Dev Diary #87 - Voice of the People post-release update
Hello! It's going to be a short and sweet development diary today as we're all very busy working on… well, the stuff I'm going to be talking about today!
As you all know, Update 1.3 and Voice of the People launched a few days ago. It's a big update, particularly to the political subsystems in the game, and it hasn't been without some bugs and balance issues. We have already rolled out a fix for the bug that omitted newlines in Chinese localization (1.3.1). We have another set of bug fixes (1.3.2) in the pipe, scheduled for next Tuesday if all tests clear.This update should fix a number of issues on the list.
We are also working on cataloging and incorporating your feedback on the new Journal Entries and events into a future update. For example, we're planning on increasing both the interactivity and challenge of the Divided Monarchy Journal Entry. Stay tuned for more on when this update will be released!
Victoria 3's Immersion Packs are meant to enhance the depth of a particular aspect of the game. For Voice of the People, that aspect is political agitation and revolutions. France is a great country to showcase these mechanics with, and we also used French aesthetics for the wealth of new art also included in Voice of the People, but the intent is not to make it a "country pack". The new map, UI skin, and command room table are available even if you don't play as France, and with the theme selector we are rolling out with Dawn of Wonder (the Art pack coming in Q3 - more on this below) you will be able to customize which theme combinations you want. Historical Agitators appear across the world, and several of the new character interactions relating to Agitators as well as coups apply regardless which country you play. Rest assured we will be rolling out country-specific content in other expansion products and updates in addition to Immersion Packs.
After the release, we received feedback suggesting that Update 1.3 - released alongside Voice of the People - has had a greater impact than the DLC itself. This is partially because we needed to introduce a significant number of new events to support the new Agitators and revamp the revolution progression system. However, the main reason for this perception is our approach to DLC development, where we don't want to lock essential mechanics behind paywalls. Mechanics spread out over multiple DLC tends to fragment the community, makes mod management harder, complicates building new features on top of old ones, and can cause features to become unbalanced over time. As an example of this approach, based on your feedback, we elected to include the Exiles mechanic in the free update rather than the DLC to address concerns about future game balance. While there is a risk this reduces the perceived value of the DLC, it ensures that the core gameplay experience remains intact and allows for future expansion without limitations.
The Voice of the People DLC still offers a range of unique content such as new events, stunning artwork, and exclusive mechanics for owners. While we understand that the number of features and improvements in the free update can lead to a lower perception of value for the DLC, we do not believe that the answer here is to simply paywall more features. Instead, we will strive to learn and improve from the criticisms of the content in Voice of the People without compromising our principal focus, which will remain on the core gameplay experience.
On the topic of lessons learnt, in case you missed it, what was originally a pre-order bonus for Voice of the People - the Agitators Jules Brunet, Georges Clemenceau, and Alexis de Tocqueville - were made available to everyone who owns Voice of the People the day after release. We didn't realize quite how valuable these characters would be to you, so thank you for making it known how you felt about this and we hope these brilliant gentlemen will help improve your great nations!
Finally, a note about the more distant future. Many of you noticed that with the availability of an Expansion Pass to upgrade from the base game to the Grand Edition, two additional products for Victoria 3 were soft-announced: the aforementioned Dawn of Wonder Art pack, and Sphere of Influence, our first major expansion. We can't get into a lot of detail on these on the Steam pages yet and as a result I've seen a lot of speculation around them. There are a few things I'd like to clarify prior to the official announcement.
First off, yes, Dawn of Wonder will include a Day/Night cycle. It is super customizable (naturally you can turn it on and off, but you can also for example scale it to in-game time so a full cycle could take 1 day or 1 year depending on your preferences - or even sync it to your computer clock for cozy nighttime play) and looks terrific in action.
Side-by-side example of a landscape at midnight and noon respectively. There is of course a gradual transition period between these as well. On-map text gradients also change with the daylight cycle, to ensure sharp text contrast even during nighttime. All map objects have been updated to provide their own light sources, where appropriate - buildings, vehicles, and more.
It doesn't have any effect on the paper map view, of course, but if you enjoy watching and listening to your little towns while playing, it really makes the world come alive. The Day/Night Cycle isn't everything in the Art pack, there will also be a hefty assortment of the kinds of things we also included in the Voice of the People Immersion Pack (thus why a theme selector will also be included).
Secondly, regarding Sphere of Influence. As mentioned in the description, among several other features this major expansion will add Power Blocs, which lets you spread your influence across the world via soft power. I have spotted a few concerns that a Sphere of Influence mechanic that served this same purpose was already included in the Victoria II base game, so I wanted to clarify what this expansion actually contains.
Victoria 3's base game already has features to model the Sphere of Influence mechanic from Victoria II: subjects, and customs unions (in fact, it's not uncommon to hear players refer to forcing nations into customs unions or subject relationships as 'sphering'). Members in a customs union share a unified market but have no other diplomatic ties, while subject nations are also forced to participate in their overlord's market but have a number of diplomatic restrictions placed on them as well. The ability to influence, cajole, or dominate other countries to force them into your market / sphere is already something you can do in Victoria 3 using a mix of diplomatic and military tools.
The idea behind Power Blocs is to make a shared market merely one of numerous ways in which countries can cooperate with (or exploit) one another. The most fundamental of these, and the core mechanic itself, will be part of the free update delivered alongside the expansion. Much like with Voice of the People, we don't want to fall into the trap of making the base game on its own obsolete over time by locking key mechanics behind paid expansions. The various ways in which players can customize Power Blocs should help make different Great Powers more distinct, enhance interaction and dependencies between nations, make Influence and Prestige feel more meaningful, and so on. While some of these options will be in the free update, others will be in the paid expansion.
So then I hear you wonder, why call the expansion Sphere of Influence? Simple answer: it's a terrific term to describe what sorts of features it contains! It may evoke the memory of one beloved mechanic from Victoria II, but the expansion itself is intended to be a broad enhancement to diplomatic gameplay with a variety of features. And as always, the fundamentals will not be paywalled.
On that note, the Sphere of Influence expansion blurb also says that investing into foreign economies will be a feature, and there have been concerns that this means we're going back on our earlier promise of making foreign expansion available in a free update. To be clear, we are always going to allow for foreign expansion in your subject nations, with or without the Sphere of Influence expansion. The expansion will add a great deal more options to Power Blocs, foreign expansion, interference in other countries' politics, and much more - but the core systems will be in the free update, since that's how we keep them current and fresh and can build on them in the future.
The release dates for Dawn of Wonder and Sphere of Influence listed on Steam are placeholder dates until their respective announcements, but do roughly reflect reality. Sphere of Influence is scheduled for early 2024, to allow sufficient time to implement new features of considerable complexity, but that's not how long you have to wait for another major update! We are also planning for another major free update - with an open beta - before 2023 is over, similar in scope to our 1.2 release. Some of the improvements to the diplomatic gameplay we're currently developing for the update alongside Sphere of Influence is targeting this release rather than the one in Q1 2024. You will hear a bit more about that next week when we return to give you an update to our post-release plans!
I hope this has cleared up a few of your questions and concerns! In closing, we are very happy to see the big uptick in player numbers since Update 1.3 and Voice of the People, and we hope you are all enjoying your time with it!
