That picture is triggering PTSD flashbacks.
Pirates!
You can do this, but it’d be boring. I imagine creating a game to make it non-boring would be quite a challenge, and I am not sure what market there would be for it. There’s a reason Crazy Taxi was a popular game and Taxi Driver Simulator was never made in the first place. In most cases the average gamer wants to roleplay the exceptional case, not the normal case.
Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s true that you have to be a psycho. You can inherit territory peacefully if your marriage game is on point, you can spend a fair amount of time raising your children, improving baronies, and if you play as a vassal there is alot of political maneuvering within the kingdom you belong that doesn’t necessarily involve the movement of armies or even assassination.
Edit: Damnit
Just like EU4 should have sufficient internal and external pressures preventing you from over-expanding and keeping you occupied with running a country, there should be enough for you to do just living the life of a person at your station of life IMO. Otherwise it’s nowhere near a historical (roleplay) simulator – it’s a meticulously crafted clone of the world that functions nothing like the real world. Advancing up the ranks should be really hard, as should increasing the power of your country in EU4.
Thing is that the psychotic actions Of a player? Not that far out of line from history. One of my favorite podcasts has a term for nobles I love, and given it is currently about Cnut era England era appropriate here, psychopathic peacocks.
The difference is the scale and consistency of players murderous actions. Rarely do you see a line act that way over centuries, but certainly over smaller scales.
Sounds like you want CK because if you try to take over the known world in the game… it doesn’t turn out so well.
I remember accidentally inheriting some chunk of land in that game during a run that was bigger than my actual kingdom, it through me into generations upon generations of constant conflict and wars with other neighbors who wanted a piece of the land I didn’t really want in the first place.
A few dances and I am sure my muscle memory will kick in again. I’ll get the dark Spanish beauty with all the riches in no time!
But will it help find your second cousin twice removed who was kidnapped?
This weeks Three Moves Ahead podcast is from a hands on with the game. They made it sound like it’s an improvement, especially with getting info and learning the game.
It got me pretty excited for the game. Is anyone streaming it yet?
Character Art
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ckiii-dev-diary-28-art-focus.1393627/
Example decisions and how they’re more central to the gameplay
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ckiii-dev-diary-29-even-the-smallest-decision.1395308/
Some modding info
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/crusader-kings-3-dev-diary-30-event-scripting.1397140/
Stress & management. 3 levels of mental breaks, traits that enable stress reduction
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ck3-dev-diary-31-a-stressful-situation.1399764/
Don’t you do that LOL.
It brought nothing but happy memories for me!
So I’m curious if its possible to weaponize stress, i.e. being a pain in the ass to your liege to make em go crazy and blow up.
The stress dev diary is really interesting, if implemented well I think it could make the game much more interesting. It’s a tough balance to tread though, where they still want players to feel like they can play a character however they want, but also improve the role-playing aspects of the game significantly by having the personality traits and mental state of the character actually interact with what you’re making them do as a player.
I really want this game so bad. In the space of a month we’ll be getting CK3, Cyberpunk, and a VR HOTAS Star Wars dogfighting game, I don’t know how I am going to cope!
I think about this quite often, with a lot of games. To what extent do I want a simulation of being in those shoes? And to what extent do I want a game?
For me, it can be tough to find the sweet spot, and I find the problem especially true with RPGs.
At the end of the day, mechanics rule 90% of the time IMO. This means that immersion and narrative is a layer painted on top of mechanics, which tend to be things like non-obvious decisions, puzzles, or tests of skill. We’re really playing Tetris, but our brain likes it a lot more if Tetris looks like piloting a spaceship, keeping the focus on the immersion.
These Paradox games are in a really tough spot, because they treat history so seriously. For immersion to work, they can’t have mechanics that push you to do wildly unrealistic things. The AI also needs to be up to scratch, which is nigh impossible in a realtime game. Also, EU4 has very little for you to do if you don’t expand. It’s essentially a very complicated, asymmetric version of Risk. If you can accept it for what it is, that’s fine. My brain doesn’t allow me to do that.
For example, it appears that EU3 had mechanics that were less ‘fun’ for most people, but far more realistic in terms of the resulting gameplay. Policies, for example, were long-term goals that had to be slowly adjusted, rather than mana points you got to spend to get instant effects. My brain prefers the less ‘fun’ (i.e. harsher) mechanics if they result in more realism (i.e. immersion).
But ultimately, the inability to play tall rather than wide basically kills the entire EU series for me, since most countries did and do play tall rather than wide in real life. The game is therefore completely flawed from my perspective at a very fundamental level. It would work fine for a fantasy world, but not for the one we inhabit.
Sound & music. With examples!
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/ck3-dev-diary-32-going-medieval-on-audio.1401422/
It occurs to me now that Andreas Waldetoft is probably the most listened to musician/composer in my life. Or would it be Jeremy Soule (via GW/Elder Scrolls/SupCom)?
Also amused by the escalating “Errors: 2388” notification in the examples
I read that as “getting it in a month” and I rushed to check the release date. Drat!
That must have been really painful, I’m sorry! The comment didn’t age well in another respect, as cyberpunk was delayed again shortly after.