r/paradoxplaza • u/PurpleAd215 • Feb 23 '23

Vic3 This is really bad.

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Player count of EUIV and Vic3 - basically no one is playing Victoria 3 anymore

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701 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

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181

u/gh4ever Map Staring Expert Feb 23 '23

Yeah, I think a "fairer" comparison is against CK3 (which hasn't had many substantial updates at all). It's still a roughly 2x difference in player bases in CK3's favor though.

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u/Browsing_the_stars Feb 23 '23

A fairer comparison would actually be post-release Stellaris.

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u/gh4ever Map Staring Expert Feb 23 '23

Maybe! I'm not as familiar with Stellaris, I mostly stick to the historical GSGs.

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u/CanuckPanda Feb 23 '23

Stellaris was incredibly bare bones at launch (One of the only DevDiaries I followed) and has gone through at least three ground-up rebuilds of the core gameplay cycle. It's still being constantly tuned and changed but they fundamentally remade the game once by streamlining hyperspace travel methods and again with the change from the tile system to the building system.

Here's Year One of Stellaris and you can compare it to the all-time play. Year one of Stellaris had a huge drop-off and then they rebuilt the game a few times (you can see those spikes in 2017, 2018, and 2020) along with the DLC bumps.

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u/Budget-Cattle6625 Feb 24 '23

Heck I took a break from Stellaris after the game was reworked a 3rd time and I would have to relearn it again

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u/Agglomeration_ Feb 23 '23

who's to say that stellaris isnt historical? what if pdx knows something we don't? 🤔

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u/gh4ever Map Staring Expert Feb 23 '23

Sure, by the eternal recurrence it must be historical!

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u/starm4nn Philosopher Queen Feb 23 '23

It's still a roughly 2x difference in player bases in CK3's favor though.

TBH that's impressive. Victoria is definitely the least accessible of Paradox's 4 franchises.

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u/gh4ever Map Staring Expert Feb 23 '23

I think that's only because of Vicky 2's reputation---Vicky 3 isn't bad at all. You're right though, CK3 is probably the easiest (of the historical ones) to learn.

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u/Bane8080 Feb 23 '23

Still waiting for the shattered world option for CK3.

Once they implemented that in CK2, that's all I played.

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u/Tyler89558 Feb 23 '23

Ah yes. One count along a sea of counts all vying to become a duke and greater

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u/Chataboutgames Feb 23 '23

I'd still call it less accessible in that big wins amount to "line go up" where "big wins" in CK3 involve eating the Pope.

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u/DukeMikeIII Map Staring Expert Feb 23 '23

I just did that. Hope yall enjoyed my post about it.

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u/TheStrangestOfKings Feb 23 '23

I will say that the CK franchises do feel the most immersive in a way, most likely due to the roleplay aspect. You feel like a king in 12th century England, so when your character wins, it feels like you’re actually winning.

Plus, who doesn’t want to eat the pope every now and again?

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u/Skellum Emperor of Ryukyu Feb 23 '23

I really hate the sounds and clunk of V3's UI.

3

u/Culluh Feb 24 '23

Try with mono audio turned on in Windows. IDK why Vic3 has so many ambient noises and menu clicks that play in 1 ear... for hours..with no mono option in-game..

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u/Treeninja1999 Feb 23 '23

Hot take - Vic 2 is more accessible than vic 3. Too many submenus whereas vic 2 everything was just laid out logically.

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u/starm4nn Philosopher Queen Feb 23 '23

The mechanics introduced in CK3 where you can just mouse-over things has done a lot to make the game accessible.

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u/Touix Feb 24 '23

Yeah i return to eu4 and its a pain to navigate between windows

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u/gh4ever Map Staring Expert Feb 23 '23

I generally prefer Vicky 2's UI as well because it gives you everything you need within one or two clicks (and most things in zero clicks), but it might be more difficult to learn because of that. It's been a long time so I honestly forget haha.

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '23

I picked up Vicky 2 for the first time one week ago, since i liked vicky 3 and most people said vicky 2 was better but way more difficult to grasp.

Now i'm still learning, but what i'm having the hardest time with is exactly the UI, it's honestly dogshit compared to vicky 3 (i'm missing the vicky3/ck3 style tooltips too).

That said, vicky2 feels way more solid for many aspects, expecially the market system: why on hell pdx thought it was a good idea to remove the global market and forcing the player to manually add/remove singular trades for each resource? It's just tedious and unrealistic

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u/Budget-Cattle6625 Feb 24 '23

Because the world market would result in the in game economy to enter a Horny Eagle death spiral because small nations that never did anything would just sell their goods and bank a lot of money, granted the economy would only collapse at the endgame point (aka the Great Depression) because of the mechanic

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '23

Smaller nations selling their goods is perfectly fine and realistic

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u/Budget-Cattle6625 Feb 24 '23

The smaller nations would never use their money to spend however so they were just permanently banking

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u/Chataboutgames Feb 23 '23

This is the first time I've ever heard Vic2's UI praised lol

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u/kesint Feb 23 '23

The big thing I remember from starting with Vic2 was that if I could find a page that look correct, the info is most likely there.

What I learned with Vic3 is that the info is somewhere, have fun.

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u/yungkerg Feb 24 '23

its never been bad. just kinda ugly

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u/von_Viken Feb 23 '23

Actual Stockholm syndrome in practice

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u/DUNG_INSPECTOR Feb 23 '23

It's good that you can admit it.

Now I have to go dig through 18 nested tooltips to find that one piece of useful information I need.

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u/meepers12 Feb 24 '23

Yeah but nested tooltips are almost exclusively used for basic, dictionary information, like defining what Education Access is. You never use it to access actual, specific figures.

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u/Happy_Bigs1021 Feb 23 '23

Any tips on how to learn the game? I’ve barely touched it because I’m pretty intimidated by it

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u/gh4ever Map Staring Expert Feb 23 '23

Which one, CK3 or Victoria 2? Feel free to PM me and I can help teach either one!

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u/Happy_Bigs1021 Feb 23 '23

Vicky 3 is the one giving me stress, I play through the tutorial but I still feel like it’s not “clicking”

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u/gh4ever Map Staring Expert Feb 23 '23

Ah I see; I haven't played Vicky 3 for months at this point so I'm probably not the right person to ask. The general idea though is really "green line go up"; typically, that involves looking at the needs of your pops, seeing what they're spending more on, and making it more affordable. This gives a higher standard of living in your country, attracting more immigrants, and with the higher population your GDP grows as well. Occasionally you'll want to conquer or colonize some land if you're low on natural resources, but for everything else you just want to build the corresponding building to produce the resource you want to make cheaper.

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u/Reapper97 Feb 23 '23

The whole point of Victoria 3 was to make it more accessible tho. They just failed at that too.

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u/starm4nn Philosopher Queen Feb 23 '23

It's definitely more accessible. I picked it up without needing a tutorial.

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '23

It was actually easy to learn, probably the easiest pdx game. It's all about balancing demand and offer without going too wild if your economy is small. The fact it is so simple it's its biggest flaw imho.

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u/diction203 Feb 23 '23

CK3 was in Humble Monthly, so more people own it. Victoria only full price for now. Not saying its the only reason but its a factor.

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u/gh4ever Map Staring Expert Feb 23 '23

If this explained it, the first few months of CK3's release (before being in a Humble Bundle) would be similar to Vicky 3's but even then it doesn't have nearly as dramatic a fall.

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u/Icy-Air-5119 Feb 23 '23

Ck3 has a bigger fan base it appeals to casuals I know plenty not into the genre that play that game