's just like a wart on the whole religion that occasionally spits out popegold and if you can completely trivialize it by vassalizing the pope anyhow. zedprime posted:Given the patches coming out of the EU4 team I really hope CK2 will aim for something similar to stitch the disparate systems back together. Its kind of scary to think what the codebase is like though because so much is event driven, which seems like a huge monkey on the back to have with some of the patch bugs that have shown up in the past few dlc patches.
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May 2, 2015 04:33
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As someone who works in the game industry (albeit on games totally unrelated to Paradox's forte) let me please remind some of you of the obvious: if you're going to be a flaming dick to people they may decide not to hang out with you if you're ok with them not hanging out with you that's cool others may disagree as to the "ok with not hanging out" assessment it's totally OK (and sometimes very valuable) to express issues with certain games it is totally possible to do so without being a flaming dick basically what I'm saying as a takeaway here: don't be a flaming dick I mean, it's not like there is a flaming dick shortage. You don't have to heroically jump in and provide one. IT'S OK.
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May 2, 2015 04:47
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can i be a flaming dick, though
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May 2, 2015 05:36
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Ehhh. I actually like India; it's had enough effort put into it that it's fine to play and even if you don't if you're anywhere near the Middle East it still sorta matters and provides more content; if you play Tengri, Zoroastrian, Muslim or Zun games it all comes in, even if you aren't using RoI. The CoC system is just so half-hearted where it counts. Yea, there's a bunch of stuff that goes into the cardinal score, but you can't really influence it except with money and if you have money to waste on that you've already won the game, pretty much. It doesn't really provide anything neat. But yea, sorry if I come across dickish; was gonna edit it to be more civil but peeps was waiting on me~ But yea, less poo poo like that, more like WoL where it deepens the existing playing experience instead of creating fluff. Or if you make fluff, at least make it cool. like lol do W-African pagans even have a feast yet or more than one merc company?
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May 2, 2015 06:10
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This discussion reminds me of the podcast with Soren Johnson and Jon Schaefer and one of the Crusader Kings crew (Doomdark?) They asked him to explain the combat system, and he's very enthusiastic about all the pulls and levers, but the Civ guys just go, "Wow, that's a prime example of the programmer having all the fun instead of the player!" and spend the rest of the podcast trying to persuade him to drop it for something more transparent and straightforward that the average player could meaningfully interact with. To be fair, I've enjoyed all the Paradox games until I couldn't keep up with all the DLC and the feeling that if I don't buy them I'm playing an inferior game, so I moved on to something else. Even then (around Old Gods in CK) there was no lack of systems that felt just shoved in there because they sounded cool, were remains from previous games or needed to justify the DLC (not very different from some of Civ's expansion packs then).
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May 2, 2015 07:23
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I find that pretty funny, given how notoriously unsatisfying Civilization's combat mechanics tend to be. e: I just had the CK2 Main Title come around in my music playlist. It's still amazing.
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May 2, 2015 07:26
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:I find that pretty funny, given how notoriously unsatisfying Civilization's combat mechanics tend to be. Yea, that's one of the things I had in mind while listening to it, although I'm one of those freaks who liked vanilla Civ5.
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May 2, 2015 07:33
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PittTheElder posted:I find that pretty funny, given how notoriously unsatisfying Civilization's combat mechanics tend to be.
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May 2, 2015 07:56
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BBJoey posted:They're unsatisfying but at least they're comprehensible to actual human beings as opposed to a computer. In CK2, combat is influenced by flank, unit makeup, commander's martial stat, commander's combat skills, tactic, terrain, technology and buildings. In addition, the chosen tactic is also modified by the commander's skill and even traits that have no effect on martial and what phase of battle you're in (this is separate for all three flanks btw). All of that poo poo comes together in a meaningful way to the player in the form of: have high martial commanders, have more men, don't attack across river/into mountains. I'd rather have an unsatisfying combat system that I can understand and meaningfully influence than an unsatisfying combat system that I can't. And at least the former case is a solid base from which to build; the only way to improve the CK2 combat system is to tear it down completely and come up with a new one. don't forget the phase of ck2's existence in which it was better to have an extremely low-martial commander than a good one, since then you'd only have access to four tactics, one of which was extremely strong ('reckless charge', something like that?) the only time I can think of when the 'tactics' system made a meaningful impact on the game
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May 2, 2015 08:00
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Mr.Morgenstern posted:Have no fear, for I have made further progress with the Black Death mod.
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May 2, 2015 09:32
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StashAugustine posted:Like shortly after WoL released someone had a screenshot of his character where he'd seduced the wife of literally everyone in the HRE and it's funny once but it's also kinda trivial to do if you put your mind to it. Please point me to where I can find this or similarly funny screenshots from Paradox games.
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May 2, 2015 09:33
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You don't have to tear down the CK2 combat system, you just need to make it more transparent. Being able to review tactics outside of combat and see what chances they have of coming up in different configurations would go a long way. Also, a feature suggestion: being able to tell flank commanders what kind of tactics to use (specific tactics or broad categories like "Defensive stance") at the risk of disloyal vassals disobeying your orders and doing their own thing (it is pretty dumb that you can put your nemesis in charge of your army and suffer pretty much no consequences from it).
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May 2, 2015 09:36
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My point mostly is that EU4 and to a lesser degree, V2 and HOI (whichever version you prefer) manage to be fun games and still generate cool stories. CK2 has always had extremely funky mechanics but it's just been getting worse with most of the changes. Pretty soon it's just going to be a random story generator with an extremely intensive menu. The character focus of CK2 isn't even what makes the mechanics funky, it's just that basically everything the game does relies on putting the game on 5x speed and waiting. It's extremely boring and when you add things that essentially force you to spend more time waiting is stupid. The biggest offender is tribal rulers, IMO. Yes, it's cool that you can reform into a Republic. It's extremely not-cool that without consoling yourself gold or being Abrahamic, it will take a century or so at the fastest.
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May 2, 2015 09:45
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Phlegmish posted:Please point me to where I can find this or similarly funny screenshots from Paradox games. Dunno if it's got "seducing every wife in the Empire" but Believable Worlds is all about the funny Paradox screenshots. 
Friend Commuter fucked around with this message at 10:59 on May 2, 2015 |
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May 2, 2015 10:53
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Burning Rain posted:This discussion reminds me of the podcast with Soren Johnson and Jon Schaefer and one of the Crusader Kings crew (Doomdark?) They asked him to explain the combat system, and he's very enthusiastic about all the pulls and levers, but the Civ guys just go, "Wow, that's a prime example of the programmer having all the fun instead of the player!" and spend the rest of the podcast trying to persuade him to drop it for something more transparent and straightforward that the average player could meaningfully interact with. Henrik Fahraeus and Chris King. http://thegamedesignroundtable.com/2012/12/04/episode-4-storytelling-crusader-kings-2-with-paradox/ It's not exactly a rare thing for the guys at Paradox to design systems that are very exciting for the programmers but not for the player. The V2 market comes to mind.
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May 2, 2015 11:08
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Friend Commuter posted:Dunno if it's got "seducing every wife in the Empire" but Believable Worlds is all about the funny Paradox screenshots. Perhaps naming it the "Aluminium Armour Centre Avenue" was not the smartest idea.
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May 2, 2015 12:07
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Deceitful Penguin posted:Nah brah, I was asking if you could provide me with a single example of a positive argument, you can't ask me to give you a universal negative instead. Sure, I just have no interest in hunting down some dude's post saying they like it. I'm fairly sure such players exist, but I don't see any point in taking the time to prove it because I wasn't talking about the CoC and it wouldn't have any bearing on your perfectly legitimate criticism of the system.
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May 2, 2015 12:13
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I'm going to give Victoria II another shot but I'm conflicted as to what mod to use. I've heard good things about the New Nations mod and POPs of Darkness but I can't decide which one to use. Which one do you guys prefer?
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May 2, 2015 18:35
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Vichan posted:I'm going to give Victoria II another shot but I'm conflicted as to what mod to use. I've heard good things about the New Nations mod and POPs of Darkness but I can't decide which one to use. Which one do you guys prefer? NNM, by a long shot.
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May 2, 2015 18:43
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New Nations Mod is lightweight that only adds more nations and decisions. POD is more controversial because it changes many base game mechanics. NNM is pretty safe to install, while POD should be tangled only when you have some experience in V2.
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May 2, 2015 18:46
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Darkrenown posted:Sure, I just have no interest in hunting down some dude's post saying they like it. I'm fairly sure such players exist, but I don't see any point in taking the time to prove it because I wasn't talking about the CoC and it wouldn't have any bearing on your perfectly legitimate criticism of the system. Could you at least add the ability to shift-click that and the Republican campaign screen to donate more gold.
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May 2, 2015 18:58
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I've just been thinking, something that could be useful as a general Paradox games thing, if the scripting conditionals allowed for "X of the following conditions must be true" in addition to the standard AND and OR. Especially in EU4 for the nation-forming decisions, it seems silly that I could control the entirety of the HRE except for Brandenburg and not be able to form Germany. Then you could have a lot more "needed to form Tag X" provinces, but still require the same number of them to be held.
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May 2, 2015 19:00
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DStecks posted:I've just been thinking, something that could be useful as a general Paradox games thing, if the scripting conditionals allowed for "X of the following conditions must be true" in addition to the standard AND and OR. Especially in EU4 for the nation-forming decisions, it seems silly that I could control the entirety of the HRE except for Brandenburg and not be able to form Germany. Then you could have a lot more "needed to form Tag X" provinces, but still require the same number of them to be held. Or have some sort of point system. Brandenburg is 8 Germany points, Hostein is 3 Germany points, Lubek is 6 etc.. and you need 25 German points to create Germany.
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May 2, 2015 19:04
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double post'n
Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 19:22 on May 2, 2015 |
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May 2, 2015 19:08
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Larry Parrish posted:Could you at least add the ability to shift-click that and the Republican campaign screen to donate more gold. This is already possible, not sure if it was recently added, but shiftclick adds 50 and ctrl click adds 100. It might be nice if there was some way to add "enough to put me in first place/all I can afford" too, so I'll see if they can add that.
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May 2, 2015 19:22
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