Hi there! I'm Rodrigue - Community Developer on Crusader Kings 3.
Welcome to our July video update during which we discuss the development of the game.
This month we have taken a look at vassal contracts and how we have overhaul them.
We've also taken a stab at character portraits
and finally we have deep delved into user research.
Take a look!
With Matthew, programmer here at Paradox, we have taken a look at vassal contracts
and how we have changed them since we discussed them in Dev Diary 17.
We weren't fully content with the initial implementation of the vassal contracts.
They didn't help facilitate telling the stories between the vassals
and lieges and the negotiations and drama involved in that relationship.
This was a sentiment shared by the community as well.
That echoed our desire to give this another look
and change it up a bit before the release.
This overhaul gives a lot of new options in the contracts
for the vassals and the lieges.
These different options and the obligations
help facilitate the drama and the narrative we want to come out from these interactions.
We have split the base tax and levies into two different categories
instead of one combined one as well as adding various fine print options.
These fine print options are things like
religious protection if the vassal is of a different faith
and it prevents the liege from taking hostile action against them
or things like coinage rights where they are given the permission
to mint their own coins
and that's represented by an increase in development for the vassal.
We have this beautiful parchment background
which we wanted to use to make the contracts.
Really feel like they were an agreement drafted by the vassal and liege
and signed with wax embossed seals of the respective characters houses.
Lower taxes and levies, obviously something vassal appreciates
it will increase their opinion of you.
On the flip side higher taxes and levies
will make them like you less.
Each different obligation option will increase or decrease the opinion.
So if you give them a concession
such as guaranteeing them a position on the council
they will also like you more
as opposed to if you were to take that away from them.
If you don't give a fair contract
such as just increasing the taxes they have to pay
then you will take a tyranny hit
amongst all your vassals for this action
as it is a breach of the the feudal contract relationship
that the liege and vassals have.
If you want to make such unfair deals then you can do it.
If you want to offset the tyranny hit
you need to use a hook whilst you do so
to sort of blackmail the vassal into agreeing to your terms
without raising too much of a fuss.
The vassals can of course
negotiate their own contracts with the liege.
The difference for them is that
they have to propose a fair trade.
They can't give something unfair towards the liege.
They have to make sure it's an even deal for both parties.
They can themselves also use a hook
if they want to have one deal in favor of them.
All of these different obligations
their effects and what they mean are fully moddable.
They're all exposed in our scripting language
so you can change as many of them as you want
add new ones, put them in different government forms
or take them out entirely.
With Niels, Lead Character Artist
we have taken a look at portraits in CK3.
In CK3 we use a dynamic system to generate the portraits in the game
and the system works in a way that it gives each character
something we call a DNA string
which stores and defines their appearance.
So the system is very flexible
in the sense that it allows us to add control
for pretty much anything we want to control.
We've added a lot of detail control, especially for the face.
As an example I could mention that
the nose alone has something like 14 genes
controlling its appearance and size.
And there's also a lot of other genes
for things like body type and body shape
and also things like hair color, skin color and eye color.
Due to the fact that we're using the same base model for everyone
it's actually easy for us to blend between several different DNA sets.
This is good when it comes to inheritance
because when two characters get children
those children will end up looking like a blend between the parents.
There's also a small chance that some features will be inherited
from their grandparents or even further back in the family tree.
The overall inheritance has a much bigger impact than it did in CK2.
So the system we use allows us to do a truly seamless aging
and there's a lot of places we take advantage of this.
There are some more obvious examples
like when it comes to body size and body proportions
which will obviously be very different between an infant and a fully grown adult.
But there's a lot of more subtle examples as well
such as facial features will get more pronounced
as the character ages through childhood and especially as they reach puberty.
Once they reach their 30s and 40s their skin will start to look more rugged
and they will start showing some wrinkles.
As they approach old age, those wrinkles will be
more pronounced and stronger
and their hair will turn gray and other things will happen
such as they lose their teeth and they lose their posture.
You can be scarred both temporarily and permanently
so it can be fresh scars or healed scars
that will show on the character.
There's various other things such as you can loose an arm
be blinded or even disfigured.
The middle ages were of course a time of gruesome diseases
and epidemics and this is something
we also represent in the game.
A few examples of such classic medieval diseases
that we represent are: smallpox, syphilis, leprosy, typhus
and, of course, last but not least: black death.
The barbershop feature allows you to customize
your character's appearance.
You can select clothing and headgear
and also change your hairstyle and beard on your character in-game.
So there's obviously a lot of characters in the game
and the vast majority of them have randomized or semi-randomized appearances
but there are some notable exceptions
where we have custom designed appearances.
For example Harold Godwinson and William the Conqueror
both have their appearances based on how they are described
and depicted historically.
Of course medieval sources and portraits aren't the most reliable
so we had to do a lot of guesswork and use some artistic license.
And finally with Anna, User Researcher here at Paradox,
we have taken a look at user testing
and how it affected the development of CK3.
I look at games from user perspective
so that means that we try to test features
and we gather feedback from players.
On how well they understand the game, how well menus work
if they think that the game is fun if it's matching their expectations.
Things like that.
We do this by using a lot of methods
that are commonly used in social sciences
but it's also important to remember that even though
I have "Researcher" as my working title
and although we use scientific methods
we aren't scientists so we don't produce scientific results.
It's rather to bring the dev team
player feedback and to inspire discussion.
By combining a bunch of methods then we can actually gather
how our players really feel about the game.
But we usually start with observation.
That means that we have players play the game for a few hours
and we watch them and then we are taking notes.
We'll also have an interview and surveys afterwards.
In interviews we kind of ask similar questions
but we can also go back to things that we have observed:
"I saw you struggling with this."
"Can you tell me a bit about this?"
"Can you show me something about this?"
Listening to players early on is really good
for any kind of game project, I think.
CK3 is a very complex game and we don't want to lose that.
We still want to be able to give experienced players that
know that they can still have the game that they want and expect
in terms of complexity but we also want to make sure
that new players they can understand the game
and like the game and they can also discover that, like:
"Oh, I inherited a title and now my nephew is dead."
or like "You marry a horse."
You know, things like that.
It's great if new people people can experience that too.
It's quite common to use colleagues etc.
when it's very early in the development process.
For CK3 we helped the dev team with evaluating the early designs
for characters by putting together a survey
and sending that out to our colleagues.
And honestly it was a good thing that we did
because we quickly discovered that the portraits
were way too cartoony for most people.
So it was back to the drawing board for the art team
which, I mean, that's a shame, but it was good that we discovered that so early on
and that we could actually make those changes.
And it was also a way for us to kind of gauge
where the level of art was during other tests.
So, like, do you... "What do you think about the portraits?"
And if cartoony popped up, then we also brought that back to the art team.
My favorite part of my work is of course to actually be creepy
and watch people play the game.
It's really fun to see what my colleagues have put together actually
come together and to see someone experiencing it rather than just...
Like: "here's a portrait" and "here's a feature" and "here's a menu"
but actually seeing that and seeing that in the hands of a player
that's super cool.
Is the tutorial helpful enough for new players
but is it also not annoying to more experienced players?
So for that test it was a bit bigger.
We had 12 players and six of them
were what we would consider experienced players
so they had between 200 to over a thousand hours
of playtime of CK2.
Then six of the players were what we would consider newbies
so they had played strategy games
but for some reason or another they just didn't pick up CK2.
And so we let them try out the tutorial and play through that
and then we let them play the game for about two hours
and then we were sitting there, looking at them and trying to see
"What can they use?"
"What can they not use?"
"Are they enjoying themselves?"
Things like that.
So newer players, they really appreciated that parts of the tutorial.
Were really visual in guiding them and showing them what to do.
Older players, they at first, some of them
kind of struggled with getting used to a new UI
but that also was really helpful with the tutorial, kind of, showing them the way.
But what was good was that they also really like the suggestion system
because for them it became more of a checklist, but more like
"Do I have everything under control in my kingdom?"
There were some areas that still needed work.
Most of the new players and the old players kind of had the same issues
and again it had to do with navigating menus
like the council menu and marriage menu.
Mostly just getting an overview of where characters were
and how they related to your character.
Well, COVID19 has changed a lot of things for us in user research
and I think that the main thing for us
has been that we don't have access to the lab in the Stockholm office.
At the lab we have about 20 computers that are prepped for us to use during tests.
Now we've had to adapt by doing, well, basically all of our play tests remotely.
And that means that players play on their own computers
and we do interviews via video chats.
So, kind of like this, honestly.
I'll be honest, it's been quite difficult.
But i think that an unexpected perk was that
we of course discovered that this works and when it does
we can also have players from all over the world playing.
So that's an interesting new perspective for us.
Well, after the release of CK3 I will be working on gathering
and reporting on feedback from, well I guess, you guys on Steam.
So I'll be going over all the written reviews and things like that
to kind of gather high points and low points
so that I can bring that back to the dev team
and they can start making a plan on what to address next.
And also of course there will be patches and DLCs
so we'll start planning play tests for them as well.
And that is it for the month of July!
If you want to know more just click on the links below
to get to the full dev diaries.
If you feel like pre-ordering Crusader Kings 3
just go on crusaderkings.com.
I will catch you next month where we will be streaming the game
on our Twitch channel.