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after playing Leviathan DLC (the worse rated item on steam of anything ever) and the Imperator Rome disaster I kind of expected it. Hoped for the best but expected the worst as they say
it's just dlc but a common trend for the past few years. before leviathan emperor dlc was pretty crap for that price too
Imperator Rome was a completely new game and at launch was clearly unfinished. They abandoned it in a much better state but it had a low player base
to be fair CK2 is a really high standard to surpass. And ck3 isn't crap, just incredibly bland in comparison. barebones for the dlc cash-grabs
Nah, it's simplistic crap, dumbed down for the masses.
Behaviour is commonly controlled by what the community will tolerate.
When the standards of a community erode or simply change, what is tolerated or even celebrated changes.
I think I notice a younger demographic enjoying strategy games more so than in years past.
Search most Paradox games in youtube and you will find play throughs, strategy guides, multiplayer games, memes,etc.
Look at the view numbers, its the 10-30 sec meme clips that get the views.
Look at the reviews "Seduced my mother and married our daughter 10/10"
To me, watching the world evolve, it seems a common theme.
Paradox has also vastly increased its advertising budgets over the years
I could guess CK3 Royal Court expansion has reached record amounts.
Id love to know the percentages of costs on project development, it could very well show a majority of funds going to management and advertising costs.
In my field, design costs to construction costs ran about 1:9 when I entered, the ratio is now approaching 1:1.
The finished product looks vastly superior from the outside than it did years ago, yet is a shade of the quality.
The consumer has made it so, not the people working on the project.
And to stay on topic, no, I do not find CK3 in anyway engaging. (I dont have the new exp)
Medieval II had a bit this Dynasty and Persons thingy I hoped they develop more. Empire had more dynamic maps and ideas. But then they realized it is easier to make games which are easy to learn, have good graphics and much action. And they sell better. This is not unusual.
The much better Mount and Blade Warband was voted like ♥♥♥♥ from official side, but people loved it. The new Bannerlord is just a mess with many unfinished ideas, many bad ideas and better graphics. People play it 20h and say "fantastic" (the graphic is good), and go on. It was a success. So it really doesn't wonder me that CKIII goes this way.
I honestly think there is a skill problem with design, coding and management in the studio, interrelated with the problem of actively soliciting and hoarding praise while blocking off criticism, which, taken together, impedes introspection and self-evaluation (collective self-evaluation more importantly than individual). This is not unlike many other companies following the marketing/branding evolution and the simultaneous psychological evolution in broader society, which results in companies lowering the bar and people focusing on affirmation and making themselves feel good. This is a normal, understandable human tendency, it's just that it's perhaps getting out of hand in this particular case.
There is this problem in certain companies where you can't criticize the management's or star employees' ideas or decisions or skill level, which results in a bubble. And I think there is this kind of problem at Paradox with design decisions, such as designing the mechanics — especially the logical aspects of their design, especially triggers/conditions and responses — and the if/then scripting, or consistency, or just making sense. And there might be a similar problem with programming, especially on the AI front and especially army movement and army behaviour in general.
Then there's a skill problem in some companies due to personal politics, various psychological aspects, as well as high rotation and excessive reliance on juniors and interns, who are cheaper, so there's more left in the coffers for the shareholders; who do not stand up to the seniors and thus offer no challenge or contradiction, so they're easier on the ego; and to whom the management and seniors may prefer to delegate whatever can be delegated so as to be able to stand aloof from whatever they can avoid personally involving themselves with. A lot of the issues with CK2 and CK3, although they clearly reflect management and senior-developer/team-leader inaction/absence, look fairly junior and seem to be consistent with the hypothesis of insufficient seniority (qualifications, experience, confidence, etc.) combined with insufficient guidance.
In a way this is reminiscent to me of those companies in my line of business, usually intermediaries, which are run by secretaries who are not experts in the substance of the company's line of business (translation, design, programming, whatever) and who are somewhat competent administrators but without the benefit of proper management training other than the practical experience of standing in for the boss, who is generally absent but has not empowered any of the employees to be the 'acting boss'. So there are procedures preventing some decisions from being made by people whose rank is too low, but nobody with a higher rank is around to make them. And the substantive team (translators, programmers, artists, depending on the company's line of business) would tend to be very junior and often somewhat semi-professional.
Paradox does seem to need more direction, a transparent allocation of responsiblities and an honest assessment of people's skill levels (including senior roles, execs, celebrity developers, founders and such like VIPs), and it may have some ego problems to solve, or some issues relating to personal politics (generally having the end result that the work ends not being done on a level that would be reasonable to expect).
Something's wrong there, though I can't put my finger on what exactly. (Almost none of what I say above is more than a hypothesis.)
It may well be. And it probably is my favourite.
It may well be. I think the situation looks more professional in their other titles, and also there are fewer personal/emotional/touchy reactions in the interactions between company people and players/community members. It may be that the CK-related part of Paradox is suffering from the worst issues that affect the company as a whole but not to the same degree that they affect its Crusader Kings department.
Another thing to note is that there are so many franchises and there may not be enough employees to do the job properly on all fronts. This would excuse individual developers, absolve them of blame if they were given too much to do and too little time by their managers. But it doesn't excuse the managers and accordingly it cannot be said to excuse Paradox as a whole, as a company, as a studio. Management decisions — which includes resource procurement and allocation, which includes staffing — are attributable to the company. So while the employees such as programmers and artists (and designers if they aren't members of the management) can say: 'sorry, dear players, we didn't have enough time to get things done right,' and count on the community's understanding and empathy, the suits can't really. Not the team leads, not the managers, not the execs and managers, not the C suite, not the shareholders. They can't claim overextension as an excuse where the extension is caused by striving for the best possible profit margin/return on capital.
The above is very important for us players to understand. We need to keep the distinction in mind that while we can empathize with and 'absolve' designer Mark, artist Steve, writer Jane, scripter Kate, researcher Jack, and so on, this doesn't extent to the company as a whole.
And questionable design/direction decisions are a yet different cup of tea, as they come down not to the skill level and work ethic of the 'little people' such as artists and programmers, nor to resources/allocation/staffing/deadlines/similar constraints, but to something being wrong with the decision-making on the celebrity/VIP level, which often means the kind of people you are not allowed to criticize in the forums or otherwise.
I can think of just one example where a senior designer was ready to not be above criticism — Johann after the Leviathan crisis. And what he said on the occasion aligned quite closely and extensively with what I've been saying for years and been retaliated against for saying.
So maybe Paradox needs a different management culture. Perhaps with less focus on personal charisma and associated infallibility or immunity to criticism? Note the 'perhaps'. Access to information is so limited that there is simply no sufficient basis to make firm conclusions and it would already be difficult to formulate a well-substantiated hypothesis.
There may be marketing and especially finance pressure to spoonfeed — as DLCs — content for which the code base already exists and for which, as they are sometimes visibly annoyed to realize, a lot of the players already paid in CK2 DLCs. It's not nice to have to wait for something that's already quite there, quite ready, but has to wait because someone in finance decided it will bring more money as a delayed (semi-)separate product. Like any business, PDX are in their right doing that, this right cannot be denied them, but they must also reckon with the customer's reaction. There is the freedom, the liberty of running your business as you see fit (without being compelled to show empathy for your customers), and then therer's the customer's freedom to vote with the wallet (without being compelled to show empathy for the seller/provider). So there are essentially two sides of the coin — supply and demand, like anywhere else in the economy — and there's going to be some grinding and some tectonic movements until the balance settles for a while). The problem with a lot of economists and management specialists is that they appreciate the company's freedom and right to run its business as it sees fit, but they expect the customer to show pro-social behaviour towards the company. This is reducible to expecting your counterparts to be taking a more forgiving stance than you are taking with them. And it is common nowadays perhaps because a lot of people don't fully leave childhood perspective behind as they grow up, so they expect a bit of an asymmetrical relationship, kind of like welfare state. As in they expect to be able to individualize the gains and successes but socialize the losses and problems.
The English writing is not native and not even proofread. It reflects a somewhat modest level of skill and effort. The company seems to be unaware of the writers' limitations. I may be reading too much into it, but that sort of thing usually involves some sort of elective, selective blindness. For example managers who know that they shouldn't be cutting corners (e.g. skimping on professional editors and proofreaders) but they still cling stubbornly to their decisions and won't change them, won't be told otherwise. Then there's the problem of, well, some people in some companies, not necessarily people in high positions, who cannot be criticized or given an honest evaluation due to office politics. There is quite a lot of that going on in companies when it comes to people's writing ability or mastery of a foreign language.
Could be the case, though there are precedents for combining the two genres successfully.
While CK3 may represented a higher standard than CK2, it would be difficult for me to agree that CK2 represents a higher standard on its own. A lot in it is done well and is truly epic. However, the same problems plaguing 3 are also present in 2 — poor design, lack of direction, missing QA/QC, bland writing with errors, and of course problems with AI in general and AI movement in particular. The AI in CK2 is not as bad as in CK3, but it still leaves much to be desired and is extremely incompetent in a lot of situations, in very embarrassing ways (the starkest example of which is the defence of Egypt with ships raised in both seas and the army sitting in between, undecided and ignoring enemies passing by and sieging their way to 100%, as well as indecision loops in any sort of AI army movement, though not as bad as CK3).
I think the' 'play it 20h and say "fantastic,'" part is potentially a good explanation of how PDX games' flaws manage to fly under reviewers' radars. Reviewers don't get enough exposure to what the game really acts like and its true condition. They just write on the basis of a first impression and initial infatuation with the concept, with the benefit of only some superficial contact with the implementation. Something happens for them, they see it, but they chalk it down to RNG or their own lack of skill or an isolated case, and at the stage they come in, they are in no position to know that the same problems happen quite a lot and are not quite accidental.
And yes, dumbing down for console or even phone interoperability is a fact, along with multiplayer tweaks that have been the bone of contention since like 2012. Some of the things that went wrong with CK2 were perceived as resulting from the desire to focus on multiplayer, such as the move from two empires (HRE and BYZ) to plenty of small de iure empires all over the map so that every corner of the map has some, as well as grinding de iure kingdoms through the same mill, which screams multiplayer balance.
… And meme generation. How some vocal fans revel in the absurdity of the stuff — often half of it a bug and another half poor design — that the game can produce. And they get their share of nonsense and absurdity because apparently that is understood to drive the sales pretty well.
When you have mass appeal as a focus combined with the studio going corporate and public, things can't end well. Think BioWare after selling out to EA, among other examples. The problem is that gamers are a tolerant bunch and won't stand up to the suits who make the decisions. They will just keep buying, and as long as purchases are made and money flows in the suits don't care.
I'd be curious to know that as well.
CK3 started with ambitious goals and visions for what the game would be, but it isn't fulfilling them. The description of the game on the store page doesn't even accurately portray what the actual substance of the game is once you get into it.
I would expect CK3 DLC to be on the level of Holy Fury at least, since they did promise that although the cost of DLCs for CK3 would be higher, they would also be bigger (which seems reasonable). Even if you compare "royal court" to "northern lords", northern lords was just a flavor pack valued at $8 USD and I'm not really convinced that royal court has 4 times the content to justify the asking price.