More dumb reviews

[Despiser]

What is it with people who logged in over 1000 hours posting negative reviews? There are so many stupid ways to mess up reviews I don't know how these people manage to dress and feed themselves. In fact I'm stupid for wasting my time rummaging through them looking for information

[Ahriman]

It depends entirely on the content of the said review.

As someone with over 1k hours in the game, it is not one I can easily recommend to people, especially when it comes to variety in the game. Paradox does not do their content well, as they show no interest in updating anything for free, which is kinda where a lot of the negative reviews come from.

Look at the nations prior to NSB for example. US, The Commonwealth, France, and Japan as examples, they are all so agonisingly outdated, and they have not even bothered to do the barest of minimum to update them. It gets even more depressing when you actually look into the code itself, seeing that there are a lot of content that was put there, but simply commented over as "Come back to this later" type of stuff. 70 day focuses to get 1 time bonus to Heavy Fighter Models. They aren't even updated to the new format where the focuses depend if you have the designers or not, instead they just give you 1 time bonus to the old tech, which most often translates very poorly to the new tech.

In other words, if Paradox actually wanted to avoid negative reviews, they'd spent a week's worth of development updating the old trees to the new standard, but no, they'd much rather spend that time developing a new DLC that will instead do that exact same thing but they can charge you for it. It wouldn't take that much to go through the current Focus Trees for all the pre-NSB nations and simply update the focuses to the new format, they wouldn't even need to add anything new to them, nor change the artwork, it would just few lines of code. I know this because I went through that process some time ago when I dabbled into modding, it isn't hard or even time consuming, but the players shouldn't be responsible for something like that.

In short, just because I have over 1k hours in the game does not mean I support the company's decisions, and would recommend the game to people. Not until Paradox starts caring about more than just the next DLC.

[Despiser]

Originally posted by Ahriman:

It depends entirely on the content of the said review.

As someone with over 1k hours in the game, it is not one I can easily recommend to people, especially when it comes to variety in the game. Paradox does not do their content well, as they show no interest in updating anything for free, which is kinda where a lot of the negative reviews come from.

Look at the nations prior to NSB for example. US, The Commonwealth, France, and Japan as examples, they are all so agonisingly outdated, and they have not even bothered to do the barest of minimum to update them. It gets even more depressing when you actually look into the code itself, seeing that there are a lot of content that was put there, but simply commented over as "Come back to this later" type of stuff. 70 day focuses to get 1 time bonus to Heavy Fighter Models. They aren't even updated to the new format where the focuses depend if you have the designers or not, instead they just give you 1 time bonus to the old tech, which most often translates very poorly to the new tech.

In other words, if Paradox actually wanted to avoid negative reviews, they'd spent a week's worth of development updating the old trees to the new standard, but no, they'd much rather spend that time developing a new DLC that will instead do that exact same thing but they can charge you for it. It wouldn't take that much to go through the current Focus Trees for all the pre-NSB nations and simply update the focuses to the new format, they wouldn't even need to add anything new to them, nor change the artwork, it would just few lines of code. I know this because I went through that process some time ago when I dabbled into modding, it isn't hard or even time consuming, but the players shouldn't be responsible for something like that.

In short, just because I have over 1k hours in the game does not mean I support the company's decisions, and would recommend the game to people. Not until Paradox starts caring about more than just the next DLC.

I agree their DLC policy is horrendous, but that's precisely why I would avoid investing a lot of hours. Especially when many devs provide constant free updates at no charge. I have EU4 in my library but would cost me around $300 to update outside of sales. Besides DLC policy, their UI could use some uncluttering. Despite these issues, I did update HOI4 because I like the game or more to the point, like the concept. It is unique.

[Včelí medvídek]

Originally posted by Ahriman:

Iespecially when it comes to variety in the game. Paradox does not do their content well, as they show no interest in updating anything for free, which is kinda where a lot of the negative reviews come from.

Except most game features is coming in free updates and DLCs are more about "useless" flavor content like focus trees and just complement free patches.

At this point Pdx it is insanely generous to only base game owners (and bit unfair to those buying DLCs)

[Ahriman]

Originally posted by Včelí medvídek:

Except most game features is coming in free updates and DLCs are more about "useless" flavor content like focus trees and just complement free patches.

At this point Pdx it is insanely generous to only base game owners (and bit unfair to those buying DLCs)

There is a very small difference between adding something, and updating something, which was my point. We got Raids, and the Science Labs, but what old mechanic was updated? Did we see changes to how designers work? Did they update the old Focus trees to add to the new features except the ones that would now be obsolete, such as the ones that used to give bonuses to Nuke tech?

That's the problem with Paradox. The only time we will see any updates to the ancient, extremely outdated Focus trees like those I already mentioned is when they can make money off it, but not a second sooner. Sure, we will see them update the trees for 'free' when we get there, but it won't be until we do actually get that far, which makes it probably close to 2-3 years from now until we see the remaining Majors all have their Focus Trees updated to the level of NSB.

[Včelí medvídek]

Originally posted by Ahriman:

That's the problem with Paradox. The only time we will see any updates to the ancient, extremely outdated Focus trees like those I already mentioned is when they can make money off it, but not a second sooner. Sure, we will see them update the trees for 'free' when we get there, but it won't be until we do actually get that far, which makes it probably close to 2-3 years from now until we see the remaining Majors all have their Focus Trees updated to the level of NSB.

I want devs work on game (mechanics, features, AI, etc), not waste time on content like focus trees that will be always inferior to what fans and enthusiasists do in mods.

And ofc they will work on 9 years old game only if they can make money out of it, that is basically principle of DLC model and how games like this can exists at first place. Otherwise it would be just small rework of what we got in 1.0 with unique focus trees for few countries only, etc.

[Pinkspring]

There are games that I play, that I still wouldnt recommend to others for various reasons, and HoI4 is one of them.

It is too complex, doesnt work well enough in a lot of areas, and is EXTREMELY overpriced for what it offers. I got it on sale, but I'm not putting a thumbs up on Steam for that.

[Donald Trump]

hoi4 is a game you absolutely despise... but also love at the same time, but for most its just too much

[[FvN] Var]

Its the only game of its kind. There literally is no other developer out there that gives this kind of experience. That's how you get 1000s of hours.
And yet the game also has massive problems and often feels like giving yourself cbt when playing. Also the game is ever changing due to the DLC policy. So one might have enjoyed the game at some point, then five new DLC released and now its no longer what they once loved.

Other then that

"You can't judge a game unless you have X hours"
"Well you have Y hours in the game, cannot have been so bad!"

[DerRitter]

people are dumb

[Ahriman]

Originally posted by Včelí medvídek:

I want devs work on game (mechanics, features, AI, etc), not waste time on content like focus trees that will be always inferior to what fans and enthusiasists do in mods.

And ofc they will work on 9 years old game only if they can make money out of it, that is basically principle of DLC model and how games like this can exists at first place. Otherwise it would be just small rework of what we got in 1.0 with unique focus trees for few countries only, etc.

You do realise you just repeated the very core criticism with this comment, right? We are getting Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq. Knowing Paradox, these focus trees are going to be just as expansive as the previous ones. Now imagine if instead they used that effort in giving us either more fleshed out mechanics, better AI, or just straight up upgrading Focus trees that are ancient by now, but still see major use because they are... majors nations.

But why would they do that when they can try to make money with that instead? They'd have to give people the updated Focus trees for free, and even if it would take them as much time updating all the old ones as it would take them to develop one of those Focus trees, so they won't. They'd much rather waste time developing something extremely few people will actually play, that's why they get the flak they do, and it is fully deserved.

[tradford1]

I have over 5000 hours in this game and probably 2 or 3 thousand on the desktop version of HOI 1 thru 4 and Paradox is ALWAYS breaking this game with DLCs. THere are periods where it can't be recommended until it get more work. They fix it for awhile and then break it again for awhile. I try to get some hours of play between breaks and I don't know if beginners just buying the game want to mess with all that.

[Bored Peon]

Somehow people have this warped reality that Steam reviews matter. Take Starfield for example, Steam sold about 3 million copies, yet only like 200k people wrote review (good and bad) and yet those people who wrote reviews insist they represent the majority of whether the game is good or bad, when the reality is the majority does not care. The same people have literally argued back and forth for over a year now.

You also have to look at the source and details of the complaints. Like this:

Originally posted by Ahriman:

They'd much rather waste time developing something extremely few people will actually play, that's why they get the flak they do, and it is fully deserved.

That is a very valid complaint, even though I am one of those "extremely few people" who does play the new countries. I under that that complaint because countries like Australia has been ignored.

[EmotionallyBroken]

Originally posted by Despiser:

What is it with people who logged in over 1000 hours posting negative reviews? There are so many stupid ways to mess up reviews I don't know how these people manage to dress and feed themselves. In fact I'm stupid for wasting my time rummaging through them looking for information

I may not have a genious level IQ, but I would guess its people commenting on the flaws of what theyre reviewing. Not everything is perfect you know, and people notice flaws. People are allowed to notice flaws too, theyre also allowed to talk about them in civilized society, that isnt run by censoring dictatorships.

So, its pretty normal to give honest reviews and commentary.

[seashell]

it's just an opium game, obviously you can hate it and play it a lot at the same time.