Plagued /r/TNOmod and the Reddit HOI4 modding community - When a subreddit for a video game mod turns to utter insanity

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This is interesting...
 
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Radola Gajda said:
There was something simillar

I present you this but TNO
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I will give TNO one thing, the focus tree Icons are amazing looking.
Lieutenant Rasczak said:
Someone created a HOI4 mod about the TNO drama. It's great despite being bare bones.
steamcommunity.com

Steam Workshop::The Meme Order: Last Days of TNO

steamcommunity.com steamcommunity.com
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Ok this is a nice HOI4 mod.

Rant below about my distaste of mods using civil wars in a railroad fashion, mostly pertaining to TNO and Kaiserreich. I am fine with civil wars when it comes to getting different paths but both mods rely on physical ones rather than event ones like you see in KR Chinese cliques.

TNO and Kaiserreich are both riddled with civil wars, TNO being the far more autistic of the two with shit going into 12-way civil wars if the right things happen. Everywhere from Iberia to Asia gets flooded with civil wars for every tiny irrelevant faction even if they will only exist to get annexed by a greater power. Some are decent like the Polish or GCW one, other's are fucking pointless and made for muh plot, like the mess that is the Middle East for mandatory oil crisis.

The GCW is annoying that it can't be avoided because muh plot, especially in regards there was originally a plan to assassinate one of the contenders to turn it into a 3-way civil war, there isn't even an attempt at this anymore. Had I been in charge I would have at least had that, maybe put in a very rare, very RNG possibility of avoiding war but getting you rivals imprisoned days after Hitler's death.

On to Kaiserreich and the mess they keep changing, the 2ACW. The most reason change has been in regards to occupation, some warplans to make MacArthur more viable for the AI, a new mechanic with losing states, and navies transferring on capitulation. Originally the ACW could be avoided by taking very specific steps as Charles Curtis, Hoover's VP. Then they killed off Curtis and moved his nomination onto Alf Landon (Who basically didn't campaign at all in 1936, effectively giving FDR his second term), but kept the same route to avoid it. Then they moved it over to wholesome chungus Floyd Olson who they have not die of cancer before the game starts, he now has the route to avoid the ACW. How you might ask?

Kill Long, compromise with Reed. Yes exactly that. Now I will get into a tangent later on how badly Kaiserdevs fucked up the American Progressives of the 30s later but this path was ultimately removed for "balance", as it was apparently too hard to redesign America's tree to hamper production and war capabilities without causing a civil war to stall the AI for about 2 years at most as a player and an infinite amount of time for the AI.

It has been removed as a route for a few years now, now you are forced into a 2-way civil war at best, 4-way at worst. Alf Landon now weakens both the AUS and CSA to a point as a player they are with beatable with ease, Garner can negotiate with Long and pacify them but make the CSA super strong, and Olson does the opposite of Garner.

However there are two trap paths, both Landon and Olson can negotiate with both and almost succeed until the game railroads the MacArthur coup for the shitty 4-way that basically means America won't be doing anything for 5 years at least. None of this would be a problem if A) The AI was competent, and B) The CSA had a real debuff. If the CSA doesn't die in the first few months it will win via attrition. Not to mention last I checked the events where they get a free 20 militia divisions plus heavy tanks some workers made (I'm not joking) while the US doesn't even start with motorized divisions, much less full fledged tank divs.

On to that tangent on Olson and the Progressives. Overall the mod skews Progressives and Long. In real life Progressives of the 30s supported populists like Long, not Socialist politicians. If anything Reed should be on his own in the ACW. Long also was not some hardcore racist and tacitly avoided the topic whenever by merit of being a Southern politician, he hated the Klan with a passion yet the devs hitched him with two fringe right wing groups, rather than the Progressives he catered to. It seems the Kaiserdevs think 30s Progressives were The Squad or something.

Kaiser Redux actually fixes this. Long takes the Midwest in the ACW, his real support base nationally, and in the event he wins can align himself with the Progressives. The Progressive party, if it wins the 36 election, is led by George Norris, as Olson is actually dead. Norris, along with every normal 36 president, can avoid the ACW. Redux also gives the US tags actual trees, not just an atrociously lazy tree consisting of Recover from the ACW and Military trees.

TLDR: God bless KRedux, though I wish the civil war didn't turn into a 5-way. Thankfully all this can be mostly alleviated with custom country paths to dictate the outcome.
 
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Corpun said:
I will give TNO one thing, the focus tree Icons are amazing looking.

Ok this is a nice HOI4 mod.

Rant below about my distaste of mods using civil wars in a railroad fashion, mostly pertaining to TNO and Kaiserreich. I am fine with civil wars when it comes to getting different paths but both mods rely on physical ones rather than event ones like you see in KR Chinese cliques.

TNO and Kaiserreich are both riddled with civil wars, TNO being the far more autistic of the two with shit going into 12-way civil wars if the right things happen. Everywhere from Iberia to Asia gets flooded with civil wars for every tiny irrelevant faction even if they will only exist to get annexed by a greater power. Some are decent like the Polish or GCW one, other's are fucking pointless and made for muh plot, like the mess that is the Middle East for mandatory oil crisis.

The GCW is annoying that it can't be avoided because muh plot, especially in regards there was originally a plan to assassinate one of the contenders to turn it into a 3-way civil war, there isn't even an attempt at this anymore. Had I been in charge I would have at least had that, maybe put in a very rare, very RNG possibility of avoiding war but getting you rivals imprisoned days after Hitler's death.

On to Kaiserreich and the mess they keep changing, the 2ACW. The most reason change has been in regards to occupation, some warplans to make MacArthur more viable for the AI, a new mechanic with losing states, and navies transferring on capitulation. Originally the ACW could be avoided by taking very specific steps as Charles Curtis, Hoover's VP. Then they killed off Curtis and moved his nomination onto Alf Landon (Who basically didn't campaign at all in 1936, effectively giving FDR his second term), but kept the same route to avoid it. Then they moved it over to wholesome chungus Floyd Olson who they have not die of cancer before the game starts, he now has the route to avoid the ACW. How you might ask?

Kill Long, compromise with Reed. Yes exactly that. Now I will get into a tangent later on how badly Kaiserdevs fucked up the American Progressives of the 30s later but this path was ultimately removed for "balance", as it was apparently too hard to redesign America's tree to hamper production and war capabilities without causing a civil war to stall the AI for about 2 years at most as a player and an infinite amount of time for the AI.

It has been removed as a route for a few years now, now you are forced into a 2-way civil war at best, 4-way at worst. Alf Landon now weakens both the AUS and CSA to a point as a player they are with beatable with ease, Garner can negotiate with Long and pacify them but make the CSA super strong, and Olson does the opposite of Garner.

However there are two trap paths, both Landon and Olson can negotiate with both and almost succeed until the game railroads the MacArthur coup for the shitty 4-way that basically means America won't be doing anything for 5 years at least. None of this would be a problem if A) The AI was competent, and B) The CSA had a real debuff. If the CSA doesn't die in the first few months it will win via attrition. Not to mention last I checked the events where they get a free 20 militia divisions plus heavy tanks some workers made (I'm not joking) while the US doesn't even start with motorized divisions, much less full fledged tank divs.

On to that tangent on Olson and the Progressives. Overall the mod skews Progressives and Long. In real life Progressives of the 30s supported populists like Long, not Socialist politicians. If anything Reed should be on his own in the ACW. Long also was not some hardcore racist and tacitly avoided the topic whenever by merit of being a Southern politician, he hated the Klan with a passion yet the devs hitched him with two fringe right wing groups, rather than the Progressives he catered to. It seems the Kaiserdevs think 30s Progressives were The Squad or something.

Kaiser Redux actually fixes this. Long takes the Midwest in the ACW, his real support base nationally, and in the event he wins can align himself with the Progressives. The Progressive party, if it wins the 36 election, is led by George Norris, as Olson is actually dead. Norris, along with every normal 36 president, can avoid the ACW. Redux also gives the US tags actual trees, not just an atrociously lazy tree consisting of Recover from the ACW and Military trees.

TLDR: God bless KRedux, though I wish the civil war didn't turn into a 5-way. Thankfully all this can be mostly alleviated with custom country paths to dictate the outcome.
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My research into the TNO "dark ages" (i.e late 2017 - mid 2019) is going reasonably well. Some important highlights:

-The mod more or less exploded out of nowhere after Panzer picked up interest on the Kaiserreich discord. On November 8th, 2017 he made a discord for development.

-By January 2018 the mod already had 100+ developers and the community was rapidly growing.

-The earliest leaks (of which we know) happened in July 2018 when a "Nazbol gang" led by "Karp" managed to convince one or more people on the team to leak stuff because they were upset with how Panzer treated them (I wonder if this pattern will repeat itself).

-As early as January 2019, the development team wrote this letter to Panzer, who read it and then wrote the infamous "Response to the fucking traitors" document. While many of you have likely already read it, the dev team letter should be brought to attention too, to see exactly what prompted such a reaction from Panzer:

The team culture in recent times has felt rather toxic, especially among the upper echelons of development. This is in no small part due to the breakneck work pace mandated for development. While we all want to see TNO release as soon as possible, we aren’t creating a lasting team that will be able to sustain and build upon the mod post-release. It's hard to create a quality mod if we have one of the highest contributor turnover rates in the coop and an unsustainable working culture amongst the more veteran team members.
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Amusingly Panzer decided to not only write that response, but he @everyone on the discord too, just to make sure they knew how he felt, and then he shortly whined about how the mod would either take six months or two more years before it was completed (guess which one it was).
 

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Radola Gajda said:
I am going to do some more digging tonight If anyone is interested in helping with going through it here is copy of their chats
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That doki file almost bricked my computer with how much shit was on there. 240k messages in a single month? Christ's sake, they need to get some fucking sun. Chop that up into segments next time.

Anyways, there's a really elitist tone among their team and how they exalt their mod above all the rest. It was present when I was on the team and it's still there now, according to those logs. In fact, there was literally a team rule not to shittalk other mods for this very reason. "The best HoI4 mod ever", "longest work of fiction ever" (nowhere close to being true, lmao), "bigger and more important than the Coop," etc etc. They're also obsessed with the number of members their server has, as if that's any mark of quality (quite the opposite when it comes to their community). First, as with every "big" server, 90% of those members are inactive. Second, literally who gives a fuck?

TNO has always had a gargantuan superiority complex, and that's why so many people love to rail on it, especially when they don't live up to their stratospheric standards (see; the Chai situation).
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There's a sense of exceptionalism among the team in that their mod is inherently different to the rest of HoI4, that they're on a mission to tell such an epic and thought provoking story that will transform the modding scene forever! Wow wow wow! This attitude spawned from Panzer's hyper-autistic desire for fame and impossibly ambitious dreams of making such a "massive" mod, and it only snowballed from there.

Newsflash; no, you aren't. You aren't any different from any of the other mods on this game and to pretend that you are is delusional. Your community overlaps with places like KR, TWR, etc; you spam the same unfunny memes and jokes that every other team does; and like it or not, you've got flaws. Serious ones. Your shit stinks just like everyone else's, no matter how much you sprinkle it.
 
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Corpun said:
I will give TNO one thing, the focus tree Icons are amazing looking.

Ok this is a nice HOI4 mod.

Rant below about my distaste of mods using civil wars in a railroad fashion, mostly pertaining to TNO and Kaiserreich. I am fine with civil wars when it comes to getting different paths but both mods rely on physical ones rather than event ones like you see in KR Chinese cliques.

TNO and Kaiserreich are both riddled with civil wars, TNO being the far more autistic of the two with shit going into 12-way civil wars if the right things happen. Everywhere from Iberia to Asia gets flooded with civil wars for every tiny irrelevant faction even if they will only exist to get annexed by a greater power. Some are decent like the Polish or GCW one, other's are fucking pointless and made for muh plot, like the mess that is the Middle East for mandatory oil crisis.

The GCW is annoying that it can't be avoided because muh plot, especially in regards there was originally a plan to assassinate one of the contenders to turn it into a 3-way civil war, there isn't even an attempt at this anymore. Had I been in charge I would have at least had that, maybe put in a very rare, very RNG possibility of avoiding war but getting you rivals imprisoned days after Hitler's death.

On to Kaiserreich and the mess they keep changing, the 2ACW. The most reason change has been in regards to occupation, some warplans to make MacArthur more viable for the AI, a new mechanic with losing states, and navies transferring on capitulation. Originally the ACW could be avoided by taking very specific steps as Charles Curtis, Hoover's VP. Then they killed off Curtis and moved his nomination onto Alf Landon (Who basically didn't campaign at all in 1936, effectively giving FDR his second term), but kept the same route to avoid it. Then they moved it over to wholesome chungus Floyd Olson who they have not die of cancer before the game starts, he now has the route to avoid the ACW. How you might ask?

Kill Long, compromise with Reed. Yes exactly that. Now I will get into a tangent later on how badly Kaiserdevs fucked up the American Progressives of the 30s later but this path was ultimately removed for "balance", as it was apparently too hard to redesign America's tree to hamper production and war capabilities without causing a civil war to stall the AI for about 2 years at most as a player and an infinite amount of time for the AI.

It has been removed as a route for a few years now, now you are forced into a 2-way civil war at best, 4-way at worst. Alf Landon now weakens both the AUS and CSA to a point as a player they are with beatable with ease, Garner can negotiate with Long and pacify them but make the CSA super strong, and Olson does the opposite of Garner.

However there are two trap paths, both Landon and Olson can negotiate with both and almost succeed until the game railroads the MacArthur coup for the shitty 4-way that basically means America won't be doing anything for 5 years at least. None of this would be a problem if A) The AI was competent, and B) The CSA had a real debuff. If the CSA doesn't die in the first few months it will win via attrition. Not to mention last I checked the events where they get a free 20 militia divisions plus heavy tanks some workers made (I'm not joking) while the US doesn't even start with motorized divisions, much less full fledged tank divs.

On to that tangent on Olson and the Progressives. Overall the mod skews Progressives and Long. In real life Progressives of the 30s supported populists like Long, not Socialist politicians. If anything Reed should be on his own in the ACW. Long also was not some hardcore racist and tacitly avoided the topic whenever by m
TLDR: God bless KRedux, though I wish the civil war didn't turn into a 5-way. Thankfully all this can be mostly alleviated with custom country paths to dictate the outcome.
Click to expand...
KX America has so many memes and enjoyable paths it almost feels like Red Flood.
- occult Lovecraft New England
- the Black Revolt, which can retake Africa as the totalists I forget the name of (edit: the UNIA) or the natpop Nation of Islam
- Walt Disney as dictator in the PSA
- Nativist Alaska/Turtle Island that reminds me of Egyptian Finland, although iirc it came before
And the rest of the world is good as well; Evolan Italy, the restored old Mongolia tree, and the fact the North Caucasus and Central Asia have focus trees and more unique nations now come to mind.
TLDR KX good
 
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Khivaria said:
KX America has so many memes and enjoyable paths it almost feels like Red Flood.
- occult Lovecraft New England
- the Black Revolt, which can retake Africa as the totalists I forget the name of (edit: the UNIA) or the natpop Nation of Islam
- Walt Disney as dictator in the PSA
- Nativist Alaska/Turtle Island that reminds me of Egyptian Finland, although iirc it came before
And the rest of the world is good as well; Evolan Italy, the restored old Mongolia tree, and the fact the North Caucasus and Central Asia have focus trees and more unique nations now come to mind.
TLDR KX good
Click to expand...
Do they plan on releasintba version for darkest hour? The normal kaiserreich is honestly lacking.
 
Khivaria said:
KX America has so many memes and enjoyable paths it almost feels like Red Flood.
- occult Lovecraft New England
- the Black Revolt, which can retake Africa as the totalists I forget the name of (edit: the UNIA) or the natpop Nation of Islam
- Walt Disney as dictator in the PSA
- Nativist Alaska/Turtle Island that reminds me of Egyptian Finland, although iirc it came before
And the rest of the world is good as well; Evolan Italy, the restored old Mongolia tree, and the fact the North Caucasus and Central Asia have focus trees and more unique nations now come to mind.
TLDR KX good
Click to expand...
I love KX so so much. My one and only complaint is that the restored Mongolia focus tree really fucks with China. I wish they added an option to disable it.
 
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Khivaria said:
KX America has so many memes and enjoyable paths it almost feels like Red Flood.
- occult Lovecraft New England
- the Black Revolt, which can retake Africa as the totalists I forget the name of (edit: the UNIA) or the natpop Nation of Islam
- Walt Disney as dictator in the PSA
- Nativist Alaska/Turtle Island that reminds me of Egyptian Finland, although iirc it came before
And the rest of the world is good as well; Evolan Italy, the restored old Mongolia tree, and the fact the North Caucasus and Central Asia have focus trees and more unique nations now come to mind.
TLDR KX good
Click to expand...
KX is great because it embraces the wacky. KX knows that alternate history is stupid and it fully embraces it. Meanwhile base Kaiserreich has been taking itself super seriously recently, removing any "unrealistic" paths because "Syndicalism is a totally serious ideology". It just comes off as boring.

The worst is TNO, where you've got some paths which take themselves super seriously and others are stupid and wacky. You have Burgundy which takes itself way too seriously, starting off with fucking child euthanasia. At the same time you can have an American Mercenary conquering Russia where every other event references Metal Gear.

Either take yourself seriously or embrace the stupid, don't try to do both.
 
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