Victoria 2

[sbr]

RiP Paradox.

If Johan wants to put the good days of Paradox behind him and continue to produce crap that tries to be part of the modern market but fails, yet also fails to address customer concerns then they've lost their niche.

Is it a big deal what they call their POPs? Not really, but Paradox games have always been targetted towards a market that has considerable interest in the fine details like that. Province names, leader names, terrains, etc..

Their attitude over the whole thing just sucks. Its very insulting towards their customers.

I am of two minds; I agree with what you are saying and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see V2 flop.  I posted this elsewhere:

The HOI3 disaster is going to keep many casual non-Paradox fans away, at least at first.  It will probably keep many hard-core Paradox fans away, at least at first.  There is no way in hell I would buy V2 until a month after release, at the earliest.

The open-ended sandbox format with a few decisions instead of 100's of historical events that railroad your game will drive away some of the die-hard Vicky fans, at least until a realism mod is made.

Where do they pick up enough sales to mitigate those loses for a game that sold poorly originally?

On the other hand they are in a no win situation with the Dev Diaries that this sprung from; their fan base is micro-managing, detail oriented historical geeks.  There is no way they can make everyone happy in a historical based game with such detail; whether it is someone who lives in that province and thinks it should have a different name, or a person who thinks the Capitalist POP is too large in that province, or Balkan Nationalism, people are going to be pissed about something that they do in the game. 

That said the "It's my game and I will make it my way" stance of Johan won't help any.

[Syt]

Oh noes, it's called clergy! 

That's not the point. The point is the way Paradox treats their audience these days. Personally, I think it went seriously downhill when Patric left - he was a lot more relaxed and friendly than Johan on his best of days and managed the forums in a more positive way. Johan's rockstar allures become rather annoying. "You don't like my design? Screw you!"

Which is a valid position for a developer, I guess, but not one that endears the general public.

Juding by a thread in the HoI3 forum a number of customers (i.e. preorders) are a bit disappointed that the game is now sold for 12 EUR (or 25, if you want all sprite and music packs), less than half a year after release.

[jimmy olsen]

This thread inspired me to download Vicky from my gamersgate account, and I just realized that I bought the expansion pack at some point in time. However I don't think I ever played it, my goldfish like attention span must have gotten distracted by something and

Started up a game as Japan 1881. Conquered Korea by 1890 and took the Philippines from Spain in '96. They also gave me Cuba, Puerto Rico and their North African enclave in the peace deal. I sold the former to the US and gave the North African enclave to France in a peace deal (Spanish allies).

The economy is easier, but the politics are much harder. I've got rebels everywhere. I thought Japan was much more stable at this point. 

[Josephus]

Seriously. How hard would it be to program the game so that clerics would be called educators in an atheist-styled government?

[Syt]

Seriously. How hard would it be to program the game so that clerics would be called educators in an atheist-styled government?

JOHAN NOT WANT THAT

[Josquius]

It's the same old "you don't like what we do, mod it yourself" as with HoI3.

Ouch, that goes totally counter to the most simple of design principles.
Sure, with vendor software you can't get exact user feedback on everything but you should at least listen to some.

I like the entire of a middle class pop covering clergy, scholars and the like.
Perhaps, to add a brain storm of my own, transformable into a seperate clergy (big militancy/consciousness improvments for the superstitious masses), scholars (research boost), teachers (education boost), factory managers (production boost), etc.... So the middle cvlass pop is a base thing like the working class base labourer/farmer pop.

[Zanza]

Someone suggested to call the clergy pop "intelligentia" or so. I think that would be fitting and would make the difference between secular and religious states superfluous.

Really strange how Paradox reacts to these kind of threads. Either they should just completely ignore them or they should be a bit more responsive to their customers.

[Josquius]

So it was a thread started by a member huh?
Was he banned?

[jimmy olsen]

So, any tips on how to manage my Pops militancy for Ricky?

[Zanza]

So, any tips on how to manage my Pops militancy for Ricky?

If you have a protectionist party in power, cut your taxes to zero (or as low as possible) and finance your state with 100% tariffs.

Use the free political reforms like free press, free parties, free assembly and free unions. Go for landed voting rights as that will give you a conservative party in power (which is usually protectionist - see above). That will change your state into a constitutional monarchy which negates the militancy modifier from plurality.

Station military units in the most troublesome provinces, gives you an immediate -0.25 on militancy.

If you can afford it, you can also use some social reforms. Healthcare is best as it gives you the great population growth bonus.

Max out crime fighting as that reduces revolt risk at a rather low cost.

Go for the cultural inventions that lower revolt risk.

Whenever an election question pops up, take the option that will lower militancy the most. If none is available take the option of the party that is in power as alignment between issues and ruling party also lowers militancy.

If you do all that, you can e.g. go through the Liberal Revolution as Prussia without a single revolt (except those triggered by event) and with barely any emigration and still have a conservative party in power for the whole time.

[sbr]

So it was a thread started by a member huh?
Was he banned?

It was a comment in the latest Dev Diary thread.

[syk]

So it was a thread started by a member huh?
Was he banned?

No he wasn't banned. They made discussion of that clergy POP issue a bannable offense however:

Folks, Johan has made his position clear, and that is the end of the discussion. As he requested, the discussion should focus on the actual working of the gameplay features as described in the Development Diary. To continue to discuss the issue of the name in spite of his clearly stated request that everyone drop the issue is to ignore the administrator. The issue, for the rest of this Dev Diary, is CLOSED. Any further discussion of the question will make the posts liable for potential moderator and/or administrator review in regards breach of forum rules.

this thread will reopen in a few minutes, once everyone has had a chance to read this warning. 

[Faeelin]

Eh. I am sure, given the sucecess of HOI3, they know better than some grognards on the internet.

[garbon]

OHGamer

[Zanza]

I am surprised that OHGamer hasn't merged every single post in the Vic2 forum into one of his beloved megathreads.