Stellaris grand strategy space game by Paradox discussy thingy thready thingy

[vinraith]

@KevinC

That’s actually what’s going on in EU4 right now, which is great.

Really? That’s fantastic news! I may need to go back and check in, then.

@KevinC

EU4 and HOI4 are both significantly improved games since release, in my opinion.

I can’t speak to HOI4, but that’s certainly true for EU4. The issue isn’t improvement, the issue is this perpetual layering of new systems to create an ever more complex whole, and being able to actually get that increasingly complex whole to work well (especially with regards to the AI).

@KevinC

Stellaris has floundered and while I also think it’s a much better game than 1.0, it’s also a mess. I’m sure a large part of that comes from having to rework a lot of core mechanics, but I also think the project leadership just hasn’t been as good. Not from a design side, but from a project management side. Bug fixes and critical AI issues have not been getting the same resources I see in the other two games I mentioned above.

In hindsight, with how flawed Stellaris was at launch, I think they would have been better served wrapping it up after an expansion or two, taking the lessons learned, and restarting on Stellaris 2. It’s understandable it wasn’t as dialed in as their other games due to it being a new kind of game for them, but I don’t think their development model is able to hold up to the demands of fundamentally redesigning a live game.

I’d agree with all of that, yeah. 2.0 probably should have just been “Stellaris 2,” a clean slate could only have helped.