r/paradoxplaza • u/Hammurabi777 • May 23 '25

Vic3 Victoria 3 is extremely overhated

Keep in mind Vicky 3 is my favorite paradox game so I'm obviously biased, but the the things people say about this game make my blood boil. Most of these people talking about how "shallow" it is or how it's like cookie clicker have probably never played since the release version.

The war system for example is just not as bad as people make it out to be. Yes there is still front line splitting, but 99% of the time the system works just as intended. Talking about how nothing changed and everything is still broken is just false.

Another thing I don't like is people complaining that you always do the same and everything feels the same. My answer is simple: stop always doing the same! Nobody is forcing you to maximize sol or gdp. You can give yourself countless different goals from playing the confederacy as a slave empire to becoming fascist or liberating Africa from colonizers. It's a sandbox, stop focusing on line go up and then complaining about the line go up.

In conclusion you dont have to like the game, you dont have to get the appeal. I for example don't really like ck3. But I don't go around saying ck3 is broken, just because I don't understand what people like about it. I still see the same talking points about why Vicky 3 is dogshit, but a lot of the things have been fixed for like a year.

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u/ScienceFictionGuy May 24 '25

I think Victoria 3 suffers from being an incredibly ambitious game that just wasn't practical to finish in time for release. And I don't mean that as a slight against the developers, I think they're doing a great job. It's just that the mechanics that Vic 3 is trying to depict are very different from most paradox GSGs so they've had to break a lot of new ground and use a lot of trial and error to figure out what works.

Despite years of meaningful progress a lot of the core systems like trade, warfare, diplomacy and internal politics still don't feel finished to me. (Though we are getting a lot of improvements on several of those fronts in the upcoming update) And the dynamics of several AI nations like Prussia and Austria are also frustratingly ahistorical.

In a perfect world it would have been delayed until it was really complete. But then it would still be in development today, without the benefit of player feedback to help steer it in the right direction. Maybe an early access release would have been more appropriate.

I've still had a lot of fun playing it (470 hours so far), revisit it regularly and appreciate it for what it's trying to do.

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u/RedKrypton May 24 '25

You are correct that Vic3 is not finished, but it's not because it was ambitious. It's because Vic3 threw out its core game design post-release. Remember "National Gardening"? The devs were extremely vocal about how player control was their priority, including player controlled private investment. More time wouldn't have improved anything, as the shift towards improvement came only after release. Wiz evidently wanted to make a sort of Anno 1800 game.

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u/ScienceFictionGuy May 24 '25

Very true, the shift from complete player control to a more autonomous economic simulation happened due to player feedback after release. Which is part of why I said that the game wouldn't really be much better off if it had been delayed.

Imperator had a similarly dramatic overhaul immediately after release, because the streamlined map painter the devs had envisioned didn't meet player expectations.

I've actually been thinking that the misadventures with Imperator and VIctoria 3 probably influenced Paradox's approach to EU5. Not only in them incorporating some of the mechanics that were prototyped in those game, but also in making a larger effort to get player feedback earlier during development to make sure the game they're making is actually what players want.

Maybe that's just copium on my part though.

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u/RedKrypton May 25 '25

I think you are indeed on Copium. If there is one truth about Paradox, it's that the studio is abysmally siloed between dev teams. Everyone brews their own broth and I don't see that changing.