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welcome to modern gaming
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Feb 15, 2023 14:02
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| # ? May 11, 2024 12:53 |
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It's not about polish or stability or quality of the game. It just feels unfinished to me. CK3 just stops very soon after you get Primogniture because the technology and the economy just halt, and you're supposed to have 150 more years ahead of you. I'd say the same about Stellaris which is much older. Its mid and endgame still feel like a placeholder to me with Laser Damage VII giving +5% to laser damage and nothing else. It might be OK by itself to have such a progression system, but it clearly clashes with the rest of the systems which assume that research is consistently important and that a lot of differences between empires come from the tech they are randomized into.
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Feb 15, 2023 14:10
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I am trying to picture playing unmodded Stellaris and my mind refuses.
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Feb 15, 2023 14:22
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The CK2 portraits were already a step down from the CK1 ones. I don't mind the 3D models too much, though.
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Feb 15, 2023 14:24
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i played ck3 far far less than ck2, and i really do believe it's bc there's just nothing new there. you interact with a ton of skin deep mechanics, realize they're skin deep, and that's that. ck2 at least lied harder lol anyway victoria 3 is unironically the best vicky yet so if u liked Ricky but hated Vicky 2 dive back in, give it a shot, hate it for all new reasons
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Feb 15, 2023 14:33
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at a minimum ck3 needs a difficulty setting beyond “baby, easy, and normal”. It’s a little ridiculous that I had to find a custom difficulty mod just to give the AI bonuses/me maluses
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Feb 15, 2023 14:47
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I played a few games of CK3 but my enthusiasm just fell away because everything felt so same-y. All the various starts and regions were all so broadly similar in playstyle and form, it was like a big sandbox in which briefly it looked like there was lots to do, until you realised the only thing in the sandbox was sand. Arguably when you apply the same critical light to CK2 you could say the same thing, but CK2 came out eleven years (and one day) ago , and my starting expectations of that game were based on CK1. And unfortunately I still remember my initial impressions of CK2, which were that Paradox had, for the first time, released a game that felt like it was in a finished state, relatively free of crippling bugs, and that was superior in every single way to its predecessor. CK3 did not feel like that, and admittedly it had a much tougher bar to clear, but it definitely felt like a return to the old Paradox, the one that releases buggy, half-finished games and then fixes them with patches--except that now the patches include paid-for DLC. CK3 isn't all that much different from CK2 in terms of the overall experience, but I had my fill of that experience over the course of nine years. CK3 just didn't bring much that was new to the table, it just put down a new tablecloth and took a bunch of the plates away. When the first major DLC promised the return of the inventory system (which I'd have put at the absolute bottom of the list of "things from CK2 which need reintroducing") and took almost two years to come out I just checked out. Ultimately I didn't even buy Victoria 3 because based on CK3, I expected it to be another buggy mess that its own AI can't play.
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Feb 15, 2023 15:00
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comparatively in their life cycle, CKII was about to release Way of Life at this point in time. CK3 just feels so slow by comparison for tweaking things that aren’t quite working or could be upgraded
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Feb 15, 2023 15:25
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Soup du Jour posted:comparatively in their life cycle, CKII was about to release Way of Life at this point in time. CK3 just feels so slow by comparison for tweaking things that aren’t quite working or could be upgraded  In my mind that's one of the last DLCs.
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Feb 15, 2023 15:29
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THE BAR posted:
yeah same, comparing HoI4 and CK3's update schedule to CK2 and (early) EU4's is very strange. you can tell something is very different nowadays
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Feb 15, 2023 15:30
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I still like EUIV
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Feb 15, 2023 15:37
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PDX games updating on a slower schedule is fine with me. I know my dumb rear end is going to still boot up CK3 or V3 every once in a whole in 2023. At this pace theres less of a chance that they’ll play like current-day EU4 by then
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Feb 15, 2023 15:37
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Takanago posted:PDX games updating on a slower schedule is fine with me. I know my dumb rear end is going to still boot up CK3 or V3 every once in a whole in 2023. At this pace theres less of a chance that they’ll play like current-day EU4 by then it depends right. i think with CK3, newer features to differentiate it from 2, and giving it any depth at all, is critical. whereas with V3 honestly just free patches every month like 1.2 would please me a fair amount, but DLC can wait longer for sure, yeah.
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Feb 15, 2023 15:38
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I’m confident enough that they’ll add that kind of content to CK3 eventually, so long as they dont Imperator it I’m not really in a rush. Maybe that’s just naive faith, but whatever. I’ve got enough games to play so I dont really care if 2024 or 2025 is the year CK gets enough content to really stand out. Actually speaking of content, I havent played too much of it but I did enjoy playing the elder kings mod for ck3. Its obviously pretty WIP, but I feel like its WIP-ness works kinda decently in CK3’s engine where you can let religion traits do a lot of heavy lifting. I didnt play much ck2 elder kings though so I cant compare directly
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Feb 15, 2023 15:48
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it's better when they don't have 25 DLCs on a game.
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Feb 15, 2023 15:49
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Soup du Jour posted:comparatively in their life cycle, CKII was about to release Way of Life at this point in time. CK3 just feels so slow by comparison for tweaking things that aren’t quite working or could be upgraded Yeah that kinda sucks. Do we have any idea why the DLC fountains seem to have dried up? I mean I know people were "upset" about all the DLCs and PDX said they wanted to consolidate a bit and make a sort of tick/tock of bigger/smaller DLCs, but well... Actually, on second checking, it seems DLC is coming along as expected, considering they explicitly said they would try to rationalize the amount of DLC they make: CK3 released in late 2020 and in the following 2 years we got 4 DLCs : 1 actual expansion, Royal court, 2 flavor packs - Northern Lords and Struggle for Iberia - which were nice but not exactly huge amounts of new content (I'll take regional packs, but by God if they take 1 year to release each one aimed at a single country/region, it'll be forever until we have a reasonable number of fleshed-out places), and 1 event pack - Friends and Foes. We know they have another event-pack in the pipeline, Wards and Wardens, and 1 full-sized expansion that should be coming in 2023 but I haven't heard anything solid on the latter, just rumors. Let's assume those, and only those, are both launched by fall this year, which sounds reasonable at this point considering what happend until now - that would make it 6 DLCs (2 expansions, 2 flavor packs, 2 event packs) in around 3 years, at a rate of about 1 dlc every 6 months or so on average. By comparison CK2 released in early 2012, and by the end of 2014 it had 9 DLCs of varying size, price and content: Sword of Islam, Legacy of Rome, Sunset Invasion, The Republic, The Old Gods, Sons of Abraham, Rajas of India, Charlemagne and Way of Life. Things slowed down considerably after that and we got 1 dlc every 6 months or so (instead of 1 every 4 months or so) until 2017 and then 1 year to the final DLC in 2018, which doesn't feel too much different from CK3's current pace. If they keep at it as outlined above, by 2026-2027 when CK3 might be nearing end-of-life it should have 12 DLCs in total, vs the 15 CK2 had in total. Not such a huge difference. Hopefully this also means that dlc quality keeps consistent, I remember some of the CK2 dlc was silly or useless, there were definitely some DLC that were absolutely worth it and some that were absolutely not on a general level (of course if you dream of roleplaying a hindu dynasty based on caste, well you can't not buy Rajas of India... but everyone else, heh)
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Feb 15, 2023 16:04
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TorakFade posted:CK3 released in late 2020 and in the following 2 years we got 4 DLCs : 1 actual expansion, Royal court, 2 flavor packs - Northern Lords and Struggle for Iberia - which were nice but not exactly huge amounts of new content (I'll take regional packs, but by God if they take 1 year to release each one aimed at a single country/region, it'll be forever until we have a reasonable number of fleshed-out places), and 1 event pack - Friends and Foes. I think the key difference is quality and universality of content. CK2 had a huge issue with expansions being roughly similar in size, so the expansion about adding a whole India had as much in it as an expansion that deepened injury and sickness systems, making those things disproportionally important. CK2 Royal Court expansion is like yer olde expansions that transform the whole game, mostly by adding various bonuses and abilities to cultures as well as all kinds of items. It's as big as 4 expansions for CK2, except it doesn't have broken parts. You may talk about something you feel is missing or some minor things like dumb events, but in CK2 you can write a long list of stuff that should be reworked or removed from the game. I know people play mods and have high tolerance to unfinished stuff and crutches as long as it promises some fantasy behind it. If the fact that Republics are playable in CK2 overshadows the fact that they're terrible then of course this is a game for you.
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Feb 15, 2023 16:22
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The objective measure of CK3's quality remains this: Can I play Republics and Hordes yet? And maybe Theocracies since hopefully they don't use the pope as a script mule anymore?
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Feb 15, 2023 16:35
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GrossMurpel posted:The objective measure of CK3's quality remains this: Can I play Republics and Hordes yet? And maybe Theocracies since hopefully they don't use the pope as a script mule anymore?
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Feb 15, 2023 16:49
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I think this discussion highlights a problem with both expansion models. In the older games, and you can see this in CK2 and EU4, you had a point where both games hit their stride - I'd say something like Way of Life for CK2 and Rights of Man for EU4. After that point both games felt "complete" to me and other expansions felt like bloat. I would have been happy if those games were just left in a state of high polish after those DLC packs, and the bloat that came afterwards has made it harder for me to get back into them. Paradox's solution to the bloat issue is to thin out releases and make them more considerable and better-engineered, which is good... but it means a game has to wait for considerably longer before it hits the same point of feeling "complete". If the goal is for the games to receive only good, important updates all the way to their end-of-life, it means that the window of time in which they are "complete" is much shorter. I think I would have preferred a halfway approach where games get their big expansions and then support switches to a much more limited scope with just cosmetic or flavour releases (that don't introduce new mechanics) explicitly to maintain a revenue stream while the game is in its final form. But this is something that just came to me as something I would be satisfied with on the consumer side, and probably doesn't make as much business sense.
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Feb 15, 2023 16:53
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YF-23 posted:My hot take is that 3D character models were a mistake and completely mismatch the paradox aesthetic. I don't mind them too much but there's just something about them that makes me feel completely unexcited in a way 2D portraits didn't. I'll hard agree with this. The best PDX content is in the writing and mechanics, not the flashy 3D models. Improving/adding more 2D representations of people/institutions would make me a lot happier, along with the UI improvements they're making.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:00
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YF-23 posted:I think I would have preferred a halfway approach where games get their big expansions and then support switches to a much more limited scope with just cosmetic or flavour releases (that don't introduce new mechanics) explicitly to maintain a revenue stream while the game is in its final form. But this is something that just came to me as something I would be satisfied with on the consumer side, and probably doesn't make as much business sense.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:17
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I'm just mad that 2 years after the release of Crusader Kings 3, Crusades still don't make a lick of sense. They lack any sort of grounding in historical processes, and the AI cannot handle them at all. If the next DLC isn't targeted at making a sensible Roman Empire, it should at least look at making a decent First Crusade.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:17
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I dont mind the 3D models at all, they are ok My problems with current state of CK3: - theres basically 2 gameplay experiences: feudal catholic and tribal norse. Everything else is just a more boring variation of these 2. CK2 had a lot more, even if not everyone liked republics or hordes. This is a matter of both more local flavor and different types of governments (harder to implement, of course) - late game is barren. I like playing loong games but in CK3 after you reached empire theres little to keep you going. That was also a problem in CK2, but in CK3 feels worse. Specially after you already researched all technology (which never happened on CK2, but in my CK3 games will always happen before 1300), the world just feels halted - theres no trade, no population (aside from the occasional rebels), nothing but court politics and war. Makes the world feel empty and always the same. Again, that was also kinda true for CK2, but it did had minimal trade, it had major epidemics with impact on the economy, stuff that at least gave some illusion of a world that had more than nobles and armies on it - it has major balance issues related to MaA and lifestyle perks making the game way too easy, and paradox dont seems to be wanting to address those - the AI is bad. Not that it was great in 2, but in 3 its way too passive (many times I was a rising small power with huge hostile blobs in my borders that never bothered to attack me, even though they had CB for it and could easily crush me) and it cant seems to be able to manage their own internal politics for long without breaking apart I believe the reason they decided to push primo and other non partitioning succession laws to be so late into the game is because partition is one of the few things that can still offer the player some challenge (and something to look forward late in the game), but its also annoying as gently caress to be doing at every succession every game. and after a few games you will know how to game it anyway. And than after you finally set primo, it feels like game over, like theres nothing left to do, unless you are painting the world Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Feb 15, 2023 |
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Feb 15, 2023 18:04
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My only real issues with CK3 are a general lack of content, how easy Royal Court makes it, and how much they lean into eugenics in comparison to CK2. Everything else is either better than CK2 or just as bad as CK2.
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Feb 15, 2023 18:26
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Hellioning posted:My only real issues with CK3 are a general lack of content, how easy Royal Court makes it, and how much they lean into eugenics in comparison to CK2. Everything else is either better than CK2 or just as bad as CK2. Im not sure I agree Royal Court makes the game much easier It does gives a lot in bonuses and stuff but it also you got to keep the minimum level or face some bad penalties, and that can be pretty expensive early. In my experience, it seems to make mid game a little harder because of the court draining all your meager income But late game money is no longer a problem so is all bonuses and it does makes the game even easier (but late game is already easy to begin with)
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Feb 15, 2023 18:34
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YF-23 posted:My hot take is that 3D character models were a mistake and completely mismatch the paradox aesthetic. I don't mind them too much but there's just something about them that makes me feel completely unexcited in a way 2D portraits didn't. Bring back side profile portraits like in CK1.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:06
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I do like the 3d models to help differentiate each ruler, and the idea of the perk trees is good even if the execution is off. Ck3 characters just seem to live forever, have a shitload of kids, and get insane stat totals. I never feel like I'm trying to make a lovely or even average ruler work, and certainly not scrabbling to ever produce an heir. The war and technology changes are all for the worse too. CB's are just too common and I hate the discrete tech.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:08
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Elias_Maluco posted:Im not sure I agree Royal Court makes the game much easier The bonuses from having a over-required-splendor royal court are so severe that it basically stops most rebellions from happening, and since rebellions are some of the only actual threats, it is well worth spending money on.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:14
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ilitarist posted:I think the key difference is quality and universality of content. CK2 had a huge issue with expansions being roughly similar in size, so the expansion about adding a whole India had as much in it as an expansion that deepened injury and sickness systems, making those things disproportionally important. CK2 Royal Court expansion is like yer olde expansions that transform the whole game, mostly by adding various bonuses and abilities to cultures as well as all kinds of items. It's as big as 4 expansions for CK2, except it doesn't have broken parts. You may talk about something you feel is missing or some minor things like dumb events, but in CK2 you can write a long list of stuff that should be reworked or removed from the game. I know people play mods and have high tolerance to unfinished stuff and crutches as long as it promises some fantasy behind it. If the fact that Republics are playable in CK2 overshadows the fact that they're terrible then of course this is a game for you. I seem to remember when reaper's due first came out, it was hell for a while because you would get spammed with every kind of horrible disease, that dlc was fun and really spiced up the game even if the plague was a potential game ender and a typhus outbreak was no joke. Nothing to do with the relatively tame illness system we have in ck3, and part of why it can seem so easy - it's just quite rare to die unexpectedly, which while it makes for more satisfying gameplay (or well, less frustrating) on one side, it also removes some challenge and unpredictability in a game that should thrive in it and being dynasty -based you often don't game over anyway,just get to play the dumb third cousin that somehow survived. From ck2 I also mostly remember that every dlc added at least some universal mechanics (some more so than others like the one that enabled retinues, conclave and reaper's due, that are now more or less rolled into ck3 default systems), which might also explain why ck3 feels a bit barren: during normal gameplay you won't be interacting a lot with Viking or Iberian struggle stuff unless you play there or really close to it, so really only royal court and the event pack (that honestly is very "light", but also in price at least) are accessible to every playthrough - if you have the dlc - if that makes sense. I hope with the next real expansion they bring up some new fancy universal mechanics and spruce up the game a bit in general, and then some "flavor packs" or something that allows having more different play styles (republics, hordes, ?)
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Feb 15, 2023 19:20
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On the one hand, slower DLCs are nice because they make keeping mods and tools up the date easier. On the other hand, CK3 needs playable republics and proper Byzantium flavor.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:34
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What the hell, I can't  harder at the model hate going on here about CK3. The 2D portraits in CK2 are hideous, they were straight up the major reason I didn't play more of that game. CK3's characters have so much more personality and it fits in so much better with the genealogy stuff to not be relying on a few dozen canned noses and eyes for all your characters.TwoQuestions posted:I'll hard agree with this. The best PDX content is in the writing and mechanics, not the flashy 3D models. Improving/adding more 2D representations of people/institutions would make me a lot happier, along with the UI improvements they're making. The artists working on the character models are different people to the writers doing the writing, and at this point Paradox can definitely afford both. Yeah the turnaround per asset is gonna be a little bit higher which might limit variety from the dev team compared to with 2D, but especially for technically inclined modders, the workflow for 3D takes so much less skill to pull off to a convincingly high quality (especially for hard surface things like crowns) than 2D that mods have made up plenty of the difference. All that said yeah definitely feeling the same vibes about the game at large as other people here. I loved the base game but 2 and a half years later I was expecting there to be more.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:53
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Koramei posted:What the hell, I can't Thats a bit tooCK2 portraits were fine but I like the models in CK3 better, after I got used to them (and also they were improved a lot). They look great and are better to show your character aging, and genetic traits going on over generations
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Feb 15, 2023 19:56
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The CK3 models are objectively better just so you don't have the dumb stuff that happens because there's only one childhood portrait per ethnicity so people can entirely change how they look as soon as they hit adulthood. CK3 models are also objectively better because they allow for ethnicities to actually mix instead of doing the weird cludge CK2 did.
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Feb 15, 2023 20:07
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Same. In CK3 I can actually recognize the characters. People think 2D portraits are significantly easier to do which is probably wrong. I could understand that sentiment somewhat if there'd be some sort of artistic thing going on, like if the portraits were stylyzed like in CK1. Or if it used unique portraits like Old World. But in CK2 they already looked like subpar 3D models! Eventually portrait packs covered the world, but before that everyone from Andalusia to Baghdad looked like the same potato face, and if you own every face pack then congratulations, now only everyone in your country looks like the same dude with different hair and beard.
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Feb 15, 2023 20:11
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Echoing the crowd that the 3D models are great, and super well implemented; I love that characters manage to retain hints of their ancestors.Elias_Maluco posted:Im not sure I agree Royal Court makes the game much easier I definitely thinks it makes the game much easier (assuming you're King rank or higher, at count or duke it makes essentially no difference at all), it's very unusual to get a high court level requirement, which makes the minimum trivial to maintain, and the bonuses for exceeding it are gigantic. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Feb 15, 2023 |
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Feb 15, 2023 20:20
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We never needed portraits, and we definitely didn't need dollhouse dress up in CK. Modeling 3D characters for all of the factions in Vicky III and failing to model such unimportant things as Unions and international corporations is the easiest example one can show of how utterly misguided the modern Paradox model is for the games.
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Feb 15, 2023 20:31
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Gaius Marius posted:We never needed portraits, and we definitely didn't need dollhouse dress up in CK. Modeling 3D characters for all of the factions in Vicky III and failing to model such unimportant things as Unions and international corporations is the easiest example one can show of how utterly misguided the modern Paradox model is for the games. source your quotes
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Feb 15, 2023 20:41
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I loving hate paradox 'fans' lol
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Feb 15, 2023 20:43
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| # ? May 11, 2024 12:53 |
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No real preference for CK2 portraits over CK3 ones, but I do feel the loss of event pictures. Two mannequins awkwardly mumming at each other is not a substitute.Eimi posted:Ck3 characters just seem to live forever, So, I find this one interesting. Mostly because I've been thinking about it recently, and puzzling over what Octogenarians, like, does? People have done mortality analyses on CK3 saves and the distribution doesn't seem massively out of line to my eyes?   Deaths in infancy seem low (though I don't think stillbirths or miscarriages are being counted here?), disease likewise, and I'm not sure stress should be accounting for an eighth of all deaths? Old age should probably spike earlier? But overall, most people are dead before they hit 55, and the vast majority never see 70. That sounds reasonable to me? The problem, I guess, is that there are a bunch of different ways to boost health in the game and players are likely to value them highly. The relationship between health and life expectancy is a little complicated, but, minimum, a point of health is worth about eight years of life. Herculean gives that much, as does the Whole of Body lifestyle tree (in addition to what is functionally complete immunity to disease). If you have those two, plus Strong, plus Octogenarians, you could expect to live a quarter of a century longer than you otherwise would?? I think if they knocked like half a point of health off of everyone and cut some of these bonuses in half, things would look a lot better.
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