Is anyone else puzzled by Pdox's half-hearted 'rollout' of Hearts of Iron IV?

Started by sandman2575, February 05, 2015, 12:26:22 PM

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Silent Disapproval Robot

Quote from: sandman2575 on February 05, 2015, 02:12:16 PM
I think all Pdox games have this problem, to greater or lesser degree -- the 'OK nothing is happening now what the hell am I supposed to do next' experience. They're so open-ended that the onus is really on the player to direct events & 'forge your own destiny' rather than respond to random happenings (although there's no shortage of that as well). 

I tend to avoid Pdox games entirely if I'm not mentally geared up for a game. They're mentally demanding, not in the sense that they're especially hard to play, but in the sense that you've got to be feeling creative in order to get fun out of them.

I don't really have that issue with HOI III or Vicky II.  I guess I'm more interested in events than people.  I barely know what the people in my real life are up to.  I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that I take no interest in the comings and goings of little medieval twits on my computer screen.  I just want my damned castle built.

sandman2575

For me, the stretch from 1936 to '39/'40 in HoI3 was always a painfully boring, just amassing of resources, building up the army, and being constantly interrupted by "your research in X is done!" messages.  Not so much a "have no idea what to do next" problem but definitely a "jesus can we just be done with all this prologue and get to the fightin'?"

I love Vicky II but maybe even more than Pdox's other games, this sometimes felt to me like the game was playing itself -- especially if you are a capitalist country and your capitalists are on auto-pilot building whatever factories they want (even--or especially--when their choices made zero sense). 

sandman2575

So no one else senses a certain lack of energy and excitement in Pdox's HoI4 'pr campaign'?

Maybe it's all subjective -- but it just feels night and day compared to the ramp-up to EUIV, even with several months to go --

fabius

Quote from: sandman2575 on February 05, 2015, 02:46:47 PM
So no one else senses a certain lack of energy and excitement in Pdox's HoI4 'pr campaign'?

Maybe it's all subjective -- but it just feels night and day compared to the ramp-up to EUIV, even with several months to go --

Not really, a combination of pushing things back, and being ambitious so they wont announce stuff until certain it going to working ups to a standard and in.

fabius

Quote from: Jarhead0331 on February 05, 2015, 02:23:09 PM
Quote from: fabius on February 05, 2015, 02:17:38 PM

Edited- I'd love to see them do a modern; Cold War or Rome game next.

They were doing a cold war game and it got cancelled.

Also, they've done Rome before, and although it was an ok game, I agree, it could be wonderful if they gave it the EUIV/CKII treatment.

Sort of. They really was some modders given money and for periods staff support. They could not hit the targets despite being given an extension so it was cancelled.

That said, it and a 3rd party tittle published by them showed P'dox the interest in a game set in the period. And just speculation but I reckon the Cold War is on their radar now. To me many changes in the direction of HoI 4 leaves it open to a Cold War expansion or whole game based on or lessons learned from HoI4. For example  4 is more sandbox; the tech tree clearly has space after their last post war tech...

JudgeDredd

Quote from: sandman2575 on February 05, 2015, 01:01:49 PM
Remember your New Year's resolution, JD!  Be strong!

Seriously though -- check out Pdox's forums mainpage -- there's oodles and oodles about EUIV and CKII, and a single post about HOI4 (about its delay, in fact).  It's been this way for months.  It just seems like EUIV and CKII are way higher on Pdox's priority list, at least as far as marketing and PR are concerned --

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/
Already broken (Combat Mission:Black Sea) and I don't believe in "damage limitation"  >:D
Alba gu' brath

sandman2575

well, if you were going to break it, JD, you picked a great game at least --

fabius -- hope you're right --

fabius

Quote from: sandman2575 on February 05, 2015, 03:10:01 PM
well, if you were going to break it, JD, you picked a great game at least --

fabius -- hope you're right --

Me too !!! It's on my 1st day buy list for 2015.

That said, that they previously did stop 3rd party and one of their in house projects because of slow development in the past is reassuring. Plus the Run master or whatever that game was, staff have now augmented the HoI 4 Team.

Jarhead0331

Quote from: sandman2575 on February 05, 2015, 02:34:37 PM
For me, the stretch from 1936 to '39/'40 in HoI3 was always a painfully boring, just amassing of resources, building up the army, and being constantly interrupted by "your research in X is done!" messages.  Not so much a "have no idea what to do next" problem but definitely a "jesus can we just be done with all this prologue and get to the fightin'?"


Maybe, but this is a crucial time for any game, especially when playing as an axis country. The decisions you make in terms of building your military, economy and infrastructure, as well as the paths you choose in technology research, usually spell the difference between ultimate victory or defeat. I think the game is usually won or lost before the war even starts.
Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


undercovergeek

Quote from: Jarhead0331 on February 05, 2015, 03:21:07 PM
Quote from: sandman2575 on February 05, 2015, 02:34:37 PM
For me, the stretch from 1936 to '39/'40 in HoI3 was always a painfully boring, just amassing of resources, building up the army, and being constantly interrupted by "your research in X is done!" messages.  Not so much a "have no idea what to do next" problem but definitely a "jesus can we just be done with all this prologue and get to the fightin'?"


Maybe, but this is a crucial time for any game, especially when playing as an axis country. The decisions you make in terms of building your military, economy and infrastructure, as well as the paths you choose in technology research, usually spell the difference between ultimate victory or defeat. I think the game is usually won or lost before the war even starts.

indeed, particularly if youre going to break with tradition

Silent Disapproval Robot

I enjoy the pre-conflict build up portion of the game.  It let's me begin shaping the nation to reflect my overall strategy.  The only tedious part for me is going through and reorganizing my force structures.  That's painful.

sandman2575

Buildup to war is indeed crucial, which is why I felt I could never skip it by starting the campaign in '39. Really no choice but to go with the '36 Grand Campaign.  But the prewar years were always way more tedious than fun for me...

Nefaro

Quote from: JudgeDredd on February 05, 2015, 01:03:32 PM
But hasn't HoI always been a bit of a poison chalice for Paradox? I mean they always ALWAYS seem to get a lot of stick for it...any release but most notably HoI3 iirc.


Yep.

Despite CK2 and EU4 being big improvements over previous releases, I think the HOI series has the most potential to be a disappointment at release.  The earlier versions were a mess through much of their span.

FlickJax

Had some joy playing EU, CKII just sends me to sleep waiting for something to happen. It reminds me of lessons with the worst teachers I had, no excitement and a slow droning noise coming from the front of the class. HOI I have really enjoyed 2 more than 3 but I still put many hours in 3.

Ian C

Quote from: sandman2575 on February 05, 2015, 12:26:22 PM
I am increasingly puzzled by Pdox's lackluster promotion of what is supposed to be one of their biggest franchises, that's supposed to release in Q2 2015 (4-5 months, give or take).

Does anyone else get the sense that Pdox's push for this game has been somewhat less than enthusiastic?  It seems nothing like the buildup that preceded launch of Europa Universalis IV.  There seemed to be huge energy behind that -- ample dev diaries, lots of sneak peeks offered to the community -- just a palpable sense of excitement on the part of the devs and community alike.

HOI4 feels nothing like this to me.  Dev diaries have been sparse. Screenshots few and far between. About one known video of Alpha gameplay, which was hardly extensive.  The whole thing just strikes me as increasingly odd.

Yes, they've still got some months to go -- but they announced HoI4 in Jan. 2014... and the energy level has been weirdly lacking...


I think it's reasonable to assume they are underplaying the hype, erring on the side of caution because of what happened with Hearts of Iron III last time. The HOI 3 release was a disaster.
On release the game was literally unplayable for a majority and those who could play found it full of serious graphical and mechanical bugs. The general response was overwhelming disappointment and the forum backlash was pretty bad. Paradox staff even received death threats.

We've already seen the game's release postponed from this quarter so I'm betting that it's low-key for this reason. They want to avoid another crapstorm and, as we know, this game's fan base generally is pretty fanatical so they are deliberately under-hyping it. A prudent strategy IMO.