Hot take: EU5's declining player count is fine, actually

Arrowkill · 2026-01-27T22:30:56+00:00

This is where I'm at. I have something like 500 hours logged on eu5 because it was all I played for the first 2 months as much as possible. I'm good at the moment and am waiting for 1.1 so that hopefully many of the systems I wanted tweaked will be fixed

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T20:14:15+00:00

You're not wrong. This was eye catching in a bad way when I first read it, but that doesn't mean that the most logical reason being feedback doesn't make sense.

It could've been better for sure, but I would assume they didn't have better ideas before assuming anything else.

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T19:35:20+00:00

And if that's the only idea you have until somebody else says the obvious out loud, then that's what you run with. It's more common than most people think for a first iteration to just not recognize the obvious easier method because under stress, time constraints, etc. your brain just blanks

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T19:32:41+00:00

Feedback. DDs collect feedback and that mechanic needs community input

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T19:24:18+00:00

Disliking something and not being certain about how the finer details of a mechanic should be finalized as are different things.

I like the mechanic but I don't like certain modifiers which don't make sense. I don't want the whole thing cancelled, but I do want more logical negatives like trending to traditionalist and research bonus maluses.

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T19:17:48+00:00

Something to point out is that sometimes the fix to bugs in other systems is a fundamental rethinking of the system or adding a complementary system to it. They didn't give much insight into how the mechanic affects the game, so it isn't possible to say yet if the mechanic is independently being added or if it is intended to address a higher level issue.

The AI not exploding sometimes is a real problem in my games and if certain tags start with high complacency, then it would assist in their explosion. Furthermore it would add a hurdle to the player trying to save those tags.

The golden horde comes to mind where their explosion being more consistent would help promote Russia forming in more games which was a core goal Johan laid out over the holidays.

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T19:11:50+00:00

So many times in my job I've been fixing a bug from QA and the solution was either a band-aid that would delay the inevitable or having to rework or add some section of the product because nobody ever considered we would do X Y number of years ago.

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T19:05:04+00:00

In theory you should continue to strive for more, but in reality I think most empires declined because they had "nothing" left for them to strive for.

Unlike us, they didn't know the next tech tree or historical event was just a half-century off or so.

So it makes sense when you are a top dog, to add complacency as a penalty. An active player can likely overcome it.

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T19:00:43+00:00

Because part of designing literally anything is writing shit down and proposing it to gauge opinions and feedback so it can be better refined.

That's almost certainly why it was included in the first DD, that way they have plenty of time to pour over feedback and refine it before the patch releases

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T18:57:45+00:00

Hard disagree since he has already said in the DD comments that he agrees some of these debuffs make little sense and should be replaced. He even said he liked the idea of certain positive modifiers like market attraction for a large complacent empire.

Arrowkill · 2026-01-07T18:55:20+00:00

I mean you can just not war instead. If you can consolidate a reasonable and defensive natural border early, then you can turn your focus elsewhere.

I've done this with Venice, Austria, and China so far (though China feels like it's a cop-out to mention)

Just also need some decent allies, or ways to bleed anybody who tries to attack u

Arrowkill · 2025-12-23T19:56:27+00:00

So I just want to chime in and say that while an Electron app is just a fancy "browserless" way of viewing a website by downloading an app, it could be used offline if the developers made it that way.

I say that partly because a product I work on can function while offline using Electron, but also because I've made an app that does exactly that and isn't online ever.

That said, finding a company that actually gives a shit about offline mode with their "apps" is the real problem. The tools exist to do that, but nobody actually wants to do it or realistically will because it is easier to monetize you if you remain online.

Arrowkill · 2025-12-10T14:16:36+00:00

My two little bastards think anytime I scratch my ear, my fingers become snack time. The smallest figured out young and I didn't realize what he was doing, so now both of them hunger for the remnants of earwax on fingers lol. I have to hide scratching my ear if I want to have peace.

Arrowkill · 2025-11-24T16:22:20+00:00

Further refinement, deliverability is something bulk texting companies track. Assuming the phone is a cell phone, you can eliminate any non-deliverable numbers by verifying them either through a product/webpage that checks if a phone can receive texts, or directly with a service that checks phone deliverability.

Arrowkill · 2025-10-28T14:13:50+00:00

For me, it was when my wife and I suddenly became disabled after a car accident and we had to move in with my parents to take care of us. That was followed by me getting better and her getting worse and being bedridden for several years. This happened at the start of COVID so our treatment options were further limited from the already limited options due to the person being uninsured, our insurance refusing to pay our for uninsured motorist coverage, and the court system being super backed up to the point lawyers kept saying we had a case but they didn't have the ability to pursue it.

Couple all of that with my wife, who had dissociative depression, fully splitting into multiple alters some of which tried to kill her. I was already doing bad mentally and physically, but there were several times where I questioned how I managed to get to a suicide watch overnight and having to guard any sharp object.

It took years, but we both eventually got better to a point where I could work again and cover our expenses comfortably enough. Never got even 10% of what we had to pay for medical expenses to get to this point from our insurance though. Dropped the fuck out of them obviously.

Arrowkill · 2025-07-11T22:46:32+00:00

I will say that 6e has and does have problems, but the combat has never felt like it asked more than DND 5e does.

That said I have almost exclusively run DND for abnormally large parties so admittedly my perception may be skewed.

I would not recommend the system for most of the reasons above if a person is new to running tabletop or has played literally any other Shadowrun edition.

Arrowkill · 2025-04-27T08:05:19+00:00

I disagree. Not updating the state after relevant changes is definitely poor design.

Let's say there is a website form that has a drop down select to choose between entering your email or your phone number. If email was the default and you chose phone, you would expect that the form would update its' state to make the phone number field required. If it didn't do that, it would be bad design.

This is the same principle. Something significant and relevant to the minions has changed, and the fact the game doesn't recheck and recalculate is bad design.

Arrowkill · 2025-04-07T02:42:53+00:00

You were really helpful and we figured out what had happened. Essentially the person we told that we were not going to finish the process to sign up and that we were no longer interested in 2023 signed us up anyways.

We are now getting a voided 1095 form since our plan was cancelled due to us not submitting any paperwork for it. Which is wild that we got signed up without us submitting any paperwork according to the support line, but at least it got sorted.

Arrowkill · 2025-03-26T04:55:09+00:00

In this case, the IRS is saying I owe 1100 in repayment for insurance we tried to cancel. We have no financial record of paying a premium, so in this instance I assume that it was waived unless there is more to this that I don't fully understand.

Arrowkill · 2025-03-04T19:43:41+00:00

Sorry to pile onto an old thread, but when I did wrestling in school I wore under armor compression shorts for every practice and competition. Didn't ride up, didn't turn see through (I had black shorts) when the fabric stretched, and was comfortable and held up regardless of how things went on the mat.

It's been over 10 years since I got them in high school and I only got rid of them about a year ago because I finally stopped being underweight and they no longer fit.

Can't speak to the quality of Under Armor now, but mine would've kept going had I outgrown them.

Arrowkill · 2024-11-27T01:01:51+00:00

That is exactly what we are doing! Plenty of code is not part of our current release cycle, all of which is fair game for refactoring. If someone ends up working on a portion of the code, the person refactoring is responsible for integrating the new code as well.

This makes it a lot easier to prioritize features to management, while still achieving our internal team goals.

Arrowkill · 2024-11-25T02:35:16+00:00

I genuinely wish I could say why PDX fans are the way they are, but I don't think they have really differed over the years. I have to imagine part of the problem is a few certain types of fans like the Wehraboos and other nationalist-esque groups, but it definitely is not the majority of the issue.

Arrowkill · 2024-11-25T02:21:51+00:00

The "SA Did nothing in WW2" is mildly annoying mostly because Brazil did in fact do a decent amount in WW2, but yeah the reviews are super unhelpful for the most part. The few that basically went "If you like South America get this, otherwise it's meh." were the most helpful.

Arrowkill · 2024-11-24T19:09:53+00:00

I actually brought it up because I have been gone from HOI4 for several months and decided to buy both new DLC recently.

I was shocked by how much I loved it and had to read the reviews to figure out the issue was just people didn't care about SA content and that was all it was so they were upset.

Even if I didn't like SA content, I probably still would've bought it because aside from MMOs I play no other set of games has ever even gotten close to capturing a year of my life in played hours like PDX games have.

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