Hey there, Nino from editing/thumbs here. We thank everyone who offers constructive feedback under our comments and maintains an open discussion with everyone. However, we ask you to *stay constructive,* as many comments have been directly attacking Hjalf. I'm replying here as well by the way, so if you see a comment marked with *^na* it's mine.
I am unsure how Paradox could depict any of this in any other manner, as depicting war crimes in-game would not be advisable. Almost all the leaders mentioned in the video have been in the game since its release, with focuses and decisions that are fairly comparable to the new focuses. If your complaint is that the update/DLC does not do enough to condemn the most condemned government in history, I really do not know what to tell you. Perhaps Paradox should add an event every few weeks that lets you know how bad of a person you are for playing Germany.
You have the mechanics of purges in the USSR, discrimination against Muslims in the British Ray, racial segregation in South Africa. There is no racial segregation in the USA and nothing in Germany. Holocaust could simply be on the sideline and the player would have no influence on it. The only way to get rid of it would be to overthrow Hitler.
Fr, is paradox supposed to just add a decision called “genocide” that just reduces population in states? Like, I just don’t see how from a gameplay standpoint paradox could add anything like that. At the end of the day hoi4 isn’t a simulation, and it isn’t a learning resource. It’s a god damn video game meant for fun
@@Jackspladt The thing is...they did. Ever checked how the Bulgarian coring decisions for the Balkans work? Or at least did last I check a year or so ago. Remove manpower, get a core. Yikes. What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan.
@FlorianGeyerFan I agree that it is not advisable to let players committ warcrimes. Nonetheless Paradox does that, and for anyone halfway knowledgeable on the matter it gets pretty obvious once you look into the effects of various focuses and decisions of the new focus tree. We are working on implementing Crimes against Humanity features in our Ultra Historical Mod...but the player won't have any agency in it, it just happens. And we are covering all sides. We'll have (and do in fact in some areas) have little info texts on national spirits. As you know these only pop up when you hover over them for a bit. Only then will the info popup show more than the immediate ingame effect, aka the historical background text. We added a red-marked section explaining what this national spirit (or whatever else) is actually representing, what crimes were committed etc. The player has to actually stay for a moment, look and read...if he wants to, otherwise he won't even get to see the info text.
@@HistoryGameV oh yeah I forgot about those Bulgarian decisions. I do agree they should’ve made the gold reserve decisions reduce the state population in some way
Lol imagine me an Indian HOI4 player doing a UK run where my country gets annexed. No one gave a fuck about that but it's a problem only when you game the Nazis Lol
Paradox must "sanatize" history to an extent due to the necessities of being a game that is meant to be enjoyed (and to avoid this very kind of drama). Sanatize is not to say glorified, but Paradox has a major aversion towards portraying atrocities in its historical games. The issue is that to portray WW2 accurately things like the Holocaust would need to be turned into game mechanics, and there are...obvious issues with gamifying things the mass murder of civilians for ingame rewards. Not to mention the controversy, legally and in the community, that can arise from the portrayal of these things. At the end of the day HOI4 is a game, nothing more--it's not meant to teach people about history, it's a product made to sell for people to consume.
Hey, that's actually one of the more reasonable comments made in the last few hours, thank you for this! Yes, absolutely. And they did it before, the old German focus tree did that. The new one lets you actually committ crimes against humanity, it just hides it in plain sight. Seizing of gold reserves? More like sending certain minorities to the death camps and take their assets (yeah, we actually checked that for our historical accuracy mod, Germans didn't seize Polish gold reserves, those were evacuated, but mass-confiscated private Polish assets especially of Jews and the Polish elites). Exploiting the Reichskommissariats? More like starving the conquered populations and enacting the Hungerplan. In comparison, the Stalinist purges are depicted much more clearly. They are BAD for the player. It's a challenge to redirect Stalins paranoia so it doesn't hurt too bad...and doing so very clearly results in the death of the people you coloured as traitors.
@@havocthecrow8742 Again. Why does the "seizing of gold" reserves increase resistance then? Not to mention that historically, NO gold reserves were seized in Poland and Norway, and very minor amounts in the Netherlands and Belgium since both countries had relocated a good chunk of them pre-war. What was seized especially in Poland was the private monetary assets of the Polish elite and the Jewish population though. As a result, many members of the Polish establishment went underground or fled the country to join Polish exilant forces. Soooo...sounds like increased resistance, doesn't it? Not to mention...we have had this very mechanic in Ultra Historical Mod, named "Seize wealth", for over a year. And it very much includes the seizing of private assets.
Calling the way a HOI IV focus tree looks "problematic" is über cringe. Calling things "problematic" without proposing a way that depicting something in game would not be "problematic" to you is also lame. Unless you're implying that removing all the icons and making the screen look as boring as possible to not be "cool" would be the solution, in which case that would also be very lame. Having warcrimes in game would be problematic, not having warcrimes in game is also problematic. Besides not allowing someone to play Germany, how exactly is this supposed to be solved?
It was solved for years before Paradox decided to include warcrime mechanics. There are even worse things, for example the hole "loot foreign gold" focuses....leaving out this was a campaign of looting everything from entire countries and their people and not only gold. It makes nazi policies appear far mroe "tame" then they really where. Again, it was solved previously. If they wanted a mechanic like the inner circle they could have easily gone with one for the german army instead considering the huge ammount of infighting that happened there during WW2. Its certainly less problematic that giving Himmler a focus tree that is a euphemism for "lets build death camps, its really cool" while depicting him with lorrels of victory. If I want to implement the nazi policies into the game, then there are mods for that. No need to include it into the main game. I also dont remember there being a "round up the japanease forcamps" focus in the US focus tree or "send back jewish ships to nazi germany" in the UK focus tree. I mean with Speer and Todt we literally have the two armaments ministers responsible for a eruope wide slave worker system for millions of people as "I was jsut doing economics" mechanics guys. In regards to Germany paradox has managed for years to walk the fine line of what is acceptable in regardds to nazi glorification and fun gameplay successfully, but this sadly crossed the line. Only thing missing now is giving Himmler any form of economic buff for his SS focus....after all the SS ran a huge part of germanys slave labor force by the second half of the war in the death camps. And regarding the portraits, just use the simple once they have been using for years previously. Dont put Himmlers head infront of laurells of victory or similar shit. And if paradox really wants to include the proper "mechanics" of anzi germany, dont hide it behind fancy words and nice pictures. Say what the focus actualyl represendts: "Deport people to slave camps", "build up the slave labour", "Put Himmler in charge of slave labour", "increase the speed of deportations", etc. with the proper "buffs" to the economy. Eather leave it out or commit to it. But dont try to white wash and glorify it like this.
Nobody owes you a solution when they call something problematic, who made up that rule?? This dude is coming from a historical perspective, not a game design perspective per se.
Very good points if it weren't for the fact that portraying the Architect of the Holocaust with laurel wreaths [a Symbol of Triumph] is a bit of a weird f*cking design choice that is worth being critiqued as problematic.
@@Rauschgenerator That’s ridiculous. There will always be people who glorify evil things, but that doesn’t mean we should be condemning games for depicting evil/not depicting evil (apparently both are bad).
I remembered how they made the Italians almost a chore to play as you had to balance inner party politics and the random wishes of Mussolini while fighting a war with limited resources... while also giving you the possibility of kicking the fascists out of power. While the game always had the contradiction of having the g*rms being the "beginner nation" to play, couldn't they just put an internal mechanic or something? Also, to those saying the n*zis looked cool... just remember those fancy hugo boss uniforms their officers wore were completely useless in the Russian winter or any actual combat situations.
An internal struggle mechanic would be a good idea, although given how screwed up the Nazi high command was, it would be less of an Italian style left to right graph and more like some kind of pie chart.
don't really care as a japan main tbh,besides talking about the ''glorification'' and the ''coolerfication'' the same arguement could be made when the USSR got a trailer and rework,a trailer mind you that has been turned into a two million viewed commie edit lmao. something i should dislike but i refuse to,because its just a game.
unless the next update will have some crazy trailer (example japan rework) with japanese soldiers walking chinese civs thru nanking or whatever i and im sure 90% of the playerbase don't really care.
Despite being of German descent, I find the German handling of WWII history odd, and the Götterdämmerung controversy by Steinwallen and others is a perfect example of this. Firstly, what do you want? The forced introduction of grey portraits across Europe? We know who the Nazis were, we know what the swastika looks like, banning them is silly. It's also just an example of how historical memory in Germany has perversely empowered extremists by making them into martyrs. Ironically, this repeats the exact same mistakes the German government made during the Weimar Republic. And now some Germans want to censor a DLC for a video game because they're so afraid of properly confronting the past? Frankly, there's also a bizarre act of selective historical memory going here. There was no outcry over depictions of the Kaiserreich and the reconquest of South West Africa, despite the genocide Germany committed against the Herero people. Nor has depictions of Stalin's bloody imperialist empire in the east prompted such feverish calls for censorship. This is despite the fact that the communist empire held half of Germany captive for four decades, replete with torture, killings and rape, and all of which are issues which Steinwallen was deploring the lack of explicit mention of in relation to the Nazi regime. Indeed, if good taste is important, as argued by Steinwallen, then there are far more pressing and real issues than sparking an internet controversy over a video game. Perhaps like the fact that Germans are now so disillusioned with their political system that the largest party in Thüringen is not simply the AfD, but the AfD of Björn Höcke. Perhaps entering politics and dealing with the underlying issues which caused that would be a better use of Steinwallen's time? Finally, I must also say that Germany's often self-defeating and contradictory laws do not apply to the United Kingdom, or any other country outside the Federal Republic's borders. Germans should keep this in mind when considering them, because their own contradictory foibles are their own, not ours. We should not be expected to abide by laws which, even in Germany, have not resulted in the desired effect.
On the whole issue of how Stalin/USSR are depicted: I remember people specifically complaining about how the "Stalin's Paranoia" system is wrongfully depicting only the Soviets Government as paranoid/broken/hard to balance (given, those videos were by people openly saying they are left-wing or communist, but still). Overall, if we are going by realistic depictions, there wouldn't be a game. Germany couldn't win because they spend more time killing people within their country than trying to win the war, the Soviets would always be crippled hard post war (something many people still don't accept, is that the Soviet economy never fully recovered from WW2 lol), UK would always fall etc. Also, like you point out, the selective outcry is kinda strange, given we had the original German Focus tree rework, which also didn't address most of the warcrimes Germany committed. Similarly, you had Himmler having a good ol' time recruiting all kinds of divisions from conquered countries, and nobody had much of an issue with that. On the flipside, imagine the outcry if they actually gave us foci to do the Holo.... (you know the ending, don't need youtube not displaying this comment) Overall, if you really need a game to teach you history, I argue your problem should be with the education system of your/whatever country, because it should be their responsibility (or arguably your parents) to teach you about this stuff. If its that big of an issue, I guess you should be required to fill out a history test before you are allowed to participate in any type of historical and alternate historical game
Agree. I hate how people can't admit the cospic principle of Yin and yang. "Nazis are depicted as kinda cool". Admit they were cool, that they had some awe inspiring qualities and yet they committed atrocities. You want them to be depicted as some cartoon evil???? It doesn't work. Just look at things at what they are. Don't be so hysterical and emotional. Stop living in denial.
They had absolutely none awe inspiring qualities. Their technology lagged behind the US and UK. Superweapons? USA & UK. Working mass-producable jet fighters? USA & UK. Gigantic rocket-boosted bombers touching the stratosphere with analog computer-guided defensive guns? USA. Radar-triggered AA and arty ammunition absolutely shredding everything? USA. Meanwhile Germany spent the equivalent of the costs of the Manhattan Project on rockets that took another 20yrs to work properly...done by the USA. Oh and btw...by the end of the war the Nazis had compromised the German combat doctrine to such a degree some units were approaching Soviet early war levels in combat quality. Absolutely based...not.
@@HistoryGameV Of course they had - charisma, political shrewdness and oratory skills. They convinced other Germans that waging war would be cool after WW1. Then they also convinced people that being blue-eyed blond is the only proper leader to govern German people yet most of them had dark hair and eyes. They managed to captivate audiences with their speeches. Did they also commit genocide on a massive scale? Yes. You can be evil while having good qualities/traits. It is a game - it doesn't (or at least shouldn't) have a "message". It has mechanics and that is it. If you start reading into it, stop it and get some help before you join one of the groups either bashing games for having DEI or not having enough DEI.
Imagine needing to be constantly beaten over the head with the fact that these people were bad in order to not flip out. I for one appreciate that the devs don't treat us like children but rather adults that can be exposed to concepts without needing to have a moral lecture shoehorned in every five minutes.
They...do treat you like a child. They don't dare show you reality otherwise you get offended...as you just did. The game was doing fine with NOT letting you commit war crimes without daring to tell you you are. Every time you click a "seize gold reserves" decision it's essentially coddling you since they are too afraid telling people "actually you are robbing the country mainly and seizing assets of minorities being sent to extermination camps". Weirdly enough, they have no issue of telling you what the Stalinist purges are doing. Which is great honestly, the Stalinist purges genuinly HURT you as a player when randomly killing off good generals and advisors, they tell you pretty directly you are ordering people to their deaths if you are redirecting Stalins paranoia. Why do Germany players need this level of coddling?
@@HistoryGameV Not offended in the slightest. I just don't personally need them to remind me every five seconds that the Germans were bad in explicit detail in order to get it. You know, just like I can play any other strategy games without needing to be told that wars and its horrors are bad in order to be fully aware of these facts. To use an even more sterile example, I don't think the board game series Axis & Allies is "treating me like a child" or "coddling me" for delivering a purely mechanical approach to war gaming without going into the explicit details of the moral implications of the German or Japanese player taking over their enemy's capital region on the board. I'm perfectly capable of filling in the blanks on my own, as I believe most war gaming enthusiasts are. But hey, you do you, free country and all that. 👍
@@HistoryGameVI get what you mean but from a gameplay perspective the purge is supposed to be an unavoidable challenge you overcome. In real life all the inner circle people were incompetent and had horrible effects on people everywhere but also..how do you represent that in a game, after all, if they gave a bunch of de buffs for having them then why would anyone go down that path. I also do half agree with what you said about the gold reserves and how it really doesn’t show the full extent. On the other hand, when I sit down and play hoi4 for a couple outs I don’t want to be repeatedly bashed in the head with the fact that yes, the Nazis were indeed bad. I personally don’t see much issue with most of the German tree stuff because at the end of the day, it’s a game made for fun and the dlc would be a lot more boring if it was just a bit of new German stuff and no wonder weapons because obviously Germany never even got close to that stuff in real life
Please don't be "Extra Credits" on this mate. Their idea of throttling one side of player matchmaking, because that particular team has to depict nazis, went down like a lead balloon. Any notion the comment section has that Germany should be "hard mode" is ignorant; this game is just that, a game, and it needs to be structured in a way that allows players to face one another fairly with an uncertain outcome. Otherwise you are asking that a game of football is played with one team having been hobbled and the other not. The novelty for spectators wears thin quickly; and for the actual team whom have their legs tied together, it's non-existent. Paradox cannot sell a game that is mechanically broken, and to hobble Germany, regardless of depictions of nazis, *would* mechanically break the game. I won't speak of the portrait. But as to the laurels, you're reaching, it's commensurate to all other icons depicted in all other focus trees, you're merely unconstructively criticising the art style at that point.
Have to admit I have no idea what "Extra Credit" did? What I am asking for is that Paradox stops coddling and sugarcoating everything for their snowflake Nazi enjoyer players (and I am a Germany enjoyer btw...not because Nazis, but because in the realism mod I help making it's pretty challenging to play). Leave internal Nazi policies out? Fine by me. Make internal Nazi policies a thing but NOT call it what they are? NOT ok. You are not "seizing gold reserves", you are plundering a country and executing its elites and minorities. You are not simply "Establishing the Rosenberg Office" to "administrate" the Reichskommissariats...you are enacting the Hungerplan. You are not "increasing the security duties of the SS", you are setting up death camps. And yes, putting Nazi war criminals into the wreaths of laurels is incredibly offputting for me. I kinda get it with Stalin in the Soviet tree, they are basically copying the Soviet artstyle of the time. Still offputting for me. But there isn't even that argument to be made for the style used in the German tree since...that's just not the case.
@HistoryGameV _"Stop Normalising Nazis - Socially Conscious Game Design - Extra Credits"._ The offending video I was referring to; Had 21,000 likes and 325,000 dislikes before TH-cam disabled dislikes. All those dislikes weren't from those sympathetic to nazi ideology, but instead a backlash to the (poorly thought through) advocacy of over-correction. I won't speak to the middle of your reply, as none of which you wrote was in reference to my comment. But I will note for those reading this that you had already hearted comments/made statements that were relevant to my original comment. So, I decided to comment. But you're simply being ridiculous when it comes to the laurels. The VAST, vast majority of icons across the game contain some stylised variation of laurels as their borders. All factions, all focus trees. You are assigning a moral value to something that is, in fact, merely generic accoutrements of the art style. Nothing more. Would you next decry the uses of gold colouring on the icons? Seeing as gold is the colour of wealth, victory, and approval. It's a petty criticism that distracts and diminishes from any previous point you were trying to make. Whilst not made in bad faith, it doesn't come off any better. I won't tell you to drop it, but don't deceive yourself.
I miss the time when gamers wouldn't be so butt hurt about "mORaL" and "wArCrIME". Back in the time of Red Alert 2 everyone cheered when the game literally had "terrorist" as suicide unit and we could gleefully pollute the land with radiation and brutally melt civilians into puddles. But now the fragile mind of yours couldn't handle the game just because (you believe) they didn't emphasize enough how some in-game texts are war crimes? YOU bought the game. YOU decide to play as Nazi. Nobody forces you to spend $40 and watch some fictions you don't like. It's like watching a slasher movie and complaining about how it's too violent.
Yeah nope. I was actually around at the time, in fact RA2 was the first game I bought with my own money and also the only one I had to pay D-Mark for since the € was just being introduced. There is no "terrorist" unit in the game. xD Complete bullshit. What you are referring to is C&C Generals which DID cause quite a controversy also in the USA because you could play Middle Eastern terrorists and kill US soldiers while the Iraq Insurgency was raging. In any case, why can't YOU handle it when a game mentions warcrimes? Can your fragile mind not handle the fact you are replaying historical events with some unsavory aspects? Are you so desperate you need it sugarcoated every time with fancy art, coddling texts making you NOT feel bad for playing the bad guys? Fucking snowflakes you are. Pathetic. The problem is it is NOT fiction FFS, but they make it seem like one.
@HistoryGameV Terrorist is the unique unit for Cuba. You played RA2, but you don't even know this?! One of the most crucial rules for literature, movies, games, and any other storytelling is perspective. In HOI4, you're not playing as some third-person narrator. You're playing as your chosen country, your chosen ideology. Since you clicked on Rhineland NF (prerequisite NF of inner circle system), that means you're now viewing things from Nazi's POV. You can disagree with Nazi, but it would be pretty weird if Nazi wouldn't convince themselves of their crime with fancy icon and flowery words, no? Every villain is a hero in their own eyes. If you don't like this POV, then just play a different path or country. I have the ability to tell right from wrong without being easily misguided by some fancy icon, and I hope you do too.
Then what's the solution? Do we make the Nazis ridiculous and incompetent for fear that someone might find them "cool"? Bombard the player with events describing unnameable atrocities? Censor every focus and every portrait, as if the player wouldn't know what country they're playing? The game allows you to pretend you're not collecting genocides like stamps, because the alternative would make for an utterly soul-crushing experience. This is far removed, both in intent and in consequences, from historical negationism. Let's call this for what it is : a moral panic. It's no different from the now-defunct idea that video games cause violence.
Not for fear. For factuality. The Nazi government WAS ridiculously incompetent in some areas. And why bombard? You do already get some news events. Why not for major events like the Babyn Yar massacre of the Ukrainian Jews, or the Katyn massacre of the Polish elite committed by the Soviets? We are actually preparing to do just that for our HoI4 realism overhaul mod. With the option to deactivate it at game start. Make the focus art actually fit in and stop sugarcoating it so little snowflake Nazi enjoyers don't get their tails in a twist. Make the description text say the silent part out loud. "Establish the Rosenberg Office"...alright. Now change the focus description text to actually saying that you just launched the first stage of the Hungerplan instead of calling it "exploitation of conquered territory" or whatever the text says again, something about the Reichskommissariats. Why are people so sensitive about this? You are playing the Nazis. Either leave their policies and Nazi cosplay out of the game as it was before the new DLC, or go the full distance. Pretty snowflakey behavior if you ask me.
@@HistoryGameV Their newly-purported incompetence is just an overcorrection from old myths of German technological/tactical supremacy. They were competent enough to subjugate almost all of continental Europe in a few years. Admitting that fact isn't a slippery slope towards fascism. The reason why these events are ignored is simple: nobody wants Genocide Simulator 2025. Not the players, not the devs, and not the descendants of victims, I would wager. We're not quite playing as the Nazis, we're essentially playing as the Wehrmacht in a fantasy where it played no part in atrocities. In another medium, it would be perpetuating outdated pop-history myths. Here, it's a necessary compromise : without it, many players who would be drawn towards Germany would be, ironically enough, neo-Nazis themselves. And really, the snowflake thing is a bit ridiculous. Perhaps you think me a conservative who will lose his mind if you turn his own slang against him, but I'm perfectly open about the fact that having to re-enact the Holocaust in a video game would be hard for me to stomach.
okay.. so i'm going to be writing this as a Norwegian. someone who walks past Germans bunkers and memorials to the fallen Norwegian and British troops every single day. Germany sent my country men to the camps, to the torture chambers, to the firing line, and bombed the cities while my grandparents ran for cover. THIS IS A GAME. nobody other than people who chose to get offended over this cares about it. i can start the game right now. Pick Norway and get Quisling in power if i want to. it's "not in poor taste" or whatever word you chose to pick this time. it's a game. "The Nazis look cool, and Hitler has a better-looking photo," my brother in Christ. do you understand that this is a game? nobody from Paradox is going around saying, "Hey, nazi stuff is cool." "mainly how the nazi's are being shown here, these are people who are deeply involved in warcrimes, okay. should we just throw out the artwork for everyone then? because i can tell you for a fact that not a single country has clean hands when it comes to war crimes. the difference is that the German warcimes are held higher than others. nobody would play a Germany if Paradox made Hitler look horrible. you know why? because it's a game. and the player has to look at it every time they open the focus tree. and no, having photos that don't look horrible isn't "problematic." "SS means warcrimes." Yes, i will not argue that the SS was behind a lot of warcrimes. but countpoint, would it sit better with you if they said "expand German military police" and just push it under the carpet? okay, Himmler time. NKVD is a thing. Soviet Union has a lot of stuff built around it following the No Step Back DLC. how many warcrimes are they guilty of, and how many camps do you think the Soviets build? should we just remove those as well? or can we just come to an agreement that his is just paradox saying, "Hey, this is the name of the military police of this given country." and not look further into it, you damn snowflake. because this is, again, a video game. and agian, it's "problematic" because you chose it to be. as for legal issues. no, not at all, Germany is the only one that cares about this. it's the reason why you had to grab a mod to be able to see Hitler for like seven years. "Reichsleiter Todt is banned in Germany." Very cool, do you see how again this is a you problem? because i'm pretty sure Paradox isn't trying to get them to stand up. "Why make it look cool?" my brother in Christ. IT'S A VIDEO GAME. players wouldn't play Germany if the focus tree said, "You are the bad dude, and you should feel bad for playing them."
@@Jackspladt Why a popup? Just write it in the info boxes and texts for the focuses and decisions. Most people will read them once and that's it. Instead everything gets sugarcoated. "Yes you are playing the Nazis, and glorious laurel-wreathed Himmler is only expanding SS security duties which totally doesn't mean setting up death camps, my sweet little snowflake."
Why do these types of people always conflate portrail with glorification? Do they think the mear fact these idea being exibited means gamers will be automaticly that?
Exactly. I hope it's just they're so desperate for attention that they give the least charitable interpretation/assumption of motivations possible instead of actually believing this schizophrenic nonsense.
Exactly, the issue is the lack of portrayal. You get to do all these nice focuses, cool sounding decisions...in the meantime what they actually represent is warcrimes. Paradox did actually put them in. They just don't tell you that you are actually committing them. What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan.
@@HistoryGameV You mean that in an historical game where you play historical criminals you actually play people that do bad things ? Imagine my shock !
Not like that TH-camr caused it to be in the mainstream gaming press in Germany. I'm also pretty sure that PCGamer has expressed similar worries on the announcement ca. a month ago. Of course people like the game, but it's nontheless something to be aware of. ^na
@HistoryGameV no it doesn't. Every adult is responsible for the media he is consuming. If he can't play this game without glorifying the third reich, then the issue lies in the education system and not within the game
It’s a WW2 game!? I don’t understand what people expect. It would be kinda pointless if it was just democratic nations battling It out. I’ve also seen zero condemnation over the Communist stuff either. Both Communism and Nazism were equally evil and bad
People have different tastes and are entitled to their opinions, and I can understand why Germans would be sensitive to this sort of thing. My own opinion is that those advocating this as problematic are both being too sensitive and are cherry-picking. I do not agree personally that the new tree "glorifies" National Socialism because it doesn't advocate or portray the National Socialists as a good thing, it's thematically appropriate art. Secondly, I would just like to remind everyone that this game is technically full of war criminals. The Holodomor achieved a higher death toll than the final solution, and it's an actual button you can press as the Soviets, if you press "The Collectivization Process" you're killing millions of people, and the "Cult of Personality" focuses are there to glorify Stalin. On top of that, Mao is also playable, but lets not get into that. Japan has swept its crimes under the rug entirely, and it's war criminals are buried in a shrine called "The Grave of the Seven Martyrs," talk about glorification.... The solution is to realize that it's a game and shouldn't be taken seriously, it's not a political statement or an advocate of anything, that is all in your head. The best way to prevent National Socialist resurgence is not to hide or censor, but to be honest and truthful about what the ideology advocated, why it struck a chord to achieve power, and tackle those head on.
So I would like to expand on tbe Seven Shrine thing because its actually a lot more complicated than what you said. And to boil it down they were enshried there in the 60 ish but the main thing is all souls who died for the Emperor go to that Shrine (there is a different one now without the war criminals) in State Shintoism and their lawyer secretly enshrined them there (because they met the requirements). The Emperor would regularly go to that Shrine to pay respect to the 2 million+ kami there every year but when the major war criminals were enshrined in the mid to late 1970s the Emperor stopped showing up. Another fun fact Pope John Paul II prayed a mass for the repose of the souls there. The shrine is extremely right wing, but the country of Japan doesn't celebrate the war criminals, and to say they do is wrong.
It would already be enough if they would cut the stupid laurel wreaths and their BS about what said focuses and decisions are representing. Their Bulgarian coring decisions are literally genocidal, you remove manpower from the state and it becomes a core. Still they need to sugarcoat it for snowflakes and only call it "Integration Campaign", yeah no shit Sherlock. Name the shit what it is.
@@HistoryGameV Why would you cut the laurel wreats ? In the game each faction has its own visual identity ; based on how the faction saw itself, and not on how we perceive that faction nowadays. I'd tend to agree more with your second suggestion, which would be to have a more factual explanation of what these national priorities actually represent. But let's be realistic, in our cultural environment this would only exacerbate the polemics.
@@fraterleonatus5864 make an angry stick figure with a pencil mustache with a arrow saying "meany" for the Rosenberg focus this guy seems to have a hard-on for.
That's the weird thing actually. While they do the same thing to a degree with the USSR, it's more ambivalent than with the Nazis. So there is a definitive double standard. The Stalinist purges are a genuinly well done mechanic since they HURT if Stalin decides to kill off the wrong generals. The game doesn't hide that if you present him with alternative targets for his paranoia, these people DIE. Meanwhile new German tree coddles the player and lets him committ crimes against humanity, "seizing of gold reserves" my arse, most of the assets came from the actual population and especially the minorities affected by the Holocaust. But oh no, we can't tell that the poor player.
That trailer did actually cause some outcry...but mainly in the Polish and Baltic community and well, they are pretty small. Generally NSB is much more nuanced than this one. The Stalinist Purges mechanic is generally well done and HURTS. Diverting Stalins paranoia causes negative impact and the game pretty directly tells you that congrats, you got a bunch of people killed. Meanwhile the new German mechanics are literally allowing you to committ warcrimes...they just don't tell you about it. What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan.
@@HistoryGameVDoesn't the Soviet tree literally have a focus with the word "purge" in it, and it is meta and good to go with it. Seems like crimes against humanity are just fine and cool when it is not the side that lost the war. Western media has just become hyper sensitive against anything right wing from white people.
I also dislike that these horrific people give bonuses to the Nazi state. They should be applying penalties due to Hitler's nepotism, and their general incompetence.
Hoi4 biggest problem is how severely overbuffed germany is, cause historically only reason germany accomplished alot of conquest is due to how utterly incompetent the Western Allies were. And then the Nazis lost to the Soviets (despite the Soviets still in the process of modernizing)
HoI should just return to being a pure wargame (where Germany is portrayed with Imperial Flag, portraits are photos, and there is no alt-history) like the original games. This weird in-the-middle approach of not wanting to portray the reality of WW2 and pass itself off as "just a game" while also wanting to appease LARPers and aestheticise history is really disturbing and irresponsible IMO. All nations get whitewashed in HoI4 but the Fascist ones end up looking like the least worse by sheer virtue of everyone else getting the slightly negative stuff and events.
It sounds to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you wishes the game had the mass murders and Holocaust and what not. Yeah no, that would've been a big controversy about the game. It's one thing that mods add stuff like that because they're third party content that Paradox can't control. But for Paradox to do it, that's an different matter entirely. It would've been seen as tasteless and we could very well have seen it covered in the mainstream media, creating another Gaming Bad moment. Games like Wolfenstein and CoD can cover it, and have done, but those games are not at all the same type of game that HOI is and I think that does in fact matter. Because in those games you're seeing it directly in it's full cruelty, while in HOI that would've been boiled down to an image and some text, and maybe some debuffs. Image and text would end up ignored and the debuffs becomes just a mechanic that have to be addressed
I do not wish for it...it does. They just don't call it that. Bulgarias coring decisions remove a chunk of manpower from conquered territories and bam, now it is a core. What do you think that is representing? The focus might be called "Establishing the Rosenberg Office" which allows you to spawn the Reichskommissariats and exploit them. That's...actually enacting the Hungerplan and organising the Holocaust. That's what the Rosenberg Office did. "Expanding the Security Duties of the SS"...now what security duties did the SS take up? Ah yes. They set up death and POW camps and engaged in so-called "Bandit Suppression" which was really mass executions of civilians to suppress partisans. They are already there...Paradox just doesn't dare tell people, so they sugarcoat it and slap some nice art on it.
The biggest problem i see next to the clarification is the game start. There is no chance to play Germany without going into NS Germany... How interesting would it be, to start 50 years earlier?!?
Does anyone know why both Mao and Stallin get full passes despite killing more than Hitler did? It makes it hard to take anti-fash seriously when they greenflag worse atrocities. A game depicting things that just were isnt controversal, being offended by history and reality is just kind of your own personal issue, go shout that trees are also problematic. It's a game where you play every faction. Pretending they didnt exist just makes it seem more like youre either a communist or you want everyone to forget what happened so you can do it again.
They don't get full passes. Stalin literally murders his generals and utterly trashes the Soviet Unions capabilities to fight an early war. Contrary to the Nazi bullshit it takes quite a while to make keeping him worthwhile. Though after that he gets ridiculously overpowered and that is plain stupid and feeding into commie/Russian worshipping. And yeah, I seriously dislike that the vast amount of casualties of his purges are barely represented in terms of stats...but at least there is some representation. For Mao...his crimes are basically out of scope for the game. But I'd prefer at least some mention of what would be coming under him. The issue is that there is virtually no downside to going full Nazi. While if you just let Stalin do his thing, he will devastate your officer corps and combat capabilities. You have to actively counteract him.
Dude, your profile picture is a wojak in a SS uniform with the "Leben" rune graved in it. Everyone knows your opinion and it doesn't matter. Furthermore, wait until you are over 18 to comment in this site
@@junglelands9119 ...yeah no. I like the game. I don't like what they changed about the internal policies of Germany in the update. I voiced said reasons in the video. I have fucking 9000 hours in the game. Me not liking the game is not the issue.
the game doesn't do that at all though lmao, it depicts Germany more like it's the Empire in star wars than what it actually was: the worst regime to ever exist
@@xoidbergskywalker9139yeah.. but it’s a video game. If it was supposed to be used to learn then I would totally understand, but it’s not, hoi4 is meant to be a game played for fun and nothing else. Why add those features then?
Nope...but, hear me out...when committing warcrimes, it should probably tell you. And not sugarcoat and coddle the player about it. What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan.
I think that there is some basis on your claims, but from a game design standpoint, its really difficult to depict a vile nation like the third Reich in a negative way whilst staying cohesive with the rest of the game. All popups within the game are generally altered towards their relevancy to the nation you are playing and its geopolitical views. The whole premise of hearts of iron is to bring the nation you selected towards whichever path you deem fit. I don't think Germany was given any special treatment compared to the other "good" or "evil" (of course both are subjective, ig) regimes in the game, its just designed similar to the other nations. If decisions were added to instigate the horrors of the holocaust, or blatant heinous war crimes it would be a different story.
That's actually part of the issue. You ARE committing crimes against humanity. They...just don't dare tell you. Rosenbergs exploiting of the Reichskommissariats? That's the execution of the Hungerplan. Seizing of gold reserves? Nice way of covering up that in fact, while in some countries some gold reserves were seized, the majority of monetary assets came from exterminated groups thrown into the death camps. Especially true for Poland, since Poland managed to evacuate its actual gold reserves...but the Nazis "extracted" about the same monetary value from the Jewish minority in the country and the Polish elites they killed. One Himmlers focuses is essentially the organisation of the "Einsatzgruppen". It just has a nicer name and description text.
I feel like if you are not comfortable with it, just don't play for fascists or nazis. Playing as the bad guy means doing bad things, they have other path for this country, if you don't want to do any of it. You are literally playing as Hitler, what did you expect, to give flowers to everyone? This fanbase intelligent enough to realise the context and realise that's it's a videogame, we don't need some idiotic censorship. We already lost games like Call of Duty World at War, because of soft people, now i guess we will lose good strategy games because someone can't handle a historic videogame, where you basically just paint the map.
Paradox has intentionally avoided depictions of war crimes and banned iconography in order to comply with laws and for ethical reasons, and it seems they continue to do that so it's fine. Would it be better if the Nazi path allowed you to build concentration camps instead of sweeping that part of history under the rug? I would argue the opposite.
That's the thing. You think they do...but they don't. What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan. They let you do the warcrimes. They just don't tell you about it.
@@Enoverdoskaffe I like Hearts of Iron IV. I like playing as Germany in Hearts of Iron IV, since it's the most interesting experience in my opinion. Due to my extensive knowledge on the subject, I don't like the constant "Let's committ a warcrime but make it sound nicer" vibe a good amount of the new focuses and decisions give. Be open about it or leave it out completely. Not this weird inbetween thing we got now.
What about the Soviets? They've committed various war crimes too, and they are without a doubt portrayed as cool, just look at the No Step Back trailer. There is a focus which glorifies Stalin and calls him "The Father of Nations" I'd say that it's fine to portray these countries in the context of their own ideals and propaganda You are not choosing to play "The Barbaric Communists", but the "Brave Workers fighting for global class liberation" And i'm honestly fine with them doing the same to all other countries, including Germany Hirohito killed 20 million chinese people, nobody cares [REDACTED] did the same, and now you can't play him in the game without heavy censorship
The difference is that when playing soviet, you now bad stuff happens when you do it (people die when stalin purges them for example), while when playing germany, you dont know that bad stuff happens when you do it. As soviet you know that shit is going on in your country, as germany you know not. Its a double standart. I personally think "its a game", but i too think it would have been better to let the player know that something happens when they do certain things (could be dead advisors, could be a brain drain event, reduced population in a lot of states, ....). An effort they made with the soviets, but not with germany.
Great point and one I should have mentioned in the video, considering how often this comes up. The Stalinist purges are pretty clear on what is happening and THEY HURT when they hit the wrong guys. The Red Army/Airforce/Navy spirits have pretty nasty negative effects and they only get somewhat better. Ironically the German spirits should be really good from the start and should get worse the further you progress down the Nazi politics tree...since there was a notable impact on combat effectivness due to Nazi indoctrination. BTW the Soviet focus tree did in fact draw quite some criticism in parts the Eastern European community, especially Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states. It's just that their amount of players is relatively modest and thus it didn't gain much attention.
I dont speak enough German to watch the original so im confused about what the argument is here, Just that focus tree art for the Nazi High command makes them 'look cool'?
Im German, I watched it like 5m ago. It's a combination of factors like Himmler being seemingly at the center of the inner circle mechanic, while being depicted with laurel wreaths. Along with the fact that the Nazi portraits are uncensored with no option to censor them and add on to that the fact that the plundering of nations got called "seize gold reserve" as well as other text descriptions hiding the nature of the NS crimes.
@@Pioneer_DE if you want to go there, where's the "starve the kulaks" or "Shun the kazans" or "Hide Beria's child rapes " focus for the ussr? why is beria's and stalin's portrait not shadowed? Where is "Discriminate Germans in Gdynia" for poland?
@@redactado266 You are shooting the Messenger, I too argued against the OG's creators decision. Theres a long comment with reasons for me disagreeing. That being said your named examples are a bit of a stretched "gotcha". Beria's Child focuses offer no gameplay reason to be added nor do they reflect on what the OG creator was expressing. The Creator was complaining about the fact that the German Plundering was simply titled "seize gold reserves" instead of what it was. The shadowed figures have to do something with German laws and the display of Nazi Imagery. Now you can argue back and forth if the Soviets deserve the same treatment, not the point of this comment though I will say there is a difference between being a horrible and terrible Person/Leader and ordering the first and so far only Systematic Industrialized Genocide of an ethnic group across an entire continent.
As a German myself... I really don't see the issue. If you somehow don't know how shit the nazis were, you should probably take a history class. Trying to find some kind of controversy in the way historical figures are respresented in a game based on history, seems like a stretch. I don't think they look cool, these portraits look like any other portrait in the game. Should they all have their faces covered by shit instead? I'm sure you can make a mod for that. Plus, it's not like the dlc lets you construct Auschwitz or show you any warcrimes. Which I don't think it should, it's a game focused on leading your country through ww2 after all. Not a game trying to educate people about all the atrocities committed by various nations during that time period. The game should be fun, not make you feel like shit for wanting to play the German Reich.
There is no need to educate people in an annoying way. Just...tell people what you are actually doing. Seizing of gold reserves? Oh boy, that's a nice way of saying your are plundering a country and seizing the assets of exterminated minorities sent to the death camps. It literally lets you committ the Holocaust...without telling you. That's pretty fucking problematic. I agree its a game about leading your country through WW2. Hence me being quite astonished as to why Paradox saw the need to let you cosplay the internal NSDAP party politics and actively committ crimes against humanity when they previously didn't. Why the hell did they see the need to change that?
@@HistoryGameV The problem is, only if they explicitly tell you what the historical context behind "seizing the gold reserves" is, does the player get to actively choose to commit warcrimes. I think the way it is implemented currently, is about as tasteful as Paradox could have done it. The way it is now, you aren't *actually* committing war crimes, you're taking gold from the place you've conquered, to hold on to the mefo bill buffs a bit longer. If they told you what's happening "behind the scenes", when you press the button, it would be a much bigger controversy imo. Paradox needs to balance making a game that's fun to play and won't make you feel like a piece of shit afterwards, while remaining, somewhat, true to history. Although, I do wish there was some sort of struggle mechanic, similar to Mussolini's struggle and his orders, or Stalin's paranoia, to somewhat closer represent the internal struggles of the German Reich, with debuffs that get progressively worse. But that's an entirely different discussion.
Oh, I like HoI4. I think the addition of "cool" Nazi politics and the option to committ crimes against humanity but hiding that this is what the player is doing is extremely tasteless and puts the game in jeopardy in my country.
@HistoryGameV You could say that about any WW2 game. Would you rather have a popup saying how many warcrimes you commited every month ingame? The point is _it's a game_. It's not real, it's not hurting anyone. And plus you could say the same thing about the Soviets and the Japanese, they did some seriously heinous stuff too. But again, _it's not real, it's just a game_. And i'm sure Paradox has already cleared it with the German government and their systems.
@@TheJackHood Well you ARE committing warcrimes with some focuses. I recommend checking up on what the Rosenberg Office actually did. It's quite gruesome and deeply involved with the Holocaust and the Hungerplan. Paradox just doesn't dare tell you. And no. I know for a fact they haven't cleared anything. They did not resubmit the game with the new focus tree to the USK rating board and this might actually really bite them in the arse. They did check with lawyers but from what I have gathered, apparently not the most competent ones.
@HistoryGameV Well, no, you _aren't_ commiting warcrimes considering, once again, _it's a video game, it's not real_ Did that stuff happen irl? Sure. Does that happen in the game or is represented in any way in the game? _No._ Like I said before, don't like it? _Don't play it._ Easy as. A videogame cannot hurt you or anyone else.
I dont see how this DLC is in any noticeable way worse than the base game where you can literally play as Nazi Germany with Hitler giving you bonuses and you can and will start world war two
They left the internal policies of the Reich out in the original focus tree. The new historical one you get with the update makes internal Nazi politics and policies a core element of playing historical Germany...including aspects of the Holocaust (SS focuses, Rosenberg focus). But they don't call it that. It's nicely sugarcoated which I, personally, find incredible distateful.
@HistoryGameV If I remember correctly even in the base game you could hire some of these same inner circle Nazis as advisors/ministers or whatever the game calls them and they for example give more resources from occupied areas, kinda feels like the same thing.
@@Jaggaraz218 Back before the update/DLC they had generic skills though and not their own, self-researching and (in my eyes) weird focus tree. And in Germany some of them were blacked out (not for me, I had a press version since release).
I really don't understand why this seems so hard for a bunch if people to understand. No, nobody says we need a Holocaust machanic or anything, but portraying architects of the Holocaust as some great statesmen is absolute nonsense and historically simply wrong. Just look at the promotional material of this DLC, how is that not obviously advertising some Wheraboo fantasies of Nazi superweapons and great acomplishments (which didn't even exist). Guess who actually had superweapons that could destroy entire cities, and bombers with massive ranges? The US, but weirdly enough it is not those weapons that are used in the ads, it's some nonsense Nazi fanatsies like the Hortens or the Ratte. HoI4 was treading a thin line before that already, but now it just went waaay too far into the Wheraboo-roleplay direction than was ever needed, though tbf it has been going there for a long time now. Apperently people care more about the next rediculous (alt-)history paths than any real gameplay improvements. The solution btw is fairly simple. Just don't include this whole "Führerprinzip" horseshit. If the strategy game is supposed to be about military strategy, why does this even exist? The political system is so dumbed down that adding a bunch of focusses doesn't make it more interesting, it only serves the roleplay fantasy of a bunch of idiots and lunatics. Like, what do you think you do when you strengthen the GeStaPo or the SS? And btw, I had the exact same issues with the Soviet rework and Paranoia system, before anybody comes in here with some Whataboutism. And as another comment stated, why is it always a base assumption that Germany needs to be an easy nation to play? They literally lost, in a decisive manner at that, so by any objective measure the easy nation to play should be the US, maaaaaaybe the UK. Germany, or any Axis power, should be hard mode.
I honestly agree with you on the political mechanics being pointless. Focus trees are a weird gimmick that have no basis in anything real. The reasoning for Germany being the "easy" nation is probably because it has the most opportunities for expansion. The USA is an easy nation, but it also has to manage two theaters across the world from each other and is not what most people imagine when they think of a fun nation.
@@FlorianGeyerFan You are absolutely correct that USA is pain in the a** to play, but that's not because of some inherent historical reason. This is purely a gameplay decision by paradox, making air, and especiall navy, so unbelievably boring and bad experiences that of course nobody wants to suffer through them. Also the fact that logistics are, to this day, an absolute nightmare of a game mechanic, especially over sea, doesn't help either.
Germany lost the war the second they declared it. Imagine being so much of a wehraboo you think they stood a chance against the 3 biggest players of that time combined.
As someone who does not follow basegame Hearts of Iron discourse (and has not played since the DLC was released) I was completely unaware of this. That is indeed not a good look for Paradox. Coincidentally I ended up playing as "the turbo Nazis" in a mod today without meaning to. At least its foci with names such as "expand the Arbeitslager" do not dance around the issue of why the national spirit for minorities gets removed.
First, let me deal with my position being discredited by not following the game. Everthing thereafter explains how the Nazis got themselves some extra horsepower in my country. So : I don't really care about the base game that much. I usually play with mods. If Germany's vanilla focus tree does not exist in seven out of eight sessions I do, then my interest is limited. I'm sure this weakens my ability to understand Paradox's artistic intentions behind making things the way they are. If the result of this is something which makes the Nazis look really cool, then I can't critique how they got there. Without knowing the discourse I can't critique how they dealt with the feedback about this which they inevitably received. I can feel conflicted about what their efforts and reactions ended up in. On the one hand, cool is good, I like cool focus icons. On the other hand, cool war criminals are not. This is, in essence, my position. I used to follow HoI more closely in the past and when the game came out I knew how and why they did (not) deal with war crimes. I don't feel the need to repeat this exercise just to say making war criminals look cool does half their job for them already. Glad that serious discussion is done with. Here's the tale you wondered about! Yesterday I played in multiplayer in a total overhaul mod as a country I did not know. That means I skimmed over most events that day, could not rely on knowing who's who because they were all made-up people, and I really did not want to end up in a civil war and serve as a proxy war for the others to try their new toys in before the session's big war began. My base path were the naturally aspirated Nazis, no turbo yet. Very bad people and somehow I kept losing local manpower in states during purges and mass arrests, who knows what that could mean. At some point I prepared for a war to regain core territory occupied by a neighbour. At this moment an event popped up, asking me to support one of two characters in a dispute. Not having read the other events deeply I recognised neither name and picked the one that gave a minor military buff for the upcoming war. While I was in my unification war another event popped up. Option A would lead to "The battle for [capital city]!" and option B would lead to "The coup defeated". I picked the one that didn't sound like launching a civil war while I'm in an actual war. This caused a second event to pop up, informing me I had lost my leader in the coup attempt and the turbo Nazis were now in charge. As it turns out the event I mentioned first-one of many events that I got over the game-asked me to side with either a hardliner or a "moderate" and I picked the hardliner without knowing, causing an inevitable coup attempt by those who think fascism is cool but turbo fascism a bridge too far. I could also have chosen for the coup to succeed without having a civil war. Something I know now that I did not know then. If you wonder why I played this country and that path in the first place : we all wanted to play in the same local area and this was the only free country (which wouldn't be devoured by one of the majors before their war) and to make it a 3v2 I'd need to go down its fascist route.
Utterly ridiculous. It's a game my dude. I'm Brazilian and we fought bravely against the axis in ww2. Our president then (yes it's weird) even sent a jewish communist woman to Germany (contradicting I know), before we entered the war on the correct side. With all that, it's a game. A game
It doesn't sit right with me either. The whole way the game is balanced to make Germany a "viable" major power in world war 2 also doesn't sit right with me. From a strategy game point of view, playing as the Germans should be "hard mode", rather than "suggested pick". This so-called inner circle were monstrous human beings who committed the worst atrocities in history. They were also incompetent, and lead their country to total self=destruction. I'm not even sure they should be omitted from the game--they should be represented for what they were--people who brought nothing but misery and disaster to their country. This has been a problem since day one of HOI4.
Yeah lmao like it or not Germany hit WAY above its weight class in ww2. Could they have won irl? Realistically speaking no lol. I was never told "hey play Germany first because it's really easy to win the war" I was told "hey play Germany first because you have less overseas shit to worry about and it gives you some easy goals to set 1. Don't get dicked. 2. Draw the allies to a stalemate. 3. Actually win the war. This is not actually easy for a new player with historical focuses turned on
…I generally hate the term ‘virtue-signaling’, and find it’s usually used by people on the far-right to attack perfectly reasonable concern about very real issues, but as far as I’m concerned, this is literally virtue-signalling. Like, I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, but a practical one.
The issue is that due to how the game is set up, the first conquests are too easy and instead of getting harder, even the historically impossible Sealion and extremely unlikely victory over the USSR are not significantly more difficult. Especially the USSR is a pushover if you just stick to historical division designs, not even in-game effective ones.
@@TerrorByte69420 im wierd person who chosen poland , as you get deathclock on you to motivates you to "iron out your early game" , germany was my second.
They did worse than the Kaiserreich 20yrs earlier, with better equipment, a better army arguably. But the problem is, when your whole leadership consists of utter morons, that's what you get. In any case...they had absolutely none cool qualities. Their technology lagged behind the US and UK. Superweapons? USA & UK. Working mass-producable jet fighters? USA & UK. Gigantic rocket-boosted bombers touching the stratosphere with analog computer-guided defensive guns? USA. Radar-triggered AA and arty ammunition absolutely shredding everything? USA. Meanwhile Germany spent the equivalent of the costs of the Manhattan Project on rockets that took another 20yrs to work properly...done by the USA.
@BiiskapsLV no. They failed where the Kaiserreich succeeded: defeating the enemy that mattered, Russia. And no, as someone who has done a TON of research these matters, there is nothing uniquely cool about the Nazis. The Wehrmacht? To a degree until the Nazi indoctrination took roots and started turn the best trained army of the world into a ruthless slaughtering and raping soldateska that frightened its own officers with its brutality and insubordination. Just listen to the tapes from the British POW camp for German officers. Its harrowing.
@@HistoryGameVcalling Russia the enemy that mattered when Imperial Germany lost WW1 although it beat "the enemy that mattered" is stupid. If you wanna take a basic lesson away from WW2 is that every part of the team mattered. UK would fall without the USSR binding up troops and US sending supplies (civilian or military), USSR would have failed without the US's supplies (something that was unlikely to happen if it wasn't for the UK) and if the UK and USSR fell the US would have negotiated a peace, because trying to fight a war across an oceans without proper allies overseas would be incredibly taxing. WW2 Germany was as close to victory as WW1 Germany, namely not at all considering all the factors, especially after the industrial power of the USA came into effect in both wars. Also side point, the "cool" thing people refer to about WW2 germany is probably their uniforms etcs...
you are probably confusing the germans with the russians, and about the projects and technology, think about it. The german reich was collapsing and they were disperate. Their economy was getting destroyed by the allied bombings, and they were fighting against a lot of enemies, on multiple fronts.
Hey there, Nino from editing/thumbs here. We thank everyone who offers constructive feedback under our comments and maintains an open discussion with everyone. However, we ask you to *stay constructive,* as many comments have been directly attacking Hjalf.
I'm replying here as well by the way, so if you see a comment marked with *^na* it's mine.
"There you are, wanting to play Germany in 1936 in HOI4 and all of a sudden... you're a Nazi."
I am unsure how Paradox could depict any of this in any other manner, as depicting war crimes in-game would not be advisable. Almost all the leaders mentioned in the video have been in the game since its release, with focuses and decisions that are fairly comparable to the new focuses. If your complaint is that the update/DLC does not do enough to condemn the most condemned government in history, I really do not know what to tell you. Perhaps Paradox should add an event every few weeks that lets you know how bad of a person you are for playing Germany.
You have the mechanics of purges in the USSR, discrimination against Muslims in the British Ray, racial segregation in South Africa. There is no racial segregation in the USA and nothing in Germany. Holocaust could simply be on the sideline and the player would have no influence on it. The only way to get rid of it would be to overthrow Hitler.
Fr, is paradox supposed to just add a decision called “genocide” that just reduces population in states? Like, I just don’t see how from a gameplay standpoint paradox could add anything like that. At the end of the day hoi4 isn’t a simulation, and it isn’t a learning resource. It’s a god damn video game meant for fun
@@Jackspladt The thing is...they did. Ever checked how the Bulgarian coring decisions for the Balkans work? Or at least did last I check a year or so ago. Remove manpower, get a core. Yikes.
What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan.
@FlorianGeyerFan I agree that it is not advisable to let players committ warcrimes. Nonetheless Paradox does that, and for anyone halfway knowledgeable on the matter it gets pretty obvious once you look into the effects of various focuses and decisions of the new focus tree.
We are working on implementing Crimes against Humanity features in our Ultra Historical Mod...but the player won't have any agency in it, it just happens. And we are covering all sides. We'll have (and do in fact in some areas) have little info texts on national spirits. As you know these only pop up when you hover over them for a bit. Only then will the info popup show more than the immediate ingame effect, aka the historical background text. We added a red-marked section explaining what this national spirit (or whatever else) is actually representing, what crimes were committed etc. The player has to actually stay for a moment, look and read...if he wants to, otherwise he won't even get to see the info text.
@@HistoryGameV oh yeah I forgot about those Bulgarian decisions. I do agree they should’ve made the gold reserve decisions reduce the state population in some way
Lol imagine me an Indian HOI4 player doing a UK run where my country gets annexed. No one gave a fuck about that but it's a problem only when you game the Nazis Lol
Laws are retarded and made by criminals. Welcome to reality
Paradox must "sanatize" history to an extent due to the necessities of being a game that is meant to be enjoyed (and to avoid this very kind of drama). Sanatize is not to say glorified, but Paradox has a major aversion towards portraying atrocities in its historical games. The issue is that to portray WW2 accurately things like the Holocaust would need to be turned into game mechanics, and there are...obvious issues with gamifying things the mass murder of civilians for ingame rewards. Not to mention the controversy, legally and in the community, that can arise from the portrayal of these things. At the end of the day HOI4 is a game, nothing more--it's not meant to teach people about history, it's a product made to sell for people to consume.
Hey, that's actually one of the more reasonable comments made in the last few hours, thank you for this!
Yes, absolutely. And they did it before, the old German focus tree did that. The new one lets you actually committ crimes against humanity, it just hides it in plain sight. Seizing of gold reserves? More like sending certain minorities to the death camps and take their assets (yeah, we actually checked that for our historical accuracy mod, Germans didn't seize Polish gold reserves, those were evacuated, but mass-confiscated private Polish assets especially of Jews and the Polish elites). Exploiting the Reichskommissariats? More like starving the conquered populations and enacting the Hungerplan.
In comparison, the Stalinist purges are depicted much more clearly. They are BAD for the player. It's a challenge to redirect Stalins paranoia so it doesn't hurt too bad...and doing so very clearly results in the death of the people you coloured as traitors.
@@HistoryGameV the old German focus tree never included anything about the holocaust.
Yes. Exactly. So...why include it now?
@@HistoryGameV it doesnt include anything now. the gold reserves are gold reserves, not secret code for mass murder. the curtains are blue.
@@havocthecrow8742 Again. Why does the "seizing of gold" reserves increase resistance then? Not to mention that historically, NO gold reserves were seized in Poland and Norway, and very minor amounts in the Netherlands and Belgium since both countries had relocated a good chunk of them pre-war.
What was seized especially in Poland was the private monetary assets of the Polish elite and the Jewish population though. As a result, many members of the Polish establishment went underground or fled the country to join Polish exilant forces. Soooo...sounds like increased resistance, doesn't it?
Not to mention...we have had this very mechanic in Ultra Historical Mod, named "Seize wealth", for over a year. And it very much includes the seizing of private assets.
Calling the way a HOI IV focus tree looks "problematic" is über cringe. Calling things "problematic" without proposing a way that depicting something in game would not be "problematic" to you is also lame. Unless you're implying that removing all the icons and making the screen look as boring as possible to not be "cool" would be the solution, in which case that would also be very lame.
Having warcrimes in game would be problematic, not having warcrimes in game is also problematic. Besides not allowing someone to play Germany, how exactly is this supposed to be solved?
It was solved for years before Paradox decided to include warcrime mechanics.
There are even worse things, for example the hole "loot foreign gold" focuses....leaving out this was a campaign of looting everything from entire countries and their people and not only gold. It makes nazi policies appear far mroe "tame" then they really where.
Again, it was solved previously. If they wanted a mechanic like the inner circle they could have easily gone with one for the german army instead considering the huge ammount of infighting that happened there during WW2. Its certainly less problematic that giving Himmler a focus tree that is a euphemism for "lets build death camps, its really cool" while depicting him with lorrels of victory.
If I want to implement the nazi policies into the game, then there are mods for that. No need to include it into the main game. I also dont remember there being a "round up the japanease forcamps" focus in the US focus tree or "send back jewish ships to nazi germany" in the UK focus tree.
I mean with Speer and Todt we literally have the two armaments ministers responsible for a eruope wide slave worker system for millions of people as "I was jsut doing economics" mechanics guys.
In regards to Germany paradox has managed for years to walk the fine line of what is acceptable in regardds to nazi glorification and fun gameplay successfully, but this sadly crossed the line. Only thing missing now is giving Himmler any form of economic buff for his SS focus....after all the SS ran a huge part of germanys slave labor force by the second half of the war in the death camps.
And regarding the portraits, just use the simple once they have been using for years previously. Dont put Himmlers head infront of laurells of victory or similar shit.
And if paradox really wants to include the proper "mechanics" of anzi germany, dont hide it behind fancy words and nice pictures. Say what the focus actualyl represendts: "Deport people to slave camps", "build up the slave labour", "Put Himmler in charge of slave labour", "increase the speed of deportations", etc. with the proper "buffs" to the economy. Eather leave it out or commit to it. But dont try to white wash and glorify it like this.
Woke bullshit from European commies
Nobody owes you a solution when they call something problematic, who made up that rule?? This dude is coming from a historical perspective, not a game design perspective per se.
Very good points if it weren't for the fact that portraying the Architect of the Holocaust with laurel wreaths [a Symbol of Triumph] is a bit of a weird f*cking design choice that is worth being critiqued as problematic.
@@davidgjam7600 "erm no one owes you a solution to the problem I invented and throwed into you, chud"
People are taking this way too sensitively.
As long as there are people who think Nazis were cool, you simply cannot take this too seriously.
Woke bullshit from commie europeans
If he is crapping bricks on Götterdämmerung. Then he would have heart attack seeing TNO mod.
@@vlegion7443The whole point of TNO is that Nazism is a horrific, moronic ideology that wouldn't last lmao
@@Rauschgenerator That’s ridiculous. There will always be people who glorify evil things, but that doesn’t mean we should be condemning games for depicting evil/not depicting evil (apparently both are bad).
I remembered how they made the Italians almost a chore to play as you had to balance inner party politics and the random wishes of Mussolini while fighting a war with limited resources... while also giving you the possibility of kicking the fascists out of power. While the game always had the contradiction of having the g*rms being the "beginner nation" to play, couldn't they just put an internal mechanic or something? Also, to those saying the n*zis looked cool... just remember those fancy hugo boss uniforms their officers wore were completely useless in the Russian winter or any actual combat situations.
well good thing they didn't wear parade or dress uniforms when they were on the eastern front eh?
An internal struggle mechanic would be a good idea, although given how screwed up the Nazi high command was, it would be less of an Italian style left to right graph and more like some kind of pie chart.
don't really care as a japan main tbh,besides talking about the ''glorification'' and the ''coolerfication'' the same arguement could be made when the USSR got a trailer and rework,a trailer mind you that has been turned into a two million viewed commie edit lmao. something i should dislike but i refuse to,because its just a game.
unless the next update will have some crazy trailer (example japan rework) with japanese soldiers walking chinese civs thru nanking or whatever i and im sure 90% of the playerbase don't really care.
nazism is bad, communism isnt bad.
@@M1ntyS4turn both are very bad
@@M1ntyS4turn stalin did bad shit tho.
@@NicholasEzclapz even so, one has some good traits in theory and the other is nazism
Despite being of German descent, I find the German handling of WWII history odd, and the Götterdämmerung controversy by Steinwallen and others is a perfect example of this. Firstly, what do you want? The forced introduction of grey portraits across Europe? We know who the Nazis were, we know what the swastika looks like, banning them is silly. It's also just an example of how historical memory in Germany has perversely empowered extremists by making them into martyrs.
Ironically, this repeats the exact same mistakes the German government made during the Weimar Republic. And now some Germans want to censor a DLC for a video game because they're so afraid of properly confronting the past?
Frankly, there's also a bizarre act of selective historical memory going here. There was no outcry over depictions of the Kaiserreich and the reconquest of South West Africa, despite the genocide Germany committed against the Herero people. Nor has depictions of Stalin's bloody imperialist empire in the east prompted such feverish calls for censorship. This is despite the fact that the communist empire held half of Germany captive for four decades, replete with torture, killings and rape, and all of which are issues which Steinwallen was deploring the lack of explicit mention of in relation to the Nazi regime.
Indeed, if good taste is important, as argued by Steinwallen, then there are far more pressing and real issues than sparking an internet controversy over a video game. Perhaps like the fact that Germans are now so disillusioned with their political system that the largest party in Thüringen is not simply the AfD, but the AfD of Björn Höcke. Perhaps entering politics and dealing with the underlying issues which caused that would be a better use of Steinwallen's time?
Finally, I must also say that Germany's often self-defeating and contradictory laws do not apply to the United Kingdom, or any other country outside the Federal Republic's borders. Germans should keep this in mind when considering them, because their own contradictory foibles are their own, not ours. We should not be expected to abide by laws which, even in Germany, have not resulted in the desired effect.
On the whole issue of how Stalin/USSR are depicted:
I remember people specifically complaining about how the "Stalin's Paranoia" system is wrongfully depicting only the Soviets Government as paranoid/broken/hard to balance (given, those videos were by people openly saying they are left-wing or communist, but still).
Overall, if we are going by realistic depictions, there wouldn't be a game. Germany couldn't win because they spend more time killing people within their country than trying to win the war, the Soviets would always be crippled hard post war (something many people still don't accept, is that the Soviet economy never fully recovered from WW2 lol), UK would always fall etc.
Also, like you point out, the selective outcry is kinda strange, given we had the original German Focus tree rework, which also didn't address most of the warcrimes Germany committed. Similarly, you had Himmler having a good ol' time recruiting all kinds of divisions from conquered countries, and nobody had much of an issue with that. On the flipside, imagine the outcry if they actually gave us foci to do the Holo.... (you know the ending, don't need youtube not displaying this comment)
Overall, if you really need a game to teach you history, I argue your problem should be with the education system of your/whatever country, because it should be their responsibility (or arguably your parents) to teach you about this stuff. If its that big of an issue, I guess you should be required to fill out a history test before you are allowed to participate in any type of historical and alternate historical game
Agree.
I hate how people can't admit the cospic principle of Yin and yang. "Nazis are depicted as kinda cool". Admit they were cool, that they had some awe inspiring qualities and yet they committed atrocities.
You want them to be depicted as some cartoon evil???? It doesn't work.
Just look at things at what they are. Don't be so hysterical and emotional. Stop living in denial.
They had absolutely none awe inspiring qualities. Their technology lagged behind the US and UK. Superweapons? USA & UK. Working mass-producable jet fighters? USA & UK. Gigantic rocket-boosted bombers touching the stratosphere with analog computer-guided defensive guns? USA. Radar-triggered AA and arty ammunition absolutely shredding everything? USA. Meanwhile Germany spent the equivalent of the costs of the Manhattan Project on rockets that took another 20yrs to work properly...done by the USA.
Oh and btw...by the end of the war the Nazis had compromised the German combat doctrine to such a degree some units were approaching Soviet early war levels in combat quality. Absolutely based...not.
Likely the path we are going to take with Ultra Historical Mods take on this mechanic.
@@HistoryGameV Of course they had - charisma, political shrewdness and oratory skills. They convinced other Germans that waging war would be cool after WW1. Then they also convinced people that being blue-eyed blond is the only proper leader to govern German people yet most of them had dark hair and eyes. They managed to captivate audiences with their speeches.
Did they also commit genocide on a massive scale? Yes. You can be evil while having good qualities/traits.
It is a game - it doesn't (or at least shouldn't) have a "message". It has mechanics and that is it. If you start reading into it, stop it and get some help before you join one of the groups either bashing games for having DEI or not having enough DEI.
Imagine needing to be constantly beaten over the head with the fact that these people were bad in order to not flip out. I for one appreciate that the devs don't treat us like children but rather adults that can be exposed to concepts without needing to have a moral lecture shoehorned in every five minutes.
They...do treat you like a child. They don't dare show you reality otherwise you get offended...as you just did. The game was doing fine with NOT letting you commit war crimes without daring to tell you you are. Every time you click a "seize gold reserves" decision it's essentially coddling you since they are too afraid telling people "actually you are robbing the country mainly and seizing assets of minorities being sent to extermination camps".
Weirdly enough, they have no issue of telling you what the Stalinist purges are doing. Which is great honestly, the Stalinist purges genuinly HURT you as a player when randomly killing off good generals and advisors, they tell you pretty directly you are ordering people to their deaths if you are redirecting Stalins paranoia. Why do Germany players need this level of coddling?
@@HistoryGameV Not offended in the slightest. I just don't personally need them to remind me every five seconds that the Germans were bad in explicit detail in order to get it. You know, just like I can play any other strategy games without needing to be told that wars and its horrors are bad in order to be fully aware of these facts. To use an even more sterile example, I don't think the board game series Axis & Allies is "treating me like a child" or "coddling me" for delivering a purely mechanical approach to war gaming without going into the explicit details of the moral implications of the German or Japanese player taking over their enemy's capital region on the board. I'm perfectly capable of filling in the blanks on my own, as I believe most war gaming enthusiasts are. But hey, you do you, free country and all that. 👍
@@HistoryGameVI get what you mean but from a gameplay perspective the purge is supposed to be an unavoidable challenge you overcome. In real life all the inner circle people were incompetent and had horrible effects on people everywhere but also..how do you represent that in a game, after all, if they gave a bunch of de buffs for having them then why would anyone go down that path. I also do half agree with what you said about the gold reserves and how it really doesn’t show the full extent. On the other hand, when I sit down and play hoi4 for a couple outs I don’t want to be repeatedly bashed in the head with the fact that yes, the Nazis were indeed bad. I personally don’t see much issue with most of the German tree stuff because at the end of the day, it’s a game made for fun and the dlc would be a lot more boring if it was just a bit of new German stuff and no wonder weapons because obviously Germany never even got close to that stuff in real life
Please don't be "Extra Credits" on this mate.
Their idea of throttling one side of player matchmaking, because that particular team has to depict nazis, went down like a lead balloon.
Any notion the comment section has that Germany should be "hard mode" is ignorant; this game is just that, a game, and it needs to be structured in a way that allows players to face one another fairly with an uncertain outcome.
Otherwise you are asking that a game of football is played with one team having been hobbled and the other not.
The novelty for spectators wears thin quickly; and for the actual team whom have their legs tied together, it's non-existent.
Paradox cannot sell a game that is mechanically broken, and to hobble Germany, regardless of depictions of nazis, *would* mechanically break the game.
I won't speak of the portrait. But as to the laurels, you're reaching, it's commensurate to all other icons depicted in all other focus trees, you're merely unconstructively criticising the art style at that point.
It’s woke bullshit call it what it is
Have to admit I have no idea what "Extra Credit" did?
What I am asking for is that Paradox stops coddling and sugarcoating everything for their snowflake Nazi enjoyer players (and I am a Germany enjoyer btw...not because Nazis, but because in the realism mod I help making it's pretty challenging to play). Leave internal Nazi policies out? Fine by me. Make internal Nazi policies a thing but NOT call it what they are? NOT ok. You are not "seizing gold reserves", you are plundering a country and executing its elites and minorities. You are not simply "Establishing the Rosenberg Office" to "administrate" the Reichskommissariats...you are enacting the Hungerplan. You are not "increasing the security duties of the SS", you are setting up death camps.
And yes, putting Nazi war criminals into the wreaths of laurels is incredibly offputting for me. I kinda get it with Stalin in the Soviet tree, they are basically copying the Soviet artstyle of the time. Still offputting for me. But there isn't even that argument to be made for the style used in the German tree since...that's just not the case.
@HistoryGameV _"Stop Normalising Nazis - Socially Conscious Game Design - Extra Credits"._
The offending video I was referring to; Had 21,000 likes and 325,000 dislikes before TH-cam disabled dislikes. All those dislikes weren't from those sympathetic to nazi ideology, but instead a backlash to the (poorly thought through) advocacy of over-correction.
I won't speak to the middle of your reply, as none of which you wrote was in reference to my comment. But I will note for those reading this that you had already hearted comments/made statements that were relevant to my original comment. So, I decided to comment.
But you're simply being ridiculous when it comes to the laurels.
The VAST, vast majority of icons across the game contain some stylised variation of laurels as their borders. All factions, all focus trees.
You are assigning a moral value to something that is, in fact, merely generic accoutrements of the art style.
Nothing more.
Would you next decry the uses of gold colouring on the icons? Seeing as gold is the colour of wealth, victory, and approval.
It's a petty criticism that distracts and diminishes from any previous point you were trying to make. Whilst not made in bad faith, it doesn't come off any better. I won't tell you to drop it, but don't deceive yourself.
I miss the time when gamers wouldn't be so butt hurt about "mORaL" and "wArCrIME".
Back in the time of Red Alert 2 everyone cheered when the game literally had "terrorist" as suicide unit and we could gleefully pollute the land with radiation and brutally melt civilians into puddles. But now the fragile mind of yours couldn't handle the game just because (you believe) they didn't emphasize enough how some in-game texts are war crimes?
YOU bought the game. YOU decide to play as Nazi. Nobody forces you to spend $40 and watch some fictions you don't like. It's like watching a slasher movie and complaining about how it's too violent.
Yeah nope. I was actually around at the time, in fact RA2 was the first game I bought with my own money and also the only one I had to pay D-Mark for since the € was just being introduced. There is no "terrorist" unit in the game. xD Complete bullshit. What you are referring to is C&C Generals which DID cause quite a controversy also in the USA because you could play Middle Eastern terrorists and kill US soldiers while the Iraq Insurgency was raging.
In any case, why can't YOU handle it when a game mentions warcrimes? Can your fragile mind not handle the fact you are replaying historical events with some unsavory aspects? Are you so desperate you need it sugarcoated every time with fancy art, coddling texts making you NOT feel bad for playing the bad guys? Fucking snowflakes you are. Pathetic. The problem is it is NOT fiction FFS, but they make it seem like one.
@HistoryGameV Terrorist is the unique unit for Cuba. You played RA2, but you don't even know this?!
One of the most crucial rules for literature, movies, games, and any other storytelling is perspective. In HOI4, you're not playing as some third-person narrator. You're playing as your chosen country, your chosen ideology. Since you clicked on Rhineland NF (prerequisite NF of inner circle system), that means you're now viewing things from Nazi's POV. You can disagree with Nazi, but it would be pretty weird if Nazi wouldn't convince themselves of their crime with fancy icon and flowery words, no? Every villain is a hero in their own eyes. If you don't like this POV, then just play a different path or country.
I have the ability to tell right from wrong without being easily misguided by some fancy icon, and I hope you do too.
Then what's the solution? Do we make the Nazis ridiculous and incompetent for fear that someone might find them "cool"? Bombard the player with events describing unnameable atrocities? Censor every focus and every portrait, as if the player wouldn't know what country they're playing?
The game allows you to pretend you're not collecting genocides like stamps, because the alternative would make for an utterly soul-crushing experience. This is far removed, both in intent and in consequences, from historical negationism.
Let's call this for what it is : a moral panic. It's no different from the now-defunct idea that video games cause violence.
Not for fear. For factuality. The Nazi government WAS ridiculously incompetent in some areas. And why bombard? You do already get some news events. Why not for major events like the Babyn Yar massacre of the Ukrainian Jews, or the Katyn massacre of the Polish elite committed by the Soviets? We are actually preparing to do just that for our HoI4 realism overhaul mod. With the option to deactivate it at game start.
Make the focus art actually fit in and stop sugarcoating it so little snowflake Nazi enjoyers don't get their tails in a twist. Make the description text say the silent part out loud. "Establish the Rosenberg Office"...alright. Now change the focus description text to actually saying that you just launched the first stage of the Hungerplan instead of calling it "exploitation of conquered territory" or whatever the text says again, something about the Reichskommissariats.
Why are people so sensitive about this? You are playing the Nazis. Either leave their policies and Nazi cosplay out of the game as it was before the new DLC, or go the full distance. Pretty snowflakey behavior if you ask me.
@@HistoryGameV Their newly-purported incompetence is just an overcorrection from old myths of German technological/tactical supremacy. They were competent enough to subjugate almost all of continental Europe in a few years. Admitting that fact isn't a slippery slope towards fascism.
The reason why these events are ignored is simple: nobody wants Genocide Simulator 2025. Not the players, not the devs, and not the descendants of victims, I would wager.
We're not quite playing as the Nazis, we're essentially playing as the Wehrmacht in a fantasy where it played no part in atrocities. In another medium, it would be perpetuating outdated pop-history myths. Here, it's a necessary compromise : without it, many players who would be drawn towards Germany would be, ironically enough, neo-Nazis themselves.
And really, the snowflake thing is a bit ridiculous. Perhaps you think me a conservative who will lose his mind if you turn his own slang against him, but I'm perfectly open about the fact that having to re-enact the Holocaust in a video game would be hard for me to stomach.
okay.. so i'm going to be writing this as a Norwegian. someone who walks past Germans bunkers and memorials to the fallen Norwegian and British troops every single day.
Germany sent my country men to the camps, to the torture chambers, to the firing line, and bombed the cities while my grandparents ran for cover.
THIS IS A GAME. nobody other than people who chose to get offended over this cares about it.
i can start the game right now. Pick Norway and get Quisling in power if i want to. it's "not in poor taste" or whatever word you chose to pick this time. it's a game.
"The Nazis look cool, and Hitler has a better-looking photo," my brother in Christ. do you understand that this is a game? nobody from Paradox is going around saying, "Hey, nazi stuff is cool."
"mainly how the nazi's are being shown here, these are people who are deeply involved in warcrimes, okay. should we just throw out the artwork for everyone then? because i can tell you for a fact that not a single country has clean hands when it comes to war crimes. the difference is that the German warcimes are held higher than others. nobody would play a Germany if Paradox made Hitler look horrible. you know why? because it's a game. and the player has to look at it every time they open the focus tree. and no, having photos that don't look horrible isn't "problematic."
"SS means warcrimes." Yes, i will not argue that the SS was behind a lot of warcrimes. but countpoint, would it sit better with you if they said "expand German military police" and just push it under the carpet?
okay, Himmler time. NKVD is a thing. Soviet Union has a lot of stuff built around it following the No Step Back DLC. how many warcrimes are they guilty of, and how many camps do you think the Soviets build? should we just remove those as well? or can we just come to an agreement that his is just paradox saying, "Hey, this is the name of the military police of this given country." and not look further into it, you damn snowflake. because this is, again, a video game. and agian, it's "problematic" because you chose it to be.
as for legal issues. no, not at all, Germany is the only one that cares about this. it's the reason why you had to grab a mod to be able to see Hitler for like seven years.
"Reichsleiter Todt is banned in Germany." Very cool, do you see how again this is a you problem? because i'm pretty sure Paradox isn't trying to get them to stand up.
"Why make it look cool?" my brother in Christ. IT'S A VIDEO GAME. players wouldn't play Germany if the focus tree said, "You are the bad dude, and you should feel bad for playing them."
Imagine playing Germany and every 180 days you get a pop-up that’s like “hey by the way Nazis are bad your a big meanie for playing them”
@@Jackspladt Why a popup? Just write it in the info boxes and texts for the focuses and decisions. Most people will read them once and that's it. Instead everything gets sugarcoated. "Yes you are playing the Nazis, and glorious laurel-wreathed Himmler is only expanding SS security duties which totally doesn't mean setting up death camps, my sweet little snowflake."
Why do these types of people always conflate portrail with glorification? Do they think the mear fact these idea being exibited means gamers will be automaticly that?
My insanely high bill for gas is just UNRELATED coincidence
Exactly. I hope it's just they're so desperate for attention that they give the least charitable interpretation/assumption of motivations possible instead of actually believing this schizophrenic nonsense.
He's literally talking about the LACK of portrayal.
Exactly, the issue is the lack of portrayal. You get to do all these nice focuses, cool sounding decisions...in the meantime what they actually represent is warcrimes. Paradox did actually put them in. They just don't tell you that you are actually committing them.
What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan.
@@HistoryGameV You mean that in an historical game where you play historical criminals you actually play people that do bad things ?
Imagine my shock !
Who cares what that german youtuber thinks lol people like the game
Not like that TH-camr caused it to be in the mainstream gaming press in Germany. I'm also pretty sure that PCGamer has expressed similar worries on the announcement ca. a month ago.
Of course people like the game, but it's nontheless something to be aware of.
^na
I think it's fine as is, and people are too thin skinned. nobody is forcing them to buy or play the new dlc and it does not glorify H man.
Actually...it does. Since the problematic focuses and mechanics are now in the base game. Not in the DLC.
@@HistoryGameV Shut up censor man
@HistoryGameV no it doesn't. Every adult is responsible for the media he is consuming. If he can't play this game without glorifying the third reich, then the issue lies in the education system and not within the game
It’s a WW2 game!? I don’t understand what people expect. It would be kinda pointless if it was just democratic nations battling
It out. I’ve also seen zero condemnation over the Communist stuff either. Both Communism and Nazism were equally evil and bad
People have different tastes and are entitled to their opinions, and I can understand why Germans would be sensitive to this sort of thing. My own opinion is that those advocating this as problematic are both being too sensitive and are cherry-picking. I do not agree personally that the new tree "glorifies" National Socialism because it doesn't advocate or portray the National Socialists as a good thing, it's thematically appropriate art.
Secondly, I would just like to remind everyone that this game is technically full of war criminals. The Holodomor achieved a higher death toll than the final solution, and it's an actual button you can press as the Soviets, if you press "The Collectivization Process" you're killing millions of people, and the "Cult of Personality" focuses are there to glorify Stalin. On top of that, Mao is also playable, but lets not get into that. Japan has swept its crimes under the rug entirely, and it's war criminals are buried in a shrine called "The Grave of the Seven Martyrs," talk about glorification.... The solution is to realize that it's a game and shouldn't be taken seriously, it's not a political statement or an advocate of anything, that is all in your head. The best way to prevent National Socialist resurgence is not to hide or censor, but to be honest and truthful about what the ideology advocated, why it struck a chord to achieve power, and tackle those head on.
So I would like to expand on tbe Seven Shrine thing because its actually a lot more complicated than what you said.
And to boil it down they were enshried there in the 60 ish but the main thing is all souls who died for the Emperor go to that Shrine (there is a different one now without the war criminals) in State Shintoism and their lawyer secretly enshrined them there (because they met the requirements).
The Emperor would regularly go to that Shrine to pay respect to the 2 million+ kami there every year but when the major war criminals were enshrined in the mid to late 1970s the Emperor stopped showing up. Another fun fact Pope John Paul II prayed a mass for the repose of the souls there. The shrine is extremely right wing, but the country of Japan doesn't celebrate the war criminals, and to say they do is wrong.
Is your source the black book of communism or smth?
I suggest that for each national priority that tends towards totalitarism, paradox uses an ugly artwork and writes "Not nice" under it
It would already be enough if they would cut the stupid laurel wreaths and their BS about what said focuses and decisions are representing. Their Bulgarian coring decisions are literally genocidal, you remove manpower from the state and it becomes a core. Still they need to sugarcoat it for snowflakes and only call it "Integration Campaign", yeah no shit Sherlock. Name the shit what it is.
@@HistoryGameV Why would you cut the laurel wreats ? In the game each faction has its own visual identity ; based on how the faction saw itself, and not on how we perceive that faction nowadays.
I'd tend to agree more with your second suggestion, which would be to have a more factual explanation of what these national priorities actually represent.
But let's be realistic, in our cultural environment this would only exacerbate the polemics.
@@fraterleonatus5864 make an angry stick figure with a pencil mustache with a arrow saying "meany" for the Rosenberg focus this guy seems to have a hard-on for.
If this was done to the USSR and they were “glorified” there wouldn’t be a problem, but it shouldn’t and also in this case but here we go…
That's the weird thing actually. While they do the same thing to a degree with the USSR, it's more ambivalent than with the Nazis. So there is a definitive double standard. The Stalinist purges are a genuinly well done mechanic since they HURT if Stalin decides to kill off the wrong generals. The game doesn't hide that if you present him with alternative targets for his paranoia, these people DIE. Meanwhile new German tree coddles the player and lets him committ crimes against humanity, "seizing of gold reserves" my arse, most of the assets came from the actual population and especially the minorities affected by the Holocaust. But oh no, we can't tell that the poor player.
Where was the outcry when No Step Back came out, the trailer was basically a soviet propaganda video.
That trailer did actually cause some outcry...but mainly in the Polish and Baltic community and well, they are pretty small. Generally NSB is much more nuanced than this one. The Stalinist Purges mechanic is generally well done and HURTS. Diverting Stalins paranoia causes negative impact and the game pretty directly tells you that congrats, you got a bunch of people killed. Meanwhile the new German mechanics are literally allowing you to committ warcrimes...they just don't tell you about it.
What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan.
@@HistoryGameVDoesn't the Soviet tree literally have a focus with the word "purge" in it, and it is meta and good to go with it. Seems like crimes against humanity are just fine and cool when it is not the side that lost the war.
Western media has just become hyper sensitive against anything right wing from white people.
Outcry for the people who were willing to fight against nazism from the start but were refused? Fuck off
I also dislike that these horrific people give bonuses to the Nazi state. They should be applying penalties due to Hitler's nepotism, and their general incompetence.
Hoi4 biggest problem is how severely overbuffed germany is, cause historically only reason germany accomplished alot of conquest is due to how utterly incompetent the Western Allies were. And then the Nazis lost to the Soviets (despite the Soviets still in the process of modernizing)
HoI should just return to being a pure wargame (where Germany is portrayed with Imperial Flag, portraits are photos, and there is no alt-history) like the original games. This weird in-the-middle approach of not wanting to portray the reality of WW2 and pass itself off as "just a game" while also wanting to appease LARPers and aestheticise history is really disturbing and irresponsible IMO. All nations get whitewashed in HoI4 but the Fascist ones end up looking like the least worse by sheer virtue of everyone else getting the slightly negative stuff and events.
Please play something else then.
It sounds to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you wishes the game had the mass murders and Holocaust and what not. Yeah no, that would've been a big controversy about the game. It's one thing that mods add stuff like that because they're third party content that Paradox can't control. But for Paradox to do it, that's an different matter entirely. It would've been seen as tasteless and we could very well have seen it covered in the mainstream media, creating another Gaming Bad moment. Games like Wolfenstein and CoD can cover it, and have done, but those games are not at all the same type of game that HOI is and I think that does in fact matter. Because in those games you're seeing it directly in it's full cruelty, while in HOI that would've been boiled down to an image and some text, and maybe some debuffs. Image and text would end up ignored and the debuffs becomes just a mechanic that have to be addressed
I do not wish for it...it does. They just don't call it that. Bulgarias coring decisions remove a chunk of manpower from conquered territories and bam, now it is a core. What do you think that is representing? The focus might be called "Establishing the Rosenberg Office" which allows you to spawn the Reichskommissariats and exploit them. That's...actually enacting the Hungerplan and organising the Holocaust. That's what the Rosenberg Office did. "Expanding the Security Duties of the SS"...now what security duties did the SS take up? Ah yes. They set up death and POW camps and engaged in so-called "Bandit Suppression" which was really mass executions of civilians to suppress partisans. They are already there...Paradox just doesn't dare tell people, so they sugarcoat it and slap some nice art on it.
AI does not launch aircraft on the Eastern Front. While aircraft work on other fronts, it does not work in the Soviet-German war. Will there be a fix?
The biggest problem i see next to the clarification is the game start. There is no chance to play Germany without going into NS Germany... How interesting would it be, to start 50 years earlier?!?
Does anyone know why both Mao and Stallin get full passes despite killing more than Hitler did?
It makes it hard to take anti-fash seriously when they greenflag worse atrocities.
A game depicting things that just were isnt controversal, being offended by history and reality is just kind of your own personal issue, go shout that trees are also problematic.
It's a game where you play every faction.
Pretending they didnt exist just makes it seem more like youre either a communist or you want everyone to forget what happened so you can do it again.
They don't get full passes. Stalin literally murders his generals and utterly trashes the Soviet Unions capabilities to fight an early war. Contrary to the Nazi bullshit it takes quite a while to make keeping him worthwhile. Though after that he gets ridiculously overpowered and that is plain stupid and feeding into commie/Russian worshipping. And yeah, I seriously dislike that the vast amount of casualties of his purges are barely represented in terms of stats...but at least there is some representation.
For Mao...his crimes are basically out of scope for the game. But I'd prefer at least some mention of what would be coming under him.
The issue is that there is virtually no downside to going full Nazi. While if you just let Stalin do his thing, he will devastate your officer corps and combat capabilities. You have to actively counteract him.
L take
Dude, your profile picture is a wojak in a SS uniform with the "Leben" rune graved in it. Everyone knows your opinion and it doesn't matter. Furthermore, wait until you are over 18 to comment in this site
Its not an l take. Its his opinion.
It's a game, grow up for God's sake...
Wow, what a spectacular argument. Grow up for God's sake!
^na
@HistoryGameV If you don't like the game, don't play it. Simple really.
@@junglelands9119 ...yeah no. I like the game. I don't like what they changed about the internal policies of Germany in the update. I voiced said reasons in the video. I have fucking 9000 hours in the game. Me not liking the game is not the issue.
people when historiy being censured: 😡
people when somebody shows how history was: 😡
Woke bullshit
the game doesn't do that at all though lmao, it depicts Germany more like it's the Empire in star wars than what it actually was: the worst regime to ever exist
@@xoidbergskywalker9139 Oh boy do we need an event pop up every few minutes about the Holocaust to remember how bad le nazis are???
@@xoidbergskywalker9139yeah.. but it’s a video game. If it was supposed to be used to learn then I would totally understand, but it’s not, hoi4 is meant to be a game played for fun and nothing else. Why add those features then?
Nope...but, hear me out...when committing warcrimes, it should probably tell you. And not sugarcoat and coddle the player about it. What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan.
junge ist das cringe
I think that there is some basis on your claims, but from a game design standpoint, its really difficult to depict a vile nation like the third Reich in a negative way whilst staying cohesive with the rest of the game. All popups within the game are generally altered towards their relevancy to the nation you are playing and its geopolitical views. The whole premise of hearts of iron is to bring the nation you selected towards whichever path you deem fit. I don't think Germany was given any special treatment compared to the other "good" or "evil" (of course both are subjective, ig) regimes in the game, its just designed similar to the other nations. If decisions were added to instigate the horrors of the holocaust, or blatant heinous war crimes it would be a different story.
That's actually part of the issue. You ARE committing crimes against humanity. They...just don't dare tell you. Rosenbergs exploiting of the Reichskommissariats? That's the execution of the Hungerplan. Seizing of gold reserves? Nice way of covering up that in fact, while in some countries some gold reserves were seized, the majority of monetary assets came from exterminated groups thrown into the death camps. Especially true for Poland, since Poland managed to evacuate its actual gold reserves...but the Nazis "extracted" about the same monetary value from the Jewish minority in the country and the Polish elites they killed. One Himmlers focuses is essentially the organisation of the "Einsatzgruppen". It just has a nicer name and description text.
I feel like if you are not comfortable with it, just don't play for fascists or nazis. Playing as the bad guy means doing bad things, they have other path for this country, if you don't want to do any of it. You are literally playing as Hitler, what did you expect, to give flowers to everyone? This fanbase intelligent enough to realise the context and realise that's it's a videogame, we don't need some idiotic censorship. We already lost games like Call of Duty World at War, because of soft people, now i guess we will lose good strategy games because someone can't handle a historic videogame, where you basically just paint the map.
Paradox has intentionally avoided depictions of war crimes and banned iconography in order to comply with laws and for ethical reasons, and it seems they continue to do that so it's fine. Would it be better if the Nazi path allowed you to build concentration camps instead of sweeping that part of history under the rug? I would argue the opposite.
That's the thing. You think they do...but they don't. What do you think "Seizing the gold reserves" stands for? Well, weird that it reduces compliance, isn't it? Could that be because, since most countries actually managed to get their gold reserves to safety (especially Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and Norway) to a large degree most monetary assets seized and used to pay off German loans came from minorities and national elites exterminated and Paradox just doesn't really want to tell you? What do you think the "Uplift the Rosenberg Office" focus is? Since that guy and his office organised the exploitation of conquered territories, the arresting of Jews and other "undesirables" and enacted the Hungerplan.
They let you do the warcrimes. They just don't tell you about it.
@@HistoryGameV oh so we can do historical things in a historical focus tree germany, crazy😱
@@zsombinagy4421You're missing the point. And I cannot tell if you are doing this on purpose or not.
^na
@HistoryGameV gng there is no way ts isn't a rage bait 😭🙏🏾
Why do you pepole care about this?
About 11 million reasons.
@HistoryGameV such as?
I guess that reference went *whoosh*...
@@HistoryGameV Can you tell me your most important reason at least. Pretty please
@@Enoverdoskaffe I like Hearts of Iron IV. I like playing as Germany in Hearts of Iron IV, since it's the most interesting experience in my opinion. Due to my extensive knowledge on the subject, I don't like the constant "Let's committ a warcrime but make it sound nicer" vibe a good amount of the new focuses and decisions give. Be open about it or leave it out completely. Not this weird inbetween thing we got now.
Don't show this soyboy the tno mod he ain't ready for it
You mean the borderline hilariously unrealistic trash mod with the horrible UI?^^ Played it. Pretty tame as far as Nazi althist goes. I prefer TWR.
What about the Soviets?
They've committed various war crimes too, and they are without a doubt portrayed as cool, just look at the No Step Back trailer.
There is a focus which glorifies Stalin and calls him "The Father of Nations"
I'd say that it's fine to portray these countries in the context of their own ideals and propaganda
You are not choosing to play "The Barbaric Communists", but the "Brave Workers fighting for global class liberation"
And i'm honestly fine with them doing the same to all other countries, including Germany
Hirohito killed 20 million chinese people, nobody cares
[REDACTED] did the same, and now you can't play him in the game without heavy censorship
The difference is that when playing soviet, you now bad stuff happens when you do it (people die when stalin purges them for example), while when playing germany, you dont know that bad stuff happens when you do it. As soviet you know that shit is going on in your country, as germany you know not. Its a double standart.
I personally think "its a game", but i too think it would have been better to let the player know that something happens when they do certain things (could be dead advisors, could be a brain drain event, reduced population in a lot of states, ....). An effort they made with the soviets, but not with germany.
Great point and one I should have mentioned in the video, considering how often this comes up. The Stalinist purges are pretty clear on what is happening and THEY HURT when they hit the wrong guys. The Red Army/Airforce/Navy spirits have pretty nasty negative effects and they only get somewhat better. Ironically the German spirits should be really good from the start and should get worse the further you progress down the Nazi politics tree...since there was a notable impact on combat effectivness due to Nazi indoctrination.
BTW the Soviet focus tree did in fact draw quite some criticism in parts the Eastern European community, especially Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states. It's just that their amount of players is relatively modest and thus it didn't gain much attention.
Re writing this. I think the game needs to portray a his as evil not neutral as it does its odd that they don't make you feel bad for doing bad things
Lore of The Götterdämmerung Controversy | Hearts of Iron IV momentum 100
booooring. What really is problematic are the stupid new super weapons that make no sense and completely break immersion.
Love how the only argument made in the comments against it is "It's just a game" lmao
I dont speak enough German to watch the original so im confused about what the argument is here, Just that focus tree art for the Nazi High command makes them 'look cool'?
@@Artosk this and various new focuses and decisions representing pretty horrific warcrimes, in some cases including the Holocaust.
Im German, I watched it like 5m ago. It's a combination of factors like Himmler being seemingly at the center of the inner circle mechanic, while being depicted with laurel wreaths. Along with the fact that the Nazi portraits are uncensored with no option to censor them and add on to that the fact that the plundering of nations got called "seize gold reserve" as well as other text descriptions hiding the nature of the NS crimes.
@@Pioneer_DE if you want to go there, where's the "starve the kulaks" or "Shun the kazans" or "Hide Beria's child rapes " focus for the ussr? why is beria's and stalin's portrait not shadowed? Where is "Discriminate Germans in Gdynia" for poland?
@@redactado266 You are shooting the Messenger, I too argued against the OG's creators decision. Theres a long comment with reasons for me disagreeing.
That being said your named examples are a bit of a stretched "gotcha".
Beria's Child focuses offer no gameplay reason to be added nor do they reflect on what the OG creator was expressing.
The Creator was complaining about the fact that the German Plundering was simply titled "seize gold reserves" instead of what it was.
The shadowed figures have to do something with German laws and the display of Nazi Imagery.
Now you can argue back and forth if the Soviets deserve the same treatment, not the point of this comment though I will say there is a difference between being a horrible and terrible Person/Leader and ordering the first and so far only Systematic Industrialized Genocide of an ethnic group across an entire continent.
As a German myself... I really don't see the issue. If you somehow don't know how shit the nazis were, you should probably take a history class. Trying to find some kind of controversy in the way historical figures are respresented in a game based on history, seems like a stretch. I don't think they look cool, these portraits look like any other portrait in the game. Should they all have their faces covered by shit instead? I'm sure you can make a mod for that. Plus, it's not like the dlc lets you construct Auschwitz or show you any warcrimes. Which I don't think it should, it's a game focused on leading your country through ww2 after all. Not a game trying to educate people about all the atrocities committed by various nations during that time period. The game should be fun, not make you feel like shit for wanting to play the German Reich.
There is no need to educate people in an annoying way. Just...tell people what you are actually doing. Seizing of gold reserves? Oh boy, that's a nice way of saying your are plundering a country and seizing the assets of exterminated minorities sent to the death camps. It literally lets you committ the Holocaust...without telling you. That's pretty fucking problematic.
I agree its a game about leading your country through WW2. Hence me being quite astonished as to why Paradox saw the need to let you cosplay the internal NSDAP party politics and actively committ crimes against humanity when they previously didn't. Why the hell did they see the need to change that?
@@HistoryGameV The problem is, only if they explicitly tell you what the historical context behind "seizing the gold reserves" is, does the player get to actively choose to commit warcrimes. I think the way it is implemented currently, is about as tasteful as Paradox could have done it. The way it is now, you aren't *actually* committing war crimes, you're taking gold from the place you've conquered, to hold on to the mefo bill buffs a bit longer. If they told you what's happening "behind the scenes", when you press the button, it would be a much bigger controversy imo. Paradox needs to balance making a game that's fun to play and won't make you feel like a piece of shit afterwards, while remaining, somewhat, true to history.
Although, I do wish there was some sort of struggle mechanic, similar to Mussolini's struggle and his orders, or Stalin's paranoia, to somewhat closer represent the internal struggles of the German Reich, with debuffs that get progressively worse. But that's an entirely different discussion.
You know the best part of Hoi4? _It's not real_
Don't like it? _Don't play_
Oh, I like HoI4. I think the addition of "cool" Nazi politics and the option to committ crimes against humanity but hiding that this is what the player is doing is extremely tasteless and puts the game in jeopardy in my country.
@HistoryGameV You could say that about any WW2 game.
Would you rather have a popup saying how many warcrimes you commited every month ingame?
The point is _it's a game_. It's not real, it's not hurting anyone. And plus you could say the same thing about the Soviets and the Japanese, they did some seriously heinous stuff too.
But again, _it's not real, it's just a game_.
And i'm sure Paradox has already cleared it with the German government and their systems.
@@TheJackHood Well you ARE committing warcrimes with some focuses. I recommend checking up on what the Rosenberg Office actually did. It's quite gruesome and deeply involved with the Holocaust and the Hungerplan. Paradox just doesn't dare tell you.
And no. I know for a fact they haven't cleared anything. They did not resubmit the game with the new focus tree to the USK rating board and this might actually really bite them in the arse. They did check with lawyers but from what I have gathered, apparently not the most competent ones.
@HistoryGameV Well, no, you _aren't_ commiting warcrimes considering, once again, _it's a video game, it's not real_ Did that stuff happen irl? Sure. Does that happen in the game or is represented in any way in the game? _No._
Like I said before, don't like it? _Don't play it._ Easy as. A videogame cannot hurt you or anyone else.
I dont see how this DLC is in any noticeable way worse than the base game where you can literally play as Nazi Germany with Hitler giving you bonuses and you can and will start world war two
They left the internal policies of the Reich out in the original focus tree. The new historical one you get with the update makes internal Nazi politics and policies a core element of playing historical Germany...including aspects of the Holocaust (SS focuses, Rosenberg focus). But they don't call it that. It's nicely sugarcoated which I, personally, find incredible distateful.
@HistoryGameV If I remember correctly even in the base game you could hire some of these same inner circle Nazis as advisors/ministers or whatever the game calls them and they for example give more resources from occupied areas, kinda feels like the same thing.
@@Jaggaraz218 Back before the update/DLC they had generic skills though and not their own, self-researching and (in my eyes) weird focus tree. And in Germany some of them were blacked out (not for me, I had a press version since release).
Played the new dlc and now realise we fought the wrong guys. Thankyou paradox! Very cool!
I dont know why they had to add a sunwheel edit on the trailer, but OK paradox. You based sweeds.
imo there is no Controversy, it is a ww2 strategy game and just because those options exist doesnt mean i start to glorify it
I really don't understand why this seems so hard for a bunch if people to understand. No, nobody says we need a Holocaust machanic or anything, but portraying architects of the Holocaust as some great statesmen is absolute nonsense and historically simply wrong. Just look at the promotional material of this DLC, how is that not obviously advertising some Wheraboo fantasies of Nazi superweapons and great acomplishments (which didn't even exist). Guess who actually had superweapons that could destroy entire cities, and bombers with massive ranges? The US, but weirdly enough it is not those weapons that are used in the ads, it's some nonsense Nazi fanatsies like the Hortens or the Ratte. HoI4 was treading a thin line before that already, but now it just went waaay too far into the Wheraboo-roleplay direction than was ever needed, though tbf it has been going there for a long time now. Apperently people care more about the next rediculous (alt-)history paths than any real gameplay improvements.
The solution btw is fairly simple. Just don't include this whole "Führerprinzip" horseshit. If the strategy game is supposed to be about military strategy, why does this even exist? The political system is so dumbed down that adding a bunch of focusses doesn't make it more interesting, it only serves the roleplay fantasy of a bunch of idiots and lunatics. Like, what do you think you do when you strengthen the GeStaPo or the SS? And btw, I had the exact same issues with the Soviet rework and Paranoia system, before anybody comes in here with some Whataboutism.
And as another comment stated, why is it always a base assumption that Germany needs to be an easy nation to play? They literally lost, in a decisive manner at that, so by any objective measure the easy nation to play should be the US, maaaaaaybe the UK. Germany, or any Axis power, should be hard mode.
I honestly agree with you on the political mechanics being pointless. Focus trees are a weird gimmick that have no basis in anything real. The reasoning for Germany being the "easy" nation is probably because it has the most opportunities for expansion. The USA is an easy nation, but it also has to manage two theaters across the world from each other and is not what most people imagine when they think of a fun nation.
@@FlorianGeyerFan You are absolutely correct that USA is pain in the a** to play, but that's not because of some inherent historical reason. This is purely a gameplay decision by paradox, making air, and especiall navy, so unbelievably boring and bad experiences that of course nobody wants to suffer through them. Also the fact that logistics are, to this day, an absolute nightmare of a game mechanic, especially over sea, doesn't help either.
@@Aim_Deusi I completely agree.
Or easy at the beginning and then get harder as time goes on.
But yeah, it is pretty weird to cater to those types of people.
Germany lost the war the second they declared it. Imagine being so much of a wehraboo you think they stood a chance against the 3 biggest players of that time combined.
There are some people that have to complain about everything…
As someone who does not follow basegame Hearts of Iron discourse (and has not played since the DLC was released) I was completely unaware of this. That is indeed not a good look for Paradox. Coincidentally I ended up playing as "the turbo Nazis" in a mod today without meaning to. At least its foci with names such as "expand the Arbeitslager" do not dance around the issue of why the national spirit for minorities gets removed.
How do you end up playing as "the turbo Nazis" by accident? That and saying you dont follow or play the game discredits your position.
First, let me deal with my position being discredited by not following the game. Everthing thereafter explains how the Nazis got themselves some extra horsepower in my country. So : I don't really care about the base game that much. I usually play with mods. If Germany's vanilla focus tree does not exist in seven out of eight sessions I do, then my interest is limited. I'm sure this weakens my ability to understand Paradox's artistic intentions behind making things the way they are. If the result of this is something which makes the Nazis look really cool, then I can't critique how they got there. Without knowing the discourse I can't critique how they dealt with the feedback about this which they inevitably received. I can feel conflicted about what their efforts and reactions ended up in. On the one hand, cool is good, I like cool focus icons. On the other hand, cool war criminals are not. This is, in essence, my position. I used to follow HoI more closely in the past and when the game came out I knew how and why they did (not) deal with war crimes. I don't feel the need to repeat this exercise just to say making war criminals look cool does half their job for them already.
Glad that serious discussion is done with. Here's the tale you wondered about!
Yesterday I played in multiplayer in a total overhaul mod as a country I did not know. That means I skimmed over most events that day, could not rely on knowing who's who because they were all made-up people, and I really did not want to end up in a civil war and serve as a proxy war for the others to try their new toys in before the session's big war began.
My base path were the naturally aspirated Nazis, no turbo yet. Very bad people and somehow I kept losing local manpower in states during purges and mass arrests, who knows what that could mean. At some point I prepared for a war to regain core territory occupied by a neighbour. At this moment an event popped up, asking me to support one of two characters in a dispute. Not having read the other events deeply I recognised neither name and picked the one that gave a minor military buff for the upcoming war.
While I was in my unification war another event popped up. Option A would lead to "The battle for [capital city]!" and option B would lead to "The coup defeated". I picked the one that didn't sound like launching a civil war while I'm in an actual war. This caused a second event to pop up, informing me I had lost my leader in the coup attempt and the turbo Nazis were now in charge.
As it turns out the event I mentioned first-one of many events that I got over the game-asked me to side with either a hardliner or a "moderate" and I picked the hardliner without knowing, causing an inevitable coup attempt by those who think fascism is cool but turbo fascism a bridge too far. I could also have chosen for the coup to succeed without having a civil war. Something I know now that I did not know then.
If you wonder why I played this country and that path in the first place : we all wanted to play in the same local area and this was the only free country (which wouldn't be devoured by one of the majors before their war) and to make it a 3v2 I'd need to go down its fascist route.
Ah, Equestria at War. I accidentally killed a certain baby in that one when playing for the first time...
Indeed you did, @@HistoryGameV. Who knew that a military coup against the rightful government could possibly end in regicide?
@@klobiforpresident2254 you yeeted the child
Utterly ridiculous.
It's a game my dude.
I'm Brazilian and we fought bravely against the axis in ww2.
Our president then (yes it's weird) even sent a jewish communist woman to Germany (contradicting I know), before we entered the war on the correct side.
With all that, it's a game. A game
It doesn't sit right with me either. The whole way the game is balanced to make Germany a "viable" major power in world war 2 also doesn't sit right with me. From a strategy game point of view, playing as the Germans should be "hard mode", rather than "suggested pick". This so-called inner circle were monstrous human beings who committed the worst atrocities in history. They were also incompetent, and lead their country to total self=destruction. I'm not even sure they should be omitted from the game--they should be represented for what they were--people who brought nothing but misery and disaster to their country. This has been a problem since day one of HOI4.
Because it was , idk what you on about.
Yeah lmao like it or not Germany hit WAY above its weight class in ww2. Could they have won irl? Realistically speaking no lol. I was never told "hey play Germany first because it's really easy to win the war" I was told "hey play Germany first because you have less overseas shit to worry about and it gives you some easy goals to set 1. Don't get dicked. 2. Draw the allies to a stalemate. 3. Actually win the war. This is not actually easy for a new player with historical focuses turned on
…I generally hate the term ‘virtue-signaling’, and find it’s usually used by people on the far-right to attack perfectly reasonable concern about very real issues, but as far as I’m concerned, this is literally virtue-signalling. Like, I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, but a practical one.
The issue is that due to how the game is set up, the first conquests are too easy and instead of getting harder, even the historically impossible Sealion and extremely unlikely victory over the USSR are not significantly more difficult. Especially the USSR is a pushover if you just stick to historical division designs, not even in-game effective ones.
@@TerrorByte69420 im wierd person who chosen poland , as you get deathclock on you to motivates you to "iron out your early game" , germany was my second.
They are depicted as kinda cool maybe because they are?? Duuuh
They did worse than the Kaiserreich 20yrs earlier, with better equipment, a better army arguably. But the problem is, when your whole leadership consists of utter morons, that's what you get.
In any case...they had absolutely none cool qualities. Their technology lagged behind the US and UK. Superweapons? USA & UK. Working mass-producable jet fighters? USA & UK. Gigantic rocket-boosted bombers touching the stratosphere with analog computer-guided defensive guns? USA. Radar-triggered AA and arty ammunition absolutely shredding everything? USA. Meanwhile Germany spent the equivalent of the costs of the Manhattan Project on rockets that took another 20yrs to work properly...done by the USA.
@BiiskapsLV no. They failed where the Kaiserreich succeeded: defeating the enemy that mattered, Russia.
And no, as someone who has done a TON of research these matters, there is nothing uniquely cool about the Nazis. The Wehrmacht? To a degree until the Nazi indoctrination took roots and started turn the best trained army of the world into a ruthless slaughtering and raping soldateska that frightened its own officers with its brutality and insubordination. Just listen to the tapes from the British POW camp for German officers. Its harrowing.
@@HistoryGameV that's cool.
They didn't defeat Russia. A revolution started in Russia.
@@HistoryGameVcalling Russia the enemy that mattered when Imperial Germany lost WW1 although it beat "the enemy that mattered" is stupid.
If you wanna take a basic lesson away from WW2 is that every part of the team mattered. UK would fall without the USSR binding up troops and US sending supplies (civilian or military), USSR would have failed without the US's supplies (something that was unlikely to happen if it wasn't for the UK) and if the UK and USSR fell the US would have negotiated a peace, because trying to fight a war across an oceans without proper allies overseas would be incredibly taxing.
WW2 Germany was as close to victory as WW1 Germany, namely not at all considering all the factors, especially after the industrial power of the USA came into effect in both wars.
Also side point, the "cool" thing people refer to about WW2 germany is probably their uniforms etcs...
you are probably confusing the germans with the russians, and about the projects and technology, think about it. The german reich was collapsing and they were disperate. Their economy was getting destroyed by the allied bombings, and they were fighting against a lot of enemies, on multiple fronts.
Snowflakes
People that can't stomach their games being even a tiny bit realistic? Yes. But then complain when nobody takes games serious...
Lame