A day after Crusader Kings 3’s Coronations DLC launched, Paradox has issued both a hotfix addressing key issues and an apology that sheds some light on why it launched in a less-than-ideal state.
The smaller content offering included in CK3’s Chapter 4 is, at the time of writing, sitting at a Mostly Negative rating on Steam, with only 23% positive reviews. Recurring complaints include shallow events, a lackluster amount of content, as well as a broken oaths feature that penalizes players even after completing an oath’s objective, painting a rather grim picture.
Crusader Kings 3 Coronations DLC Hotfix and Apology
The reception and speculation around what prompted CK3’s Coronations DLC to launch in such a state saw QA Manager Riad Deneche taking to the Paradox forums, where he issued an apology while explaining why Paradox Development Studios’ Black team missed the mark.
“‘Coronations’ was not up to the standard you deserve, and that’s on me. As the QA Manager for the studio, it is my job to ensure that our releases meet the QA vision we have set out. It is clear we didn’t give the project the resources and attention it needed, and the result was a release that let you down. You have every right to be upset, and I want to acknowledge that openly,” he wrote.
“To give some context, not as an excuse, but as a bit of background, our team has been pouring enormous effort into ‘All Under Heaven’. It’s the biggest expansion we’ve ever attempted, and making sure it’s both fun and stable has demanded most of our experienced developers, and basically every resource we have in the studio to be committed towards that release to ensure that things like tick speed performance is up to your expectations.
“Due to this, our other projects, such as ‘Coronations’, have had less resources dedicated to them. Though I am very proud of the development team, and really amazed with what they did with such limited resources, we didn’t assign enough people to oversee the release and meet our quality demands, and that was clearly unfair to both them and you, our fans.”
He goes on to say that the studio is “taking a hard look at how we assign resources, and support our developers so that every release meets the expectations you rightfully have.”
This includes being “more stringent about allowing last-minute changes to the game (which can cause issues like broken oaths),” as well as dedicating more time for full-length playthroughs during development.
Crusader Kings 3 fans were already pointing fingers at All Under Heaven for the issues plaguing Coronations and justifiably so, since it promises considerably more content than past major expansions.
In addition, it also adds a multitude of new territories to the map, raising concerns not just about the bugs and mechanical issues we might have to deal with but also regarding CK3’s performance, especially in the later stages of a playthrough, once it goes live.
For now, a hotfix is already live, addressing several key issues, including the game labeling you as an oathbreaker despite having successfully completed your oath. “At least one more patch” is expected to tackle “many of the issues we encountered ahead of the release, but didn’t have enough time to fix.”
Here are the full patch notes for CK3’s hotfix 1.17.0.1:
Bugfixes
- Fixed the issue with always getting the Oathbreaker event, regardless of if you completed the oath or not
- The buildings needed for the three “build special oath buildings” oaths have been changed from tier 3 to tier 2
- The special oath buildings have had their costs and modifiers reduced across the board
- The special oath buildings have had some of their triggers simplified, so they need fewer of their requirements than they used to
- These oaths have also had the time you can do them increased from 10 years to 20 years
- Specifically for the spiritual one, switched the requirements from tier 3 to 2, and vice versa
- The Alliance oath has been changed from 5 alliances needed to 3
- Building Oath (the generic one) has been reduced from 10 buildings to 8, and the time available to do it has been increased (from 15 years to 20)
- Legendary Hunt has been changed from 3 to 1, and has had the time available increased (from 20 years to 40)
- Fixed the Prepare Heir oath decision, so it checks for the proper scope in its requirements, and also removed the gold cost
- Added two new modifiers for the AI, so if they choose a warlike oath, they will have an increased war chance, and similarly, if they have the peace oath, they will have a peace oath, which will decrease their war chance
- Removed health bonuses and maluses from Prepare the Heir rewards
- Added extra checks for the AI so they will try to take oaths that make sense
- Fixed the End the Struggle oath, so it correctly tells you which struggle area it is targeting, and massively increased the time it is available to you (from 20 years to 50)
- Increased the time available to do the Repent Oath from 10 years to 20 years
- Fixed Anointment Doctrines and Anointment activity type being available to faiths with Temporal Head of Faith (these are for Spiritual HoF faiths only); temporal HoF faiths have guaranteed access to regular coronation instead
- Fixed duplication bugs and self-crowning malus caused by temporal HoF being Coronation host
- Blocked the building oaths for Nomads and Tribals
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