How to adress and reach the fans of EvW and other modders?

[Comandante]

Hi,
Like I already said in the Welcome Thread I think that one problem is the visibility or the external impact of this project. There are many fans of EvW who do not know that there is further development on this project and some do not even know that the game was leaked. In my personal case I learned about the leaked version by pure chance though I was a great fan of East vs West. I already told some people I knew or some people on Youtube about this project, but I think it would be necessary to adress people in a more effective way. I think that if we/you could manage to build up a solid EvW community work would be a lot easier. Fans could make suggestions and test the game and other modders or even developers could help directly to fix problems and to enhance the game. Personally I am not really sure how to do that. After all I heard Paradox Interactive is very strict and reacts punishing regarding the advertising or mentioning of the game so it would be nearly impossible to reach the people in the Paradox Interactive Forum via open threads in the forum. It may be stupid that I just made this suggestion and have no real idea myself, but maybe this thread is able to launch a discussion about methods regarding this. Maybe advertising in other forums or on other sites would be helpful, I already saw that the game is also listed on ModDB.

Greetings Comandante

[alpha2518]

Try advertising on other mod forums where there are mods for paradox games like ModDB. You will get peoples attention drawn to the project and it would help. Although what also may be effective would be a more discreet method of finding people who were interested on east vs west, get their skype information (assuming they got skype or if not that steam), and then introduce them to what we have here. Right under the noses of Paradox.

[warsmith17]

Should we advertise now or wait until we have road map of what we intend to do, and have proven that it can be done?

Maybe PM people who used to hang around the East vs West forum, at least the ones who were angry about the cancellation. A lot of ideas just seem too risky, such as the paradox sub reddit. I wouldn't want to risk this project getting shut down.

[Viking Panda]

As far as developing a project roadmap..any thoughts? I think getting a base game release finalised and uploaded somewhere for download is the first step. This means getting rid of those excess .exe and deleting anything else in the game files we don't need (like HoI3 launchers and shit). I started a another thread about this before. We should also apply the fixes we've been able to come up with some far.

[warsmith17]

I agree cleaning up unnecessary files is an easy place to start, followed by applying fixes for the bugs that have been found (at least the major ones). Following that getting the ai to do stuff will go a long way toward helping the game. We need to make sure that no more tech is bugged. Bottom priority should be events, balance, and adding modifiers to policies etc where there aren't any. Once the game is working to some degree we can worry about that more detailed stuff.

[Comandante]

But is it safe to send PMs to other people on the Paradox Interactive Forum? Or are these messages visible for the Admins? I think that this would be definetly an idea or maybe like alpha2518 said we could try to get skype or email adresses. I just do not want to get banned by Paradox.
Does anybody know more about the legality of this project? Would Paradox be able to shut it down by force? Or are we somehow able to get into an grey area where they can´t reach us?
I think if there would be a roadmap and maybe a new version where several bugs are erased we could do advertising in a large scale until then I think we should focus on the hardcore fans and other mod(d)ers. I simply think that we could need other people to help this project. For myself I am really impressed that this project keeps going regarding the fact that there are so few people working on it and the game is so unfinished, but I do not think that this little community is able to burden all the work. Like I already said I would gladly help to do political and historical research for parties, politicans, graphics or events and make suggestions and find bugs, but my modding skills are really bad! Except for one litte selfmade socialist Iraq in HoI III with new ministers, a new flag, new ressources in provineces and some different starting conditions I never did any modding in HoI III.

EDIT: Man, all these Saddams around here really confuse me XD

[jetblackissp]

i cant mod but im willing to look for events, people and other historical things, im sure this mod can use all the help it can get

[Comandante]

Hi,
I ask again: Is it safe to send PMs to other people on the Paradox Interactive Forum? Or are these messages visible for the Admins? Like alpha2518 said we could also try to get skype or email adresses. I just do not want to get banned by Paradox.
And does anybody know more about the legality of this project? Would Paradox be able to shut it down by force? Or are we somehow able to get into an grey area where they can´t reach us?

[warsmith17]

Messages may be visible to admins if they're somehow reported. I don't think admins check pm's though.

As to the legality, I have no idea what a leaked project counts as, I'm sure we're relatively safe as long as we don't monetize. The risk is having Paradox discover this project and shut it down, but if we continue to grow then they'll discover us at some point.

[Comandante]

Jan 20, 2015 13:42:27 GMT warsmith17 said:

Messages may be visible to admins if they're somehow reported. I don't think admins check pm's though.

Ok, then I will try to get email adresses

The risk is having Paradox discover this project and shut it down, but if we continue to grow then they'll discover us at some point.

And this is exactly why I ask. One day they will know about this project and I hope we are ready for this. I do not want that they are able to just threaten us and destroy everything what we have done until then. 

[Viking Panda]

I feel like a revolutionary plotting a coup lol

[FOARP]

Jan 20, 2015 13:42:27 GMT warsmith17 said:

Messages may be visible to admins if they're somehow reported. I don't think admins check pm's though.

As to the legality, I have no idea what a leaked project counts as, I'm sure we're relatively safe as long as we don't monetize. The risk is having Paradox discover this project and shut it down, but if we continue to grow then they'll discover us at some point.

I work in intellectual property. Basically, Paradox can have this project shut down any time they want - you're using their IP without their permission. Not monetising the project just means that it will be less easy for them to claim substantial damages, it doesn't mean they can't get an injunction and shut you down.

The good news is they haven't shut it down yet and may (or may not) ever do so, even though I guess they must be aware of the situation. The HOI3 engine is now approaching 8+ years old so they probably don't care that much about what a bunch of modders do with it.

Personally, though, I think EvW missed its window and there's probably no point trying to fix it. The idea that it might be fixed in only a few months, after an entire dev team who dedicated years to the task failed to make it work, seems a little bit optimistic. 

[nguyenthepatriot]

Jan 24, 2015 22:11:43 GMT FOARP said:

The good news is they haven't shut it down yet and may (or may not) ever do so, even though I guess they must be aware of the situation. The HOI3 engine is now approaching 8+ years old so they probably don't care that much about what a bunch of modders do with it.

Personally, though, I think EvW missed its window and there's probably no point trying to fix it. The idea that it might be fixed in only a few months, after an entire dev team who dedicated years to the task failed to make it work, seems a little bit optimistic. 

What window is that? There are people who want a historically plausible Cold War grand strategy game, and many of those people will still want it after HoI4 is eventually released.

Sure, I doubt that audience is as large as that for EU4 or CK2, but as seen by the continued presence of a fanbase for an unfinished game it has a devoted core.

I don't deny that the current state of the game is clearly unfinished and has a significant number of problems, but I would argue that even in this state there are no better modern alternatives for a Cold War grand strategy game.

[Jimmy]

PI might be well aware of the status of the project when leaked and about the effort it would be needed to get this to work.
As without additional exe changes, it won't. It is better to start and own project with own IP/engine.

[GuestBlah]

You can probably reach a lot of people on the reddit for paradox games : www.reddit.com/r/paradoxplaza