Haha, sorry, Tim! I posted that last night on my phone and I didn’t see your post! :) Whenever I find the Imperator thread via the forum search function, it dumps me off in a weird place in the thread (like post #60). When I scrolled to the bottom I must have missed yours.
Here’s a very good overview of all the changes in Cicero. Come on, September.
According to the discourse designers, it intentionally dumps you in a random place because you’re using they software incorrectly!
Thanks for posting, that was a good video, consider my interest in Imperator piqued enough to dive back in.
Good lord, that was a frustrating read. On the bright side, apparently you are no longer the lone person on the whole planet who expects clicking on a topic via Search to drop them to their last read location!
This isn’t the first time they implement some crazy feature and force it on everyone because they know what is ‘best’ for everyone. Other than some of their odd feature decisions I really like the software a lot, but they are pretty heavy handed with some of their odd ideas.
You perfectly sum it up, @robc04. I like the software a lot (going to forum that use vBulletin is just painful now) but some of the stuff they force on everyone is just bizarre.
Johan’s been teasing new developments throughout July, but now that the team is back from summer vacation they are starting back up the dev diaries for Imperator 2 the 1.2 update this September.
Sounds like the new food system will have impacts on the warfare side of the game, specifically in regards to attrition.
My interest is rising.
Hope they stress tested that concept past the early game…
I think 1.2 is when I’m going to give this a proper replay. Thought about it for 1.1 but just haven’t found the time yet.
The cynical part of me wants to know where these ideas were before release but, to be honest, I think Imperator has suffered enough now. The fact that they’re willing to go to such drastic measures to improve the game is good enough for me, and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds over the next year.
I think they were just making a different type of game. Outrage on forums has them retooling and changing course. Personally, I liked 1.0 but I accepted it for what it was, not what I wanted it to be (CK2 in Rome, Vicky 2 in Rome, etc). Hopefully I’ll like 1.2+ as well.
The changes are already publicly available in the 1.2 branch on Steam so if there are issues I’m sure we’ll hear about them.
Well the speed and ease that these overhauls are coming through is a bit puzzling. Maybe Johan genuinely doesn’t mind - which is very charitable of him - but if you think of the amount of work that’s being thrown away… How long did it take Stellaris to finally decide to overhaul its combat systems? It’s expansion systems? And now planets?
Like we don’t even get to see how the game was going to get improved if everyone was happy with 1.0 as-is, so I always thought they’d perhaps fight a bit more to retain what they did.
Unless this was always the ‘next step’ and they’re just accelerating the iteration but again, if it’s this “easy”++ to get done and roll-out, I come back to my question of why it wasn’t done in the first place.
++ Not a great word and I don’t mean to imply any game development is ‘easy’, but these updates just seem to be getting done without much fuss. I’m not seeing any stumbling blocks or resistance, no “this is hard to implement”… it’s just all a matter of ‘when’, and I guess it’s weirding me out a bit. In a good way? Because like I said it’s great they’re just throwing themselves at changing this game up, but I guess I’m quick to cynicism at times.
I mean, he said in interviews the reaction to the game had him debating leaving the industry, so I think it’s pretty clear he minded. :) But he sucked it up and said okay, if that’s what people want, then I’ll go back to the drawing board and that’s what we’ll do. The Imperator team has also been working through the traditional summer vacation month from what I can tell as well, so I get the impression they’re burning the midnight oil to try to salvage the property.
He talks a bit about Imperator’s reception and their plans to address it in this interview from back in June.
I mean’t “mind” as in he doesn’t mind going back to the drawing board. I remember that interview, I know he was a bit shaken by the reaction but it’s not just him - I’m sure his team could have put up a bit of protest if they really felt like sticking to their guns.
Anyway - bring on 1.2!
What’s your sense of what’s being lost in the set of changes? There must be something lost along the way, I think. Does Johan talk about that in the interview?
Paradox has embraced the fact that people perceive change as improvement. People had said that Imperator will be a great game after several expansions even before release. So Paradox embrace this self-fulfilling promise and puts games into eternal early access. “Is Stellaris good now?”, ask the fans, and blink.
That’s a very good question. The interview was from a couple months ago, so he doesn’t go into a lot of specifics, from what I recall. I don’t have a good sense for what is lost because I’m staying away from 1.2 until it’s complete and rolled out of beta. There is a lot of decision making that has to take place when you’re actions are restricted by the currencies. It’s possible something there is lost, maybe some clarity or accessibility. Time will tell, I suppose!
This very well could be, and for me I wish they had done that. But Paradox has very long development cycles for a game, rather than moving on to a sequel and the “Mostly Negative” tag on Steam is basically a death knell for a game’s future. If they felt like that was going to hamstring their long-term plans for the game, they may have felt like that they didn’t have much a choice.
I would also imagine that the various people on the team had different ideas and directions they wanted to take the game, but there’s one guy in charge driving the vision. When Imperator was received the way it was, that may have been what it took to say “Okay, maybe you other guys were right, lets go with those other designs we had previously shelved”.