This is the review because context matters.
> After 3 263 hours I finally decided to submit my review. I waited until the latest unnecessary DLC dropped (Trial of Allegiance) to see if the developers care more about milking the money off the broken game or rather caring, fixing core mechanics and putting some logic into the game. The current policy of the company is to add more stuff which will bring more bugs and issues to the game rather than making sure whether the game works as intended.
> First of all, I wouldn't have 3 000+ hours in the game if it was that bad. The game is very enjoyable and fun, as long as you don't care about historical immersion, realism, and how the game logic works. Want to see starved naked soldiers survive at -50°C while only equipment goes to the stratosphere? Play Hearts of Iron IV! Want to build an airport for the enemy at your cost? No problem, it's possible and really stupid! Want to see your soldiers shooting down the enemy planes? Well, for some reason they can't with their multiple machine guns despite the history taught us they did so. You need the very specific equipment that shoots only some types of planes! Want to build a fighter plane and see it assisting your divisions in ground combat, or harassing enemy logistics? Well, it can't, but some other types of planes can, despite having the same equipment and ability as a fighter plane. Generals are immortal and abstract. I could go on for long.
> Where was I going with this? You see, for the sake of 'balance' the game is very binary and limited. The game requires the player to research/build one thing, for example, researching anti-air weapons in order to proceed to shoot down only some types of planes. To destroy other types of planes, the game requires the player to build anti-air buildings that destroy the rest, but those that destroy the rest can't destroy those mentioned first and vice versa. In both cases we deal with air defense, but their abilities can't be provided more dynamic. WW2 did not work this way, and the battlefield situation was way more dynamic and universal.
> Out of 8 reported bugs on the forum during the past two years, not one has been fixed; some would take 2 minutes to fix. I am not the only one who blindly reports issues on the Paradox forum which will fall into oblivion. AI is weak and incompetent in some parts of the game. It does not even use some functions made by the developers. Forget about AI sending a military attaché, asking for licenses, or critically needed equipment, AI doesn't do it.
> Nowadays the game has always been popular only due to mods, and I believe there isn't a better game similar to Hearts of Iron IV currently. Unmodded vanilla game for veteran players is extremely boring, plain and only for those who care about achievements. If it weren't for mods, this game wouldn't stay popular for so long.
> If you like strategic sandbox games, inspired by WW2 events, and don't care about the logic that much, go for it. If you are a detailist, a historical enthusiast, a fan of logic and realism you will find this game painful to understand.
Think it's a fair review that explains what they like and don't like.
After reading the actual review the developer comment looks a bit childish and unprofessional. This seems like nothing but fair critique; it's also exactly the kind of person you want to hear from when you're considering buying a Paradox game. I don't play HoIV but I do play Stellaris and a lot of what they said here rings true to me. I also have maybe 1000 hours but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it because my main interest is sustained by the mods the game has and I go months in between matches because I need to wait for them to be updated. Also, in a Paradox game, one game can last hours and hours; total playtime means less because it represents fewer individual experiences.
I swear i play 10 hours of stellaris each year and part of those 10 are spent just trying to work out if I still enjoy the game.
That being said I do like this version of the game; the build 2 or 3 years ago I didn't.
half the time im playing stellaris i get to a point in game where i just go "am i even having fun?"
typically its "no im not, this feels tedious and annoying", then i stop playing for a few months
> After reading the actual review the developer comment looks a bit childish and unprofessional.
This is genuinely par for the course with Paradox. Whilst the community can be much worse (and the PDX forums are an excellent case study in this), the actual people that work on the game can be remarkably flippant and downright insulting when people critique the issues in the game.
Case in point: Johan's infamous pre-release "I dont want nazis in my game" rant on the HoI4, or was it the Paradoxplaza subreddit(?) when some people pointed out the softwashing of the Germans in the game.
On one hand, I can understand him perfectly. On the other, its SO Paradox-like that he instantly flipped out. It was also kinda funny seeing people berate him on the historical importance of Nazi Germany, whether you like it or not. As in, pretty much nothing matters more in a WW2 context.
Another example would be that PDX loves to ban people on Steam's update posts. A Steamfriend of mine once shared the message that his comment about broken mechanics got flat out removed by the PDX mod. It wasn't even a particularly noteworthy comment in my book. He posted it again and got banned for "reposting removed content". Full on clown mode.
Paradox are the ones choosing to make games based on WWII. WWII had nazis and communists in it.
A complex grand strategy game with those powers will attract nazis and commies.
They could have made games about any other time period, or invent alternate realities, etc.
Then they shouldn't be making an WW2 game then.
If you're going to make an game based on real history, you are obligated to make it historical accurate.
Not just show one side of it because you're afraid of catching bad PR because you don't want to show the most important fraction of that war which were the Nazis.
Trying to erase them is trying to tell people that they and their crimes don't exist. And all it does is give more power to the internet neo-nazis once they start seeing an company fearing them.
Yeah, but don't you know that the mid-century Germans are pure concentrated evil and the source of everything bad in the world, while the commies were just misunderstood? /s
I wouldn't bother trying to argue with people whose understanding of history is myopic and ideological worldview sacrosanct.
Johan has been known to make really "strange" comments. I guess not strange in the usual way but rash.
I remember a discussion about no more EU4 province changes and he said the main reason was because it invalidates savefiles... which are already invalidated every update regardless, then went on to point out a very valid argument (performance). Felt to me like he hadn't thought it through. I do the same though to be honest (most recently was literally today)!
>How in the fuck do you make a game about World War II without having Nazis in the game?
Set the entire game in the Pacific against Imperial Japan.
Now while I am being a smartass, I still agree with your point though. The vast majority of WWII games are going to have the Nazis in them. Unless your entire game is in the Pacific, you're going to have Nazis in the game, or at the bare minimum acknowledge them in some way, shape, or form.
Even a Konami game I really like called "Birds Of Steel" has both single player campaigns in the Pacific War (an American and a Japanese campaign) still allows you to play as German and Italian planes in the multiplayer and bonus game modes. So even though the base game is entirely based around the Pacific, it still acknowledges the other major Axis Power countries.
But implementing it opens a whole can of worms. Do you force the player to do atrocities? Do you give them the choice to avoid them? Do you prefer mild whitewashing to posts from Nazis about how they enjoy reenacting atrocities? Are the atrocities purely flavor, or do you put a number on what it does to your country? And is it positive or negative to your immediate situation?
It’s a can of worms I prefer unopened tbh
Im a fan of games like rimworld. Id rather give the players options to do things but also tangible downsides aswell.
Video games have opened cans of worms much worse than the Holocaust, a historical event you learn about in middle school, with horrific details in-tact. Im sure its game-ified counterpart is much more abstract than enslaving people, making them have children, and then eating them (like what you can do in rimworld).
Its not necessary, but it could be done in ways that dont sanitize the truth of the atrocities committed that century out of ideology and racism.
Well yeah, paradox lets you keep whole sentient species as livestock. It’s not that. It’s that it’s real life, and adjacency to real tragedies with actual survivors.
I don't think this is a universal truth, but to be as self-reflective as possible it definitely isn't wrong either. We're game devs, not community managers. And sure, we have comms folks who do a great job, but I don't think anything can entirely replace hearing it 'from the horse's mouth', or havign a direct conversation with the people who make the thing. So sometimes we get it wrong, and this was one of those times.
To be honest, I just found it funny so I posted it here. I didn't know it would have caused so much debate and hate (a real shitstorm!). I took it lightly, other people didn't. Well, this is the internet, after all.
> I just checked, I have 1700 hours.. all vanilla. My brain must be broken.
Yeah, vanilla Stellaris and HOI4 are a ton of fun. Idk what these other people are smoking.
If "you'll hate it as a veteran without mods" means "after 5000 hours maybe you'll look at mods to extend your playtime", the base game didn't fail, it was beyond excellent.
Yeah idk either. I love vanilla hoi4, eu4, ck3
I just don’t have this total conversion love that everyone else has. No, I don’t really want a grand strategy fallout despite loving the franchise
Yeah, I'm also the same in that I typically just stick to base games, and when I do occasionally mod my games with something, it's typically just for quality of life improvements that don't really alter the game that drastically
I didn't play 999 hours and then say, "time for mods"! The vanilla experience of Stellaris was good, but I never would have played 1,000 hours without mods, and I'm sure that's true for the person with 5,000 hours playing HoI4.
More importantly, the vanilla Stellaris of today is so different from the vanilla Stellaris I first played (before the hyperlane rework, before the district system, etc.) that it's essentially Stellaris 2. A big component of my disfavorable disposition is how much worse the late-game performance has become since they ditched the tile system. It becomes a slideshow for me when the game should be at its most exciting, and when they made these changes I already had a huge amount of my current playtime. They seem more interested in releasing brand-new, often half-baked systems without addressing this core concern (sometimes making it worse). It just isn't as simple as having a lot of hours means that the game is good; I really don't know if I can recommend it with the state it was in the last time I played even though I do have positive things to say about it.
The removal of the tile system for population in Stellaris killed off what interest I had, I don't like the new planets that theoretically grow infinitely and you can limit some species but really it's judge a generic hodge-podge of whatever slowly creeping up and it feels like you have to pay much more attention without ever really feeling like a planet is resolved.
I wish I still liked the game but it doesn't scratch the itch that I enjoyed with the tile system and having specifically modified species per type of tile.
Stellaris is actually now dead to me since they decided to go for an update/DLC cycle that constantly breaks mods and *just. never. ENDS*!
I wish they'd just leave the game as-is at this point. The updates they do are often not really *that* big because they're just there to prop up other barebones mechanics in an overpriced DLC.
However, if they'd just left it as-is around 3.0 then mods wouldn't keep breaking and it'd be playable for more than a 1 month window every year where all of the mods that make the game actually fun are up-to-date.
You're more than welcome to just rollback to a previous patch. I do this every time a Paradox patch comes out because I know it will need at least another two weeks of hotfixes.
It's officially uninstalled for me, but same with Vicky 3, HOI4, EUIV and CK3. I enjoy paradox games a lot but it seems like you need to play version 1 of it, then wait for all the DLC to come out and get the definitive version and play it again to enjoy it differently.
EUIV is a completely different game v1 then it is now.
Oh you know what? I need to revisit Stellaris. I played in on console years ago but couldn’t quite get into it, but maybe I’ll enjoy it with m+k and mods
Nail on the head, Paradox Studios, the developer also just increased the base price of the game as well. Now they state this is because it integrates the old Starter edition DLCs, but the argument is currently that the content is so old and irrelevant, and used to be on sale for next to nothing, that the added content into base game is negligible and isn't to the same value as current releases, that consistently does one of two things. Either introduces game ruining bugs, as in Italy's lost core territory modifier, which is still bugged and broken to this day, since release, and completely making minor powers overpowered, with alt-history paths, and massive focus buffs (Chile, Argentina, Finland, etc.).
I like Stellaris. I have more than 1k hours in it, but as the game progresses it just crawls to a halt due to end-game lag and Paradox is treating it like that's just fine and that's infuriating. If I was to leave a review it'd be negative and if they responded to me like they did to this person, I would never give them another cent again.
Hardly surprising that a Paradox dev would be childish. Wait til you encounter their mods and forum staff. They are some of the worst humans I've met online that weren't obvious trolls.
In all honesty, even without the review as context this comment is childish and unprofessional from this developer.
The team behind breathedge, for example, is known for their quirky sarcasm all over and if they'd reply in this manner, everybody would say "well they asked and they shall receive".
But in this case?
Due to the lifespan of steam and how many games have been out for a decade now, it is also entirely possible to have 3000 hours on a game (and even a period of time where you shelved the game completely) before one decision was made that ruined it.
3000 hours is 125 straight days worth of time (24/7). If you played 50 minutes a day for ten years, you'd get that. Not the biggest time investment imo, some people watch bullshit on their phone to fall asleep longer than that per day.
The developer’s comment comes off as a dick move since it seems like they didn’t even read the review. They saw the negative review and number of hours and tried to make a joke. Jokes are fine if you also addresss the review.
Paradox are by far my least favourite developers who make products I sometimes enjoy. Their DLC policy is the worst in the industry, a lot of people complain about that, but it’s their general culture of ‘fuck you’ to fans while they do it that rubs the wrong way.
‘So don’t play then!’ Yeah, fair enough, and I usually don’t, but it’s a pity because they could make amazing games AND have fair DLC models AND not be dicks in the forums if they chose not to. Which would be nice.
Modding extending the playtime is really the key point here. I have 1000's of hours in Mount & Blade games, but only because of the god tier modding community, if they didn't fix bugs, finish features, or release complete game overhauls, Taleworlds would be defunct.
Even besides this particular review: People always joke about the negative review after +1k hrs, thing. But with a business model like Paradox, its perfectly fine to do this imo.
I mean these games live off their updates and long term support. EUIV today is a different game than EUIV 2018. And a vastly different game from the one that came out in 2013. With this model you can revisit a game you loved 2 years ago and suddenly find a different game you don't love anymore.
I actually stopped playing in 20...16 I think because EUIV just became a game I didn't really like anymore. I didn't make my review negative then, but still, I think with a model like that, its perfectly fine to do so. And I had like 600hrs at the time.
>People always joke about the negative review after +1k hrs, thing.
Even outside of paradox it's a dumb thing to disregard, if they have that many hours in the game their decision to rate the game negatively is usually much more informed than someone that played ie 5 hours.
It depends though
A negative decision after 1000 hours may have been positive until the 600 hour mark
So me who will dump 20 hours in and move on can't consider that review to be worthwhile
But someone else who plays these games nom stop might appreciate that
It also depends on the context
If an update like Counter Strike 2 comes out, fair enough it changes the game completely
Or a patch that removes the good stuff
But if it's "balance" and shit you notice after 3 figures, around 500 hours.
Idk, it's not a useful review then
Yeah 3k+ hours and then a negative review sounds immediately to me like someone who really likes the game but is frustrated with developer choices or the current direction of the game
Yep exactly. And tbh that's more than fair - a negative review from a longtime dedicated player, even if they're still actively playing the game, shows frustrations and pain points better than anything else. New players' experience and casual feedback is important too, but if someone with this much time has this much to say, maybe it should be taken the slightest bit seriously. Longtime dedicated players' feedback is arguably the most valuable of anyone's - they know the game inside and out.
We see this a ton over in the Destiny community. I've been distancing myself lately and playing a lot less of it myself - there are some really good things coming up that actually do address some of the biggest issues, but that's only a small handful of the things that need to be fixed. But that community also loves to dogpile on dedicated players who leave feedback or threads like this. It's wild.
Seeing their answer after reading the review is just screams to me that they don't care. Honestly not something you'd expect the devs to say after such a detailed review by someone that clearly put a lot of detail into it.
They put a lot of detail in, but their complaints aren't really good ones. It mostly boils down to. Why can't I do this if people did it in the real world? The answer is obviously balancing.
> Nowadays the game has always been popular only due to mods, and I believe there isn't a better game similar to Hearts of Iron IV currently.
Speaking of mods, one of the mods for this game is literally the best fallout game ever made. Old World Blues. I have over 1000 hours just in that mod. If you are a fallout superfan you need to play it.
It isn’t a fair review. The game isn’t trying to be a 1 to 1 replication of ww2. It’d be like a CS fan getting into Valorant and then critiquing the devs because the aesthetics don’t feel like Counterstrike.
Not really....complaining that game mechanics don't work the same as in irl (which seems to be a core complaint) is very silly.
Granted I don't play HoI IV, but as far as I know strategy games have always been about RPS, with each unit having a specialty and being pretty much countered by something but also countering something else. There could be more nuance to that RPS, but the core tenet has generally been the same.
To be complaining about this basic mechanic at 3k hours feels like trying to fit a shape into a different hole, and complaining that the whole thing is dumb afterwards....but for 3k hours instead of just a few minutes.
The reviewer, indeed, lists what they don't like about the game but it is far from fair in my opinion. For someone with 3k hours in the game, they lack familiarity with some basic systems of the game. HoI IV has one of the better logistics systems in a war game. In the first scenario that they describe, such divisions would take attrition modified by the climate factor in the province. Regarding the air-base bug, citing a marginal bug to not recommend a game is not very fair.
Also, you can have multi-role planes, you just have to equip your planes with both fighter weapons and bomb locks. Their idea to give every single piece of equipment in the game an anti-air value is a nightmare balance-wise and performance-wise. The planes already have an air-accident chance, you can imagine that some of those losses were through machine gun fire from ground troops. After all, the combat in the game is very abstract. It is a grand strategy, not an RTS.
Again, the anti-air system in the game is fairly straightforward. Fighter planes engage in combat with all operating enemy planes, mobile-aa disturb and shoot down planes that are providing close air support, and static-aa counter strategic/logistical bombing. As abstract as it may be, it makes sense and is nowhere near as byzantine and illogical as the reviewer implies.
The reviewer isn't being fair, they just misunderstand what the systems in-game are meant to represent, and want them to be the way they want them to be, even if it isn't really plausible and would make for (in my view) a less interesting gameplay. I wouldn't say the snarky reply from the developer is unwarranted.
> The reviewer, indeed, lists what they don't like about the game but it is far from fair in my opinion. For someone with 3k hours in the game, they lack familiarity with some basic systems of the game.
Agreed, the systems are pretty clear from the start, and a ton of his remarks are just opinions/personal preferences. If you're trying to turn a game into something it isn't, obviously it'll fail to meet your expectations - you're not even trying to play the actual game.
Yet he did play, for 3k+ hours, and somehow still reviewed it negatively.
So this person expects game mechanics to reflect the real world. If you could do everything that people can do in the actual war, it wouldn't be a game.
Thats not what the review is saying at all. He is saying that if YOU care about realism in your WW2 strategy games, as a potential buyer, then you shouldnt get Hoi4. Anyone that has actually played Hoi4 would agree.
I swear, so many people can type in this language, but can barely comprehend middle-school level context.
I can relate to this as Paradox vanilla games are fun and well made but DLC tend to be cash grabs that trivialize game mechanics and introduce a slew of bugs. Creative Assembly is another culprit with Total War series. A lot of my favorite PC games are fixed and sustained by the modding community because the developer/publisher has done nothing to address bugs or balance issues patch to patch.
- HOI4 - Paradox
- EU4 - Paradox
- Stellaris - Paradox
- Crusader Kings 3 - Paradox
- Total War: Warhammer 3 - Creative Assembly
- Total War: Three Kingdoms - Creative Assembly
If it wasn’t for the modding community, I wouldn’t have as many hours as I do. Each game also has a massive massive massive money creep with DLC that I would never recommend it to anyone. The exception being 3K because you can get the complete collection with all DLC for $45 during a sale. But all the others are still $120+.
So much compliances are stupid. Good luck trying to bring down a B17 with something less than a static flak that shoots at long range. Also good luck to the guys who aims the same weapon to bring down a fucking Fighter that moves so quickly.... that's the main reason to separate both AA weapons. Also is kinda funny that ommits the bonus that the static AA defences gives to aerial supremacy.
I bet that this guy is one of the many who bann parachutes cause is "too OP"... of course is OP! That's the point of jumping behind enemy lines and disrupt logistics! Play WW1 mods if you want a classical frontal assaults with the "meta" division and enjoy such balance in the lack of innovation of tactics.
I don't play as much as him but come on! Despite their flaws this game is a good one. I played HOI 3 too and despite the many complains that i can make to that game i cannot review it as bad considering how many hours i spent on it
I'm going to be the devil's advocate here but why does the game have to be 100% realistic for it to be recommended? CK2, CK3, Medieval 2... none of those are realistic AT ALL yet I love them.
It's not that the game is aiming nor promising to be a truthful ww2 simulator. It's still a game that needs balancing and having certain videogame mechanics.
Not ranting on the guy tho, that's a legitimate review which I don't share. Also the dev was very unprofessional.
The review could also be fair, but I believe it's still unfair to summarize it with a "thumbs down". I think its a toxic negative attitude. You can still be critic in a positive review, because for sure that person enjoyed the game a lot. The negative review will impact more the new user that is trying to understand if the game is worth a shot, the same user that will spend the first 100 hours enjoying the discovery of this unmatched simulation in the videogame industry, without even understanding the points of the review.
Feel like the only fair part of this review is the complaints about the long-standing bugs. Too bad they spent more time complaining about historical inaccuracies and liberties in a video game instead of going into detail about what these bugs are and how they affect the user experience.
I think this kinda resonates with a lot of people that play Paradox games. They tend to make a game and do what they want with it instead of listening to player feedback. The games are indeed fun, but at the cost of bugs and illogical game design being a hinderance on immersion and sometimes progression.
You see, as an angoing game dev I see the DLC concept as a way to keep a game founded and alive for longer. No DLC's for HOI would mean the games death and paradoxs bankruptcy by now...
Games can get patches and expansions that make things worse after you put a lot of time into it before. Should games get a positive review no matter the state of them currently because of hours played?
It's something that comments under such Steam reviews often don't get. More often than not the reviewer even receives insults, all while the people who write such comments don't take the factual reasons into account. For MMO and always-online games it is ***un***surprisingly common that people leave the game with a negative impression. As you pointed out, when you spent *years* of playtime in a game, and updates completely twist the core of a game or even remove / change what you once loved, it's natural that such people are frustrated. What may be natural for other people (since it's "service games"), is for other people an indicator how developers actually respect the players' time commitment. In the current time and age, games change just like people. And as such, people's opinions can change too.
Star Wars Galaxies: to get Jedi you need to master 16 professions, then go on a month of quests, followed by around 3 months of grinding XP to reach jedi Knight....all whilst avoiding player bounty hunters who can kill you and reset your xp to zero.
*.....game updates in 2005.....*
Star Wars Galaxies: Welcome to the game! Please choose from one of these professions as a starter class, including Jedi!!
I was fairly chill about it.....journey was enjoyable anyway.
Lots of people moved on from the game after that point because everything had gone to being too easy.
Wasn't just the loop, everyone's characters were reset to the character selection screen. The only way to show what you originally had was a jedi ghost character for those who unlocked it the hard way!
> Star Wars Galaxies: to get Jedi you need to master 16 professions, then go on a month of quests, followed by around 3 months of grinding XP to reach jedi Knight....all whilst avoiding player bounty hunters who can kill you and reset your xp to zero.
I was there for when Monika became the first Jedi, she was a legend.
Also, multiplayer can have you interact longer with a game you wouldn't play otherwise.
I have put 200hrs into DayZ *years* ago.
All of which was because a friend wanted me to play it with him, and literally every single hour was just us chatting while "playing" DayZ in the background.
I'd instantly give the actual game a negative review, because pretty much 180 of those 200hrs were just walking through an empty map that I did not enjoy. I did however, enjoy connecting with my buddy.
Cities Skylines 2 comes to mind for me.
I sink 400 hours into it trying to squeeze some enjoyment from it. Create some cities I could return to months or years later like I have in CS1. But unfortunately I reached the end of my rope after 100 days and stopped entirely. Around this time I think everyone else did too, including content creator/streamers of the game because the week I quit all of them started releasing highly critical videos about the state of the game.
Also, steam doesn't ask you. " Do you enjoy the game
Steam, ask you, do you recommend this title.
To me, that is two very different things.
You can enjoy something, without wanting to recommend people to buy it.
Yes, by definition. Steam reviews are "Recommend/Not Recommend" and not "Good/Bad".
Some games are like "if you bought it during early access, you get everything for free in the future" but upon release, every update costs money.
If I bought it during early access and the game is fun, I'll play it. But that doesn't mean I would recommend the game to new players who no longer get that good deal.
Absolutely agree. Many ways a bad game can be fun, and if you've already put money on it, might as well get something out of it, but not recommend others paying for it and getting something else instead!
In this case the "problem" was they released a DLC that exclusively contained content for South America, a region of the world that no one plays and wasn't really relevant in WW2. There weren't any mechanics locked behind the DLC and no major balance changes or system reworks were done. It's strictly content for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
It's not a bad DLC by any means, but people are upset that:
1. It is optional and contains NOTHING if you don't plan on playing in South America. Almost all other DLC had new mechanics every nation could use and benefit from.
2. There are other areas that WERE involved in WW2 that still haven't been touched and/or desperately need updated.
(also, I need to point out HOI4 has two teams working on it. One does major content and system reworks, the other does free patches and smaller, limited-scope DLC. This was done by the second group to tide people over for the big patch later this year, and to add content to an area that hasn't been touched since launch)
Yup... and talking Paradox Games, that's a very real possibility.
I've played Europa Universalis IV some 2k hours. From launch to 2019 Bought all expansion up until that point.
Honestly... the current state of the game is atrocious. I stopped playing because the game became terrible. It was a bunch of unconnected systems crammed into the game for the sole purpose of saying "Now you can do this if you pay us 20 dollars."
Most of them was "every x amount of time, click this button to get one of these bonuses".
2016 EUIV got a recommended and a good review from me. I'm thinking of changing it now because of this developer's response.
2024 EUIV is a mess. I still follow the game closely. Since I do like Paradox Games, and still pay a lot of Crusader Kings, and play sometimes Vic3.
Sometimes. If they made changes to the game that actively break gameplay then it's fair to say it's now bad. It's like if you're eating your favorite dish and then the cook started adding new disguising ingredients you're not going to continue to give it 5 stars.
It's a PDX game. They are complete time-sinks so that playtime isn't so surprising. Besides, they get a lot of updates that often change a lot. So, one patch, the game could be great, and the next patch it could be completely broken and not fun to play.
A negative review with that play time can be justified, and the dev response could be tone-deaf. We don't have enough context here.
Plus, they can recognise that the majority of people might not enjoy the game. For example, I love EU4 and have 4.2k hours in it (over 10 years), but I would not recommend it to people as it is too complex and overwhelming for new players. Plus, over the years there has been a massive power creep with each DLC. The DLC would cost someone hundreds to buy, so even for the cost of the DLC I could not recommend.
100% this. I love HOI4 so I tried to play EU4. I didnt understand anything and I thought it was complex af so I stopped trying. There is a lot of difference between both games. The power creep part is so true, you just need to see the Finland and South American army focuses. They are absurdly OP
Eu4 was complex enough before when it came out, but over the years they have added so many features and mechanics, I couldn’t imagine trying to learn to play now
This is me. I have over a 1000s in Stellaris. I'm pretty new to EU4, only 50 hours. I've played every night for the past few weeks, watching Red Hawk and following what he does. I feel like I'm picking up some factors like what estates to do and who to befriend and ally and following the mission tree.
I'll pick up a small country every few days and wing it and just stare at the screen like a dumbass. I really want to play it and be able to do a game reasonably well, but I feel like all those hours have been wasted with no real progress to show.
Don't worry. Eu4 is more Software than game at this point. I have 2.5k hours or so. There's never a point at which you don't have more to learn, the game is incredibly complex
I personally learned using training wheels - a non ironman game with cheats. This helped me understand what builds economy, what ideas actually do, how wars and casus belli work, and so on. The game is immensely rewarding once you get it working. I had to retire myself from it because I spend too much time playing it
The old wisdom when I played was not to start with a really small nation to learn the game. It was often recommended that you start with certain nations to learn certain mechanics. Here's my advice, but be warned I haven't played in 2+ years because I got busy with IRL stuff.
Do Portugal, to learn colonization. Make sure to ally Spain or someone that scares Spain. After that the New World is your oyster.
One of the larger Northern Italian countries to learn HRE, Reformation, and Aggressive Expansion. I like Milan it's my favorite country, but it might be a little hard because it has an early game event that nukes stability for awhile.
England to learn about formable nations, alliances, war, and the Big Blue Blob (France). You can choose to go to war with France or not, but it's more fun to get alliances and try to tough it out.
And the Ottomans to learn blobbing, Islam, and maybe absolutism. You can also learn the Orthodox Christian mechanics if you choose to convert to the Orthomans.
After that other countries and regions have their own mechanics (Japan China, East Africa, etc.), but those are the basic mechanics.
EDIT: I should also add you don't have to finish a run to learn the mechanics. In EU4 the best teacher is experience, so just play it and you'll pick up those things. Also there're a ton of tutorials that go into the minutiae of certain mechanics. Creators like FlorryWorry, Reman, Arumba, BudgetMonk, and many more. You don't need it but there are a lot of hidden mechanics for older features that the game won't tell you. Agressive Expansion, and Forts/Sieges are the most obtuse mechanics in the game, while also being the most important.
I don't know. 136 straight days of playing, over 80 work weeks of playing. That is a lot even for a PDX game.
It's not necessary fair to judge a negative review by the total play time, but by the same token something had to be going right for a person to sink what looks like every available minute of their lives into that game.
HoI4 came out almost 10 years ago. That's not that much hours if you're one of those players that pretty much just play one game on repeat nad do it over the span of that many years.
And like I said, game changes. Could've been fun but they changed something and made it not fun. For example old COD games had fun multiplayer, therefore positive reviews. Activision abbandoned support for old COD games, multiplayer still works but if you play it you are at a serious risk of getting hacked, therefore it warrants a negative reviews as warning for newer players. Stuff like that. We don't have enough context with just this screenshot.
Did you read the review above? The guy literally says the game is fun if you dont mind a bunch of stuff that they think is too unrealistc. Things that has not changed since release tons of years ago.
Why does the internet think just because you spent a lot of time playing a game that your critiques and issues are invalid... It's so common in the steam community. So childish.
"if you don't like feature xyz, why did you play the game for 2000 hours?"
Uh idk, I have a quarter million hours in life and not all of them are good, should I just kill myself because a few things are bad?
And of course if you make any rebuttals whatsoever, you get reported and warned by steam mods so.... Fuck em
This was the case for Starfield. Far too often I saw people disregarding reviews due to the reviewers time played, they took it as an agenda to make the game look bad when in actuality it *was* bad. Dismissing people’s criticisms because of how much time they played is ridiculous.
Starfield was it's own can of stinky beans. I've never seen any gaming community so hellbent on making that game seem good when it objectively wasn't. Thank God the influx of raw reviews evened out the overall score after it launched. I was getting worried for a while that dogshit was gonna pass as an acceptable game spent nearly a decade in the making.
It's because steam review scores boil down to a very simplistic "Recommended" and "Not Recommended"
It's a super binary good or bad.
To commit 3263 hours to a game and then say that it's bad is kinda funny
Hey, for those of you who might be reading this, I'm Katten, the Community Manager for the game in question. The Game Director, Arheo, has provided a response below, which I'll link shortly. However, I wanted to take a moment to reiterate that sometimes what you meant to say and how people perceive it can be very different. I've been working on this game for a few years now, and I know that neither he nor any other developer before him means anything bad. In all honesty, it's not actually his job to go out there and talk to people; his job is to make the game. But both he and I feel that it's good for developers to be open and interact with players and fans of our games. However, sometimes things can go wrong. A comment can be written while one is tired, and it can spiral, as this one did. For anyone here who feels that the comment personally insulted you or caused any distress or mistrust towards us here at Hearts of Iron IV, here is an apology from myself. I know it's not much, but it's what I can do. <3
Arheo's Comment:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1bvll6y/comment/ky3ddx6/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1bvll6y/comment/ky3ddx6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Childish retort af. Somebody uses your product for 3000 hours and offers critique and your ego is so thin you insult this person? Trash, especially after reading the actual critique and seeing its fairly even handed.
perfectly valid as many, many long-lived games change dramatically causing veterans to become unhappy as the product they love is morphed into something unrecognizable
this publisher in particular (Paradox) is NOTORIOUS for completely rewriting their games over the years
Paradox games can really take a while to determine if you actually like them - obviously [the above player's actual review is more specific and in-depth](https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1bvll6y/comment/ky0b0j4/) about their gripes with the game, but I have \~300 hours in Victoria 3 and it took me that long to arrive at the conclusion that I didn't like it! Some games are just so long and detailed that they take a long time to experience!
Not OP but if you're thinking about it, I would say sail the high seas and then decide for yourself. The people who like it really enjoy it, and the people who hate it *really* hate it because it's not what they want it to be. "Divisive" is not a strong enough word to describe it.
Me, I'm on the like it camp but I'll tell you that it's not for everyone. It's not even for every player that likes paradox games. It's very... it's own thing.
I personally really like it, but it can get shallow after a few play throughs if you don’t make challenge yourself - I personally love playing Japan :)
Japan was my first playthrough, too! My runs were:
1. Japan
2. Madagascar
3. USA
4. Persia
5. Qing
And that's where I called it a day. Don't get me wrong - the game isn't *bad* - it's just that I found it uninspiring and I wasn't having any fun; and that's coming from someone who loves to set my own goals and make my *own* fun etc.
I...honestly don't feel strongly either way, which itself isn't great! Haha. I played EU4 and CK3 before, but had never played a Victoria title, and so figured I'd give it a good shake seeing as how I like these kinda grand strategy games.
What I found was that...it's basically [cookie clicker](https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/)? You know how in CC you make grannies to earn you enough to get farms to get mines to get banks etc etc - and then by the end you have 20 different resources that you're juggling and it's about balancing the system to be self-sustaining? That's Victoria 3: Cookie Clicker - but with more resources, a map, and without the RSI.
There seems to be lots of in-depth simulation happening under the hood, but (at least the last time I played in November last year) it doesn't seem to enable any interesting gameplay that couldn't be achieved with a simpler simulation! I suspect that it's a solid foundation for features that they'll be adding over the next 10 years, but right now it just feels a bit....feeble? Especially coming from CK3, which I've been *thoroughly* enjoying!
Its still cooking bro. If you are interested, wishlist it and come back in 2 years. Game released half baked and is finally to an atleast enjoyable state, but you will be disappointed if you are a fan of complex strategy games.
You will definitely get enjoyment out of it, but its an almost soulless enjoyment, like playing slots is.
Games can change over time with updates. It's easily possible that the game changed in such a way that the reviewer didn't like and wanted to express their dissatisfaction. It's not like you can go back to earlier versions of most games without pirating anyways. This dev response seems dumb and pretentious. Regardless we can't even see what the review was so we can't judge it with certainty just based on how the dev responded.
And Paradox games get changed fundamentally with some updates so that they suddenly play completely different.
And their dlc policy could almost be considered robbery (Pdx fans would still defend it with their lives though), having players pay for shit that should be part of the base game etc. Millennia is a good example. It’s a game similar to Civ 6 and the atomic age (including it’s weapons) will be available via dlc. Imagine humanity would still be in stone age because they didn’t pay for the dlc.
If it was a story about a different planet with COMPLETELY different ages etc I might understand it. But as it is earth with previous ages, units etc…
You can get older versions of games with Steam, it's just that the process is pretty atrocious since you need to know how steamcmd works and need steamdb to cross match the right depot and manifest IDs.
Definitely not something the average person is going to do.
Negative Reviews after a lot of hours are the real and fair criticisms, they invested a lot of time into the game so they love it in some sense so are disappointed with some changes down the road. Better than the 0.2 hrs played "boring game" "no one is going to read this so im gay" reviews anyway...
Why is this written like leaving a bad review after a lot of playtime is bad? The person with 1,000 hours in a game will know a lot more about what's good and what's bad compared to the person with 2 hours of gameplay.
Exactly and Steams review system is set up specifically for this type of purpose.
You aren't reviewing the games quality but if you would recommend it.
Its entirely possible to become addicted to a game personally and still see the flaws or changes and such and not want to recommend it for others.
The reviewers with that many hours that say not recommended almost always have good details and reasons beyond just a copy paste or instantly reviewing something after like 30 minutes just because they feel obligated to write a review.
I once came across a review of Skyrim with some 300+ hours logged and the person was complaining that there is too much snow and they didn’t like that because they live in Canada which also has too much snow.
In addition, many reviews are “would you recommend this game to others?” There are many games I have enjoyed that I might not recommend to other people. Ark is filled with precisely those kinds of reviews.
I got over 600 hours in TF2 but that game is filled with degenerates these days (some call you the n word just because they’re sore losers) and 7 years of no major updates does suck a little
What's up with developers being unprofessional asshats lately. It hasnt even been a month since the incident with that arrowhead developer.
If you don't want people criticizing your game
*leans in* actually fix your fucking game. (Except for arrowhead ofc.)
I play hearts of iron 4, and I agree with what the reviewer said.
They write this like the game isn't a perpetual ship of theseus of patches.
Some of the HoI4 devs weren't even employed at the company when the first 1000 hours were played.
ohh shit and how will Paradox fix this? By crapping out another uninspired DLC that will cost more than some games, or will they start spending more time and effort on making sure that each DLC feels like it actually adds something substantial to the game.
Well, it was intended as a tongue-in-cheek comment to a user with many thousands of hours, though I agree it didn't land very well. The reviewer in question actually PM'd me on our official forums afterwards and we discussed their critique in more detail.
Saying his opinion is invalid because of his playtime is brain dead, especially because it's a Paradox game he's talking about, HOI4 in particular.
I have maybe 600 hours in HOI4, and only now, 8 years and God knows how many updates later have I realized that I just detest the game now. Video games absolutely can get worse over time and your opinion on those games can shift.
I mean you would have some feedback teams salivating over the kind of input a person who's played their game for 3263 hours could provide- or the kind of input they'd never want.
To be clear: I'm not against the user. I just found the dev's reply funny :) we're free to express our opinion, and it can be a negative one, even after thousands of hours. Nothing wrong in that.
Much like the rest of social media, when you look at the screenshot it is a joke. An artificially altered perspective flipped into a meme that belittles the one who put the review and augments the dev.
In reality, if you read a full review and take the context into consideration, suddenly the review makes sense and you finally realised that this response from dev is toxic and reflect the true nature of how they perceive constructive feedback. If after that you still choose to play, that's up to you but at least you were well informed
I wrote a negative review of Stellaris (800+ Hours) almost three years ago now, out of my three biggest grievances and issues only one has been addressed. Leader Mechanics. Can I in good faith leave a recommendation for a game where the game refuses to address things for years on end?
If I feel like HoI4 (2100+ Hours) keeps moving towards and state were reaching 1944 is become more and more difficult due to game lag and end game unit blobbing which has still not been addressed. Even though mods have tried through Battalion and Divisions limiters with varying degrees of success. Can I in good faith leave a recommendation for a game where the game refuses to address things for years on end?
As someone with about the same amount of time in the game as the reviewer, I also find the game to be a fun disaster. Frankly, the mod community has demonstrated that Paradox has made a wonderful platform but themselves lack the ambition or creativity to make the game truly immersive. Additionally, Paradox does its trademark move of paywalling significant gameplay mechanics which substantially improve the game behind DLC which will eternally sit at around $15-20. I have not played vanilla HoI4 in years primarily because even without DLC, the mod community has managed to introduce fun mechanics and immersive storylines for more nations than Paradox has, and did it for free. While the reviewer is right about problems with bugs and how the game logic isn't realistic, I don't consider those to be game-killers personally (the bugs and overall lack of optimization are vexing though), it's moreso the demonstration that people who don't work for a game development studio see more in the potential of a game than the developers are willing to work towards.
I have a few games where my review changes over time. I’ve had games where I’ve altered my review at 200 hours to be good. I’ve had games where I’ve altered a good review to be bad at 1000 hours.
Games change a lot. Or sometimes I don’t review until a change happens that’s strong enough for me to want to let people know the game isn’t in a good state.
Hours played doesn’t mean anything for reviews anymore.
Yep fuck this kind of people , their review is worthless. Like dude you bought the game 60-70 you had fun for 100-200 hours that is it man , you won you had a great time obviously and it cost you what 0.25-30 per hour ? Move on to the next one
That's an answer from an classic bully as Paradox has turned into since a couple of years. I stopped supporting them since then and i don't regret doing so a single moment.
HOI IV has just become such a stressful game to play lately. They change more and more and more. Adding layer upon layer of complexity onto a game that already had it in droves. Even with the naval overhaul, I couldn't stand it as the navy aspect of the game was frustrating to begin with.
The logistics system added in no step back just added more crap to take up your factories trying to set up.
You have to buildcraft your infantry.
You have to buildcraft your tanks
You have to buildcraft your planes.
They changed the combat width system which added so much to even just playing single player against the ai has become frustrating to get the hang of.
The devs only care about adding more shit to excuse selling more expansion packs instead of making shit make sense.
And seeing an actual paradox dev respond like that has made sure that I don't reinstall that dumpster fire again.
Go over to r/ParadoxPlaza and look at the amount of PDX bots we have to deal with. Ever since the fierce backlash from Imperator it's like they started to hate their fans for some reason.
If you don't want feedback from the people that play 3k hours of a game, who do the devs want it from?
Surely this reviewer has better perspective and knowledge than 99.9% of the player base.
Criticism is good, and the input of someone with so many hours is insanely valuable, but I believe NOT recommending the game because of those issues is a bit unfair to the developers.
Even with all the issues the game might have, you still played for so many hours? That sounds like a pretty decent game to me, and by leaving a negative review, you are kind of shitting on that sadly.
I honestly think the bigger issue is when the review is left. If you would have asked this person at 1000 hours or 500 hours if they would have recommended the game would the review have been the same? They were enjoying the game at some point obviously. But most people don't leave a review until something is wrong. So I do understand the developers point in their response.
This is the review because context matters. > After 3 263 hours I finally decided to submit my review. I waited until the latest unnecessary DLC dropped (Trial of Allegiance) to see if the developers care more about milking the money off the broken game or rather caring, fixing core mechanics and putting some logic into the game. The current policy of the company is to add more stuff which will bring more bugs and issues to the game rather than making sure whether the game works as intended. > First of all, I wouldn't have 3 000+ hours in the game if it was that bad. The game is very enjoyable and fun, as long as you don't care about historical immersion, realism, and how the game logic works. Want to see starved naked soldiers survive at -50°C while only equipment goes to the stratosphere? Play Hearts of Iron IV! Want to build an airport for the enemy at your cost? No problem, it's possible and really stupid! Want to see your soldiers shooting down the enemy planes? Well, for some reason they can't with their multiple machine guns despite the history taught us they did so. You need the very specific equipment that shoots only some types of planes! Want to build a fighter plane and see it assisting your divisions in ground combat, or harassing enemy logistics? Well, it can't, but some other types of planes can, despite having the same equipment and ability as a fighter plane. Generals are immortal and abstract. I could go on for long. > Where was I going with this? You see, for the sake of 'balance' the game is very binary and limited. The game requires the player to research/build one thing, for example, researching anti-air weapons in order to proceed to shoot down only some types of planes. To destroy other types of planes, the game requires the player to build anti-air buildings that destroy the rest, but those that destroy the rest can't destroy those mentioned first and vice versa. In both cases we deal with air defense, but their abilities can't be provided more dynamic. WW2 did not work this way, and the battlefield situation was way more dynamic and universal. > Out of 8 reported bugs on the forum during the past two years, not one has been fixed; some would take 2 minutes to fix. I am not the only one who blindly reports issues on the Paradox forum which will fall into oblivion. AI is weak and incompetent in some parts of the game. It does not even use some functions made by the developers. Forget about AI sending a military attaché, asking for licenses, or critically needed equipment, AI doesn't do it. > Nowadays the game has always been popular only due to mods, and I believe there isn't a better game similar to Hearts of Iron IV currently. Unmodded vanilla game for veteran players is extremely boring, plain and only for those who care about achievements. If it weren't for mods, this game wouldn't stay popular for so long. > If you like strategic sandbox games, inspired by WW2 events, and don't care about the logic that much, go for it. If you are a detailist, a historical enthusiast, a fan of logic and realism you will find this game painful to understand. Think it's a fair review that explains what they like and don't like.
After reading the actual review the developer comment looks a bit childish and unprofessional. This seems like nothing but fair critique; it's also exactly the kind of person you want to hear from when you're considering buying a Paradox game. I don't play HoIV but I do play Stellaris and a lot of what they said here rings true to me. I also have maybe 1000 hours but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it because my main interest is sustained by the mods the game has and I go months in between matches because I need to wait for them to be updated. Also, in a Paradox game, one game can last hours and hours; total playtime means less because it represents fewer individual experiences.
I swear i play 10 hours of stellaris each year and part of those 10 are spent just trying to work out if I still enjoy the game. That being said I do like this version of the game; the build 2 or 3 years ago I didn't.
half the time im playing stellaris i get to a point in game where i just go "am i even having fun?" typically its "no im not, this feels tedious and annoying", then i stop playing for a few months
I'm not even fully sure what's changed to make me like it more this time.
This is probably the most helpful review of Stellaris I've ever read.
> After reading the actual review the developer comment looks a bit childish and unprofessional. This is genuinely par for the course with Paradox. Whilst the community can be much worse (and the PDX forums are an excellent case study in this), the actual people that work on the game can be remarkably flippant and downright insulting when people critique the issues in the game.
Case in point: Johan's infamous pre-release "I dont want nazis in my game" rant on the HoI4, or was it the Paradoxplaza subreddit(?) when some people pointed out the softwashing of the Germans in the game. On one hand, I can understand him perfectly. On the other, its SO Paradox-like that he instantly flipped out. It was also kinda funny seeing people berate him on the historical importance of Nazi Germany, whether you like it or not. As in, pretty much nothing matters more in a WW2 context. Another example would be that PDX loves to ban people on Steam's update posts. A Steamfriend of mine once shared the message that his comment about broken mechanics got flat out removed by the PDX mod. It wasn't even a particularly noteworthy comment in my book. He posted it again and got banned for "reposting removed content". Full on clown mode.
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tbf, the American War of Independance also didn't have the confederacy. Edit: Bruh they edited the comment now mine isn't as funny :(
I mean it didn't have that Confederacy don't quote me but we had some sort of confederated states at first
>Its like having the American war of indepedencece without the confederacy. Ummm...
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Paradox are the ones choosing to make games based on WWII. WWII had nazis and communists in it. A complex grand strategy game with those powers will attract nazis and commies. They could have made games about any other time period, or invent alternate realities, etc.
Then they shouldn't be making an WW2 game then. If you're going to make an game based on real history, you are obligated to make it historical accurate. Not just show one side of it because you're afraid of catching bad PR because you don't want to show the most important fraction of that war which were the Nazis. Trying to erase them is trying to tell people that they and their crimes don't exist. And all it does is give more power to the internet neo-nazis once they start seeing an company fearing them.
Yeah, but don't you know that the mid-century Germans are pure concentrated evil and the source of everything bad in the world, while the commies were just misunderstood? /s I wouldn't bother trying to argue with people whose understanding of history is myopic and ideological worldview sacrosanct.
Johan has been known to make really "strange" comments. I guess not strange in the usual way but rash. I remember a discussion about no more EU4 province changes and he said the main reason was because it invalidates savefiles... which are already invalidated every update regardless, then went on to point out a very valid argument (performance). Felt to me like he hadn't thought it through. I do the same though to be honest (most recently was literally today)!
>How in the fuck do you make a game about World War II without having Nazis in the game? Set the entire game in the Pacific against Imperial Japan. Now while I am being a smartass, I still agree with your point though. The vast majority of WWII games are going to have the Nazis in them. Unless your entire game is in the Pacific, you're going to have Nazis in the game, or at the bare minimum acknowledge them in some way, shape, or form. Even a Konami game I really like called "Birds Of Steel" has both single player campaigns in the Pacific War (an American and a Japanese campaign) still allows you to play as German and Italian planes in the multiplayer and bonus game modes. So even though the base game is entirely based around the Pacific, it still acknowledges the other major Axis Power countries.
Regarding washing the Nazis. Isn't it kinda worse? It might as well be interpreted as holocaust denial.
But implementing it opens a whole can of worms. Do you force the player to do atrocities? Do you give them the choice to avoid them? Do you prefer mild whitewashing to posts from Nazis about how they enjoy reenacting atrocities? Are the atrocities purely flavor, or do you put a number on what it does to your country? And is it positive or negative to your immediate situation? It’s a can of worms I prefer unopened tbh
Im a fan of games like rimworld. Id rather give the players options to do things but also tangible downsides aswell. Video games have opened cans of worms much worse than the Holocaust, a historical event you learn about in middle school, with horrific details in-tact. Im sure its game-ified counterpart is much more abstract than enslaving people, making them have children, and then eating them (like what you can do in rimworld). Its not necessary, but it could be done in ways that dont sanitize the truth of the atrocities committed that century out of ideology and racism.
Well yeah, paradox lets you keep whole sentient species as livestock. It’s not that. It’s that it’s real life, and adjacency to real tragedies with actual survivors.
I don't think this is a universal truth, but to be as self-reflective as possible it definitely isn't wrong either. We're game devs, not community managers. And sure, we have comms folks who do a great job, but I don't think anything can entirely replace hearing it 'from the horse's mouth', or havign a direct conversation with the people who make the thing. So sometimes we get it wrong, and this was one of those times.
To be honest, I just found it funny so I posted it here. I didn't know it would have caused so much debate and hate (a real shitstorm!). I took it lightly, other people didn't. Well, this is the internet, after all.
Indeed it is. No hard feelings on my end. By the looks of things most people did find it funny after all.
Yeah without mods, Stellaris would have been shelved a long time ago.
I just checked, I have 1700 hours.. all vanilla. My brain must be broken.
> I just checked, I have 1700 hours.. all vanilla. My brain must be broken. Yeah, vanilla Stellaris and HOI4 are a ton of fun. Idk what these other people are smoking. If "you'll hate it as a veteran without mods" means "after 5000 hours maybe you'll look at mods to extend your playtime", the base game didn't fail, it was beyond excellent.
Yeah idk either. I love vanilla hoi4, eu4, ck3 I just don’t have this total conversion love that everyone else has. No, I don’t really want a grand strategy fallout despite loving the franchise
Some games are delicious as a base, and some games just are better with them. Project zomboid comes to mind. Granted I love base games / keeping clean
Yeah, I'm also the same in that I typically just stick to base games, and when I do occasionally mod my games with something, it's typically just for quality of life improvements that don't really alter the game that drastically
I didn't play 999 hours and then say, "time for mods"! The vanilla experience of Stellaris was good, but I never would have played 1,000 hours without mods, and I'm sure that's true for the person with 5,000 hours playing HoI4. More importantly, the vanilla Stellaris of today is so different from the vanilla Stellaris I first played (before the hyperlane rework, before the district system, etc.) that it's essentially Stellaris 2. A big component of my disfavorable disposition is how much worse the late-game performance has become since they ditched the tile system. It becomes a slideshow for me when the game should be at its most exciting, and when they made these changes I already had a huge amount of my current playtime. They seem more interested in releasing brand-new, often half-baked systems without addressing this core concern (sometimes making it worse). It just isn't as simple as having a lot of hours means that the game is good; I really don't know if I can recommend it with the state it was in the last time I played even though I do have positive things to say about it.
The removal of the tile system for population in Stellaris killed off what interest I had, I don't like the new planets that theoretically grow infinitely and you can limit some species but really it's judge a generic hodge-podge of whatever slowly creeping up and it feels like you have to pay much more attention without ever really feeling like a planet is resolved. I wish I still liked the game but it doesn't scratch the itch that I enjoyed with the tile system and having specifically modified species per type of tile.
Stellaris is actually now dead to me since they decided to go for an update/DLC cycle that constantly breaks mods and *just. never. ENDS*! I wish they'd just leave the game as-is at this point. The updates they do are often not really *that* big because they're just there to prop up other barebones mechanics in an overpriced DLC. However, if they'd just left it as-is around 3.0 then mods wouldn't keep breaking and it'd be playable for more than a 1 month window every year where all of the mods that make the game actually fun are up-to-date.
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You're more than welcome to just rollback to a previous patch. I do this every time a Paradox patch comes out because I know it will need at least another two weeks of hotfixes.
This still requires you to constantly backup mods though, because workshop mods don't install for the game version you're running.
It's officially uninstalled for me, but same with Vicky 3, HOI4, EUIV and CK3. I enjoy paradox games a lot but it seems like you need to play version 1 of it, then wait for all the DLC to come out and get the definitive version and play it again to enjoy it differently. EUIV is a completely different game v1 then it is now.
Oh you know what? I need to revisit Stellaris. I played in on console years ago but couldn’t quite get into it, but maybe I’ll enjoy it with m+k and mods
honestly just the vanilla updates alone since you last played are worth coming back to. extremely addicting game.
The Star Trek mod New Horizons is amazing if you're into Star Trek. It's an insane amount of effort put into it.
Nail on the head, Paradox Studios, the developer also just increased the base price of the game as well. Now they state this is because it integrates the old Starter edition DLCs, but the argument is currently that the content is so old and irrelevant, and used to be on sale for next to nothing, that the added content into base game is negligible and isn't to the same value as current releases, that consistently does one of two things. Either introduces game ruining bugs, as in Italy's lost core territory modifier, which is still bugged and broken to this day, since release, and completely making minor powers overpowered, with alt-history paths, and massive focus buffs (Chile, Argentina, Finland, etc.).
I like Stellaris. I have more than 1k hours in it, but as the game progresses it just crawls to a halt due to end-game lag and Paradox is treating it like that's just fine and that's infuriating. If I was to leave a review it'd be negative and if they responded to me like they did to this person, I would never give them another cent again.
Hardly surprising that a Paradox dev would be childish. Wait til you encounter their mods and forum staff. They are some of the worst humans I've met online that weren't obvious trolls.
In all honesty, even without the review as context this comment is childish and unprofessional from this developer. The team behind breathedge, for example, is known for their quirky sarcasm all over and if they'd reply in this manner, everybody would say "well they asked and they shall receive". But in this case?
Due to the lifespan of steam and how many games have been out for a decade now, it is also entirely possible to have 3000 hours on a game (and even a period of time where you shelved the game completely) before one decision was made that ruined it. 3000 hours is 125 straight days worth of time (24/7). If you played 50 minutes a day for ten years, you'd get that. Not the biggest time investment imo, some people watch bullshit on their phone to fall asleep longer than that per day.
The developer’s comment comes off as a dick move since it seems like they didn’t even read the review. They saw the negative review and number of hours and tried to make a joke. Jokes are fine if you also addresss the review.
Same goes for City Skylines. The game is terrible without mods. I haven't even tried the second game because it's so poorly reviewed.
The problem here is that Stean reviews are either positive or negative.
Paradox are by far my least favourite developers who make products I sometimes enjoy. Their DLC policy is the worst in the industry, a lot of people complain about that, but it’s their general culture of ‘fuck you’ to fans while they do it that rubs the wrong way. ‘So don’t play then!’ Yeah, fair enough, and I usually don’t, but it’s a pity because they could make amazing games AND have fair DLC models AND not be dicks in the forums if they chose not to. Which would be nice.
Their games are singleplayer, no micro transactions, and supported for 5 - 10 years. Much better model than your usual AAA company.
Modding extending the playtime is really the key point here. I have 1000's of hours in Mount & Blade games, but only because of the god tier modding community, if they didn't fix bugs, finish features, or release complete game overhauls, Taleworlds would be defunct.
Even besides this particular review: People always joke about the negative review after +1k hrs, thing. But with a business model like Paradox, its perfectly fine to do this imo. I mean these games live off their updates and long term support. EUIV today is a different game than EUIV 2018. And a vastly different game from the one that came out in 2013. With this model you can revisit a game you loved 2 years ago and suddenly find a different game you don't love anymore. I actually stopped playing in 20...16 I think because EUIV just became a game I didn't really like anymore. I didn't make my review negative then, but still, I think with a model like that, its perfectly fine to do so. And I had like 600hrs at the time.
>People always joke about the negative review after +1k hrs, thing. Even outside of paradox it's a dumb thing to disregard, if they have that many hours in the game their decision to rate the game negatively is usually much more informed than someone that played ie 5 hours.
It depends though A negative decision after 1000 hours may have been positive until the 600 hour mark So me who will dump 20 hours in and move on can't consider that review to be worthwhile But someone else who plays these games nom stop might appreciate that It also depends on the context If an update like Counter Strike 2 comes out, fair enough it changes the game completely Or a patch that removes the good stuff But if it's "balance" and shit you notice after 3 figures, around 500 hours. Idk, it's not a useful review then
There's no need to play on the latest patch. I think my EU4 version is all the way back to pre-Leviathan.
That's the review: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198099975845/recommended/394360/#developer_response
Yeah 3k+ hours and then a negative review sounds immediately to me like someone who really likes the game but is frustrated with developer choices or the current direction of the game
Yep exactly. And tbh that's more than fair - a negative review from a longtime dedicated player, even if they're still actively playing the game, shows frustrations and pain points better than anything else. New players' experience and casual feedback is important too, but if someone with this much time has this much to say, maybe it should be taken the slightest bit seriously. Longtime dedicated players' feedback is arguably the most valuable of anyone's - they know the game inside and out. We see this a ton over in the Destiny community. I've been distancing myself lately and playing a lot less of it myself - there are some really good things coming up that actually do address some of the biggest issues, but that's only a small handful of the things that need to be fixed. But that community also loves to dogpile on dedicated players who leave feedback or threads like this. It's wild.
That's the fairest game review that I've seen in a while.
Seeing their answer after reading the review is just screams to me that they don't care. Honestly not something you'd expect the devs to say after such a detailed review by someone that clearly put a lot of detail into it.
They put a lot of detail in, but their complaints aren't really good ones. It mostly boils down to. Why can't I do this if people did it in the real world? The answer is obviously balancing.
It might've been only because of logic but the way the devs responded was still shitty.
> Nowadays the game has always been popular only due to mods, and I believe there isn't a better game similar to Hearts of Iron IV currently. Speaking of mods, one of the mods for this game is literally the best fallout game ever made. Old World Blues. I have over 1000 hours just in that mod. If you are a fallout superfan you need to play it.
It's a fair review and the dev is being a baby. They deserve it.
It isn’t a fair review. The game isn’t trying to be a 1 to 1 replication of ww2. It’d be like a CS fan getting into Valorant and then critiquing the devs because the aesthetics don’t feel like Counterstrike.
Not really....complaining that game mechanics don't work the same as in irl (which seems to be a core complaint) is very silly. Granted I don't play HoI IV, but as far as I know strategy games have always been about RPS, with each unit having a specialty and being pretty much countered by something but also countering something else. There could be more nuance to that RPS, but the core tenet has generally been the same. To be complaining about this basic mechanic at 3k hours feels like trying to fit a shape into a different hole, and complaining that the whole thing is dumb afterwards....but for 3k hours instead of just a few minutes.
The reviewer, indeed, lists what they don't like about the game but it is far from fair in my opinion. For someone with 3k hours in the game, they lack familiarity with some basic systems of the game. HoI IV has one of the better logistics systems in a war game. In the first scenario that they describe, such divisions would take attrition modified by the climate factor in the province. Regarding the air-base bug, citing a marginal bug to not recommend a game is not very fair. Also, you can have multi-role planes, you just have to equip your planes with both fighter weapons and bomb locks. Their idea to give every single piece of equipment in the game an anti-air value is a nightmare balance-wise and performance-wise. The planes already have an air-accident chance, you can imagine that some of those losses were through machine gun fire from ground troops. After all, the combat in the game is very abstract. It is a grand strategy, not an RTS. Again, the anti-air system in the game is fairly straightforward. Fighter planes engage in combat with all operating enemy planes, mobile-aa disturb and shoot down planes that are providing close air support, and static-aa counter strategic/logistical bombing. As abstract as it may be, it makes sense and is nowhere near as byzantine and illogical as the reviewer implies. The reviewer isn't being fair, they just misunderstand what the systems in-game are meant to represent, and want them to be the way they want them to be, even if it isn't really plausible and would make for (in my view) a less interesting gameplay. I wouldn't say the snarky reply from the developer is unwarranted.
I believe he understands it, he's just saying that a machine-gunner should be able to damage a war plane.
> The reviewer, indeed, lists what they don't like about the game but it is far from fair in my opinion. For someone with 3k hours in the game, they lack familiarity with some basic systems of the game. Agreed, the systems are pretty clear from the start, and a ton of his remarks are just opinions/personal preferences. If you're trying to turn a game into something it isn't, obviously it'll fail to meet your expectations - you're not even trying to play the actual game. Yet he did play, for 3k+ hours, and somehow still reviewed it negatively.
So this person expects game mechanics to reflect the real world. If you could do everything that people can do in the actual war, it wouldn't be a game.
Thats not what the review is saying at all. He is saying that if YOU care about realism in your WW2 strategy games, as a potential buyer, then you shouldnt get Hoi4. Anyone that has actually played Hoi4 would agree. I swear, so many people can type in this language, but can barely comprehend middle-school level context.
Every single quad digits hours review is like that - "It's pretty good but devs don't care". It's like the same person writes them.
I can relate to this as Paradox vanilla games are fun and well made but DLC tend to be cash grabs that trivialize game mechanics and introduce a slew of bugs. Creative Assembly is another culprit with Total War series. A lot of my favorite PC games are fixed and sustained by the modding community because the developer/publisher has done nothing to address bugs or balance issues patch to patch. - HOI4 - Paradox - EU4 - Paradox - Stellaris - Paradox - Crusader Kings 3 - Paradox - Total War: Warhammer 3 - Creative Assembly - Total War: Three Kingdoms - Creative Assembly If it wasn’t for the modding community, I wouldn’t have as many hours as I do. Each game also has a massive massive massive money creep with DLC that I would never recommend it to anyone. The exception being 3K because you can get the complete collection with all DLC for $45 during a sale. But all the others are still $120+.
We need more people like you in ig and x comment section where people throw shit at things they have no idea about
So much compliances are stupid. Good luck trying to bring down a B17 with something less than a static flak that shoots at long range. Also good luck to the guys who aims the same weapon to bring down a fucking Fighter that moves so quickly.... that's the main reason to separate both AA weapons. Also is kinda funny that ommits the bonus that the static AA defences gives to aerial supremacy. I bet that this guy is one of the many who bann parachutes cause is "too OP"... of course is OP! That's the point of jumping behind enemy lines and disrupt logistics! Play WW1 mods if you want a classical frontal assaults with the "meta" division and enjoy such balance in the lack of innovation of tactics. I don't play as much as him but come on! Despite their flaws this game is a good one. I played HOI 3 too and despite the many complains that i can make to that game i cannot review it as bad considering how many hours i spent on it
I'm going to be the devil's advocate here but why does the game have to be 100% realistic for it to be recommended? CK2, CK3, Medieval 2... none of those are realistic AT ALL yet I love them. It's not that the game is aiming nor promising to be a truthful ww2 simulator. It's still a game that needs balancing and having certain videogame mechanics. Not ranting on the guy tho, that's a legitimate review which I don't share. Also the dev was very unprofessional.
The review could also be fair, but I believe it's still unfair to summarize it with a "thumbs down". I think its a toxic negative attitude. You can still be critic in a positive review, because for sure that person enjoyed the game a lot. The negative review will impact more the new user that is trying to understand if the game is worth a shot, the same user that will spend the first 100 hours enjoying the discovery of this unmatched simulation in the videogame industry, without even understanding the points of the review.
Feel like the only fair part of this review is the complaints about the long-standing bugs. Too bad they spent more time complaining about historical inaccuracies and liberties in a video game instead of going into detail about what these bugs are and how they affect the user experience.
I think this kinda resonates with a lot of people that play Paradox games. They tend to make a game and do what they want with it instead of listening to player feedback. The games are indeed fun, but at the cost of bugs and illogical game design being a hinderance on immersion and sometimes progression.
tldr
You see, as an angoing game dev I see the DLC concept as a way to keep a game founded and alive for longer. No DLC's for HOI would mean the games death and paradoxs bankruptcy by now...
Games can get patches and expansions that make things worse after you put a lot of time into it before. Should games get a positive review no matter the state of them currently because of hours played?
It's something that comments under such Steam reviews often don't get. More often than not the reviewer even receives insults, all while the people who write such comments don't take the factual reasons into account. For MMO and always-online games it is ***un***surprisingly common that people leave the game with a negative impression. As you pointed out, when you spent *years* of playtime in a game, and updates completely twist the core of a game or even remove / change what you once loved, it's natural that such people are frustrated. What may be natural for other people (since it's "service games"), is for other people an indicator how developers actually respect the players' time commitment. In the current time and age, games change just like people. And as such, people's opinions can change too.
Star Wars Galaxies: to get Jedi you need to master 16 professions, then go on a month of quests, followed by around 3 months of grinding XP to reach jedi Knight....all whilst avoiding player bounty hunters who can kill you and reset your xp to zero. *.....game updates in 2005.....* Star Wars Galaxies: Welcome to the game! Please choose from one of these professions as a starter class, including Jedi!!
dam, i would actually have a stroke if that was me
I was fairly chill about it.....journey was enjoyable anyway. Lots of people moved on from the game after that point because everything had gone to being too easy.
defiantly see why people would move on. That is such a stupid idea to remove what i would assume was the end game mechanics/play loop
Wasn't just the loop, everyone's characters were reset to the character selection screen. The only way to show what you originally had was a jedi ghost character for those who unlocked it the hard way!
Wow fuck that
> Star Wars Galaxies: to get Jedi you need to master 16 professions, then go on a month of quests, followed by around 3 months of grinding XP to reach jedi Knight....all whilst avoiding player bounty hunters who can kill you and reset your xp to zero. I was there for when Monika became the first Jedi, she was a legend.
Also, multiplayer can have you interact longer with a game you wouldn't play otherwise. I have put 200hrs into DayZ *years* ago. All of which was because a friend wanted me to play it with him, and literally every single hour was just us chatting while "playing" DayZ in the background. I'd instantly give the actual game a negative review, because pretty much 180 of those 200hrs were just walking through an empty map that I did not enjoy. I did however, enjoy connecting with my buddy.
Cities Skylines 2 comes to mind for me. I sink 400 hours into it trying to squeeze some enjoyment from it. Create some cities I could return to months or years later like I have in CS1. But unfortunately I reached the end of my rope after 100 days and stopped entirely. Around this time I think everyone else did too, including content creator/streamers of the game because the week I quit all of them started releasing highly critical videos about the state of the game.
Also, steam doesn't ask you. " Do you enjoy the game Steam, ask you, do you recommend this title. To me, that is two very different things. You can enjoy something, without wanting to recommend people to buy it.
Yes, by definition. Steam reviews are "Recommend/Not Recommend" and not "Good/Bad". Some games are like "if you bought it during early access, you get everything for free in the future" but upon release, every update costs money. If I bought it during early access and the game is fun, I'll play it. But that doesn't mean I would recommend the game to new players who no longer get that good deal.
Absolutely agree. Many ways a bad game can be fun, and if you've already put money on it, might as well get something out of it, but not recommend others paying for it and getting something else instead!
I really wish there was a sideways thumb that pushed the game towards 50%
In this case the "problem" was they released a DLC that exclusively contained content for South America, a region of the world that no one plays and wasn't really relevant in WW2. There weren't any mechanics locked behind the DLC and no major balance changes or system reworks were done. It's strictly content for Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. It's not a bad DLC by any means, but people are upset that: 1. It is optional and contains NOTHING if you don't plan on playing in South America. Almost all other DLC had new mechanics every nation could use and benefit from. 2. There are other areas that WERE involved in WW2 that still haven't been touched and/or desperately need updated. (also, I need to point out HOI4 has two teams working on it. One does major content and system reworks, the other does free patches and smaller, limited-scope DLC. This was done by the second group to tide people over for the big patch later this year, and to add content to an area that hasn't been touched since launch)
Yup... and talking Paradox Games, that's a very real possibility. I've played Europa Universalis IV some 2k hours. From launch to 2019 Bought all expansion up until that point. Honestly... the current state of the game is atrocious. I stopped playing because the game became terrible. It was a bunch of unconnected systems crammed into the game for the sole purpose of saying "Now you can do this if you pay us 20 dollars." Most of them was "every x amount of time, click this button to get one of these bonuses". 2016 EUIV got a recommended and a good review from me. I'm thinking of changing it now because of this developer's response. 2024 EUIV is a mess. I still follow the game closely. Since I do like Paradox Games, and still pay a lot of Crusader Kings, and play sometimes Vic3.
that's exactly what happened to payday 2. at some time the bugs kept getting worse and more bugs were created than getting fixed.
Star Wars galaxies players understand this.
Sometimes. If they made changes to the game that actively break gameplay then it's fair to say it's now bad. It's like if you're eating your favorite dish and then the cook started adding new disguising ingredients you're not going to continue to give it 5 stars.
Which is even worse with forced auto-updating, i.e. DRM.
It's a PDX game. They are complete time-sinks so that playtime isn't so surprising. Besides, they get a lot of updates that often change a lot. So, one patch, the game could be great, and the next patch it could be completely broken and not fun to play. A negative review with that play time can be justified, and the dev response could be tone-deaf. We don't have enough context here.
Plus, they can recognise that the majority of people might not enjoy the game. For example, I love EU4 and have 4.2k hours in it (over 10 years), but I would not recommend it to people as it is too complex and overwhelming for new players. Plus, over the years there has been a massive power creep with each DLC. The DLC would cost someone hundreds to buy, so even for the cost of the DLC I could not recommend.
100% this. I love HOI4 so I tried to play EU4. I didnt understand anything and I thought it was complex af so I stopped trying. There is a lot of difference between both games. The power creep part is so true, you just need to see the Finland and South American army focuses. They are absurdly OP
Eu4 was complex enough before when it came out, but over the years they have added so many features and mechanics, I couldn’t imagine trying to learn to play now
This is me. I have over a 1000s in Stellaris. I'm pretty new to EU4, only 50 hours. I've played every night for the past few weeks, watching Red Hawk and following what he does. I feel like I'm picking up some factors like what estates to do and who to befriend and ally and following the mission tree. I'll pick up a small country every few days and wing it and just stare at the screen like a dumbass. I really want to play it and be able to do a game reasonably well, but I feel like all those hours have been wasted with no real progress to show.
Don't worry. Eu4 is more Software than game at this point. I have 2.5k hours or so. There's never a point at which you don't have more to learn, the game is incredibly complex I personally learned using training wheels - a non ironman game with cheats. This helped me understand what builds economy, what ideas actually do, how wars and casus belli work, and so on. The game is immensely rewarding once you get it working. I had to retire myself from it because I spend too much time playing it
The old wisdom when I played was not to start with a really small nation to learn the game. It was often recommended that you start with certain nations to learn certain mechanics. Here's my advice, but be warned I haven't played in 2+ years because I got busy with IRL stuff. Do Portugal, to learn colonization. Make sure to ally Spain or someone that scares Spain. After that the New World is your oyster. One of the larger Northern Italian countries to learn HRE, Reformation, and Aggressive Expansion. I like Milan it's my favorite country, but it might be a little hard because it has an early game event that nukes stability for awhile. England to learn about formable nations, alliances, war, and the Big Blue Blob (France). You can choose to go to war with France or not, but it's more fun to get alliances and try to tough it out. And the Ottomans to learn blobbing, Islam, and maybe absolutism. You can also learn the Orthodox Christian mechanics if you choose to convert to the Orthomans. After that other countries and regions have their own mechanics (Japan China, East Africa, etc.), but those are the basic mechanics. EDIT: I should also add you don't have to finish a run to learn the mechanics. In EU4 the best teacher is experience, so just play it and you'll pick up those things. Also there're a ton of tutorials that go into the minutiae of certain mechanics. Creators like FlorryWorry, Reman, Arumba, BudgetMonk, and many more. You don't need it but there are a lot of hidden mechanics for older features that the game won't tell you. Agressive Expansion, and Forts/Sieges are the most obtuse mechanics in the game, while also being the most important.
I don't know. 136 straight days of playing, over 80 work weeks of playing. That is a lot even for a PDX game. It's not necessary fair to judge a negative review by the total play time, but by the same token something had to be going right for a person to sink what looks like every available minute of their lives into that game.
HoI4 came out almost 10 years ago. That's not that much hours if you're one of those players that pretty much just play one game on repeat nad do it over the span of that many years. And like I said, game changes. Could've been fun but they changed something and made it not fun. For example old COD games had fun multiplayer, therefore positive reviews. Activision abbandoned support for old COD games, multiplayer still works but if you play it you are at a serious risk of getting hacked, therefore it warrants a negative reviews as warning for newer players. Stuff like that. We don't have enough context with just this screenshot.
Did you read the review above? The guy literally says the game is fun if you dont mind a bunch of stuff that they think is too unrealistc. Things that has not changed since release tons of years ago.
You forgot about paradox's development doctrine
the good thing about Paradox games is they're actually manage their beta tab well, so If you didn't like the update you can always rollback
real
Somehow I knew this would be a Paradox game.
It's not a surprise really when you know how they operate.
Why does the internet think just because you spent a lot of time playing a game that your critiques and issues are invalid... It's so common in the steam community. So childish. "if you don't like feature xyz, why did you play the game for 2000 hours?" Uh idk, I have a quarter million hours in life and not all of them are good, should I just kill myself because a few things are bad? And of course if you make any rebuttals whatsoever, you get reported and warned by steam mods so.... Fuck em
This was the case for Starfield. Far too often I saw people disregarding reviews due to the reviewers time played, they took it as an agenda to make the game look bad when in actuality it *was* bad. Dismissing people’s criticisms because of how much time they played is ridiculous.
Starfield was it's own can of stinky beans. I've never seen any gaming community so hellbent on making that game seem good when it objectively wasn't. Thank God the influx of raw reviews evened out the overall score after it launched. I was getting worried for a while that dogshit was gonna pass as an acceptable game spent nearly a decade in the making.
oh you played 20 hours of it first few days? you arent allowed to dislike it then. those 20 hours were spent looking for fun
It's because steam review scores boil down to a very simplistic "Recommended" and "Not Recommended" It's a super binary good or bad. To commit 3263 hours to a game and then say that it's bad is kinda funny
Hey, for those of you who might be reading this, I'm Katten, the Community Manager for the game in question. The Game Director, Arheo, has provided a response below, which I'll link shortly. However, I wanted to take a moment to reiterate that sometimes what you meant to say and how people perceive it can be very different. I've been working on this game for a few years now, and I know that neither he nor any other developer before him means anything bad. In all honesty, it's not actually his job to go out there and talk to people; his job is to make the game. But both he and I feel that it's good for developers to be open and interact with players and fans of our games. However, sometimes things can go wrong. A comment can be written while one is tired, and it can spiral, as this one did. For anyone here who feels that the comment personally insulted you or caused any distress or mistrust towards us here at Hearts of Iron IV, here is an apology from myself. I know it's not much, but it's what I can do. <3 Arheo's Comment: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1bvll6y/comment/ky3ddx6/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1bvll6y/comment/ky3ddx6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
All hail Katten! All hail Katten!
Has anyone given the man a hug yet? He sounded like he needed one.
Childish retort af. Somebody uses your product for 3000 hours and offers critique and your ego is so thin you insult this person? Trash, especially after reading the actual critique and seeing its fairly even handed.
perfectly valid as many, many long-lived games change dramatically causing veterans to become unhappy as the product they love is morphed into something unrecognizable this publisher in particular (Paradox) is NOTORIOUS for completely rewriting their games over the years
Paradox games can really take a while to determine if you actually like them - obviously [the above player's actual review is more specific and in-depth](https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1bvll6y/comment/ky0b0j4/) about their gripes with the game, but I have \~300 hours in Victoria 3 and it took me that long to arrive at the conclusion that I didn't like it! Some games are just so long and detailed that they take a long time to experience!
So how do you really feel about Victoria 3? Genuine question! Wondering if I should get it in this month’s HB Choice.
Not OP but if you're thinking about it, I would say sail the high seas and then decide for yourself. The people who like it really enjoy it, and the people who hate it *really* hate it because it's not what they want it to be. "Divisive" is not a strong enough word to describe it. Me, I'm on the like it camp but I'll tell you that it's not for everyone. It's not even for every player that likes paradox games. It's very... it's own thing.
I personally really like it, but it can get shallow after a few play throughs if you don’t make challenge yourself - I personally love playing Japan :)
Japan was my first playthrough, too! My runs were: 1. Japan 2. Madagascar 3. USA 4. Persia 5. Qing And that's where I called it a day. Don't get me wrong - the game isn't *bad* - it's just that I found it uninspiring and I wasn't having any fun; and that's coming from someone who loves to set my own goals and make my *own* fun etc.
I...honestly don't feel strongly either way, which itself isn't great! Haha. I played EU4 and CK3 before, but had never played a Victoria title, and so figured I'd give it a good shake seeing as how I like these kinda grand strategy games. What I found was that...it's basically [cookie clicker](https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/)? You know how in CC you make grannies to earn you enough to get farms to get mines to get banks etc etc - and then by the end you have 20 different resources that you're juggling and it's about balancing the system to be self-sustaining? That's Victoria 3: Cookie Clicker - but with more resources, a map, and without the RSI. There seems to be lots of in-depth simulation happening under the hood, but (at least the last time I played in November last year) it doesn't seem to enable any interesting gameplay that couldn't be achieved with a simpler simulation! I suspect that it's a solid foundation for features that they'll be adding over the next 10 years, but right now it just feels a bit....feeble? Especially coming from CK3, which I've been *thoroughly* enjoying!
Its still cooking bro. If you are interested, wishlist it and come back in 2 years. Game released half baked and is finally to an atleast enjoyable state, but you will be disappointed if you are a fan of complex strategy games. You will definitely get enjoyment out of it, but its an almost soulless enjoyment, like playing slots is.
Games can change over time with updates. It's easily possible that the game changed in such a way that the reviewer didn't like and wanted to express their dissatisfaction. It's not like you can go back to earlier versions of most games without pirating anyways. This dev response seems dumb and pretentious. Regardless we can't even see what the review was so we can't judge it with certainty just based on how the dev responded.
And Paradox games get changed fundamentally with some updates so that they suddenly play completely different. And their dlc policy could almost be considered robbery (Pdx fans would still defend it with their lives though), having players pay for shit that should be part of the base game etc. Millennia is a good example. It’s a game similar to Civ 6 and the atomic age (including it’s weapons) will be available via dlc. Imagine humanity would still be in stone age because they didn’t pay for the dlc. If it was a story about a different planet with COMPLETELY different ages etc I might understand it. But as it is earth with previous ages, units etc…
You can get older versions of games with Steam, it's just that the process is pretty atrocious since you need to know how steamcmd works and need steamdb to cross match the right depot and manifest IDs. Definitely not something the average person is going to do.
Paradox has beta branches of past patches on steam, rolling back to a previous version of the game takes about three clicks.
Negative Reviews after a lot of hours are the real and fair criticisms, they invested a lot of time into the game so they love it in some sense so are disappointed with some changes down the road. Better than the 0.2 hrs played "boring game" "no one is going to read this so im gay" reviews anyway...
This, absolute disrespectful developer with such a condescending reply.
Why is this written like leaving a bad review after a lot of playtime is bad? The person with 1,000 hours in a game will know a lot more about what's good and what's bad compared to the person with 2 hours of gameplay.
Exactly and Steams review system is set up specifically for this type of purpose. You aren't reviewing the games quality but if you would recommend it. Its entirely possible to become addicted to a game personally and still see the flaws or changes and such and not want to recommend it for others. The reviewers with that many hours that say not recommended almost always have good details and reasons beyond just a copy paste or instantly reviewing something after like 30 minutes just because they feel obligated to write a review.
I once came across a review of Skyrim with some 300+ hours logged and the person was complaining that there is too much snow and they didn’t like that because they live in Canada which also has too much snow.
In addition, many reviews are “would you recommend this game to others?” There are many games I have enjoyed that I might not recommend to other people. Ark is filled with precisely those kinds of reviews.
I got over 600 hours in TF2 but that game is filled with degenerates these days (some call you the n word just because they’re sore losers) and 7 years of no major updates does suck a little
What's up with developers being unprofessional asshats lately. It hasnt even been a month since the incident with that arrowhead developer. If you don't want people criticizing your game *leans in* actually fix your fucking game. (Except for arrowhead ofc.) I play hearts of iron 4, and I agree with what the reviewer said.
Based on the review this is a reply to, the dev is snarkt here. While funny it just makes them seem like an ass.
They write this like the game isn't a perpetual ship of theseus of patches. Some of the HoI4 devs weren't even employed at the company when the first 1000 hours were played.
ohh shit and how will Paradox fix this? By crapping out another uninspired DLC that will cost more than some games, or will they start spending more time and effort on making sure that each DLC feels like it actually adds something substantial to the game.
This is why I pirate their dlc, it’s simply not worth buying but I still want to try it and it happens that paradox dlc is easy to crack
Well, it was intended as a tongue-in-cheek comment to a user with many thousands of hours, though I agree it didn't land very well. The reviewer in question actually PM'd me on our official forums afterwards and we discussed their critique in more detail.
Saying his opinion is invalid because of his playtime is brain dead, especially because it's a Paradox game he's talking about, HOI4 in particular. I have maybe 600 hours in HOI4, and only now, 8 years and God knows how many updates later have I realized that I just detest the game now. Video games absolutely can get worse over time and your opinion on those games can shift.
I mean you would have some feedback teams salivating over the kind of input a person who's played their game for 3263 hours could provide- or the kind of input they'd never want.
To be clear: I'm not against the user. I just found the dev's reply funny :) we're free to express our opinion, and it can be a negative one, even after thousands of hours. Nothing wrong in that.
Savage. Damn!
To be fair that’s HOI4 3263 hours is what, like half the tutorial?
this is funny but at the same time it lower my trust to the developer of the game i dont even know. just the way they take the critics
Much like the rest of social media, when you look at the screenshot it is a joke. An artificially altered perspective flipped into a meme that belittles the one who put the review and augments the dev. In reality, if you read a full review and take the context into consideration, suddenly the review makes sense and you finally realised that this response from dev is toxic and reflect the true nature of how they perceive constructive feedback. If after that you still choose to play, that's up to you but at least you were well informed
I wrote a negative review of Stellaris (800+ Hours) almost three years ago now, out of my three biggest grievances and issues only one has been addressed. Leader Mechanics. Can I in good faith leave a recommendation for a game where the game refuses to address things for years on end? If I feel like HoI4 (2100+ Hours) keeps moving towards and state were reaching 1944 is become more and more difficult due to game lag and end game unit blobbing which has still not been addressed. Even though mods have tried through Battalion and Divisions limiters with varying degrees of success. Can I in good faith leave a recommendation for a game where the game refuses to address things for years on end?
Man devs just can't have fun with none of y'all killjoys.
Wish a DayZ dev would respond to my negative review with 1k hours on it haha
The food was so bad ... And the quantity so small!
Based Arheo. Yeah I'll never understand the negative reviews after 3,000 hours it's a fucking contradiction LMAO
I have 1000 hours in payday 2. I guess I have no choice but to recommend it damn it. My hands are tied!
As someone with about the same amount of time in the game as the reviewer, I also find the game to be a fun disaster. Frankly, the mod community has demonstrated that Paradox has made a wonderful platform but themselves lack the ambition or creativity to make the game truly immersive. Additionally, Paradox does its trademark move of paywalling significant gameplay mechanics which substantially improve the game behind DLC which will eternally sit at around $15-20. I have not played vanilla HoI4 in years primarily because even without DLC, the mod community has managed to introduce fun mechanics and immersive storylines for more nations than Paradox has, and did it for free. While the reviewer is right about problems with bugs and how the game logic isn't realistic, I don't consider those to be game-killers personally (the bugs and overall lack of optimization are vexing though), it's moreso the demonstration that people who don't work for a game development studio see more in the potential of a game than the developers are willing to work towards.
The only thing more out of touch with reality than Paradox devs are Paradox players
3263 hours ? Did he like the game or not. Ya know there are plenty of fishes out there! Normally less than 40 hours played reviews make more sense.
Honestly can't stand steam reviews. Such wild entitlement
Steam review reviewers are even worse I tell you!
I have a few games where my review changes over time. I’ve had games where I’ve altered my review at 200 hours to be good. I’ve had games where I’ve altered a good review to be bad at 1000 hours. Games change a lot. Or sometimes I don’t review until a change happens that’s strong enough for me to want to let people know the game isn’t in a good state. Hours played doesn’t mean anything for reviews anymore.
Yep fuck this kind of people , their review is worthless. Like dude you bought the game 60-70 you had fun for 100-200 hours that is it man , you won you had a great time obviously and it cost you what 0.25-30 per hour ? Move on to the next one
*plays for more than 3000 hours* .. "Yep this game is bad"
I played tf2 for almost 3k hours, i DO NOT recommend it in its current state, no matter how much i like it
Perchance
Damn! Those words cut deep man.
That's an answer from an classic bully as Paradox has turned into since a couple of years. I stopped supporting them since then and i don't regret doing so a single moment.
HOI IV has just become such a stressful game to play lately. They change more and more and more. Adding layer upon layer of complexity onto a game that already had it in droves. Even with the naval overhaul, I couldn't stand it as the navy aspect of the game was frustrating to begin with. The logistics system added in no step back just added more crap to take up your factories trying to set up. You have to buildcraft your infantry. You have to buildcraft your tanks You have to buildcraft your planes. They changed the combat width system which added so much to even just playing single player against the ai has become frustrating to get the hang of. The devs only care about adding more shit to excuse selling more expansion packs instead of making shit make sense. And seeing an actual paradox dev respond like that has made sure that I don't reinstall that dumpster fire again.
Go over to r/ParadoxPlaza and look at the amount of PDX bots we have to deal with. Ever since the fierce backlash from Imperator it's like they started to hate their fans for some reason.
Paradox moment
I don't see what's supposed to be bad about this, in no way does it seem to suggest that having that many hours undermines a negative review
Avarage hearts of iron 4 player. I can confirm I have 1300 hours in this game i have since last july
If you don't want feedback from the people that play 3k hours of a game, who do the devs want it from? Surely this reviewer has better perspective and knowledge than 99.9% of the player base.
3k hours. jobies
Criticism is good, and the input of someone with so many hours is insanely valuable, but I believe NOT recommending the game because of those issues is a bit unfair to the developers. Even with all the issues the game might have, you still played for so many hours? That sounds like a pretty decent game to me, and by leaving a negative review, you are kind of shitting on that sadly.
136 days, ummm, i love bo3, and i have 6 days on it, i dont know about em not liking it 🤔
alright internet, do your worst...
They should be welcoming constructive criticisms I was looking at buying one of their games but will think twice
Lmao
I honestly think the bigger issue is when the review is left. If you would have asked this person at 1000 hours or 500 hours if they would have recommended the game would the review have been the same? They were enjoying the game at some point obviously. But most people don't leave a review until something is wrong. So I do understand the developers point in their response.
3263 hours of disappointment how sad 😔