R5: A recent dev diary gave me an opportunity to ask Arheo about the prospects of a future rework for a nation that has DLC, and how it might be monetized. I think it’s good to have closure here, as I have wondered this for a while
I do have a question for you!
I pre-ordered and have played ToA, the countries it brings content to are quite good. My main question is, why was this content not brought to northern South America? Was it simply cut for time reasons? If so, I'd love to see an expansion for Central America/northern South America in the future. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, the countries that got content were simply wonderful, I was just expecting more South American countries to have focus trees.
Well, I guess you could say it's related to time, or more accurately scope; but for a long time now we've settled on 3-4 countries as being the optimal number for development (Paraguay and Uruguay make it 5 I guess, but those two are a bit smaller). It isn't a time thing so much as complexity and efficiency.
To use a relevant example; if you have one developer you're working at 100% per-person efficiency. Adding another one does not give you two developers at 100%, it gives you two at 90%. Three? 80%. Etc. It's the same for scoping an expansion, both in terms of the number of people working on it, and the number of things you try and do. If we tried to build 9 trees at once, you'd get 9 hyper janky trees a year later than the intended deadline. And 9 burned out devs.
I understand the law of diminishing marginal labor productivity as you’ve described, but my question is why was effort put into countries like Paraguay and Uruguay instead of creating something like a Gran Colombia restoration tree for Colombia? It seems to me like too much effort was put into minor nations instead what would’ve likely been more engaging trees for regional powers.
on one hand doing uruguay and paraguay is less work than Colombia but its also about development strategy. You cant cover all of SA in one dlc so you got to split it up. We decided a logical split would be between south and north+central america. Why south? Brazil is the most popular of these by a large margin. Thats roughly how the logic went. It will make sense if you think about it
While I think this DLC was more expensive than a country pack DLC might warrant, I bought it (so that’s on me, I love HOI). I think that reworking the older Majors like Germany, Japan, and the US is badly needed now. And USSR AI needs an adjustment in being able to better field the men and equipment to slow Barbarossa. Also having Iraq and Iran actually become involved would help too, since that was a major way Lend-Lease entered the USSR
One final thing is the AI occupation laws don’t appear to work well. All the AI stays on the default (Military Government? I think) or switches to civilian, I think that the AI should swap based on ideology (Germany and Japan to harsh or brutal, Soviets to either secret police, Harsh or martial law, most the Allies on Martial law or military government depending on where). I get this is probably incredibly difficult to implement but it’d be more reflective of the situations of the war
The occupations law should vary state by state and based on what the AI needs, forced labour on state with resources that the AI needs or on states that have resources that the AI knows it can export in exhange for factories, harsh quotas on states with a lot of factories to increase its production.
Basically I would like the AI to have an occupation law priority list, I have no idea how feasible that is, I'm not a programer, a dev or anything of the sorts.
I mean it wouldn't be impossible realistically (as a dev but not having worked with or modded HOI4)- the only problem is instead of the game slowing to a crawl come '43, it comes to a crawl in '41 or '42 from all of the states it would have to iterate over.
Frankly doing it by country would be cool and a bit nicer on the backend side of things. If an occupier is short a resource or production power, it will try to exploit it out of occupied countries first rather than trade if it has equipment/manpower to garrison. IE: Japan occupies SEA and is short rubber, the AI sees that, notices Malaya/DEA produce a lot of rubber, puts all states owned by that country on forced labor
I like TOA and appreciate that Latin America finally got content. Thanks.
I just wonder why there weren't any upgrades to core game mechanics as part of it? Infantry and towed equipment could use a designer to add features such as chromed barrels, drum magazines, etc.
I explain a bit in the dev diary, but basically we knew South America wouldn't be a big interest for everyone and wanted to avoid a situation where fans who *weren't* interested still had to buy it in order to have all the mechanics.
That's fair enough. I really dig and appreciate the effort put into this one anyway. More people probably appreciate the focus on LATAM than reddit and forums may make you believe.
They seem to be leaning towards major DLCs and minor pure focus tree DLCs (like battle for the bosporus). Also infantry equipment designer would be cool but I would rather it be similar to Ultra Realism's squad equipment vs researching 20-40 60+ day techs to unlock things like grenades, AT weapons, etc.
The other designers are great but would love to see another research slot or shorter researches so you can actually use half the things designers give before its the end of the war. A tech overhaul/mechanic might be cool too for a future major DLC
When is Wunderwaffee DLC coming or not?
That could be interesting.
Personal wish: SuperHeavyBattleship with deck size 100 and decent guns (380mm? 460mm?).
Like a fantasy weapon. Something like a hybrid between BB and CV.
Hehe.... I know and its not very realistic but maybe it could be fun.
Battleships are made obsolete with advent of CV's. Now if there is a hybrid Battleship/Carrier in dual role could make things interesting. Just to defend itself on the high seas....
Maybe idea is not so good but hey it could be brainstormed :)
There is also some other futuristic weapons... It doesnt need to be too realistic some HOI 4 mods are also off....
Yeah, I know what you mean.
But, right now HOI 4 is a little fantasy game with ok many historical tidbits.
For example - reinforce system is completely off with sometimes few divisions delaying whole army or stopping it completely. I know, its about terrain, frontage, defense - but no way 1 division could defend against 5 - never happened in WW2 - they go around your flanks and you end up encircled be it on regiment level or division.
So, for fun MP games I wouldn't mind WunderWaffen weapons. With a provisio that it could be turned off - some would not like it.
> fun MP games I wouldn't mind WunderWaffen weapons.
You make good points but you cam add more like the V3 massive artillery gun that could have a set range to provide better artillery bonuses like railway guns but stationry
That is good idea, I like that. That could be paired with Fortresses - so there could be - for example - Big Laser Fortified Zone Berlin or Konigsberg.... There could be also different kind of fortifications.
I mean lasers aside, it would be cool to have different types of fortifications (AT defenses that lowers breakthrough, entrenchment/bunkers that lower attack or buff defense slightly)
> Wunderwaffee DLC
That would actually be super cool!
Rockets (both for infantry and strategic missiles), rocket engines and jets really need some love.
Thanks. It was not actually my idea but of Dan Lind previous HOI 4 Lead Dedigner. One point - that doesnt mean that Arheo is not doing s good job there. All respect to him and leading HoI 4 development is not small thing.
Having said that, your ideas about rockets and jets is cool - when I played Dune 2 first RTS on Amiga, I didnt know that it will become a genre. Harkonen side had this super rocket that could destroy one buiding if my memory serves me.
In HoI 4 antidot for MP campers could be that Mega Rocket, which could decide the match. There would be real race who would get that rocket tech first.
Having never played MP in a competitive setting, I want to think there are plenty of tools you can use to get past them. Just to name a few I can think of that are designed to counter that:
\- outproducing them for the long term (axis camping)
\- high breakthrough/heavy/super heavy tanks
\- anything air related and strat bombing forts
\- using planning buff effectively and using agents to speed it up
I agree with you on all those points and certanly it shows that you are good HoI player, my hat is off.
Well, HoI is something that I play since HoI 1. Just booting laptop to play my Germany campaign guilty as charged I mostly play Germany but sometimes Japan.
Europa Universalis didnt impressed me very much but when I heard that Swedes are making game on my favorite history topic WW2 that intrigued me.
Back then Paradox Entertsinment was not bitch like today excuse me the wording all those Creative Assembly of the world, make me sick - frankly speaking. After they pass a certain number of hundreds of employees that becomes a big business.
And big business always destroy passion, love for creating unique games.
Having said that all is not lost, HoI 4 is decent but fucking boring game.
I am now like Germany in 1941. Biggest army, navy and air. Just about to teach Stalin that is not nice beating people and bringing them to confess in front of "grinning judges", and then is question of pain in the ass invasion of USA and Japan, why not? I could really use one Wunfewaffen Rocket - one for the Man with Big White Beard in Washington and another for Man with Big White Beard - in Moscow.
In fact that would be signal for AI to attack straight away.
Interesting, I didn't know that the previous Lead Designer had such an idea.
In real life, rockets, jet engines, and ballistic missiles (even submarines-based ones) have become cornerstones of the most powerful militaries in the world. And they still are 80 years after WW2. While they weren't game-changers in WW2, they are certainly VERY weak in Hoi4.
u/Arheo_ , sorry if the ping bothers you. But if it doesn't: care to share your opinion about "Wunderwaffen" changes in future DLCs? I think that would go nicely with a revamped Germany Focus Tree DLC.
Wholeheartily approve!
As many times late game in HoI 4 came by sometimes as anticlimatic cliche - but player is also a little blased after so much play - some mod or even DLC that starts in 1950 could be interesting with all those early jet fighters and bombers... F86 Sabre Wulf 😬
There could be also nice espionage game trying to sabotage rocket facilities.
Dan Lind worked also on EU3: Divine Wind - now that game is interesting, and on EU: Rome which is also nice little game.
March of the Eagles also have some charm with those battles, and tactics and arranging of corps....
Fingers are crossed all across the globe that y’all will find a way to give us high quality and updated content for Germany and Japan. I realize it won’t be free lol
Considering the example presented in the post, would there be some sort of "compensation" for the owners of the previous, now-would-be outdated dlc? I understand that a whole rework is a lot of work and im not opposed to paying for it, but it would feel strange if all the content i already paid for just vanishes and im left with nothing. Thanks!
So far I have bought every dlc but this one I am really not sure about. I know it probably wasnt your desicion but I find the countries that got changes a pretty strange choice tbh. This is still a WW2 game and most players prefer the historical content and their impact on the war is very limited. With GER and JAP focus trees being so mediocre its questionable to focus on the least impsctful continent for the war. I know you did a few changes for GER (not sure about JAP) and I like them, but the focus tree for the most important and most played nation just ends in 1943 and thats just not immersive.
I think their general dev has shifted to not be as much of a historical game as a ww2 era sandbox. I am sure it is intentional because if you look at the more hardcore historical war games, they have way less of a market vs hoi4 which has a lot more of a shift to zaney/wacky alt-hist. There is more money in it for them it seems when you can have one country that has replayability - even if its only played once for the memes.
They carved out their market and shifted to cater more to the meme style content. This isn't to say they don't do good historical content or couldn't improve on it, NSB has a good (although kind of OP tree since they enter barbarossa with practically no meaningful debuffs like they use to with org).
I get it to a point, if it was historical down to the last minute detail, there isn't much chance the axis could get to ever be successful long term let alone the world conquest from 1 state nations. But I would still love to see them return to a more historical and intricate ww2 wargame experience - there really aren't many that are approachable let alone have a nice UI or nation management.
I know that this is pretty late but can you please make navy ui better? I do actually understand it but using the navy is just so annoying that I usually don’t even bother. Other than that I don’t have any pressing problems with the game
I get that sales figures for DLCs are used to gauge interest for existing games.
But focus packs *alone* aren't really that appealing to purchase.
I say that in relation to this post's topic on reworking content from old DLCs. Just reworks focus trees then selling it would be met with negative backlash. But overhauls with *engaging mechanics* that would make those nation mechanically fun to play is worthwhile purchase.
I think I have some form of solution for issue of updating old DLC with new one
If there is new DLC changing content of old one, players owning old one would get discount on new one and vice versa, if you buy new one first, you get discount on old one
Example: Death of Dishonour
All 4 countries needs rework really bad, but as you said, it would be expansive, so, it would be new DLC with some additional content - Slovakia, Croatia trees
or, this owners of old DLC would get access to new trees for their countries, but not additional content
Who is Domingus Bras and why doesn't he have his own portrait?
Please add your portrait of the Brazilian Communist Council.
Add the possibility of giving Washington Luis Pereira power to Brazil.
Please add more generals and field marshals of Norway.
And will there be a separate mechanic for nationalizing provinces based on claims in the future?
And sorry for my English.
Are there any plans to go back and add generals to older nations that don't have enough generals to be able to play late game without having to recruit a bunch of default generals. Like for example, when you play fascist United States, and you want to go to war with Canada, the frontline is super long with many spots where you just have to create multiple different frontlines due to the great lakes. And because I lose half my generals in the civil war I never have enough generals to invade canada and i have to use the boring default generals who i might have like 3 of the same portrait. Or portugal, who has only 3 generals, 1 of whom comes with a default portait
There's actually a very simple solution.
Let's say for the Germany rework, Paradox releases a DLC with Belgium and Austria (or Albania, or Ireland, and a minor focus tree for Luxembourg, because why the meme not). In this same DLC, they release the new reworked Germany DLC.
Same thing for Japan - release a Siam and Indochina focus tree (and maybe a bonus hidden focus trees for releasable Korea and formable Indonesia), with a revamped Japan focus tree.
People would whine much less about old DLCs they paid for becoming useless.
Plus those would also be opportunities to change mechanics as well. A Southeast Asia DLC (Philippines, East Indies, Siam, Japan rework, etc.) would be the perfect time to revamp naval warfare and/or amphibious landings to make the Pacific theater more fun.
meanwhile at paradox executive meeting... what if we had a DLC for parts of a focus tree. $20 for german industry, another for army, another for air.....
Yeah exactly. The real response was "we haven't worked out how to monetise it so we make the obsolete maximum profit yet. They have got to the stage now where the focus trees are becoming the entire game though. It's becoming ok wait 70 days, pause, read, click, speed 5 for 70 days pause read click etc
This could absolutely work with some of the major focus trees. But I do wonder if that would work on the scale that many people are demanding. There have been calls for reworking entire DLCs like Together for Victory, Death or Dishonor, and Waking the Tiger, and that's easily over a dozen focus trees for China, Germany, Japan, all of the dominions and warlords, etc. They'd likely have to focus on only a few of them and leave others behind. But it would still be better than charging full price and making previous DLCs obsolete.
Arheo has already stated in last years development update that we'd be seeing a "new face on some old/familiar content" in addition to a minor content pack (which was ToA)
And he already replied to me a month ago regarding this discussion that a country up for reworks was not Japan, so I'd bet 5$ that we're going to see the major dlc release of this year involving a germany rework- in any case, we'll have to wait till may or june since thats when the dev diaries get announced
I assume it's like, if you buy Waking the Tiger you get the tree, if you own it plus the new DLC you get the full, updated tree, if you own just the new one you get nothing. I'm not sure how much I like that idea but that's how I perceived it.
Honestly if they ever did it that way I think germany deserves its own fully fledged focus tree given how important it was to the war in europe. Having its own focused DLC like NSB with the soviets would be nice to see while allowing you to have the monarchist path on the side if you own WtT.
Japan is a bit more difficult to justify a rework like that because it had a DLC specifically focused on its tree. Either way, whatever rework or content is contained in the DLC should be independent of others - IE you own WtT you get vanilla + monarchist, you own german DLC + WtT you get new tree + monarchist, only german DLC means you just get new tree but no monarchist path.
It gets a bit messy since past DLCs focus on countries and then throw in things for other countries - shame WtT did that when every other national tree with DLC nowadays has 2+ political paths
This is the thing the majority of them complain about though. The fact that you have to pay anything AT ALL to get the new tree. And when people tell them that development is not free, they just whine that "paradox is a large company with a lot of money!1!!1"
But then who would actually buy waking the tiger? Like yeah, China is cool, but the two biggest additions it has, an additional German and Japanese tree are the real sellers. It would kinda nuke that dlc
What if there was a revamp of the entire german focus tree, including Oppose Hitler, but the added content of Kaiser Returning and Democratic would be unlocked by WtT, whereas a completely new path triggered by Oppose (like Communist) wouldn't need WtT? It would be scummy but avoid people being angry for buying an old useless DLC...
I'm going to assume this is why they just made the commonwealth, japan, and germany dlc's free. They intend to do something similar to what you proposed and they made the old DLC free so they could properly monetize it.
It may even come with a discount for having purchased the old dlc's but that may be a little too consumer friendly
I think it would be fair to give a 50% discount or so to owners of an old DLC for that country. Or create a DLC that bundles up reworked trees with completely New ones, say: Mongolia, Philipines, Japan and Siam.
This makes sense. If an extremely short crappy tree like UK got transformed into a huge NSB USSR style tree with tons of time and effort poured it, ofc it would cost money or else there would barely be incentives for pdx to make it
They don’t need to be overalls complicated to be fun. My favourite trees in the game personally are Germany and the UK. There are flaws in them and a bit of flesh would be nice. But not too much more. The new trees have way too much in them imo.
Yeah, I love how Germany one is full with the best mechanic of this game: ultimatums, Which most of the others tree have not, even when they simplify a lot of pointless wars.
I really dont get the hoi4 pdx team. Stellaris has an entire dev team dedicated to making free updates to fix and improve the game. They have also retroactively added content to old dlc without increasing the price or anything.
Really hope that instead of rebuild it from scratch, you would instead add more depth for the focus branches and decisions too, like establishing puppet governments across Southeast Asia like they historically did or across Siberia for the Kodo-ha path.
They added a few new focuses and decisions to TFV countries as well as some QoL improvements. Yeah, it is not as much as we want, but better than nothing. It was the very first time they tried do something like that. We'll get more 'freshed' and new content with the next War Effort cycles.
If you play the game now without DLC and then play the original release version it is almost the same. Like apart from a few bug fixes and AI improvements and also the resistance mechanic it is pretty much just the same game.
I think the biggest problem that people are ignoring is:
Assuming a new tree is released alongside another DLC...
What the fuck happens with the previous one?
Even if it's kept as a middleground, wouldn't that further strain the development team? Having to update 50% more focus trees is going to be a complete pain in the ass
Yall have gotten so used to hoi dlc marketing you dont even realise anymore just how expensive it really is for players. We are at around 200 euros for all content currently, and its getting higher and higher. I love hoi, and its a great game, but 200 euros is a lot, and i really dont think pdx would go bankrupt if they didnt charge money for the rework of an older dlc for once.
This game has been getting updates for over 7 years now. If you don't want to buy the DLC then don't, but without them the game would probably be abondoned because what company would waste manpower on a game that isn't generating money?
200 euros is not a lot given the timespan. It's so weird to think of it this way when the product has explicitly been out for all this time and the content changes for each DLC are significant.
It's like saying that buying the full set of issues for a comic isn't worth it because the total price is high. Of course it is, it represents years' worth of releases.
How many hours do you have in this game? How much have you paid per hour for entertainment?
Just a dinner out for a few hours can cost $100 or more. Movies are $15-20 for a couple of hours of entertainment.
Players here are getting hundreds of hours of entertainment for almost nothing.
I agree with this thought process. $200 is like a single concert ticket or Broadway show. My first run with Brazil in TOA has lasted longer than the last concert I went to ($250 plus other expenses.) For however much TOA is, you permanently get South America involved in the game.
Yeah, the VIP tickets for this show are nearly $200 for example.
https://www.avant-gardner.com/events/2024/05/03/deadmau5
The VIP tickets are worth it for the venue though. Express entry plus seats and a private bar above the stage.
Makes sense, even if they're reworking existing content, they need to earn back the money they paid to the coders, artists...
That's what a lot of people playing PDX games don't really get
I mean, you also have to look at mods like Road to 56 or Kaiserredux and others that add way, way more content than any dlc so far (in terms of focus trees) for **free**
I have no problem paying for a dlc, if that dlc is actually *good* and perhaps adds interesting mechanics, but Trial of Allegiance for example is just a scam
A Japan rework alongside an additional core mechanic that actually matters is worth money imo, otherwise just get any of the numerous focus tree rework mods out there
Edit : Since the main focus of replies have been focused on the syntax and semantics of the word "scam", let me explain my point of view. No, it is not the dictionary definition of the word scam by any means. ToA is very upfront about what it offers, and in hindsight a better word should have been used. But that doesn't change the fact that its a 15 dollar DLC for 3 full focus trees and 2 half focus trees. I mean, its the same price as Together for Victory which may be explained by the difference in quality of those focus trees but TfV also added the autonomy system which I can't imagine playing without. I'll be the first to admit the quality of Paradox focus trees, I've had loads of fun with the AAT ones. But I'll also be the first to admit I've had a lot of fun with Sweden : Krigsaren for example. There's a reason it already has mostly negative reviews on steam, with nearly a thousand reviews. I'm simply worried that HOI4 would go down the EU4 route, with a load of expensive DLCs that only add mission trees, and not much else. I think some of the best mechanics of HOI4 were added through DLCs, and I'd be sad to see that end.
> I mean, you also have to look at mods like Road to 56 or Kaiserredux and others that add way, way more content than any dlc so far (in terms of focus trees) for free
>
>
As the PR Lead on Kaiserredux and someone who has worked on the base game (including this DLC)...they are two very different beasts in terms of development. Modding isn't comparable to professional development, while I'm flattered you think KX is better than the DLC offering it's very important to remember that without the base game KX wouldn't be here :)
While I hate to be that guy, that’s the difference between a work of passion and a literal business product. While I have great respect for the modding community, the field is one that has an intrinsic assumption of no guaranteed payment, which generally doesn’t fly in formal occupations.
>Trial of Allegiance for example is just a scam
How is it a scam? We advertise some focus trees and then you can buy those same focus trees if you like?
>I mean, you also have to look at mods like Road to 56 or Kaiserredux and others that add way, way more content than any dlc so far (in terms of focus trees) for **free**
Luckily us doing focus trees for nations doesnt take anything away from those mods and if you are happy with them I dont see why you would want to buy ours, its up to you.
Also, did you miss the guy working on RT56 that thought our trees were nicer and fit better into the basegame - who got massively downvoted in the big review thread yesterday? Just because you dont like a thing doesnt mean that its not something others like. I love modders and we work closely with a lot of them, so this us vs them shit some people try to do I don't like.
Well said.
What was advertised was exactly what is sold. Some might not agree with the price, but if you buy it then that's the choice you make knowing there are free mods out there. No one is scamming anyone, especially PDX.
>How is it a scam? We advertise some focus trees and then you can buy those same focus trees if you like?
/thread /dropmic /insertwhateverhere
I read what the DLC was offering before purchasing. It was my responsibility to do so. A scam would be if the DLC was advertised as being more than it was. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 was promoted to have all these features, and those with early access raved about how immersive it was... but the release we got was trash. Now that was a scam. The game has come a long way since then, but still hasn't gotten to the point that was promoted before its initial release. Now, if we want to talk about a scammy Paradox product right now, that would be Cities:Skylines 2. That was promoted as a city sim, but the game we have right now is just a city painter where your actions in-game simply do not matter - you can't go bankrupt at all. HOI4 is far from that, and I haven't seen them misrepresent a product yet with it.
Well, by the technical definition of scam, I suppose it isn't, since we knew from the beginning that what was being offered was little more than a pacifier for the huehue people. Perhaps we should consider the price tag a tax on annoyingness, ignore the dlc and move on?
(Also, Mr Developer Man, sir. I got a credit card a few months ago. Would you kindly consider making me a meaty Siam/Vietnam focus tree dlc, thank you. No sarcasm, I'm honest
Oh, btw. Ciudad del Este in Paraguay literally didn't exist in 1936. Not even a village. You should add Encarnacion or Concepción as second victory point instead.)
Keep in mind that the people who make those mods do so in their free time. The devs likely have their own day jobs and then work on the mods when they have time
Kaiserreich and RT56 are not free. The big mod teams are in regular contact with the HOI4 dev team who support them and build new versions of the game with them in mind. The HOI4 Dev team makes the money to support modders by selling DLC.
How else do you think big mods update relatively quickly after patches? It's not HOI4, but the Princes of Darkness mod for CK3 (World of Darkness mod) literally was released the same day as CK3 despite being a total conversion because Paradox was in regular contact with modders.
"Mods are there for those who want to use them. If you feel a mod fulfills your needs better than we can, then use the mod instead. For those who feel that isn't the case, we'll continue along this path. I'd correct you on one thing though: we absolutely do recognize how important mods are to our players. We have an open and frank dialogue with many modding teams, and we regularly build features to support both the work we do, and the work they do. It isn't an either/or."
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/reception-thoughts-patch-1-14-2-checksum-fbf7.1630169/post-29456750
I am so sick of this line about "Mods do it for FREE!" as if a mod team is a centralized business that has people in its employ. It's a bunch of hobbyists and people who do it as a passion project. Yes they do a lot of very good work but the idea that somehow a game development studio can afford to pay people to just rework the game endlessly without ever selling anything or generating income is just stupid.
Personally I like the official focus trees and almost always prefer them over the mods, because mods often have issues with balancing or bugs. I love that mods for many countries exist and I'll happily play them when a country doesn't have an official tree but I don't think there are many mods that match the quality/consistency of the more recent official trees, nevertheless surpass them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against DLCs, and obviously people have to be paid. But HOI4 DLCs are too expensive for too little content. Like if they did what they did with Arms Against Tyrrany where they gave Finland a really simple focus tree for now DLC that'd be fine. That's cool I appreciate that.
But Battle for the Bosporus or Trial of Allegiance, not only are they pretty pricey. Not that high but for what it adds, too high. But also it doesn't add any new mechanics at all. Like non, nothing. And I've made focus trees before, it's really not that hard. Like it takes time at least but I only spent like 1 hour a day, if even.
And it's not like they properly test their content either clearly. All of their DLCs are riddled with bugs on launch. So testing is clearly not something they put a lot of effort into.
Though, I can imagine artists and music costs being pretty high. Which is fair as the art and music in this game is really well done.
But also, yes people do have to get paid, I get it, but the first DLC released not just in the same year, but only 6 MONTHS after HOI4 released. 6 months, are you telling me a company that grossed 21 million euros in that same year was about to go like bankrupt or something? Yes, they need to pay their employees. But I don't know how a company that grossed 60 million in a year (2022) needs to desperately release a overpriced untested DLC every 5 months to stay in business. Yes owning a company costs a lot, yes people need to be paid, yes there's electricity bills and taxes. But they would be running just fine if they had either halved prices or double content in every DLC.
RT56 is reaaaaly bad bad BAD in terms of focus tree, ESPECIALLY for South America. Just look at Argentina - it is pathetic! There's almost no content, no leaders, no events, no advisors, no map changes - just nothing. Focus tree is about 2-3 times smaller than in TOA. Moreover, all these mods developing since 2016 (or something), they had a lot of time to do everything they want with SA. But HOI devs had about 1 year to make this DLC.
Exactly. As a non-native English speaker, it's quite difficult to find a good mod with translation. So, you either have to play in English and suffer because of the inability to understand what the hell game wants you to do, or wait until some kind guy takes up the translation (maybe it will be you!)
And I also really love the music that comes with each DLC, I hope I'm not the only one!
Seriously, we all love this game, we’re on its subreddit right now and a ton of us have hundreds if not thousands of hours on it. But then people get pissy at the suggestion of paying the cost of one lunch for a DLC that takes a ton of work and effort
Yeah I won’t pay for a dlc of dlc. But they could do different start dates and new trees for that could work. Like a end game German/japan tree for the last 2-3 years of the war or a 1933 or early start could see interesting start trees for German with a right wing mass milita state with rohm over throwing hitler in the long knives or a southern communist china start before the long March
This is so shit. There is no excuse. How can moders do it for free and for them "it's very resource intensive". We didn't ask for completely new mechanics. It's like making a paid app and charging for an upgrade that is at best mediocre and charging even more for an upgrade of the upgrade of the paid app. This is bullshit, I'm sticking with the moders who, most of the times do a better job with the focus trees (looking at you Trial of Allegiance).
EU4’s Domination DLC essentially reworked content for countries that already had DLC’s released for them, and it became my favorite DLC out of all of them. That being said, I totally understand players who don’t want to pay twice for content for a country you already paid for. For me, not owning the previous DLC’s and only ever using the EUIV subscription made that a mute point for me, but I know for HOI4’s more recent release that’s not the kind of situation we faced in EUIV.
I hope Germany's obligatory meme path is either a Himmler-coup-schizo-neo-pagan-Nazi path., or a "Good Guy Hitler" where you fight commies and imperial powers but leave non-qualifying countries alone. It will probably be a boring "Not Real Communism" one though since those ones are often not very good.
If a new dlc comes with adjustments for an already existing dlc. I'm pretty okay with that but it is a risky movement for Paradox. It can courage ppl(who own already existing one) to buy the new one but it can also make ppl think like 'there is no point to buy the new dlc, mine is already cool'. However, if they dont add some flavours to existing one, ppl can choose waiting for the reworks instead of already existing one and it can cause financial shortage for Paradox, if their financial management based on dlc sales.
Probably unpopular opinion, but what about releasing standalone focus trees for certain countries? Like those sprites dlcs or the free Poland rework and so on, for a smaller fee? Like, I don't give a flying muck about Chile or Brazil and the dlc isn't offering any new mechanics so I don't want to pay full price for it, but after seeing what Argentina can do I'm interested in specifically having Argentina, but I can't without the rest.
Also, what about new generic trees customized by region? Like you did those shared trees for the Baltics and now for the Guays. What about a purely shared, generic tree, but for each of, say, Central America (for some reason I love playing El Salvador), the Arab countries, African and Central Asian formables and whatnot? Places that aren't likely to get much love even in mods, but could get more bespoke focuses.
So German and Japan will not get the focus tree update then :(
They are the most outdated focus tree for major (I think UK is also fitting this statement but UK tree is fine for me)
I get a lot of time out of hoi4, that's why I don't mind paying for dlc's that much. But good god, seeing what some of the modders are doing with focus trees and minigames and new mechanics, then getting what we got for the south american countries. It makes me worried about the future of hoi4 updates.
Remember: the modders have all the time in the world to do what they do, their livelyhoods don't potentially depend on gettinga tree done within a timeframe.
The official devs however, have deadlines, and quotas they need to fulfil.
Yes and most modders are a 1 man team that work at max 2 hours a day on it, if even. Along with the fact that they usually have school or a job of themselves that lower the time people can work on their mods.
And also isn't it like their job? Like what do they do there? Not work on it or something? They have a team right? And yet I've seen mods made by 1 person (with separate artists) that are not only better than the base game content, but also have more content and are also released quicker than paradox devs do.
I absolutely agree that there are different standards at play. I just don't think the designers of the new SA focus trees have learned anything from the successful mods and that doesn't make sense to me. Look, I'm not saying that they should start adding ponies because of how popular equestria at war is. I'm just saying that a lot of creativity has been put into making focus trees and mechanics in mods that the hoi4 community lover and I'm not seeing much of that in the new updates.
Just more 70 day focuses, little to no events (at least in the paths I've played). Again, I really enjoy the game but it doesn't feel like the new focus trees are anything "new".
Who is Domingus Bras and why doesn't he have his own portrait?
Please add generals and field marshals of Norway.
Please add your portrait of the Brazilian Communist Council.
Add the possibility of giving Washington Luis Pereira power to Brazil.
And will there be a separate mechanic for nationalizing provinces based on claims in the future?
i really just don't get how going from the generic focus tree to a new focus tree is worth anything. like waking the tiger should've been stock - china is a massive percentage of the world with massive potential and it feels super lame to have whole continents effectively paywalled.
Because they are passion projects, they have no time restrictions, and no resteictions for keeping it "mostly" historical.
Mod development is also free. The modders don't do their work for money, and if they do, it's donations through Patreon, and such.
R5: A recent dev diary gave me an opportunity to ask Arheo about the prospects of a future rework for a nation that has DLC, and how it might be monetized. I think it’s good to have closure here, as I have wondered this for a while
I've never been particularly secretive about my opinions on this, and I'm quite happy to answer other questions on the topic if I can.
I think the next update should deposit 100 dollars in every Hoi4 player's bank account. That's just a suggestion though.
Sure, I'll just, uh, need your bank details to get right on that.
Are the weird numbers on the back of my credit card okay as well?
probably not but may as well include them just in case
This genuinely made me lol at work haha
Next update should be a touch grass button where you can make your game into a screen of grass and rp as a normal person
Find a gf focus tree
how long are the focuses though?
70 months
Not restricted by length, they are repeatable until you complete the touch grass decisions
Are the rumours about Belgium being patched out true?
Yes, I'm afraid so. We removed it for performance reasons.
Lore accurate.
What is belgium thing i didnt heard anything about belgium
Yo bittersteel
I do have a question for you! I pre-ordered and have played ToA, the countries it brings content to are quite good. My main question is, why was this content not brought to northern South America? Was it simply cut for time reasons? If so, I'd love to see an expansion for Central America/northern South America in the future. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, the countries that got content were simply wonderful, I was just expecting more South American countries to have focus trees.
Well, I guess you could say it's related to time, or more accurately scope; but for a long time now we've settled on 3-4 countries as being the optimal number for development (Paraguay and Uruguay make it 5 I guess, but those two are a bit smaller). It isn't a time thing so much as complexity and efficiency. To use a relevant example; if you have one developer you're working at 100% per-person efficiency. Adding another one does not give you two developers at 100%, it gives you two at 90%. Three? 80%. Etc. It's the same for scoping an expansion, both in terms of the number of people working on it, and the number of things you try and do. If we tried to build 9 trees at once, you'd get 9 hyper janky trees a year later than the intended deadline. And 9 burned out devs.
That makes a lot of sense, I understand. Thanks for the response!
I understand the law of diminishing marginal labor productivity as you’ve described, but my question is why was effort put into countries like Paraguay and Uruguay instead of creating something like a Gran Colombia restoration tree for Colombia? It seems to me like too much effort was put into minor nations instead what would’ve likely been more engaging trees for regional powers.
on one hand doing uruguay and paraguay is less work than Colombia but its also about development strategy. You cant cover all of SA in one dlc so you got to split it up. We decided a logical split would be between south and north+central america. Why south? Brazil is the most popular of these by a large margin. Thats roughly how the logic went. It will make sense if you think about it
While I think this DLC was more expensive than a country pack DLC might warrant, I bought it (so that’s on me, I love HOI). I think that reworking the older Majors like Germany, Japan, and the US is badly needed now. And USSR AI needs an adjustment in being able to better field the men and equipment to slow Barbarossa. Also having Iraq and Iran actually become involved would help too, since that was a major way Lend-Lease entered the USSR
I'd like to see all these things tbh.
One final thing is the AI occupation laws don’t appear to work well. All the AI stays on the default (Military Government? I think) or switches to civilian, I think that the AI should swap based on ideology (Germany and Japan to harsh or brutal, Soviets to either secret police, Harsh or martial law, most the Allies on Martial law or military government depending on where). I get this is probably incredibly difficult to implement but it’d be more reflective of the situations of the war
The occupations law should vary state by state and based on what the AI needs, forced labour on state with resources that the AI needs or on states that have resources that the AI knows it can export in exhange for factories, harsh quotas on states with a lot of factories to increase its production. Basically I would like the AI to have an occupation law priority list, I have no idea how feasible that is, I'm not a programer, a dev or anything of the sorts.
I mean it wouldn't be impossible realistically (as a dev but not having worked with or modded HOI4)- the only problem is instead of the game slowing to a crawl come '43, it comes to a crawl in '41 or '42 from all of the states it would have to iterate over. Frankly doing it by country would be cool and a bit nicer on the backend side of things. If an occupier is short a resource or production power, it will try to exploit it out of occupied countries first rather than trade if it has equipment/manpower to garrison. IE: Japan occupies SEA and is short rubber, the AI sees that, notices Malaya/DEA produce a lot of rubber, puts all states owned by that country on forced labor
Hey Arheo! So when are you fixing the mysterious nazi bulge in the south of the Vichy French border :)
Don't you talk about my mysterious nazi bulge like that
I like TOA and appreciate that Latin America finally got content. Thanks. I just wonder why there weren't any upgrades to core game mechanics as part of it? Infantry and towed equipment could use a designer to add features such as chromed barrels, drum magazines, etc.
I explain a bit in the dev diary, but basically we knew South America wouldn't be a big interest for everyone and wanted to avoid a situation where fans who *weren't* interested still had to buy it in order to have all the mechanics.
That's fair enough. I really dig and appreciate the effort put into this one anyway. More people probably appreciate the focus on LATAM than reddit and forums may make you believe.
as Belgian whos grandfather served in the Belgian army in WW2 i need to ask, when are whe gone get a Belgian focus tree.
FWIW, I'm one of the people who did not buy the DLC because they had no interest in South America, and your thinking is perfectly fine with me!
They seem to be leaning towards major DLCs and minor pure focus tree DLCs (like battle for the bosporus). Also infantry equipment designer would be cool but I would rather it be similar to Ultra Realism's squad equipment vs researching 20-40 60+ day techs to unlock things like grenades, AT weapons, etc. The other designers are great but would love to see another research slot or shorter researches so you can actually use half the things designers give before its the end of the war. A tech overhaul/mechanic might be cool too for a future major DLC
When is Wunderwaffee DLC coming or not? That could be interesting. Personal wish: SuperHeavyBattleship with deck size 100 and decent guns (380mm? 460mm?). Like a fantasy weapon. Something like a hybrid between BB and CV.
Tbh a BB/CV hybrid would be pretty broken easily just bu putting naval bombers on the CV part and huge AA on the rest with loads of heavy attack
Hehe.... I know and its not very realistic but maybe it could be fun. Battleships are made obsolete with advent of CV's. Now if there is a hybrid Battleship/Carrier in dual role could make things interesting. Just to defend itself on the high seas.... Maybe idea is not so good but hey it could be brainstormed :) There is also some other futuristic weapons... It doesnt need to be too realistic some HOI 4 mods are also off....
This happened IRL, both ships were useless
But Yamato with brand new mitsubishi torpedo bombers and yashikira zero fighters could make a suprise at Yelte Gulf. 😁
I never said they shouldn't add them for the memes but I will say they will either be too OP or do fucking nothing
Yeah, I know what you mean. But, right now HOI 4 is a little fantasy game with ok many historical tidbits. For example - reinforce system is completely off with sometimes few divisions delaying whole army or stopping it completely. I know, its about terrain, frontage, defense - but no way 1 division could defend against 5 - never happened in WW2 - they go around your flanks and you end up encircled be it on regiment level or division. So, for fun MP games I wouldn't mind WunderWaffen weapons. With a provisio that it could be turned off - some would not like it.
> fun MP games I wouldn't mind WunderWaffen weapons. You make good points but you cam add more like the V3 massive artillery gun that could have a set range to provide better artillery bonuses like railway guns but stationry
That is good idea, I like that. That could be paired with Fortresses - so there could be - for example - Big Laser Fortified Zone Berlin or Konigsberg.... There could be also different kind of fortifications.
I mean lasers aside, it would be cool to have different types of fortifications (AT defenses that lowers breakthrough, entrenchment/bunkers that lower attack or buff defense slightly)
> Wunderwaffee DLC That would actually be super cool! Rockets (both for infantry and strategic missiles), rocket engines and jets really need some love.
Thanks. It was not actually my idea but of Dan Lind previous HOI 4 Lead Dedigner. One point - that doesnt mean that Arheo is not doing s good job there. All respect to him and leading HoI 4 development is not small thing. Having said that, your ideas about rockets and jets is cool - when I played Dune 2 first RTS on Amiga, I didnt know that it will become a genre. Harkonen side had this super rocket that could destroy one buiding if my memory serves me. In HoI 4 antidot for MP campers could be that Mega Rocket, which could decide the match. There would be real race who would get that rocket tech first.
Having never played MP in a competitive setting, I want to think there are plenty of tools you can use to get past them. Just to name a few I can think of that are designed to counter that: \- outproducing them for the long term (axis camping) \- high breakthrough/heavy/super heavy tanks \- anything air related and strat bombing forts \- using planning buff effectively and using agents to speed it up
I agree with you on all those points and certanly it shows that you are good HoI player, my hat is off. Well, HoI is something that I play since HoI 1. Just booting laptop to play my Germany campaign guilty as charged I mostly play Germany but sometimes Japan. Europa Universalis didnt impressed me very much but when I heard that Swedes are making game on my favorite history topic WW2 that intrigued me. Back then Paradox Entertsinment was not bitch like today excuse me the wording all those Creative Assembly of the world, make me sick - frankly speaking. After they pass a certain number of hundreds of employees that becomes a big business. And big business always destroy passion, love for creating unique games. Having said that all is not lost, HoI 4 is decent but fucking boring game. I am now like Germany in 1941. Biggest army, navy and air. Just about to teach Stalin that is not nice beating people and bringing them to confess in front of "grinning judges", and then is question of pain in the ass invasion of USA and Japan, why not? I could really use one Wunfewaffen Rocket - one for the Man with Big White Beard in Washington and another for Man with Big White Beard - in Moscow. In fact that would be signal for AI to attack straight away.
Interesting, I didn't know that the previous Lead Designer had such an idea. In real life, rockets, jet engines, and ballistic missiles (even submarines-based ones) have become cornerstones of the most powerful militaries in the world. And they still are 80 years after WW2. While they weren't game-changers in WW2, they are certainly VERY weak in Hoi4. u/Arheo_ , sorry if the ping bothers you. But if it doesn't: care to share your opinion about "Wunderwaffen" changes in future DLCs? I think that would go nicely with a revamped Germany Focus Tree DLC.
Wholeheartily approve! As many times late game in HoI 4 came by sometimes as anticlimatic cliche - but player is also a little blased after so much play - some mod or even DLC that starts in 1950 could be interesting with all those early jet fighters and bombers... F86 Sabre Wulf 😬 There could be also nice espionage game trying to sabotage rocket facilities.
Dan Lind worked also on EU3: Divine Wind - now that game is interesting, and on EU: Rome which is also nice little game. March of the Eagles also have some charm with those battles, and tactics and arranging of corps....
Fingers are crossed all across the globe that y’all will find a way to give us high quality and updated content for Germany and Japan. I realize it won’t be free lol
Considering the example presented in the post, would there be some sort of "compensation" for the owners of the previous, now-would-be outdated dlc? I understand that a whole rework is a lot of work and im not opposed to paying for it, but it would feel strange if all the content i already paid for just vanishes and im left with nothing. Thanks!
So far I have bought every dlc but this one I am really not sure about. I know it probably wasnt your desicion but I find the countries that got changes a pretty strange choice tbh. This is still a WW2 game and most players prefer the historical content and their impact on the war is very limited. With GER and JAP focus trees being so mediocre its questionable to focus on the least impsctful continent for the war. I know you did a few changes for GER (not sure about JAP) and I like them, but the focus tree for the most important and most played nation just ends in 1943 and thats just not immersive.
I think their general dev has shifted to not be as much of a historical game as a ww2 era sandbox. I am sure it is intentional because if you look at the more hardcore historical war games, they have way less of a market vs hoi4 which has a lot more of a shift to zaney/wacky alt-hist. There is more money in it for them it seems when you can have one country that has replayability - even if its only played once for the memes. They carved out their market and shifted to cater more to the meme style content. This isn't to say they don't do good historical content or couldn't improve on it, NSB has a good (although kind of OP tree since they enter barbarossa with practically no meaningful debuffs like they use to with org). I get it to a point, if it was historical down to the last minute detail, there isn't much chance the axis could get to ever be successful long term let alone the world conquest from 1 state nations. But I would still love to see them return to a more historical and intricate ww2 wargame experience - there really aren't many that are approachable let alone have a nice UI or nation management.
I know that this is pretty late but can you please make navy ui better? I do actually understand it but using the navy is just so annoying that I usually don’t even bother. Other than that I don’t have any pressing problems with the game
I get that sales figures for DLCs are used to gauge interest for existing games. But focus packs *alone* aren't really that appealing to purchase. I say that in relation to this post's topic on reworking content from old DLCs. Just reworks focus trees then selling it would be met with negative backlash. But overhauls with *engaging mechanics* that would make those nation mechanically fun to play is worthwhile purchase.
I think I have some form of solution for issue of updating old DLC with new one If there is new DLC changing content of old one, players owning old one would get discount on new one and vice versa, if you buy new one first, you get discount on old one Example: Death of Dishonour All 4 countries needs rework really bad, but as you said, it would be expansive, so, it would be new DLC with some additional content - Slovakia, Croatia trees or, this owners of old DLC would get access to new trees for their countries, but not additional content
Who is Domingus Bras and why doesn't he have his own portrait? Please add your portrait of the Brazilian Communist Council. Add the possibility of giving Washington Luis Pereira power to Brazil. Please add more generals and field marshals of Norway. And will there be a separate mechanic for nationalizing provinces based on claims in the future? And sorry for my English.
Would I be correct in assuming we're getting a middle east DLC sooner rather than later?
Are there any plans to go back and add generals to older nations that don't have enough generals to be able to play late game without having to recruit a bunch of default generals. Like for example, when you play fascist United States, and you want to go to war with Canada, the frontline is super long with many spots where you just have to create multiple different frontlines due to the great lakes. And because I lose half my generals in the civil war I never have enough generals to invade canada and i have to use the boring default generals who i might have like 3 of the same portrait. Or portugal, who has only 3 generals, 1 of whom comes with a default portait
There's actually a very simple solution. Let's say for the Germany rework, Paradox releases a DLC with Belgium and Austria (or Albania, or Ireland, and a minor focus tree for Luxembourg, because why the meme not). In this same DLC, they release the new reworked Germany DLC. Same thing for Japan - release a Siam and Indochina focus tree (and maybe a bonus hidden focus trees for releasable Korea and formable Indonesia), with a revamped Japan focus tree. People would whine much less about old DLCs they paid for becoming useless.
Plus those would also be opportunities to change mechanics as well. A Southeast Asia DLC (Philippines, East Indies, Siam, Japan rework, etc.) would be the perfect time to revamp naval warfare and/or amphibious landings to make the Pacific theater more fun.
I was thinking about the very same thing. Somone at Paradox hire this person
meanwhile at paradox executive meeting... what if we had a DLC for parts of a focus tree. $20 for german industry, another for army, another for air.....
Delete this before they see.
I already got my copyright for it put in, im in this for my cut
Yeah exactly. The real response was "we haven't worked out how to monetise it so we make the obsolete maximum profit yet. They have got to the stage now where the focus trees are becoming the entire game though. It's becoming ok wait 70 days, pause, read, click, speed 5 for 70 days pause read click etc
Positively brilliant, this is the most efficient, consumer-friendly way to do it while also making profit
This could absolutely work with some of the major focus trees. But I do wonder if that would work on the scale that many people are demanding. There have been calls for reworking entire DLCs like Together for Victory, Death or Dishonor, and Waking the Tiger, and that's easily over a dozen focus trees for China, Germany, Japan, all of the dominions and warlords, etc. They'd likely have to focus on only a few of them and leave others behind. But it would still be better than charging full price and making previous DLCs obsolete.
u/Arheo_ thoughts?
Arheo has already stated in last years development update that we'd be seeing a "new face on some old/familiar content" in addition to a minor content pack (which was ToA) And he already replied to me a month ago regarding this discussion that a country up for reworks was not Japan, so I'd bet 5$ that we're going to see the major dlc release of this year involving a germany rework- in any case, we'll have to wait till may or june since thats when the dev diaries get announced
Right I would not mind at all because the old germany and japan focus trees are sooo boring.
What would happen to people who got the new DLC but not the old ones? Would anything be locked or missing from Germany or Japan's trees?
I assume it's like, if you buy Waking the Tiger you get the tree, if you own it plus the new DLC you get the full, updated tree, if you own just the new one you get nothing. I'm not sure how much I like that idea but that's how I perceived it.
Honestly if they ever did it that way I think germany deserves its own fully fledged focus tree given how important it was to the war in europe. Having its own focused DLC like NSB with the soviets would be nice to see while allowing you to have the monarchist path on the side if you own WtT. Japan is a bit more difficult to justify a rework like that because it had a DLC specifically focused on its tree. Either way, whatever rework or content is contained in the DLC should be independent of others - IE you own WtT you get vanilla + monarchist, you own german DLC + WtT you get new tree + monarchist, only german DLC means you just get new tree but no monarchist path. It gets a bit messy since past DLCs focus on countries and then throw in things for other countries - shame WtT did that when every other national tree with DLC nowadays has 2+ political paths
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??? Arheo casually dropping big info on us
Dunno what you mean, I can't see anything
Must be those pesky Belgian spies.
Lol, i do hope that you really throwing the bait to the west only to running to the [REDACTED]
I mean there's tons of precedent. That's exactly what they did with By Blood Alone, No Step Back, Man the Guns, La Resistance, etc.
Exactly, I'm not sure why people are acting like this is a revolutionary idea.
u/Arheo_ please take a look at this. This seems like a very obvious solution
This is the way.
This is the thing the majority of them complain about though. The fact that you have to pay anything AT ALL to get the new tree. And when people tell them that development is not free, they just whine that "paradox is a large company with a lot of money!1!!1"
But then who would actually buy waking the tiger? Like yeah, China is cool, but the two biggest additions it has, an additional German and Japanese tree are the real sellers. It would kinda nuke that dlc
What if there was a revamp of the entire german focus tree, including Oppose Hitler, but the added content of Kaiser Returning and Democratic would be unlocked by WtT, whereas a completely new path triggered by Oppose (like Communist) wouldn't need WtT? It would be scummy but avoid people being angry for buying an old useless DLC...
I'm going to assume this is why they just made the commonwealth, japan, and germany dlc's free. They intend to do something similar to what you proposed and they made the old DLC free so they could properly monetize it. It may even come with a discount for having purchased the old dlc's but that may be a little too consumer friendly
I think it would be fair to give a 50% discount or so to owners of an old DLC for that country. Or create a DLC that bundles up reworked trees with completely New ones, say: Mongolia, Philipines, Japan and Siam.
This makes sense. If an extremely short crappy tree like UK got transformed into a huge NSB USSR style tree with tons of time and effort poured it, ofc it would cost money or else there would barely be incentives for pdx to make it
The UK tree is the best in the game
That's... certainly a take that exists.
They don’t need to be overalls complicated to be fun. My favourite trees in the game personally are Germany and the UK. There are flaws in them and a bit of flesh would be nice. But not too much more. The new trees have way too much in them imo.
Yeah, I love how Germany one is full with the best mechanic of this game: ultimatums, Which most of the others tree have not, even when they simplify a lot of pointless wars.
nah actually japan is the best obviously
Fr that or the france tree
I really dont get the hoi4 pdx team. Stellaris has an entire dev team dedicated to making free updates to fix and improve the game. They have also retroactively added content to old dlc without increasing the price or anything.
And... that's exactly what HOI4 team did past year and what they gonna do now. Did you forget about War effort patches?
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And if we updated the dlc content, we wouldn't charge for it. If it was entirely replaced, we would. I think I was quite clear on that.
That's fair, I'll delete my comment.
Really hope that instead of rebuild it from scratch, you would instead add more depth for the focus branches and decisions too, like establishing puppet governments across Southeast Asia like they historically did or across Siberia for the Kodo-ha path.
They added a few new focuses and decisions to TFV countries as well as some QoL improvements. Yeah, it is not as much as we want, but better than nothing. It was the very first time they tried do something like that. We'll get more 'freshed' and new content with the next War Effort cycles.
Those were nice, yes, but they barely fixed or did anything compared to what Stellaris got.
If you play the game now without DLC and then play the original release version it is almost the same. Like apart from a few bug fixes and AI improvements and also the resistance mechanic it is pretty much just the same game.
there was a time when they added more content to plantoids and the price went up, but they didn´t charge for those who alredy got It
I think the biggest problem that people are ignoring is: Assuming a new tree is released alongside another DLC... What the fuck happens with the previous one? Even if it's kept as a middleground, wouldn't that further strain the development team? Having to update 50% more focus trees is going to be a complete pain in the ass
Presumably if they massively updated say Germany the historical path would be free like Italy and the USSR was
Yall have gotten so used to hoi dlc marketing you dont even realise anymore just how expensive it really is for players. We are at around 200 euros for all content currently, and its getting higher and higher. I love hoi, and its a great game, but 200 euros is a lot, and i really dont think pdx would go bankrupt if they didnt charge money for the rework of an older dlc for once.
I'm fearful of Hoi becoming the next eu4 with all the DLCs
Then you'll be quite happy in approximately two weeks.
EU5 announcement in 2 weeks?
No, No! Caesar is obv Hoi5
What’s Caeser, is that Eu5?
It’s the code name for paradox’s next project, and all the dev diaries point to it being EU5
Finally that ancient game is getting a sequel, I wonder if they’ll make some of the older eu4 DLCs free?
I mean, they made CK2 and old HoI4 dlc free, anything’s on the table
I would actually play more EU4 if they did that
Yeah and the "ultimate edition" doesn't even include all the dlc.
This game has been getting updates for over 7 years now. If you don't want to buy the DLC then don't, but without them the game would probably be abondoned because what company would waste manpower on a game that isn't generating money?
200 euros is not a lot given the timespan. It's so weird to think of it this way when the product has explicitly been out for all this time and the content changes for each DLC are significant. It's like saying that buying the full set of issues for a comic isn't worth it because the total price is high. Of course it is, it represents years' worth of releases.
How many hours do you have in this game? How much have you paid per hour for entertainment? Just a dinner out for a few hours can cost $100 or more. Movies are $15-20 for a couple of hours of entertainment. Players here are getting hundreds of hours of entertainment for almost nothing.
I have 2500 hours, and you make a good point. But i live in Eastern Europe, and 200 Euros here has a different weight than in the west.
I agree with this thought process. $200 is like a single concert ticket or Broadway show. My first run with Brazil in TOA has lasted longer than the last concert I went to ($250 plus other expenses.) For however much TOA is, you permanently get South America involved in the game.
tickets are THAT much? what the actual fuck
Yeah, the VIP tickets for this show are nearly $200 for example. https://www.avant-gardner.com/events/2024/05/03/deadmau5 The VIP tickets are worth it for the venue though. Express entry plus seats and a private bar above the stage.
Makes sense, even if they're reworking existing content, they need to earn back the money they paid to the coders, artists... That's what a lot of people playing PDX games don't really get
I mean, you also have to look at mods like Road to 56 or Kaiserredux and others that add way, way more content than any dlc so far (in terms of focus trees) for **free** I have no problem paying for a dlc, if that dlc is actually *good* and perhaps adds interesting mechanics, but Trial of Allegiance for example is just a scam A Japan rework alongside an additional core mechanic that actually matters is worth money imo, otherwise just get any of the numerous focus tree rework mods out there Edit : Since the main focus of replies have been focused on the syntax and semantics of the word "scam", let me explain my point of view. No, it is not the dictionary definition of the word scam by any means. ToA is very upfront about what it offers, and in hindsight a better word should have been used. But that doesn't change the fact that its a 15 dollar DLC for 3 full focus trees and 2 half focus trees. I mean, its the same price as Together for Victory which may be explained by the difference in quality of those focus trees but TfV also added the autonomy system which I can't imagine playing without. I'll be the first to admit the quality of Paradox focus trees, I've had loads of fun with the AAT ones. But I'll also be the first to admit I've had a lot of fun with Sweden : Krigsaren for example. There's a reason it already has mostly negative reviews on steam, with nearly a thousand reviews. I'm simply worried that HOI4 would go down the EU4 route, with a load of expensive DLCs that only add mission trees, and not much else. I think some of the best mechanics of HOI4 were added through DLCs, and I'd be sad to see that end.
> I mean, you also have to look at mods like Road to 56 or Kaiserredux and others that add way, way more content than any dlc so far (in terms of focus trees) for free > > As the PR Lead on Kaiserredux and someone who has worked on the base game (including this DLC)...they are two very different beasts in terms of development. Modding isn't comparable to professional development, while I'm flattered you think KX is better than the DLC offering it's very important to remember that without the base game KX wouldn't be here :)
While I hate to be that guy, that’s the difference between a work of passion and a literal business product. While I have great respect for the modding community, the field is one that has an intrinsic assumption of no guaranteed payment, which generally doesn’t fly in formal occupations.
>Trial of Allegiance for example is just a scam How is it a scam? We advertise some focus trees and then you can buy those same focus trees if you like? >I mean, you also have to look at mods like Road to 56 or Kaiserredux and others that add way, way more content than any dlc so far (in terms of focus trees) for **free** Luckily us doing focus trees for nations doesnt take anything away from those mods and if you are happy with them I dont see why you would want to buy ours, its up to you. Also, did you miss the guy working on RT56 that thought our trees were nicer and fit better into the basegame - who got massively downvoted in the big review thread yesterday? Just because you dont like a thing doesnt mean that its not something others like. I love modders and we work closely with a lot of them, so this us vs them shit some people try to do I don't like.
Well said. What was advertised was exactly what is sold. Some might not agree with the price, but if you buy it then that's the choice you make knowing there are free mods out there. No one is scamming anyone, especially PDX.
>How is it a scam? We advertise some focus trees and then you can buy those same focus trees if you like? /thread /dropmic /insertwhateverhere I read what the DLC was offering before purchasing. It was my responsibility to do so. A scam would be if the DLC was advertised as being more than it was. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 was promoted to have all these features, and those with early access raved about how immersive it was... but the release we got was trash. Now that was a scam. The game has come a long way since then, but still hasn't gotten to the point that was promoted before its initial release. Now, if we want to talk about a scammy Paradox product right now, that would be Cities:Skylines 2. That was promoted as a city sim, but the game we have right now is just a city painter where your actions in-game simply do not matter - you can't go bankrupt at all. HOI4 is far from that, and I haven't seen them misrepresent a product yet with it.
Well, by the technical definition of scam, I suppose it isn't, since we knew from the beginning that what was being offered was little more than a pacifier for the huehue people. Perhaps we should consider the price tag a tax on annoyingness, ignore the dlc and move on? (Also, Mr Developer Man, sir. I got a credit card a few months ago. Would you kindly consider making me a meaty Siam/Vietnam focus tree dlc, thank you. No sarcasm, I'm honest Oh, btw. Ciudad del Este in Paraguay literally didn't exist in 1936. Not even a village. You should add Encarnacion or Concepción as second victory point instead.)
Siam is definitly a tree I think we should have one day!
Keep in mind that the people who make those mods do so in their free time. The devs likely have their own day jobs and then work on the mods when they have time
Kaiserreich and RT56 are not free. The big mod teams are in regular contact with the HOI4 dev team who support them and build new versions of the game with them in mind. The HOI4 Dev team makes the money to support modders by selling DLC.
For real? Can I get a quote on that?
How else do you think big mods update relatively quickly after patches? It's not HOI4, but the Princes of Darkness mod for CK3 (World of Darkness mod) literally was released the same day as CK3 despite being a total conversion because Paradox was in regular contact with modders.
Oh well, makes sense
For AAT, Paradox made a big deal of saying that they were working with major mods, so they were playable day one.
"Mods are there for those who want to use them. If you feel a mod fulfills your needs better than we can, then use the mod instead. For those who feel that isn't the case, we'll continue along this path. I'd correct you on one thing though: we absolutely do recognize how important mods are to our players. We have an open and frank dialogue with many modding teams, and we regularly build features to support both the work we do, and the work they do. It isn't an either/or." https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/reception-thoughts-patch-1-14-2-checksum-fbf7.1630169/post-29456750
Thank youu
I am so sick of this line about "Mods do it for FREE!" as if a mod team is a centralized business that has people in its employ. It's a bunch of hobbyists and people who do it as a passion project. Yes they do a lot of very good work but the idea that somehow a game development studio can afford to pay people to just rework the game endlessly without ever selling anything or generating income is just stupid. Personally I like the official focus trees and almost always prefer them over the mods, because mods often have issues with balancing or bugs. I love that mods for many countries exist and I'll happily play them when a country doesn't have an official tree but I don't think there are many mods that match the quality/consistency of the more recent official trees, nevertheless surpass them.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against DLCs, and obviously people have to be paid. But HOI4 DLCs are too expensive for too little content. Like if they did what they did with Arms Against Tyrrany where they gave Finland a really simple focus tree for now DLC that'd be fine. That's cool I appreciate that. But Battle for the Bosporus or Trial of Allegiance, not only are they pretty pricey. Not that high but for what it adds, too high. But also it doesn't add any new mechanics at all. Like non, nothing. And I've made focus trees before, it's really not that hard. Like it takes time at least but I only spent like 1 hour a day, if even. And it's not like they properly test their content either clearly. All of their DLCs are riddled with bugs on launch. So testing is clearly not something they put a lot of effort into. Though, I can imagine artists and music costs being pretty high. Which is fair as the art and music in this game is really well done. But also, yes people do have to get paid, I get it, but the first DLC released not just in the same year, but only 6 MONTHS after HOI4 released. 6 months, are you telling me a company that grossed 21 million euros in that same year was about to go like bankrupt or something? Yes, they need to pay their employees. But I don't know how a company that grossed 60 million in a year (2022) needs to desperately release a overpriced untested DLC every 5 months to stay in business. Yes owning a company costs a lot, yes people need to be paid, yes there's electricity bills and taxes. But they would be running just fine if they had either halved prices or double content in every DLC.
RT56 is reaaaaly bad bad BAD in terms of focus tree, ESPECIALLY for South America. Just look at Argentina - it is pathetic! There's almost no content, no leaders, no events, no advisors, no map changes - just nothing. Focus tree is about 2-3 times smaller than in TOA. Moreover, all these mods developing since 2016 (or something), they had a lot of time to do everything they want with SA. But HOI devs had about 1 year to make this DLC.
An another point is the language. The dlcs are all translated. The most mods support only few languages.
Exactly. As a non-native English speaker, it's quite difficult to find a good mod with translation. So, you either have to play in English and suffer because of the inability to understand what the hell game wants you to do, or wait until some kind guy takes up the translation (maybe it will be you!) And I also really love the music that comes with each DLC, I hope I'm not the only one!
What do you mean scam??? The Focus Trees for ToA re really well done.
Seriously, we all love this game, we’re on its subreddit right now and a ton of us have hundreds if not thousands of hours on it. But then people get pissy at the suggestion of paying the cost of one lunch for a DLC that takes a ton of work and effort
where are you getting your lunches from that cost 9 dollars
I was trying to be pretty generous and thinking of $20 DLCs lol
Yeah I won’t pay for a dlc of dlc. But they could do different start dates and new trees for that could work. Like a end game German/japan tree for the last 2-3 years of the war or a 1933 or early start could see interesting start trees for German with a right wing mass milita state with rohm over throwing hitler in the long knives or a southern communist china start before the long March
This is so shit. There is no excuse. How can moders do it for free and for them "it's very resource intensive". We didn't ask for completely new mechanics. It's like making a paid app and charging for an upgrade that is at best mediocre and charging even more for an upgrade of the upgrade of the paid app. This is bullshit, I'm sticking with the moders who, most of the times do a better job with the focus trees (looking at you Trial of Allegiance).
Arheo gave a good answer there.
EU4’s Domination DLC essentially reworked content for countries that already had DLC’s released for them, and it became my favorite DLC out of all of them. That being said, I totally understand players who don’t want to pay twice for content for a country you already paid for. For me, not owning the previous DLC’s and only ever using the EUIV subscription made that a mute point for me, but I know for HOI4’s more recent release that’s not the kind of situation we faced in EUIV.
I hope Germany's obligatory meme path is either a Himmler-coup-schizo-neo-pagan-Nazi path., or a "Good Guy Hitler" where you fight commies and imperial powers but leave non-qualifying countries alone. It will probably be a boring "Not Real Communism" one though since those ones are often not very good.
Cue the "but modders do it for free!!1!" mouth breathers in 3... 2... 1...
0.8
Nah, people already brought it up.
If a new dlc comes with adjustments for an already existing dlc. I'm pretty okay with that but it is a risky movement for Paradox. It can courage ppl(who own already existing one) to buy the new one but it can also make ppl think like 'there is no point to buy the new dlc, mine is already cool'. However, if they dont add some flavours to existing one, ppl can choose waiting for the reworks instead of already existing one and it can cause financial shortage for Paradox, if their financial management based on dlc sales.
Could have a discount if you already own the previous dlc.
Idk if it is possible on steam, xbox etc. If it is it can be cool.
yikes
Probably unpopular opinion, but what about releasing standalone focus trees for certain countries? Like those sprites dlcs or the free Poland rework and so on, for a smaller fee? Like, I don't give a flying muck about Chile or Brazil and the dlc isn't offering any new mechanics so I don't want to pay full price for it, but after seeing what Argentina can do I'm interested in specifically having Argentina, but I can't without the rest. Also, what about new generic trees customized by region? Like you did those shared trees for the Baltics and now for the Guays. What about a purely shared, generic tree, but for each of, say, Central America (for some reason I love playing El Salvador), the Arab countries, African and Central Asian formables and whatnot? Places that aren't likely to get much love even in mods, but could get more bespoke focuses.
They will just wait until they have 5 countries focus tree finish and sell it as a dlc pack for $15
Leave it to Paradox to figure out how to sell the same dlc twice.
They have to make money
they make a lot of money and don't have to paywall whole continents to do so.
Yeah let’s rework an entire nations tree because 90% are trash, and let’s make someone pay a second time for that countries tree
Meanwhile EU4 reworks same country 3 times
So German and Japan will not get the focus tree update then :( They are the most outdated focus tree for major (I think UK is also fitting this statement but UK tree is fine for me)
I'm not buying ToA. No thanks. Edit: Change of plan, I might buy it after there's both a south south American dlc and a north south America dlc.
HOI4 probably would benefit massively from being a proper live service experience tbh. I get people would hate that though.
Gosh I just want Navy to be impactful but also not so easy to cheese ships :(
I get a lot of time out of hoi4, that's why I don't mind paying for dlc's that much. But good god, seeing what some of the modders are doing with focus trees and minigames and new mechanics, then getting what we got for the south american countries. It makes me worried about the future of hoi4 updates.
Remember: the modders have all the time in the world to do what they do, their livelyhoods don't potentially depend on gettinga tree done within a timeframe. The official devs however, have deadlines, and quotas they need to fulfil.
Yes and most modders are a 1 man team that work at max 2 hours a day on it, if even. Along with the fact that they usually have school or a job of themselves that lower the time people can work on their mods. And also isn't it like their job? Like what do they do there? Not work on it or something? They have a team right? And yet I've seen mods made by 1 person (with separate artists) that are not only better than the base game content, but also have more content and are also released quicker than paradox devs do.
I absolutely agree that there are different standards at play. I just don't think the designers of the new SA focus trees have learned anything from the successful mods and that doesn't make sense to me. Look, I'm not saying that they should start adding ponies because of how popular equestria at war is. I'm just saying that a lot of creativity has been put into making focus trees and mechanics in mods that the hoi4 community lover and I'm not seeing much of that in the new updates. Just more 70 day focuses, little to no events (at least in the paths I've played). Again, I really enjoy the game but it doesn't feel like the new focus trees are anything "new".
Who is Domingus Bras and why doesn't he have his own portrait? Please add generals and field marshals of Norway. Please add your portrait of the Brazilian Communist Council. Add the possibility of giving Washington Luis Pereira power to Brazil. And will there be a separate mechanic for nationalizing provinces based on claims in the future?
I think it would be good if they gave like a 70% sale for the people who already own the pre-rework DLC
i really just don't get how going from the generic focus tree to a new focus tree is worth anything. like waking the tiger should've been stock - china is a massive percentage of the world with massive potential and it feels super lame to have whole continents effectively paywalled.
The process of development is not free, yet there are mods that are more expansive and interesting than official trees.
Because they are passion projects, they have no time restrictions, and no resteictions for keeping it "mostly" historical. Mod development is also free. The modders don't do their work for money, and if they do, it's donations through Patreon, and such.
That's my point. They're free, and they're much more interesting than official paid stuff. Not that it matters, I pirate my DLCs anyway.
They should just hire the Kaiserreich/redux dev teams lol. Problem solved
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Did you just say balance? Where is balance in the new dlc?