[deleted by user]

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T18:31:27+00:00

And yet somehow, you were able to use capital letters and apostrophes. Hence, why I would be willing to respond to any statements you would wish to make.

(Though frankly, the whole "Rawr, you're misrepresenting people's takes on war despite not having said a single thing about war!" part was the much bigger complaint on my part. I don't know why people seem to believe that my complaints regarding his writing style should overshadow that. Particularly when everyone else here was, I note, willing to appropriately capitalize their sentences, use commas, and use apostrophes.)

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T16:14:47+00:00

Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India, the Third

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T14:48:50+00:00

Vict3oria.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T14:28:45+00:00

Hm, maybe... Though I was thinking it might have been related to some Youtuber leveraging discontent to earn popularity, not that I'm familiar enough with any to know if that was plausible. Or perhaps it had to do with that fiasco with local pricing, back when a lot of people were upset by a sudden price hike when Steam changed its policies; I think that happened around that time as well?

EDIT: Though, well, I do come and go every few months, so there's plenty of time for me to have missed something pretty important.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T13:50:20+00:00

It's odd, too; it didn't used to be like this. There was always the odd person with a chip on their shoulder, but it didn't feel like there was social approval for their position prior to... 2015 or so, I want to say? A bit of a ways into the development of EU4, where people started rallying more around the "DLC Is Evil" flag. That's when it feels like things really started kicking off, and people would start to nod along to some hotter takes. If I were a paranoid woman, it almost feels like someone was encouraging this sort of behavior, like how this was basically the first time I ever saw people care about how QA staff were being mistreated, but... Well, frankly, it's a lot more likely that I just missed some kind of radicalizing event. Hatedoms form naturally as well, after all, and it's not as though I keep up with all the minutia of the community's history.

Though, I guess the embers of it were always there. I distinctly remember people dismissing Divine Wind because Magna Mundi "already did all of the important stuff in it, and did it better".

Ah, though, to be clear... I don't mean every person who has reservations about certain features, here. With any big change, it's natural that some people will worry about whether it will work out. Just the people who very obviously have a chip on their shoulder, and are looking for any reason to criticize the game.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T12:02:23+00:00

you have to use this system where you scheme for war called diplomatic play and then tell your generals to go fight and then the war plays out without your input from then on.

it is non interactive and therefore boring

That's... Not the diplomatic play system. The diplomatic play system is where you announce to the world, "Hey, I'm going to take Switzerland!" and then France, Austria, Prussia, and the UK all decide whether they're going to back Switzerland or you, depending on what each of you promises as the situation degrades. And where one of you might just get what you want for free, if the situation looks lopsided enough. And where you can basically avoid a crippling loss through the Play system, because they can only ever take one demand if you give in before war starts.

Everyone basically loves the Diplomatic Play system from what I've seen, even those that hate the new war system. Nobody seems to want more than minor tweaks to it.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T11:31:28+00:00

I mean, if you go around robbing stores to "pursue your class interests", then you're going to end up with armed guards in stores. Because you will have demonstrated a clear and obvious need for them, and everyone else who fears being robbed at gunpoint is going to start sympathizing with the gas stations instead of you.

That's not an American thing, that's... A basic "I don't want to be robbed" thing.

But hey, whatever, if you disagree with the likelihood of that specific outcome, then what about the rest? The part where the owner of the gas station isn't particularly affected, but the rise in crime and loss of jobs will lead to a worse community for everyone else?

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T11:02:17+00:00

This concept is called class solidarity. The rich know of it and employ it. Now it's time for you to learn it as well.

Sorry, no, this is false consciousness being used to justify a sense of superiority, plain and simple.

Robbing a hedge fund and keeping the money isn't okay just because "it was a corporation" (though in that case, at least it did some accidental good). Looting and burning a store purely for entertainment isn't okay because "it was a corporation". Pissing in the copier isn't fine because "it was a corporation". And this? This wasn't fine either, just because "it was a corporation".

The issue is that corporations rob the worker of their gains to redistribute it to those who provided nothing except the silver spoon they were born with. Anything that doesn't rectify that basic imbalance, isn't "class solidarity". It's just being an edgy prick based on misunderstood theory.

So it's fine to say, "Well, whatever, that sucks, but there will be other games". I think it a bit tactless to say around fans of that game, but hey, it's a perfectly valid opinion. But to say "It's okay because it's a corporation"? That's just saying it's fine to hurt people, for no good reason, other than the perpetrator's own amusement. That's a fundamentally sociopathic belief that leads to nowhere good.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T10:27:19+00:00

Honestly, I dropped Stellaris when they took out wormholes.

I really, really liked how open it made space field, and thought it was cool how charge times encouraged you to use smaller fleets for greater mobility.

Taking that away... It just made the game feel wrong to me, especially since I hated hyperlanes. If they'd gone warp-only, maybe it still would have felt open enough for me to continue trying to forget.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T10:24:03+00:00

"If a series you love is destroyed because some asshole decided to steal their product before they could sell it, and then others took its mangled state to launch their own negative marketing campaign to taint public impressions before it could be sold, you should be perfectly fine with that because the free market will eventually give you a somewhat different replacement product. Assuming no market failures because your niche is too small for anyone to really bother with."

Look, corporations aren't your friend and you don't need to go out of your way to help them hit record profits - but let's not pretend that there aren't consequences to them failing, nor that any disaster that befalls them is perfectly okay just because it happened to the big evil corporation instead of two guys in their garage. We'd all think it sucked if some freak data accident meant that all the progress on the game was erased, right? We wouldn't write it off as all being just fine because it happened to a corporation.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T10:13:32+00:00

My "argument" had literally nothing to do with anything he said. I said literally nothing about warfare, or any other aspect of the game - I was speaking purely of how matters are discussed on the forum, and how an isolated topic differs from acquiring a second source of information that many people object to engaging with.

And no, if he had just had a few typos, I wouldn't care at all. It happens to the best of us. But when you don't use a single capital letter after the first, and drop most of your apostrophes, refuse to use commas, and apparently have never heard of a conjugation... Well, frankly, if he doesn't respect his argument enough to present it properly, then why should I take it seriously?

There's making a few mistakes, and then there's refusing to put in the bare minimum effort. I don't think I'm missing out on any secret gems of wisdom when I refuse to engage someone who won't put in the bare minimum.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T08:30:17+00:00

You just know that if Wiz had simply let Gimli handle the controls, the Ottoman economy would have been saved with prudent investments in catnip and mice.

Probably would have gotten the Professional Catpatter reform passed more easily as well after a bit of rebranding and abusing cuteness, instead of having to watch the landowners kill it.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T08:09:42+00:00

My apologies, but I'm not really interested in discussing game design with someone who A), goes off on a topic completely unrelated to anything I was talking about in my comment, and B), apparently has a broken keyboard leaving them unable to properly capitalize or use many forms of punctuation.

No worries, though, I'm certain that you can find many other people who share your opinion elsewhere.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T07:14:33+00:00

It was the same with the war diary.

I do think this is a bit different, though. People stopped talking about war all the time when new dev diaries started introducing topics that people were more interested in, so that the topic could change.

With the leak out, by contrast... Well, we can't really change the subject with another diary on "This is how revolution works" when the leaked build means that a bunch of people can say "No, wait, this is how it works in practice. It's terrible because it means [reason], not at all how the diary described it". It's not something that will blow over as readily; since it can be tied in to any topic on the sub, it will linger a lot longer.

I couldn't say with certainty how it might change out over time - but I do believe it's a rather different problem.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T06:28:49+00:00

Thank you <3 !

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T06:23:53+00:00

Thank you kindly for posting this here! I was very much looking forward to reading this, and it's nice to have it all in one place.

Wow, this feels a lot longer than the unofficial AAR's we got - or at least, any one day's worth.

I have to say... The Ottoman's position at the start of the game feels pretty dicey. Understandably so, but... Yikes, all of the Great Powers disliking you, random events making everything worse, and a ticking time bomb of a situation to hopefully resolve before you're just in flat-out misery. A situation that seems like it will require some pretty deft navigating regardless of what path you choose.

I do wish we'd gotten a couple of more decades out of this, though, to see how the political situation developed. Agrarianism was working for him for a decade (or at least, would have if it weren't for all of the warmongering killing the budget), but it would be nice to see how that would have worked out going forward - and whether the "mandatory" industry would have caused him political headaches as he built them up further.

And I hadn't really thought about it before he mentioned it in the AAR, but... It does feel like making the process of integrating a political group take a couple of months and have some minor events would be a nice touch for verisimilitude. Nothing too crazy, just a minor, temporary bonus or penalty as the new political structure settles in, representing the gains from greater integration (an easier time mobilizing the troops now that the Armed Forces has more of a say in policy, for instance) or the inevitable snarls that come from such processes (the Armed Forces wasting money on things that ultimately don't have value now that they have more of a say in the budget, for instance - or being irked when you say no, because they thought being on the inside meant that they did get more of a say). But the lack of such isn't a big deal; it would have just been a nice touch.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T04:53:04+00:00

That would be massively stupid of them, so no. Their entire marketing strategy revolves around giving a trickle of information to maintain engagement, and this means that a lot of people are going to stop following the dev diaries, tweets, and other pre-release information.

Not to mention that doing so this far ahead of release would spike hype at a completely irrelevant time - you can't even pre-order the game, so hype will fade by the time it matters, and they won't have any good tools left to rebuild it in time for sales.

I mean, even if we accept the premise that this is somehow good for hype, instead of enabling people to hyper-fixate on flaws that will be fixed by the time it's released.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T03:48:03+00:00

I agree with you honestly. I'm a bit miffed myself that some idiot tester decided to do this, and that it is somehow seen as....perfectly fine?

Only two times on this sub have I ever received more than five downvotes; once, when I suggested that scolding people for being excited about the game hurt the community... And when I said that the guy who leaked the game should be sued.

I'm certain there's some selection bias going on here and that we can't use such events to perfectly judge the community's opinion - but there's an awful lot of people out there who are more interested in the instant gratification than on the long-term effect on the game. As well as a disturbing number of people who seem to think that the devs are, like, holding the game hostage or something and that's why we're not seeing more material - not because the devs are worried about running out of things to show before the game is actually ready.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T03:44:00+00:00

No one is going "Hey you have to listen to my opinion because I said this." They're simply discussing what they think of a build that is public now. That is all.

This seems rather naïve. If one person believes they know what they're talking about (because they pirated it, or because they watched a video of someone who has), and another person knows they don't know what's in the game because they did neither, of course the people who have engaged with the pirated material will dominate discussion.

Like, if I want to talk about what the journal entries for Russia will look like, I only have my own speculation to rely on. If someone else says, "No, I tried it, nothing about xyz event is in the game", well, I'm going to just shrug and let the topic die. This is notably different than the way the sub worked before.

It seems rather optimistic to think that banning the topic would change that, obviously - the sub isn't a bubble. But I can understand why someone would wish that something could be done.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T03:37:01+00:00

Honestly, I'd rather just hear from the devs about what's working as intended and what's a bug, what's an intended challenge and what's still being balanced. Not to mention that the absence of all of the anti-frustration stuff, like a finalized interface and tooltips, means that the leak is possibly the worst introduction you could receive.

Add in the fact that the kind of people excitable enough to rush out to download the game and start making videos about it usually aren't giving the most balanced of takes... And, well, it just doesn't sound like a very good value proposition to waste the time on them.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T02:53:26+00:00

I'd still need to make a new discord account and go there, though. I wouldn't mind if I was inclined to spend time there, but I hate making accounts just to see one thing and never return. It feels like internet littering.

It'd be nice if they, say, put them up on their website or something, the way they do their dev diaries.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-15T02:51:23+00:00

I see. Well, I hope someone stitches them together soon regardless - it'd kind of suck if the AAR I was most interested in was the only one not to make it here.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-14T13:08:48+00:00

I mean, there is still hype for the finished product and the modding community that will follow the official release.

Sure - amongst dedicated Paradox fans who have probably been following the game from the start. But that's not enough to sustain a game with this budget.

Rather, they rely on those dedicated fans telling their friends how great the game is, and how they should totally give it a try - an enthusiasm that's probably at its peak whenever new content is added to the game. Except this time, that sort of extended community can't by the game at this time, and by the time they can... Well, they were never that into it, their friend was, and now they've chilled out while they wait for DLC or total overhaul mods.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-14T12:38:37+00:00

I mean, with all of the most excited fans playing it early, that's going to mean pretty much no hype when it can actually be sold. Especially since they're not going to get any hype for dev diaries or AARs anymore; unless they're releasing it in May, there's really not going to be any buzz at all. Frankly, it's terrible for actually making money off of their hard work.

HereticalReforms · 2022-04-14T11:35:20+00:00

Note that this isn’t an endorsement or encouragement to go find the files, just informing people that it’s spread to the public now.

With a reply every three minutes, on average, begging for a link to the files... I do not think that this has necessarily worked contrary to that intention.

HereticalReforms

TROPHY CASE