Magna Mundi getting cancelled ?!

[TheLastOne36]

Damn. I still hope that the devs who left UV and PI will come to some sort of agreement to slowly weed out enough bugs to at least attempt a beta release.

The former have invested too much work and the latter two much money to simply leave the game rot. Or that´s what I'm trying to convince myself of, anyway.

That's kind of the reason they cancelled the project though, isn't it?

Too much work and too much money(along with no progress) to be a profitable venture for Paradox.

 

[Arakhor]

Ubik's posted some beta-tester responses on the UV forum, which are mostly encouraging, except when they mention major bugs or glaring errors that need to be fixed. Someone on at ParadoxPlaza opined that Ubik simply doesn't seem to understand what a good-quality game actually looks like.

 

[Evie]

That's about the long and short of it, and is a long-standing affair.

To Ubik, game design is about intricacy, and correctly simulating all the forces at play in whatever the game is trying to model. This isn't a new opinion on my part: we had several major clashes on the Paradox forums waaaaay back in 2007 where he argued that EU3 was horrible design for its failure to account for all those factors, failure to prevent people-who-were-not-Portugal from colonizing early, and its relatively simple gameplay. (I was arguing the other side - that EU3 was a far superior design even back then to EU2, because it was about gameplay, not about history books).

In short, he never heard (or at least never accepted) "An engineer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Serious flaw in a game designer, that. (Far less so in a modmaker)

 

[Heathcliff]

Joe: If you compare the amount of bugs in Magna Mundi to other paradox games buggy at release... I don't know which you have played of course, but lets say compared to SotS 2, Gettysburg, Pride of Nations or Hearts of Iron 3 ?
Was Magna Mundi more buggy than those games at release?
Or it's rather that Paradox has shifted and won't allow buggy games to be released anymore?

 

[Joecoolyo]

Joe: If you compare the amount of bugs in Magna Mundi to other paradox games buggy at release... I don't know which you have played of course, but lets say compared to SotS 2, Gettysburg, Pride of Nations or Hearts of Iron 3 ?
Was Magna Mundi more buggy than those games at release?
Or it's rather that Paradox has shifted and won't allow buggy games to be released anymore?

Well, I can't really say, since I don't think I've ever played a Paradox game at release.

But! I have seen a video of Gettysburg, and well, it's not that bad, but it's close to that in terms of buggy-ness and unplayability.

 

[Maniacal]

failure to prevent people-who-were-not-Portugal from colonizing early

That explains why I didn't like his mod. Okay so MEIOU does have modifiers that do work against early colonization, but you still can do it if you really want to (early colonization shouldn't be easy anyway), but what I got from Magna Mundi (the mod) was that they'd rather just prevent you from even trying in the first place.

 

[Turquoiside]

This thread <3: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?483356-700.000!

Yeah, the guy is nuts. I never played MM even when I had IN, and I was never interested in this project in the slightest. Against my better judgement I feel bad for Paradox for putting up with all of this. Besides that, I honestly find all this pretty funny.

 

[TheLastOne36]

That's about the long and short of it, and is a long-standing affair.

To Ubik, game design is about intricacy, and correctly simulating all the forces at play in whatever the game is trying to model. This isn't a new opinion on my part: we had several major clashes on the Paradox forums waaaaay back in 2007 where he argued that EU3 was horrible design for its failure to account for all those factors, failure to prevent people-who-were-not-Portugal from colonizing early, and its relatively simple gameplay. (I was arguing the other side - that EU3 was a far superior design even back then to EU2, because it was about gameplay, not about history books).

In short, he never heard (or at least never accepted) "An engineer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Serious flaw in a game designer, that. (Far less so in a modmaker)

I think that quote describes the MM situation quite well.

 

[Evie]

That explains why I didn't like his mod. Okay so MEIOU does have modifiers that do work against early colonization, but you still can do it if you really want to (early colonization shouldn't be easy anyway), but what I got from Magna Mundi (the mod) was that they'd rather just prevent you from even trying in the first place.

Yep. It's one reason I never got into MM to begin with (having the gravest doubt about Ubik's overall philosophy never helped).

Not that I really play the other mods much. They either keep us stuck on the Paradox map, which, even putting aside its rather, ah, unusual projection, was drawn by a three-years-old with crayolas and the long-term memory of a goldfish; or they create a map of their own which mostly involve throwing new province after new province after province, generally at Europe, sometime at India, and rarely at anywhere else.

(Mostly, though, I don't play other people's mods much because I'd much rather go the DIY way)

 

[TheLastOne36]

Yep. It's one reason I never got into MM to begin with (having the gravest doubt about Ubik's overall philosophy never helped).

Not that I really play the other mods much. They either keep us stuck on the Paradox map, which, even putting aside its rather, ah, unusual projection, was drawn by a three-years-old with crayolas and the long-term memory of a goldfish; or they create a map of their own which mostly involve throwing new province after new province after province, generally at Europe, sometime at India, and rarely at anywhere else.

(Mostly, though, I don't play other people's mods much because I'd much rather go the DIY way)

I hope my map when it is done will be more to your liking.

It is looking quite beautiful now that I've made some more progress. I hope there is nothing wrong with the game engine in handling an exponentially bigger map though...

 

[Evie]

Well, given I'm in the home stretch of my DIY map, we'll see. ;-)

 

[Heathcliff]

Ubik fighting on Paradox Magna Mundi forum.

 

[Son of Erdrick]

Yep. He wrote an open letter to Fredrick Wester (Pdox's CEO, I believe) and pretty much threw down the gauntlet.

This is more entertaining than the game ever would have been.

 

[Turquoiside]

Yep. He wrote an open letter to Fredrick Wester (Pdox's CEO, I believe) and pretty much threw down the gauntlet.

This is more entertaining than the game ever would have been.

Definitely. Paradox wisely deleted the thread, so hears ubik's opening post for those who missed it:

Spoiler :

An Open Letter to Fredrik Wester

Fredrik Wester,

I am publicly addressing you as I feel it’s my duty to the Magna Mundi fans to do the utmost to save the game and allow them to experience the work of the very special and talented team I have the pleasure to lead.
I also feel I have the duty to the team I lead to try to save Magna Mundi. The involvement of the team on the project and how all worked together towards the single objective of delivering the game was impressive. I was still deciding things minutes before I was warned by a Spanish team member that the game had been cancelled.
After reading that you were the one coming up with the idea of turning Magna Mundi into a commercial project, I feel we stand exactly at the same level of responsibility towards the fans: I created the brand and coordinated both the amateur and the professional projects and you decided to take advantage of it by producing a commercial game and in the process take ownership of the brand.

In the first scenario everybody wins. This scenario demands leadership, charisma and ability to compromise. And those are exactly the qualities I am asking for you to show while trying to summon them myself. It’s a scenario where, to put it simply, a normal release date is set (I have no problem about a release in two or three months time to accommodate your release schedule), the game gets normally released and UV will continue to assume its responsibilities from then on. If for any reason you want UV to stop supporting Magna Mundi after the release thus allowing Paradox to take control of any future development within the scope of Magna Mundi, we can certainly talk about that.

At present the situation is clear. Your decision to cancel the game will lead to a legal battle where Universo Virtual will try its best to beat Paradox, while Paradox will be doing the same to Universo Virtual. All the while I will neither give you the Magna Mundi engine nor return to you a single euro that you spent financing the development of the game.
Courts apart, I am not one who fears the judgement of the public. I invite everyone who can come to Lisbon to check for them the game and make a judgement about it.

In my book, cancelling a game at this stage and in these conditions while demanding back the money used for funding its development for two and a half years, demanding also the engine of the game, continuing to enjoy the ownership of the brand and retaining the possibility of releasing Magna Mundi for you, has a far uglier name than “cancellation”.

 

[TheLastOne36]

Ability to compromise....

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

Just look at that smug man.

I never paid much attention to MM until the whole thing started to crumble (I was vaguely aware of it, and to be honest the faction mechanics seemed promising if the UI did not). However, this whole debacle has the makings of comedic gold. Let's just hope this does not dissuade Paradox from licensing out their engines to fans; DH and AoD prove that fans can be capable.

I wonder if he has Moor blood. He looks a little like an Arab (which is a totally cool group of people, by the way).

 

[NBAfan]

I'll bet Ubik gets banned from the Paradox forums now.

 

[TheLastOne36]

If this thing does get taken to court, does UV actually have a case?

 

[Tee Kay]

I do hope that Paradox takes the faction system of MM and incorporates it into EUIV.

Maybe. But you'll have to wait for the 6th expansion, 4th patch, 8th beta patch and 23rd DLC.

"An engineer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

I like this.

I wonder if he has Moor blood. He looks a little like an Arab (which is a totally cool group of people, by the way).

He reminds me of Quentin Tarantino.

 

[Son of Erdrick]

Maybe. But you'll have to wait for the 6th expansion, 4th patch, 8th beta patch and 23rd DLC.

Well in light of their most recent game (CK2) and the change in their business model (no more broken games out of the box, small DLC expansions accompanied by substantial patches) I think it would not be all that long before we get some nifty features in the future Paradox games.