Darkrenown posted:

As far as I know Wiz is a good person and has been supportive to people harassed by their manager.

I'm not at all surprised by the survey results. It was brought up multiple times when I was there and the upper management always made noises about being very concerned and that they would take action, but at most someone would be moved around and informally told off then it was declared all good. Multiple people even spoke to a RPS reporter a few years ago, but the eventual article which came out was very mild and only really mentioned the other abuses in passing while focusing on the QA people being fired.

It's possible something will be changed this time since it's been much more publicly reported, but I will believe it when I see it. When we had a manager who was screaming at people until they cried (this was not a behavior unique to this guy either), creepily messaging AFAB employees at all hours, and eventually sending them porn, the only result was him being moved to only manage men (who were mostly senior so this was almost a promotion for him). When people called this out as unacceptable they were censored for trouble-making. Porn-manager continued to be welcome at after-work drinks with senior people and eventually, years later, left on his own for a design role in another studio. After he left, when this incident was mentioned the management line was "yes, and he was dealt with and no longer works here" as if he was fired on the spot rather than continuing with all prestige until choosing to leave much later.

Jeoh posted:

could we ignore the boring rehashed "hoi is a genocide simulator" discussion and go back to the sparkling new "paradox is run by sex pests" storyline? because jesus christ, yikes

A Buttery Pastry posted:

What more is there to talk about, so long as there's no new development? People could talk about the ethics of a boycott, but recent precedent points to that being too spicy a discussion for the mods.

Davincie posted:

No? Tinto is johan. A fact that has been mentioned in this thread dozens of times

Gaius Marius posted:

Nobody played the balanced world scenarios for Doomsday. And balance is for other games, having asymmetrical challenges is an appeal of Paradox over other strategy games.

yikes! posted:

Where did they explicitly abandon asymmetry, other than stellaris. Also what do you mean by asymmetry? You don't mean switzerland will be as strong as austria in v3 i hope.

yikes! posted:

Yes, and you're using asymmetry in a way I've never seen before if you think there was no difference between states in eu4 at release.

Sampatrick posted:

No Paradox game has ever been assymetric in the way you're describing except for specifically CK2 - and CK3 will probably eventually get to a point where it's similarly assymetric.

Steely Dad posted:

Has Imperator been patched into being tolerable for someone looking for CK2 in togas? (Or CK3 in togas with more content, I guess.)

Crazycryodude posted:

Paradox is a serious big boy company with stock prices and shareholder meetings and an HR department and sexual harassment scandals now. Sure the thread has a few favorites to pick on but I think it's honestly more a product of PDX blowing up and hiring enough lawyers to get you fired for saying anything that isn't on the list of marketing dept. approved vague yet broadly positive platitudes. It's not like goons were any more polite and friendly 10 years ago, it's Paradox that changed from a few weird nerds making janky indie games for other weird nerds to a giant corporation.

Jazerus posted:

the devs that post here are by and large not managers. the ones that are managers are either johan (who imo is a valid target given that this is, in many ways, his company even if he doesn't run it) or wiz, who immediately came out in support of the union. also at this point almost all of the paradox dev goons were goons first and became paradox devs later...i don't see the point in aiming criticism at them rather than the people who made the culture they were hired into, especially when they're all apparently in the union.

Alchenar posted:

You don't actually know what's going on and a dead internet comedy forum is not remotely an appropriate place to ask about this sort of stuff.

Subjunctive posted:

Alchenar posted:

Okay the thing to remember is that Paradox Interactive started out as a 7 man studio that achieved escape velocity from the bankruptcy and breakup of Target Games. There's an in-between moment where Fredrik gets brought in to advise on strategy for Paradox Entertainment and when the board decides to double down on making unsuccessful AAA games rather than repeat the successful grand strategy formula he buys out the video games division which I believe includes Johan (does this story seem familiar?).

So without really having any detail as to what's going on, rather than assume individual malice it seems more likely that Paradox just did what hundreds of other small companies that experience rapid growth have done, which is that they didn't quite get right the necessary cultural shift as they grew and had a core who kept on acting like they were a company half dozen guys taking on the world rather than a medium-to-large international enterprise with hundreds of employees.

Alchenar posted:

I'm not saying we shouldn't believe specific allegations, particularly the ones he's held his hands up to. I'm saying that an awful lot of leaping is being done from 'Fredrik once did a bad thing and got immediately called out for it by HR' to why exactly Paradox evidently has a lovely culture, and I particularly don't think it's helpful to be trying to engage Paradox employees in this leaping when there is a company and union process going on.

Alchenar posted:

No you are repeatedly misreading my posts, which I presume is whatever got you banned and forced you to re-reg.

Alchenar posted:

So without really having any detail as to what's going on, rather than assume individual malice it seems more likely that Paradox just did what hundreds of other small companies that experience rapid growth have done, which is that they didn't quite get right the necessary cultural shift as they grew and had a core who kept on acting like they were a company half dozen guys taking on the world rather than a medium-to-large international enterprise with hundreds of employees.

HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:

All Alchenar is saying is don't go after individuals that haven't had confirmed knocks against them and blaming or extending blame to them for the systemic culture issue at Paradox. It's not our place to do that. Definitely signal boost stories and reports, but don't witch hunt anyone who just so happens to work for the company.

Jabor posted:

I would play neither, because there are enough good games made by people who don't suck.

HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:

If you want to buy the game that’s fine. If the actions of Paradox as a whole colour your decision to buy the game then that’s fine too. I will be buying the game regardless if it turns out well, since it’s a game I want and it’s not completely exchangeable with another similar product. Still,

If you really wanted Diablo 2 Remastered, even though it’s kinda poo poo IIRC, that’s fair enough. If you want to support a game in a niche genre to say “hey I want more of this” that’s also fair enough. If the claims against Blizzard make it distasteful for you to buy the game, that is also entirely fair. So long as people aren’t buying the game because of the claims, I can respect their choice.

It is however kinda funny when someone comes in with “yeah I don’t care about what they did btw what did they do” though

Agean90 posted:

drat I'm good

yikes! posted:

I remember people being happy it wasn't eu: rome 2 only to be disappointed when they realized it was.

Mantis42 posted:

I do, those games are mostly mediocre.

SlothfulCobra posted:

The PRC does not like accurate depictions of history, and they have weird feelings about people saying anything good about previous Chinas, so odds are low that they'd be okay with a game about trying to accurately depict history.

Not that there aren't plenty of people outside PRC control who wouldn't want a game about Chinese history, and other East Asian countries could have good potential markets, just that odds are low on Paradox getting a game past Chinese censors.

Lum_ posted:

uh, the Hearts of Iron series is banned in China for literally this (specifically having an independent Tibet since China noticed it in HOI2 and independent warlords since HOI3)

Mans posted:

The Taiping Rebelion isn't on vanila vicky 2???

Holy moly, I never played vanilla and it shows.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

People's Republic of China GDP, 2019: 14.28 billion United States Dollars
United States of America GDP, 2019: 21.43 billion United States Dollars
Apple, gross profit, 2019: 55.25 billion United States Dollars

drat I'm glad Apple has no control over my life.

Tomn posted:

Yeah from the looks of it I doubt these guys are gonna break the "Paradox modding teams make bad developers" curse. Remember the good old days of Magna Mundi and EvW?

IncredibleIgloo posted:

Isn't most modding of EUIV just manipulating and changing Lua scripts? Like I am sure that is helpful and a good skill to have but I am not sure that Lua scripting translates well to OOP, like C# that Unity uses. I mean, I like C# and I think it is fun and easy to use, and Unity does a lot of the heavy lifting in regards to a game engine, but I think there is a significant skill jump between the modding and programing. Not to say they cannot do it, but their mod philosophy seemed to be based around making a million systems, pop-ups, events, whatever, in the hope that some of them were engaging. I don't think adding province count accomplishes all that much. In fact I would even argue that too many provinces cause a saturation and somewhat flattens the impact of certain provinces.

Also the "Phenomena that drove mankind forward" seems a lot like an abstraction, such as mana points or board game mechanics. Their comments remind me so very much of Star Citizen.

idhrendur posted:

I've found recursive descent with each component handling its own parsing of the incoming data and letting sub-components do their thing works well. A handful of helpers handle 99% of cases. And I believe others have done more efficient parsers than mine, in a plethora of languages. So if you ever wanted to do so for kicks, you're in good company. Or if you wanted that as a stepping-stone towards a bigger project, others have handled that step for you.

Hellioning posted:

CK3 does not have a sunset invasion and it is the lesser for it.

Koramei posted:

Not coming down on you specifically, because I know this is a really common assumption, but the notion that bodies of water are the only meaningful barriers is really a pretty flawed one; China’s geography is really not any more suited towards unification than Europe’s is — there are huge changes in climate even in the traditionally Han regions, mountain ranges criss-crossing major chunks of the landscape, and while there are navigable ones too, there are large stretches of river that are very difficult to navigate. Chinese unification was a long, slow process largely in spite of all of that, and even its heartlands are like 4-5 separate geographical regions.

ThaumPenguin posted:

I remember being hyped for the release of this one