stupid game design

[Bobisud]

As independ clerical king i cant create my own arcibishop. I cant have my own domecile and meanwhile some other priest expand his clerical domain into main teritory and i cant do nothing about it.

Paradox, people who made this need to be fired. This is not a fun game design at all. worthles DLC.

[joshthomas134]

please put this on their forum i get frustrated how many people come to steam to review bomb a dlc based soley on things that i think if enough people got on the actual studio forums and complained maybe they would take note and fix a few things.
but instead people come here instead review bomb so others that may have bought said game wont game dies and its our fault. Now onto the issues yes their are issues i would like to see fixed but we all have to leave the steam echo chamber and make known this stuff on the studio bug reporting form cheers.

[Harris]

Originally posted by joshthomas134:

game dies and its our fault

How come it's our fault? Not the CEO, the game director, the game designer, the QA, the community manager's, but ours?

If anything, we've been on our best behavior for 6 years now. Friends and Foes. Legends of the Dead. Coronations. Even one of these offerings should have had entire Studio Black pursue a career in fast food industry, and yet that never happened. They learned they can do a "mea culpa" and then it's business as usual. And it works, because we enable them to.

And we enable them to, because we're willing to keep funding the hospice bill, even though the patient is deep in coma and will never recover. Just like we funded one for Piranha Bytes and other studios that pushed the bar lower and lower until it was no longer sustainable.

The tragedy of CK3 is it was never better than vanilla. Most DLC didn't make it better. Some made it worse. All of them bloated it. No long-term plan or overall vision, only "what else could we make they would pay for".

This latest one is so bad I don't even want to write a thesis to explain why. I wanted more religious flexibility in Europe in a "lore-friendly" manner and a buff to feudal in a form of the ability to replace hereditary nobles with loyal bishop "bureaucrats". What I got instead is a rigid system with the tedium compared to that of the huangdi, but that one at least has 20 concubines going for it. The only explanation I have is this must be their final "season pass" and they're not planning to extend support into next year. But then, I don't see myself sticking around for CK4 either, the way they handled this one.

[Sledjer]

Why should you be able to independently establish a clerical region outside of the direction of the head of faith? Just ask the Pope to give you a clerical region.

[Toblm]

Originally posted by Sledjer:

Why should you be able to independently establish a clerical region outside of the direction of the head of faith? Just ask the Pope to give you a clerical region.

That's what I was wondering.

If OP wants the privileges of being a head of faith.... sounds like they should sack up and form their own heretical faith.

[joshthomas134]

Originally posted by Harris:

Originally posted by joshthomas134:

game dies and its our fault

How come it's our fault? Not the CEO, the game director, the game designer, the QA, the community manager's, but ours?

If anything, we've been on our best behavior for 6 years now. Friends and Foes. Legends of the Dead. Coronations. Even one of these offerings should have had entire Studio Black pursue a career in fast food industry, and yet that never happened. They learned they can do a "mea culpa" and then it's business as usual. And it works, because we enable them to.

And we enable them to, because we're willing to keep funding the hospice bill, even though the patient is deep in coma and will never recover. Just like we funded one for Piranha Bytes and other studios that pushed the bar lower and lower until it was no longer sustainable.

The tragedy of CK3 is it was never better than vanilla. Most DLC didn't make it better. Some made it worse. All of them bloated it. No long-term plan or overall vision, only "what else could we make they would pay for".

This latest one is so bad I don't even want to write a thesis to explain why. I wanted more religious flexibility in Europe in a "lore-friendly" manner and a buff to feudal in a form of the ability to replace hereditary nobles with loyal bishop "bureaucrats". What I got instead is a rigid system with the tedium compared to that of the huangdi, but that one at least has 20 concubines going for it. The only explanation I have is this must be their final "season pass" and they're not planning to extend support into next year. But then, I don't see myself sticking around for CK4 either, the way they handled this one.

Please post this on the official Paradox forums as well. I get frustrated seeing people come straight to Steam and review-bomb a DLC over issues that might actually get addressed if enough players reported them through the studio forums and bug-reporting channels.

I'm not saying there aren't problems. There absolutely are things I'd like to see fixed or improved. Criticism is fair, and developers need to hear it.

But when the response immediately becomes “worthless DLC” and negative reviews, we risk discouraging other people from even trying the game instead of giving the developers useful feedback they can act on. If enough of us clearly explain the problems on the official forums, there's at least a better chance they'll take notice and make changes.

Let's get out of the Steam echo chamber, document what's actually wrong, and make sure the feedback reaches the people who can do something about it.

Cheers.

[joshthomas134]

Originally posted by Harris:

Originally posted by joshthomas134:

game dies and its our fault

How come it's our fault? Not the CEO, the game director, the game designer, the QA, the community manager's, but ours?

If anything, we've been on our best behavior for 6 years now. Friends and Foes. Legends of the Dead. Coronations. Even one of these offerings should have had entire Studio Black pursue a career in fast food industry, and yet that never happened. They learned they can do a "mea culpa" and then it's business as usual. And it works, because we enable them to.

And we enable them to, because we're willing to keep funding the hospice bill, even though the patient is deep in coma and will never recover. Just like we funded one for Piranha Bytes and other studios that pushed the bar lower and lower until it was no longer sustainable.

The tragedy of CK3 is it was never better than vanilla. Most DLC didn't make it better. Some made it worse. All of them bloated it. No long-term plan or overall vision, only "what else could we make they would pay for".

This latest one is so bad I don't even want to write a thesis to explain why. I wanted more religious flexibility in Europe in a "lore-friendly" manner and a buff to feudal in a form of the ability to replace hereditary nobles with loyal bishop "bureaucrats". What I got instead is a rigid system with the tedium compared to that of the huangdi, but that one at least has 20 concubines going for it. The only explanation I have is this must be their final "season pass" and they're not planning to extend support into next year. But then, I don't see myself sticking around for CK4 either, the way they handled this one.

[joshthomas134]

Originally posted by Harris:

Originally posted by joshthomas134:

game dies and its our fault

How come it's our fault? Not the CEO, the game director, the game designer, the QA, the community manager's, but ours?

If anything, we've been on our best behavior for 6 years now. Friends and Foes. Legends of the Dead. Coronations. Even one of these offerings should have had entire Studio Black pursue a career in fast food industry, and yet that never happened. They learned they can do a "mea culpa" and then it's business as usual. And it works, because we enable them to.

And we enable them to, because we're willing to keep funding the hospice bill, even though the patient is deep in coma and will never recover. Just like we funded one for Piranha Bytes and other studios that pushed the bar lower and lower until it was no longer sustainable.

The tragedy of CK3 is it was never better than vanilla. Most DLC didn't make it better. Some made it worse. All of them bloated it. No long-term plan or overall vision, only "what else could we make they would pay for".

This latest one is so bad I don't even want to write a thesis to explain why. I wanted more religious flexibility in Europe in a "lore-friendly" manner and a buff to feudal in a form of the ability to replace hereditary nobles with loyal bishop "bureaucrats". What I got instead is a rigid system with the tedium compared to that of the huangdi, but that one at least has 20 concubines going for it. The only explanation I have is this must be their final "season pass" and they're not planning to extend support into next year. But then, I don't see myself sticking around for CK4 either, the way they handled this one.

I think you're taking my “our fault” comment more broadly than I intended it.

I'm not saying players are responsible for bad design decisions, bugs, poor QA, or anything else Paradox does. Obviously the developers and management are responsible for the product they release.

My point is about what we as players do afterward. If there's a specific mechanic that's broken, poorly designed, or simply not fun, I'd rather see people document exactly what's wrong and put that feedback somewhere the developers are likely to act on it instead of immediately jumping to “worthless DLC, fire everyone.”

And I'm not saying people shouldn't leave negative Steam reviews either. If you genuinely don't recommend the DLC, that's exactly what reviews are there for. What bothers me is when the conversation turns into a pile-on where everything is terrible, the game is dead, the developers are incompetent, etc., because then useful criticism gets buried underneath the outrage.

You clearly have specific problems with the religious system, and that's exactly the kind of feedback I'm talking about. Explain what you wanted, what the system currently prevents you from doing, and what you think would make it better.

We might disagree about the overall state of CK3, but I think we'd probably agree that specific, actionable criticism is more useful than just yelling that everyone involved should be fired.

[Harris]

Originally posted by joshthomas134:

I think you're taking my “our fault” comment more broadly than I intended it.

I deliberately avoided taking it literally, because it felt incredibly silly to me when taken that way.

It is not our job to go to PDX forums and talk about stuff. But it's THEIR job to go to every medium where the game is discussed - including two subreddits, Steam forums and all the way to random comments under shorts on Youtube. Otherwise, I'm not sure what Trinexxx is getting paid for. From indies to AAAs, you see devs reading reviews on Steam and interacting with them. This idea that feedback goes invisible unless it's delivered through one, very specific channel is ridiculous to say the least.

One other thing is some gamemakers are notorious for turning their forums/Discords into an echo chamber and a warm bath. At such mediums, there are only two takes - the accepted one, and the wrong one. I had my share of Discord servers where I was told to shut up by a blue-haired moderator whose biggest challenge in life was figuring out own gender identity.

See, by providing feedback I am hopefully bringing value to the company. I commit some of my limited time on this planet to it, and I do it for free. The last thing I want is for someone to start talking about my mother and some barnyard animals. So, generally, I find Steam reviews are the perfect medium for me - I get to talk about the game based on what it is, and it can't be banned like on Discord or downvoted to shreds like on Reddit.

Originally posted by joshthomas134:

everything is terrible, the game is dead, the developers are incompetent, etc., because then useful criticism gets buried underneath the outrage.

It's just that at this point any deep analysis doesn't make sense to me because the criciticisms are so surface-level it begs the question if it was playtested by anyone before they pressed "release"... oh why am I asking, of course it wasn't.

Just one example, back in the day when you reformed Asatru the unreformed rite was renamed to Old Asatru. With BGA, it no longer does, and so when you reform you get two rites both called Asatru. While the game initially allows it, problems start when you modify your new rite - you can't save it with a name that some other rite already has. So at this stage you gotta rename it to something else. This just gives credibility to the reviews that talk about how systems built with Christianity in mind were mindlessly copy-pasted onto faiths outside of Europe, because some simple playtesting would've caught that.

Respect is a two-way street, so long as they keep treating us as unpaid testers "worthless DLC" is the only kind of feedback they can feasibly get.

[Comrade Burrito]

Originally posted by Bobisud:

As independ clerical king i cant create my own arcibishop. I cant have my own domecile and meanwhile some other priest expand his clerical domain into main teritory and i cant do nothing about it.

Did you skip history in school or something? The constant power struggle between secular rulers and the church was the norm for most of human history.

[Bobisud]

Originally posted by Sledjer:

Why should you be able to independently establish a clerical region outside of the direction of the head of faith? Just ask the Pope to give you a clerical region.

My problem you cant ask pope. Thats why it is stupid. If you become cleric and independet ruler you dont have option to ask pope for stuff like other.

[Bobisud]

Originally posted by Comrade Burrito:

Originally posted by Bobisud:

As independ clerical king i cant create my own arcibishop. I cant have my own domecile and meanwhile some other priest expand his clerical domain into main teritory and i cant do nothing about it.

Did you skip history in school or something? The constant power struggle between secular rulers and the church was the norm for most of human history.

Did you skip reading in school or something?

Thats my point, you dont have power struggle if you are independent cleric. If you remain feudal, everything is ok, but the moment you change into cleric its ♥♥♥♥ up. You cant do stuff, you should still be able to ask pope for stuff and so on.

[Bobisud]

Originally posted by Toblm:

Originally posted by Sledjer:

Why should you be able to independently establish a clerical region outside of the direction of the head of faith? Just ask the Pope to give you a clerical region.

That's what I was wondering.

If OP wants the privileges of being a head of faith.... sounds like they should sack up and form their own heretical faith.

I want as cleric still have option to do diplomacy with head of faith, As feudal you still have to ask pope and so on. But if you change from feudal into cleric, you cant ask pope for stuff anymore and thats is stupid game design. There is no gameplay wise or historic wise reason why you shouldnt be able to ask pope for stuff like feudal ruler when you are independent king or duke but cleric.

[FGRSentinel]

There's technically one method for a player character to form their own clerical title/realm, but it's pretty convoluted and requires prep work. First off, it only works in the 867 start (or if your faith's head of faith title was destroyed) and you can only be, at most, a duke due to the limits on becoming a theocracy.
From there you basically need to do the following: become a feudal duke outside the reach of any existing clerical title. Get enough piety and prestige to petition the head of rite of the mainline rite for your court chaplain to be given a clerical title. The moment they do so, fire the decision to become a theocracy and pick Simonia as a personal tenet. From there you can go to the clerical title holder of your de jure kingdom and buy the title off them using the hook, then toss Simonia as a personal tenet. If you don't want to grab Simonia, you can simply ensure that you're the next in line for their seat.

[Bobisud]

Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:

There's technically one method for a player character to form their own clerical title/realm, but it's pretty convoluted and requires prep work. First off, it only works in the 867 start (or if your faith's head of faith title was destroyed) and you can only be, at most, a duke due to the limits on becoming a theocracy.
From there you basically need to do the following: become a feudal duke outside the reach of any existing clerical title. Get enough piety and prestige to petition the head of rite of the mainline rite for your court chaplain to be given a clerical title. The moment they do so, fire the decision to become a theocracy and pick Simonia as a personal tenet. From there you can go to the clerical title holder of your de jure kingdom and buy the title off them using the hook, then toss Simonia as a personal tenet. If you don't want to grab Simonia, you can simply ensure that you're the next in line for their seat.

As feudal you have a lot of option, you can seperate clerical title to create new one and so on. But as bishop you can do ♥♥♥♥.

The devs are just ....... to make such fatal error.

There is no reason for bishop to not be able to do same stuff as feudal lord.
Like look here pope, im your freind, im stronger than bigger bishop next to me, let me steal his some clerical zone or let me create my own zone and so on.

As feudal lord you can, As independent cleric you cant. Thats just fatal game design error.

After they screw up byzantine DLC where they made simple typo and basic men at arms cheapest unit instead of 0.17 maintanenc have 1.7 for two month i just give up on that they have any QA department and now i dont trust even their game design department.

[Nats]

Originally posted by Bobisud:

As independ clerical king i cant create my own arcibishop. I cant have my own domecile and meanwhile some other priest expand his clerical domain into main teritory and i cant do nothing about it.

Do you know anything about history at all? Kings did not have much influence over the church. The church was far more influential than any one king. Henry 8th had to create his own church from scratch because he had no power to even get a divorce.

These games force you to work within historical constraints. They do enable you to get over those constraints to do what you want to, but they do not make it easy.