You play as head of the family. The distinction is important, because you fould have a feud with your sibling(s), for example. It helps to put emphasis on your direct descendants. Sometimes they can mess up things for you.
I don't interpret that like this. You play as state which has a series of rulers, but they are more fleshed out than in games like EU4 and there is more incorporation of personalist politics. This fleshing out is a very welcome addition highly appropriate to the period and the more such fleshing out there is, the better. It would be good to add more flesh to other aspects like population. But it doesn't replace the core gameplay, which is about the same as in all other Paradox games.
There isn't much to interpret to be honest, because it is not a matter of opinion.
I am referring to CK2. CK3's interface is too infuriating so I am not playing that. At the same time, it seems to be improving. For example, I heard that one of the DLCs actually adds the economic map mode which was bizarrely missing. Perhaps with time they will return to the functionality of the older games, so I'll just wait a few more years until it is all fixed.
"Personal politics" and managing the kingdom are one and the same.
People who play a lot of tabletop stuff like DnD can build massive narratives in their minds but the *actual game mechanics* don't support that. That's where the confusion comes from.
I wouldn't call it a marketing gimmick per say, but CK3 absolutely *fails to deliver* on the promise. CK3, like most Paradox games, really does have an uncommon premise, but they all generally don't succeed at their goals. Except EU4, easily the best PDox game. Solid 8/10.
It's not you, CK3's UI is just cancer, that's all. Said so since release. I think Victoria 3 later revealed what degenerate design it leads to down the line too - information hidden in a tooltip within a tooltip within a tooltip. CK2 UI was awesome in comparison.
When all you have is a hammer, and Paradox only has hammers in every part of their design theory, everything looks like a nail. Jon Shafer pioneered a brilliant UI innovation and the braindead zombies at Paradox just slapped it on everything regardless of if it was appropriate because critical thought is beyond them.
Both character screens show roughly the same exact information bar some minor differences. Only CK2's needs only like half the space and looks pretty – paper, wood, ornamentation, and it actually has different styles based on religion. CK3's is ugly as fuck in comparison. The 3D models and transparency kill any sort of stylization.
Well as I'm sure everyone on this forum knows I'm a massive 3D model hater. In fact the minutes I saw them I decided not to buy the game, or any other Paradox game. Which turns out was absolutely the right call since V3 and CK3 are both trash. I def agree that the UI theming of CK3 sucks as well but I imagine it was done for modding purposes.
There are other problems than just that. I mean consider just the character screen:
Both character screens show roughly the same exact information bar some minor differences. Only CK2's needs only like half the space and looks pretty – paper, wood, ornamentation, and it actually has different styles based on religion. CK3's is ugly as fuck in comparison. The 3D models and transparency kill any sort of stylization.
There's also the matter of the UI in CK3 controlling like shit. I distinctly recall waging battles with the dynasty tree screen because it was a nightmare to basically get an overview of a noble house using it (something that was never a problem in CK2). CK3 also divided the main toolbar – instead of having everything in the top left like CK2, you have the character in bottom left (why? Fucking why?), and the rest of the menu in top right. There's actually a ton of things like these all over CK3's UI, making it a pain to use. So many little things, but it just adds up, especially when most of the damn game is in the UI. So many clicks, so much wasted space, so many unwieldy design decisions. Also the map is ugly as sin (not the paper one when zoomed out, but the zoomed in one that you spend 90% of the time looking at).
I think the 3D models are absolutely the right call and pretty cool tech, they do help in matters like immersion, being cinematic and such.
Obviously if games had infinite budget and staff and development time and CPU and GPU and RAM limits and so on then 3D models are fine. And if we could reduce them in the UI. Why not let people have a button to reduce them down in size? But none of those things are true. I mean ideally we'd have a full on amazing looking walking sim and awesome AI generated stories and dialogue and shit. But again that isn't the choice.
You think those cartoony abominations are hot?
They are considerably less moddable than 2d images, especially with the whole gene morphing stuff, so in the end you are still left with purple CK3 style humans with long ears. And for everything slightly different from a standard humanoid you would need to basically design something new from scratch. Or use models from Reforged, I suppose. But even those won't quite fit, because stylistically CK3 is too different. Also they will be (90-100%) static, so you'll have humanoid races looking like cosplayers and non-humanoids looking like cheap props.
That's what that means - i.e. there's no such "thing" as a bastard.
First they have pledged never to allow landless characters, in fact one reason they don't put in Republics and Theocracies is that it is at odds with the dynasty/family sequential character play.
