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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Sobotnik said:
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This is perhaps one of the core reasons why TNO is such a disaster as a serious work. The Imperium of Man is obviously a horrible hellhole with ironic admirers because the setting is inherently so ridiculous.

However when it comes to real life figures, Panzers bizarre decision to create stories that make you feel sorry for genuine Nazis that literally killed millions in real life and didn't do the wholesome things they did in the mod, it undermines the entire point of the whole thing!

In Pamzers interviews (where you can audibly hear him being sucked off), he spoke about how he hated that the media would often say (implicitly) that the Nazis were either good at technology or economics or that not all Nazis were bad (muh wehrmacht dindu nuffin, they were good boys).

The mod itself does little to actually drive this point home because the very first thing the Nazis do is land the first man on the moon. There is a path where Speer can reform and save Nazism, while Heydrich is given a wholesome redemption path. Further afield, the mod constantly goes out of its way to nudge the player with the implied message "actually America is bad like the Nazis when you think about it" much like how dipshits simped for the Khmer Rouge back in the day and would reflexively point to how the USA did a coup in some Banana Republic as though it absolves the Khmer Rouge.

I wouldn't be upset if it were just a meme mod, or for fun. What upsets me is the utter pretentiousness of the developers in claiming this is some kind of masterpiece that decries tyranny while constantly making players want to come and LARP as burgundy or taboritsky in the game because they are based. If you're attracting players who are unironically feeling sorry for nazis, getting nazi memorabilia, and making fanart for their ideological waifus, maybe you are failing to tackle fascism. Perhaps you may even be enabling it.
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Hope this isn't too autistic, I've put some thought into why these concepts always violently explode and enable Fascism.

I call this Starship Troopers syndrome. Paul Verhoeven was much like Panzer in attempting to make a mockery and critique of Fascism and its aspirations. But they both made a gigantic mistake, taking Fascism too seriously during a time when it's not a serious issue.

Seriously compare the attempts of TNO and Starship Troopers to parody Fascism to Chaplin's Great Dictator. One is comedic and lighthearted with a serious subject, the other two try to inject aspects of that into it. But they let the biases and autistic neurosis of the creators override that and fog up the entire lens that you're supposed to look through. Which one succeeded? Clearly the one that was made with clarity when Fascism was an actual political force to be worried about for the opponents of the then very successful Fascism. The boogeyman chasers fail completely and actually give what they deride a boost via exposing it to the outside of the vacuum it is normally stuck in, a vacuum of anathema to true Fascism, socially and politically. A similar effect happens when you see boomers deciding Trump going dictator mode is a good idea whenever they see some drug addicted college spergs riot over the enforcing of property or immigration laws because that's "Fascism".

There is also the fact that Liberals are inherently unable to portray or parody Fascism without also portraying the aspects of Fascism that genuinely define it. These aspects are also the aspects of Fascism that people genuinely enjoy and respect about Fascism, consciously or unconsciously. You can have as many sappy and poor written popup stories about LGBTBBQ+ people being scared because someone said the scary F word in your imaginary victim porn scenario as you want. However it will not change the fact that positives always have and always will exist to one side of that coin in peoples minds. In fact to some extent, you have to portray Fascism someone dishonestly or inaccurately to even get the result these critics would want because of that factor.

PS. Some would argue this content was already dishonest, but they already failed in their goals so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for the sake of argument.

But that positive appeal doesn't mean all those people are crazy or sociopaths (those certainly exist, but in a very different person and scenario, like Speer hoodie retards), some are very lucid and rational. People will see the Terran Federation fighting a horde of alien bugs bent on destroying our species and automatically gravitate towards that side out of a loyalty to their species, fiction or not. The cons of that world or scenario do not really matter as much as the hypothetical benefits of supporting that system. People will see that fictional German Reich desperately clinging onto a miraculously gained Europe when in the real world they feel like they are losing their world in much the same way. Then they will automatically gravitate to that out of an empathy to that state of being and simple realpolitik rather than true political fanaticism or craziness.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
 
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Merry said:
Hope this isn't too autistic, I've put some thought into why these concepts always violently explode and enable Fascism.

I call this Starship Troopers syndrome. Paul Verhoeven was much like Panzer in attempting to make a mockery and critique of Fascism and its aspirations. But they both made a gigantic mistake, taking Fascism too seriously during a time when it's not a serious issue.

Seriously compare the attempts of TNO and Starship Troopers to parody Fascism to Chaplin's Great Dictator. One is comedic and lighthearted with a serious subject, the other two try to inject aspects of that into it. But they let the biases and autistic neurosis of the creators override that and fog up the entire lens that you're supposed to look through. Which one succeeded? Clearly the one that was made with clarity when Fascism was an actual political force to be worried about for the opponents of the then very successful Fascism. The boogeyman chasers fail completely and actually give what they deride a boost via exposing it to the outside of the vacuum it is normally stuck in, a vacuum of anathema to true Fascism, socially and politically. A similar effect happens when you see boomers deciding Trump going dictator mode is a good idea whenever they see some drug addicted college spergs riot over the enforcing of property or immigration laws because that's "Fascism".

There is also the fact that Liberals are inherently unable to portray or parody Fascism without also portraying the aspects of Fascism that genuinely define it. These aspects are also the aspects of Fascism that people genuinely enjoy and respect about Fascism, consciously or unconsciously. You can have as many sappy and poor written popup stories about LGBTBBQ+ people being scared because someone said the scary F word in your imaginary victim porn scenario as you want. However it will not change the fact that positives always have and always will exist to one side of that coin in peoples minds. In fact to some extent, you have to portray Fascism someone dishonestly or inaccurately to even get the result these critics would want because of that factor.

PS. Some would argue this content was already dishonest, but they already failed in their goals so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for the sake of argument.

But that positive appeal doesn't mean all those people are crazy or sociopaths (those certainly exist, but in a very different person and scenario, like Speer hoodie retards), some are very lucid and rational. People will see the Terran Federation fighting a horde of alien bugs bent on destroying our species and automatically gravitate towards that side out of a loyalty to their species, fiction or not. The cons of that world or scenario do not really matter as much as the hypothetical benefits of supporting that system. People will see that fictional German Reich desperately clinging onto a miraculously gained Europe when in the real world they feel like they are losing their world in much the same way. Then they will automatically gravitate to that out of an empathy to that state of being and simple realpolitik rather than true political fanaticism or craziness.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
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Imho
To criticize fascism or to parody it, one must know what it is and most importantly not show it in a majorwar.
Fatherland works perfectly because since the reich is in a small scale counterinsurgency we can see how hypochritical and shit life is.
I think that TNO and all the "bushing natzees" media tend to fall into two categories, one is the veerhoven camp of making it glamour rather than abhorrent.
The other is the Ken follet school of "My characters are godlike and everyone else is shit" where nuance is close to zero and its so ridicolous and in your face you actively question the things he proposes as good.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk and fuck Ken follet with a poking iron.
 
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gangweedfan said:
Hey kiwis should I do an image dump of all the "focus trees" I could find for these stupid mods? I have most of them but it will take me a bit to get the MLP ones.
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I'd really appreciate it if you did that, but am unsure how worthwhile it'd end up being. A lot of the content for the thread comes from the community, stupidity of wider narrative events brought by actions enabled by the effect of focuses. Rather than the actual focuses themselves. Outside of laughing at some of Equestria at War's bad art, awful focuses are probably something you'd find more plentiful in the unmodded game than most mods worth laughing at. Like how the American Communist Tree lets you annex the Soviet Union for free as long as they're still losing the Great Patriotic War but that the ruling party being Communist isn't a requirement to go down the tree and you can suppress Communism after you do this. Unless they've changed it. Or playing as New Zealand to declare an independent Kiwi Empire and sitting on your hands all game. Or you can form the Imperial Federation to confederate the British Empire, which the game justly punishes you for doing by changing your flag to this.

1608781150151.png
 
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I have never played HOI4 before but I have played stellaris and I think its community and gameplay have the same issues it does, the main difference being that stellaris doesnt have any mod as stupid as TNO or equstria at war yet. These games claim to be grand strategy simulators where you can customize your nation with all kinds of cool abilities but its always something uninteresting like a +25% modifier instead of a unique ability. I really think you have to be autistic or an accountent to enjoy this stuff.
https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/National_spirit

A lot of people dont really seem to care and just roleplay but everytime they just pick the fanatic xenophobe option and pretend they are the space marines from warhammer 40K. Like haha dude we get it you like popculture.

Anyhow looking through these tech trees I can kinda see what you guys mean by the mods being more about storytelling than being an actual game. I dont really get it 100% because I have never played hoi4 like I said. some of the context is missing because for these pictures because they dont have descriptions of what each step on the chart does. It seems like a lot of the developers of these mods just make the charts before they actually do anything else so they can get reddit upvotes with very little work.

Image dump time. pls give good ratings because it took me forever to get all of these. If im missing something its because the devs never bothered to put it on the wiki or its some tree that you unlock later in the game.

heres the mods I got pics from:
  • red flood
  • millennium dusk
  • TNO
  • mobeius rising
  • equstria at war
Also lol whoever uploaded one of the TNO communist nations (Buryatia) orignally had the trees file name saved as "wholsome 100". Is there some kind of meme in the community about that nation?
 

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gangweedfan said:
Also lol whoever uploaded one of the TNO communist nations (Buryatia) orignally had the trees file name saved as "wholsome 100". Is there some kind of meme in the community about that nation?
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because sablin (dude being in charge of Buryatia, in OTL led a mutiny hoping to turn back soviets to leninist ideas and got executed for that) will make true gomunnism real
 
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gangweedfan said:
I have never played HOI4 before but I have played stellaris and I think its community and gameplay have the same issues it does, the main difference being that stellaris doesnt have any mod as stupid as TNO or equstria at war yet. These games claim to be grand strategy simulators where you can customize your nation with all kinds of cool abilities but its always something uninteresting like a +25% modifier instead of a unique ability. I really think you have to be autistic or an accountent to enjoy this stuff.
https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/National_spirit

A lot of people dont really seem to care and just roleplay but everytime they just pick the fanatic xenophobe option and pretend they are the space marines from warhammer 40K. Like haha dude we get it you like popculture.

Anyhow looking through these tech trees I can kinda see what you guys mean by the mods being more about storytelling than being an actual game. I dont really get it 100% because I have never played hoi4 like I said. some of the context is missing because for these pictures because they dont have descriptions of what each step on the chart does. It seems like a lot of the developers of these mods just make the charts before they actually do anything else so they can get reddit upvotes with very little work.

Image dump time. pls give good ratings because it took me forever to get all of these. If im missing something its because the devs never bothered to put it on the wiki or its some tree that you unlock later in the game.

heres the mods I got pics from:
  • red flood
  • millennium dusk
  • TNO
  • mobeius rising
  • equstria at war
Also lol whoever uploaded one of the TNO communist nations (Buryatia) orignally had the trees file name saved as "wholsome 100". Is there some kind of meme in the community about that nation?
Click to expand...
You do indeed have to select them ingame to see a short description of the focus. A few sentences of flavour and a list of what effects the focus will have and possibly a vague implication of what events it could trigger. I.E Declaring the Greater Germanic Reich or The Fate of Czechoslovakia, Anschluss, etc. But yes the content of mods is largely story focused because of the extremely simplified modding tools offered by Paradox. And how simple and abstracted and dumbed down the gameplay is. HoI 4's gameplay actually has an impossible amount of depth in regards to combat between generals using randomized tactics based on your choices of generals and doctrine research. It's just that the game purposefully chooses to explain none of it. As well as it being able to be boiled down to "put 7 troops slots and 2 artillery pieces in your division template and scale up as needed" Or as the new meta, give your foot infantry support Anti-Air guns and nothing else. Then right click the enemy with your overloaded heavy tank divisions and encircle with light tanks if you have them. Spam out submarines and whatever planes you currently need and win. At most mods like Old World Blues and Equestria at war will make slight changes to some stats like width to compensate lower recruit able manpower numbers. There's also dumb shit like the space marine template because the armour of your units is calculated in such a way that adding a single heavy tank to your infantry division will make the game treat everyone like a heavy tank when calculating damage received.

HOI 4 is grand strategy and 4X stuff distilled into its simplest most casual form as a click buttons, wait for timers to count down constant gratification game. It's why the mods considered so good have an extreme narrative focus or are jokes like Super Czechoslovakia and Ultimate Albania. Sure clicking 10 buttons to increase your navy's stat power and naval research speed are fucking boring national spirits and bonuses. But it's the wider narrative idea of establishing your nation's super navy that gets people going. Or say during the Spanish Civil War getting focuses like "Consolidate The North" which just adds military factories to the land you control as long as you meet the requirements of owning the northern land the Nationalists actually owned. It's that feel good gratification and the reinforcement of the narrative that you're making actual gains and seeing the results outside of just changing the colour of Spain.
 
Kanuckski said:
an independent Kiwi Empire
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Under the benevolent rule of Null?
Kanuckski said:
Or you can form the Imperial Federation to confederate the British Empire, which the game justly punishes you for doing by changing your flag to this.

1608781150151.png
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Why does it have an Indian nationalist symbol in the centre?

The Empire would use the star of India to represent the Raj. Using the symbol of the anti-British Indian National Congress to represent India would be like America sticking a Confederate battle flag on its flag to represent the South.
 
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Kanuckski said:
You do indeed have to select them ingame to see a short description of the focus. A few sentences of flavour and a list of what effects the focus will have and possibly a vague implication of what events it could trigger. I.E Declaring the Greater Germanic Reich or The Fate of Czechoslovakia, Anschluss, etc. But yes the content of mods is largely story focused because of the extremely simplified modding tools offered by Paradox. And how simple and abstracted and dumbed down the gameplay is. HoI 4's gameplay actually has an impossible amount of depth in regards to combat between generals using randomized tactics based on your choices of generals and doctrine research. It's just that the game purposefully chooses to explain none of it. As well as it being able to be boiled down to "put 7 troops slots and 2 artillery pieces in your division template and scale up as needed" Or as the new meta, give your foot infantry support Anti-Air guns and nothing else. Then right click the enemy with your overloaded heavy tank divisions and encircle with light tanks if you have them. Spam out submarines and whatever planes you currently need and win. At most mods like Old World Blues and Equestria at war will make slight changes to some stats like width to compensate lower recruit able manpower numbers. There's also dumb shit like the space marine template because the armour of your units is calculated in such a way that adding a single heavy tank to your infantry division will make the game treat everyone like a heavy tank when calculating damage received.

HOI 4 is grand strategy and 4X stuff distilled into its simplest most casual form as a click buttons, wait for timers to count down constant gratification game. It's why the mods considered so good have an extreme narrative focus or are jokes like Super Czechoslovakia and Ultimate Albania. Sure clicking 10 buttons to increase your navy's stat power and naval research speed are fucking boring national spirits and bonuses. But it's the wider narrative idea of establishing your nation's super navy that gets people going. Or say during the Spanish Civil War getting focuses like "Consolidate The North" which just adds military factories to the land you control as long as you meet the requirements of owning the northern land the Nationalists actually owned. It's that feel good gratification and the reinforcement of the narrative that you're making actual gains and seeing the results outside of just changing the colour of Spain.
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After playing games like med 2 and DH I can't go back to HoI4, it just gives no challenge.
Fuck even command and conquer has more grand strategy to it.
 
A couple days ago Panzer announced Pacifica was given control of the TNO Discord and the mod. Seems to imply he's given up defacto power by granting ownership on the Steam Workshop as well; though I am unsure because the mod says its still made by Panzer on Steam. I don't know if that would have changed with a transfer of ownership. Anyway, the updated content roadmap for the foreseeable future was published 2 days after Panzer's statement. I'd expect that content will still be influenced by Panzer. However, it still largely revolves around additional or reworked content for the mods current time period. It's possible that the future content that expands the timeline could be much different than what Panzer has outlined. Though it's probably optimistic to expect much deviation. I don't think him giving total power away was motivated by anything massive from behind the scenes. But I do wonder what changed that Panzer suddenly surrendered the power that just one month ago he was set on maintaining over the mod.
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What's obvious from that is that despite still missing a great deal of content, its putting a lot of focus into "reworks" and changing up mechanics and the GUI. This mod has been in development for six years (4 of them in HOI4) but they are still trying to completely revamp the GUI, startmenu, politics, core mechanics, etc. Dozens upon dozens of nations lack even basic content, but the ones they are working on need to have 4 or 6 paths each. Then to top that off, they are reworking all of the paths of existing nations.

I reckon Panzer finally realized just how overambitious the mod was and finally lost all willpower to continue working on it. It's in the hands of the autists now.

Baffled as to why they feel the need to have tutorials though. As long as you can play vanilla HOI4 there's not much else new besides reading walls of text.
 
Sobotnik said:
What's obvious from that is that despite still missing a great deal of content, its putting a lot of focus into "reworks" and changing up mechanics and the GUI. This mod has been in development for six years (4 of them in HOI4) but they are still trying to completely revamp the GUI, startmenu, politics, core mechanics, etc. Dozens upon dozens of nations lack even basic content, but the ones they are working on need to have 4 or 6 paths each. Then to top that off, they are reworking all of the paths of existing nations.

I reckon Panzer finally realized just how overambitious the mod was and finally lost all willpower to continue working on it. It's in the hands of the autists now.

Baffled as to why they feel the need to have tutorials though. As long as you can play vanilla HOI4 there's not much else new besides reading walls of text.
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I guess it's because the average TNO and even HOI player at this point is a giga casual and or 14 years old. HOI 4 can be initially overwhelming because it has so many poorly explained concepts that you can really overthink or get lost in without help. No doubt people are just getting HOI for TNO too.
 
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Kanuckski said:
A couple days ago Panzer announced Pacifica was given control of the TNO Discord and the mod. Seems to imply he's given up defacto power by granting ownership on the Steam Workshop as well; though I am unsure because the mod says its still made by Panzer on Steam. I don't know if that would have changed with a transfer of ownership. Anyway, the updated content roadmap for the foreseeable future was published 2 days after Panzer's statement. I'd expect that content will still be influenced by Panzer. However, it still largely revolves around additional or reworked content for the mods current time period. It's possible that the future content that expands the timeline could be much different than what Panzer has outlined. Though it's probably optimistic to expect much deviation. I don't think him giving total power away was motivated by anything massive from behind the scenes. But I do wonder what changed that Panzer suddenly surrendered the power that just one month ago he was set on maintaining over the mod.
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Is the years intended as in-game years or development, optimistic prediction in either case
 
As someone who was probably the first ever person to even mention this mod on this site in the smaller communities thread I feel I should say that aside from the rather obnoxious community surrounding it I've had generally positive expirences with the mod mostly from the side of having fun in revelling in being the bad guy in a lot of paths and I will say that this is nowhere near the worst hoi 4 mod out there (once again community aside) in terms of offerings you can do much worse between the likes of
  • Modern Kaiserreich that with every passing update seems to surgically remove more and more of the fun and interesting paths in the name of realism
  • Thousand week reich which handily wins the award for dullest story about a nazi victory of all time
  • calm before the storm which advertised itself as bringing kaiserreich level depth of choice to the base game scenario but in reality was what I can only describe as an unironic proponent of horseshoe centrism where anything slightly left or right of milquetoast liberal capitalism is a mustache twirling supervillain
  • And the original rise of Italia which unironically read like some 13 year old Italian kids' personal historical wank fiction leaked to the internet
 
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But what about the pony mod?

I'm only jesting a little when I say it is hands down one of the better mods out there for HoI4.

It and Old World Blues are the only one I play, as they both lack a narrative to get in the way of me having fun.
 
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