Stellaris grand strategy space game by Paradox discussy thingy thready thingy

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File this one under “symptoms of having gone public.” I worry a great deal about the future of that company.

I’m not going to be too worried until it impacts their core games. I mean, any time a company goes public it’s just a matter of time in my opinion, but they often can keep it together until the important founders all move on.

And it’s been taken down already for stealing artwork from Halo.

That’s hilarious.

I hope this, along with the “Nova Empires” error message (I know that was a game from the same dev), has taught PDX a valuable lesson.

Best meme I have seen from this announcement: “Pick your ethics now my lord”

Now that it’s revealed that they were indeed mobile UI screens (i.e. Stellaris: Galaxy Command has Arrived! | Paradox Interactive Forums), I think we ended up being both right. They are for the mobile game, but they shouldn’t be! As you said some of the tiny icons look pretty bad for a phone.

Also Paradox usually have inventive ads. This one was imagine playing A GAME on YOUR PHONE which is even more pathetic than classic “do not play this game if you’re under 18” or “lvl 1 crook lvl 60 mafia boss”. That one was directed by your grandma who hasn’t been to subway for several years and is surprised people play games on their phones now.

Ugh. Yeah, there are no winners here.

Why is everything about mobile games so scummy, from the business models to the developers?

They are, and everyone knows it, so why was Paradox so naive? Seems like they were just after a quick cash grab. Not a good look for them.

I don’t know, but I see so many “traditional” game developers stumble in this exact same way when they try to dip their toes in the mobile market.

I get the thinking: the ludicrous amounts of money the big games make would be enticing to any business. Since they’re PC developers they don’t have the skill set to do a mobile game on their own, and since they’re dipping their toes in they don’t want to staff up a full team of their own. Instead, it makes sense to contract out the work to a studio that has expertise in mobile games.

The problem is that it seems like everything and everyone in that business is scummy. I feel like I’ve seen this type of scenario play out so many times.

This whole episode has kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. What is most egregious about it is that you can tell not one person that works at Paradox is remotely excited about this release. It is the grossest kind of cynical cash grab.

Let’s hope the announcements at PDX con are worth this insanely long wait we’ve had with virtually no news.

Oh, that depends on me getting to the end game. And I find Stellaris doesn’t do enough to drive me towards that end game. For fun, I played the same race wide. I got lucky being able to colonise a large number of systems that were otherwise unreachable for the other aliens. The penalty for going beyond the admin cap is not even an issue. Unity is suffering, I have a bit of a deficit on my energy, but when I’m pulling in 200/month of food and minerals that I can sell off in bulk, I don’t have any problems. Compare to CKII where exceeding demense limit has some major drawbacks in terms of keeping vassals happy, I am underwhelmed.

I am also fairly tolerant of bad AI. Civ V and Civ VI for instance bother me mildly opposed to the general backlash this forum has. In Stellaris, the piss poor AI is annoying me. Somehow my fleet is all powerful despite being composed of roughly 30 corvettes at 1k strength with swarm missiles.

After this, I think I’m going back to the diplomacy model, trade manipulation and general excitement that is EUIV.

This x100. Despite the many changes they’ve made, e.g. nerf warp types, nerf planet mgmt, designed to improve the AI, they still don’t have a game that is worth playing to the end. Once you get near the crisis, you either know you’re going to win or lose so there’s no point. Adding copious DLC with new options is just trying to apply a plaster, over a plaster, on top of a leg fracture.

Maybe, this Galaxy Command move is genius, because the expectations for mobile games are a lot less.

This is painful

I’ve started using the Starnet AI mod when I play. It’s way more challenging. So far, I have yet to survive beyond the mid game on any difficulty level over Captain.

My understanding of the situation is that Gamebear made a Stellaris knock-off on mobile. Paradox reached out to them and said “Want to make an actual Stellaris game instead?” so it wouldn’t be surprising to me to see a bunch of similarities. I’d also assume they’d just work off of the existing codebase, so the text string stuff doesn’t really surprise me (if sloppy).

The stolen artwork from Halo is what gets me, but that seems par for the course when you combine Mobile + China. Yuck.

Hong Kong, not China. That distinction has never been more prominent, though, of course, it might not be as great as it is perceived to be.

This being reskin is not the problem, them pretending it’s not is the problem. Lesser one than stolen assets, of course.

Given that the original was a Stellaris knockoff and this is a Stellaris mobile game by the same developer (and likely working off the same codebase), I don’t know what constitutes a reskin vs just being similar for obvious reasons.

I’m only having to wonder aloud instead of just looking at it myself because my interest in mobile games is zero. :D

GOG leaked a thing.

Imgur

Not much of a surprise.
(The time on the picture is just someone’s play time)