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

[Kanuckski]

Fun and TNO are not words I would put together. HOI4 mods in general seem to be anti fun. The fact that the majority of them remove features such as war justification and ideology boosting is evidence of this. Paradox games were not meant as narrative focused experiences. And too often in HOI4 mods they remove player interaction in exchange for narrative control. As an example, a couple of years ago you could play Kasierreich as Imperial Germany and send troops to aid your colonies if you figured the European theater wasn't going to blow up too soon. A year or so ago that got removed, so now you just sit there and watch as the shitty AI loses because the outcome is pretty much pre determined. In TNO player control was never an option, and they go so far as to remove division recruitment and designer while playing as Germany.

As someone who plays HOI4 and somewhat knows what goes on within the community, yes everything is true. Sadly, the Speer hoodie is fucking real. TNO's fan base is a special case of a child being dropped on it's head. It comes with every other mod's fan base being full of fags like this to a degree. Full of both sensitive pussies who are either tumblr tier special snowflakes who'll melt at the sight of an offensive term and 14 year old zoomer edge lords at the same time who think saying nigger for the 1,488th time is comedy gold with little or almost none in between this spectrum. On their own, the mods are fun to play but it's the fan base of a mod that'll generally ruin everything. Even if the mod itself is so edgy that it makes Nick Cruz look positively spherical as with the case with the cannibal Anglos. Generally, every fan base is shit but some are shittier than others.

For @Pointless Pedant's post on a fixed TNO scenario book, do it. I'd buy a copy of the book myself as soon as it's published in book stores. Otherwise here's how I'd describe TNO as a mod. Fun mod, awful eye burning UI, dumpster fire fan base, too much fucking edge in the story, good concept executed god awfully by a shitty dev team that constantly in-fights. I mean after all, the political and HOI4 community overlap so expect something this bad.

This is why Equestria at War is unironically the best mod. Snowflakes still fall, but without the deep political commentary about why fashy is baddy, it doesn't appeal as much. Edgelords refuse to touch it. It embraces the wacky what if? scenarios and sandbox gameplay without issue. It doesn't take itself seriously or lost sight of what it is. Really hard to debate the ethics of Equestrian colonization into the Griffian homelands. Or the pros & cons of a sun queen dictoatorship without sounding like the sperg you are. I would say this mod is a pretty close runner-up for second best though.

 

[Pope Negro Joe the XIIIth]

I'm wearing a nazi hoodie rn(it's comfy) and you can find copious amounts of that sorta art on deviantart. It seems abnormally plain honestly.

Yea they're spergs, but what makes them of note? I have no clue what trannies have to do with anything regarding this.
Also >far left

So, what's your username on the subreddit?

 

[Arm Pit Cream]

So, what's your username on the subreddit?

APC1488_KF
These games suck, so does reddit and funnily enough so does your mother.

 

[LOWERCASE LETTERS]

The only good part of this mod is the Russian unification wars.

 

[Pope Negro Joe the XIIIth]

APC1488_KF
These games suck, so does reddit and funnily enough so does your mother.

If you actually know what my mom looks like you'd understand I'm not the one being insulted here.

 

[Lizard Machine Bugs]

Obligatory.
Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2307988796

 

[Marshal Mannerheim]

Stuff like this is why I just play CK2 on my potato of a computer and don't engage with the community unless I'm trying to form Outremer/stop the Karlings from being retards and creating horrendous bordergore/work out what the conditions are to reform Suomenusko and can't figure out what to do.

 

[Iceland Heavy]

Not resuming unrestricted submarine warfare keeps the Americans out of the war, but they also beat the British navy in a massive fleet battle, which wouldn't have happened. Without American intervention the war would probably have come to a stalemate with neither side able to break through. Communist revolutions could still have happened like they did in Russia, but Germany wouldn't have just magically blown the superior Entente navies away, and if they negotiated a peace treaty that would still be German victory since they would have all their Brest-Litovsk gains to the east.

What do you think of TNO's premise for a Nazi victory in the East in WW2? Stalin gets epsteined so Bukharin takes over, doesn't industrialize so the kulaks horde all the grain and cause famines anyway so the USSR is a complete basket case in 1941 and collapses almost instantly. Smells a but like tankie apologia but at least it's different from the usual 'if the Nazis did this and this differently they would've won!'. I did find it quite a bit amusing at least that the Pacific War victory for Japan in TNO was pretty much 'Japan does virtually everything right, gets their Kantai Kessen and is still getting pushed all the way back to the Home Islands by sheer industrial might before getting the bomb'.

 

[Gay Scientologist]

What do you think of TNO's premise for a Nazi victory in the East in WW2? Stalin gets epsteined so Bukharin takes over, doesn't industrialize so the kulaks horde all the grain and cause famines anyway so the USSR is a complete basket case in 1941 and collapses almost instantly. Smells a but like tankie apologia but at least it's different from the usual 'if the Nazis did this and this differently they would've won!'. I did find it quite a bit amusing at least that the Pacific War victory for Japan in TNO was pretty much 'Japan does virtually everything right, gets their Kantai Kessen and is still getting pushed all the way back to the Home Islands by sheer industrial might before getting the bomb'.

Most of the lore comes from the original RP game and the guy who ran it was a legitimate socialist (not sure what kind exactly, but he was far-left) who mostly just cobbled together a rough explanation of things. https://facepunchrp.fandom.com/wiki/A_New_Order

The main reason for Germany winning the war is that Bukharin didn't do stalins reforms (in real life he was actually considering five year plans and collectivisation but he obviously got kicked out by stalin before he could do this) and then pretty much everything else going right for the Nazis. I recall parts of it were based off Wolfenstein too, so Panzer wasn't exactly the core creative force behind the world.

Additionally much of the rest of the mod was based off what happened in the RP itself. Burgundy manipulating everyone, the four-way powerstruggle in Germany, China industrializing and secretly plotting to overthrow Japan, Russia being a mess of broken states, etc One of the funny things about the original game is that it was pretty open and you could do pretty much whatever you liked. Of course once those things were written down, the mod which developed from the RP ended up taking the opposite approach by heavily railroading the events of the world to fit Panzers narrative.

Of course maybe the reason he did this is because I once tricked him into blowing up the world with nukes in an RP game. He seems to have taken this concept with him into the mod.

 

[millais]

Is HOI4 not the weakest platform for exploring all this obscure politi-sperging? Why not do it in Victoria 2 or something with more fleshed out non-warfare mechanics?

I always thought HOI4 is just "Push divisions around the map to achieve encirclement" simulator.

 

[Iceland Heavy]

Is HOI4 not the weakest platform for exploring all this obscure politi-sperging? Why not do it in Victoria 2 or something with more fleshed out non-warfare mechanics?

I always thought HOI4 is just "Push divisions around the map to achieve encirclement" simulator.

The best game for it probably would've been East vs West (RIP). Given that HOI4 revolves around very simplified WW2 strategic warfare and actually trying to do that usually ends in nuclear war in TNO.

 

[GentlemanFaggot]

Is HOI4 not the weakest platform for exploring all this obscure politi-sperging? Why not do it in Victoria 2 or something with more fleshed out non-warfare mechanics?

I always thought HOI4 is just "Push divisions around the map to achieve encirclement" simulator.

HOI4 has very simple political mechanics and the Focus Tree system basically encourages event-based gameplay and alt-history shit.

As a result, it's actually the perfect framework for political-sperging.

TNO actually originally was planned to be a Vicky 2 mod though.

 

[Übertroon]

HOI4 has very simple political mechanics and the Focus Tree system basically encourages event-based gameplay and alt-history shit.

As a result, it's actually the perfect framework for political-sperging.

TNO actually originally was planned to be a Vicky 2 mod though.

It's not just the instant gratifications of the focus tree system and easy political manipulations, it's also just that Victoria 2 is a lot less stable, and more difficult to mod. Modding Victoria 2 would require actual coding and math skills. HOI4 is incredibly simplistic in comparison.

But like I also said it's the instant gratification aspect. In HOI4 you just select a focus and the political demographic magically changes, just like the political spergs want. While in Victoria 2 you have to actually plan long term with your economic and social policies.

 

[Foltest]

The only mod that I play for HOI IV is Kasierreich. I found it to be a pretty good one and without so much drama among the devs as TNO seems to suffer under. Is it silly at times? Yes, but it is pretty fun.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

Stuff like this is why I just play CK2 on my potato of a computer and don't engage with the community unless I'm trying to form Outremer/stop the Karlings from being retards and creating horrendous bordergore/work out what the conditions are to reform Suomenusko and can't figure out what to do.

Yeah but even then the first answer you'll inevitably get is to reform Suomenusko with the Divine Marriage and Polygamy tenets so you can marry your mother, sisters and daughters in order to create the most unholy spawn possible.

 

[Marshal Mannerheim]

Yeah but even then the first answer you'll inevitably get is to reform Suomenusko with the Divine Marriage and Polygamy tenets so you can marry your mother, sisters and daughters in order to create the most unholy spawn possible.

Spoiler: CK2 sperging

What even is the point of divine marriage as a tenet?

I can understand polygamy (allows you to marry multiple powerful vassals' or neighbouring threats' daughters for non-aggression pacts) and there are actually faiths today that practice polygamy, but divine marriage only really occured in some Zoroastrian dynasties and is probably best left as a unique perk of Zoroastrianism instead of as something which can be ahistorically adopted by a Finnish king who's probably never even heard of Zoroastrianism in his life.

It, along with half of the shit related to Hellenism, only really exists for the meme factor. It's not even like Sunset Invasion which you can choose to turn off and which makes playing in Western Europe more interesting than ”form Britannia” if you're William the Conqueror or Harold Hardråde, ”unite Italy” if you're Matilda or Robert Guiscard, or ”remove kebab/tapas” if you're anything in Iberia, it's only really there so you can make jokes about boning your sister-wife-cousin while being the Reformed Germanic Fylkir and crushing the Karlings.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

it's only really there so you can make jokes about boning your sister-wife-cousin while being the Reformed Germanic Fylkir and crushing the Karlings.

That's basically it. Just GETTIN' BIG or fulfilling the dreams of ultranationalists in certain countries by blobbing up the country they live in as much as possible gets boring, so when people master the game they just turn it into a bunch of jokes. The same goes for other Paradox games. It starts off with "I'm going to try to turn the tides of WWII" and ends with "I'm going to unite China under an ultraimperialist leader, then I'm going to colonize Europe".

 

[Marshal Mannerheim]

That's basically it. Just GETTIN' BIG or fulfilling the dreams of ultranationalists in certain countries by blobbing up the country they live in as much as possible gets boring, so when people master the game they just turn it into a bunch of jokes. The same goes for other Paradox games. It starts off with "I'm going to try to turn the tides of WWII" and ends with "I'm going to unite China under an ultraimperialist leader, then I'm going to colonize Europe".

Yeah. Case in point - the fact that when Rajas of India got released the achievements just turned into ridiculous things like ”as a Hindu ruler hold the empire of Brittania”.

What pisses me off is that, instead of expanding the map into China and Japan or Sub-Saharan Africa, or actually fleshing out Christianity beyond ”man in big hat says 'Deus Vult', if you piss off man in big hat he kicks you out of the Church”, or doing anything vaguely beneficial to gameplay, or even allowing rulers to go Henry VIII and make their own TRUE and HONEST Catholic Church, we got useless shit like ”divine marriage” and Glitterhoof.

 

[Merry]

Oh god how did I just notice this thread.

The former main dev and entire TNO community have been personal lolcows of mine for years. The general HoI4 community was already fantasy fulfillment trash, but I noticed a definite negative shift when this mod started to become "big". I have some red flags from before the mod released in full that previewed the trashfire that this was going to become, they are worth documenting for posterity with some of the sources that haven't circled the drain:

1. Development has been a multi year Cyberpunk 2077 tier process. Huge delays, exaggerations of content, overhyped, original demo was rushed out because of leaks in an attempt to appease the already very autistic community. As you may notice, there's a bit of an unwarranted ego on the author of that document, the mod's founder PinkPanzer.
2. Panzer's intention with the whole thing was to springboard a writing career, despite the fact that the mod uses volunteers called Greytides for 90% of the writing.
3. P.S, the above interview is worth reading for insight into his psyche, definite unresolved issues there, no surprises from a Neo-Nazi to Neo-Lib convert.
4. Many, many volunteer devs suspended and their content removed for disagreeing with Panzer or his clique on content, it is essentially a feudal enterprise. Troons at the top and it's organized on Discord ofc, rat kings anyone?
5. Original iteration of the mod was far edgier. Had Natsocs working on it until they were purged for disagreements with Panzer over depiction of various FR Ideologies and leaking because of the disagreements.
6. Had more leaks than the Titanic even after FR purges because of poor management.

Amusingly they recently made reacting to things with the Star of David emoji on their Discord a perma ban offence. I predict it will continue to devolve and spread lolcows now that a troon has replaced Polish Hitler/Vaush groupie as supreme leader. The fact that near weekly announcements on the Reddit fail to amend any of the community's absolutely autistic behavior speaks truth to this.

 

[Übertroon]

Oh god how did I just notice this thread.

The former main dev and entire TNO community have been personal lolcows of mine for years. The general HoI4 community was already fantasy fulfillment trash, but I noticed a definite negative shift when this mod started to become "big". I have some red flags from before the mod released in full that previewed the trashfire that this was going to become, they are worth documenting for posterity with some of the sources that haven't circled the drain:

1. Development has been a multi year Cyberpunk 2077 tier process. Huge delays, exaggerations of content, overhyped, original demo was rushed out because of leaks in an attempt to appease the already very autistic community. As you may notice, there's a bit of an unwarranted ego on the author of that document, the mod's founder PinkPanzer.
2. Panzer's intention with the whole thing was to springboard a writing career, despite the fact that the mod uses volunteers called Greytides for 90% of the writing.
3. P.S, the above interview is worth reading for insight into his psyche, definite unresolved issues there, no surprises from a Neo-Nazi to Neo-Lib convert.
4. Many, many volunteer devs suspended and their content removed for disagreeing with Panzer or his clique on content, it is essentially a feudal enterprise. Troons at the top and it's organized on Discord ofc, rat kings anyone?
5. Original iteration of the mod was far edgier. Had Natsocs working on it until they were purged for disagreements with Panzer over depiction of various FR Ideologies and leaking because of the disagreements.
6. Had more leaks than the Titanic even after FR purges because of poor management.

Amusingly they recently made reacting to things with the Star of David emoji on their Discord a perma ban offence. I predict it will continue to devolve and spread lolcows now that a troon has replaced Polish Hitler/Vaush groupie as supreme leader. The fact that near weekly announcements on the Reddit fail to amend any of the community's absolutely autistic behavior speaks truth to this.

I wish I remember the forum where Panzer basically stole the TNO setting from. Remember it being linked in 4chan, and the forum thread basically confirmed that most of the TNO setting had already been created by others as a Nazi RP thing. For a aspiring writer PinkPanzer has constantly relied on other people to write for him