It’s supposed to be the opposite. We’ll see soon enough!
So much is changing now that I feel like just letting the game sit until 2.2 launches. No sense relearning how to play the current game with a new game coming. :)
The Paradox paradox! :) I’m holding off until the 6th myself. Really excited!
2.2 won’t be in good shape to play for quite awhile, though, and you can always roll back to earlier patches (big props to Paradox for that).
Uh-huh, this is a common thing to say about Paradox games but in my experience (which is pretty broad as I play all the PDS games) it’s not common for a major patch to be unplayable, at least recently. There are always going to be bugs, but I rarely personally encounter any even after a big patch.
I mean, it’s all down to what you think is “unplayable” I guess. I adore Paradox but they can’t test these things as rigorously as I’d like, by virtue of the sheer scale of their games. The first few releases after a major update are functionally beta, and I really don’t have time or patience for that anymore. 2.0 was never in what I’d consider playable condition, and 2.1 took several months to get there. Once it did, mind you, it was the best the game had ever been. I’ve no doubt this eventually will be even better.
With a major rework of core systems like this, though, I’m not getting anywhere near it for awhile - probably not until summer. Between bugs, balance issues, and things that just don’t work, it may well take until 2.3.X to really settle out to something I want to play. We’ll see. In the mean time, I appreciate brave souls like yourself testing it.
OK I got Utopia and Apocalypse, so I’m ready for the update now.
I agree with Tim, but that’s a spot-on observation, vinraith. I expect there to be bugs and things out of whack balance wise, but that doesn’t prevent me from firing up a campaign and having fun. I tend to look at that first game as a tutorial for the new systems and content, where I’m learning the ropes and seeing how the new stuff works. Typically, by the time I realize there’s a problem there’s a hotfix out to fix it.
Unplayable to be would be constant crashes or other major bugs preventing me from engaging with a campaign. Paradox is usually pretty good at getting those taken care of, in my experience.
Now, if your time is very limited and you maybe will have a chance for a handful of games max, probably doesn’t hurt to wait a day or two for the hotfix at least.
For now at least, I am in the “your time is very limited” category, but I will be jumping in with both feet on the 6th. Learning the ropes and seeing how the new stuff works tends to be my favourite part of strategy gaming, even if there are some bugs in the way.
I’m not buying the expansion right away, as mentioned above, but will play 2.2 right away, warts and all. As @KevinC says above, it’s learning the new stuff that is fun for me too. I guess that’s because eXploration is always my favorite X in a 4X game and this will be about exploring new mechanics.
As I’m sure is clear from my post, I tend to wait longer than that. :)
I get in perhaps 1 or 2 games on any given major patch, there’s too much other stuff to play and not nearly enough time to play it. Each game tends to be on the order of 50+ hours, so I need to be very confident nothing’s going to be broken before I’m willing to commit. I monitor the forums and it’s relatively easy to tell from the chatter when things are where they need to be.
I appreciate that people with more time, and folks that don’t mind beta testing, can certainly enjoy the game on their own terms. For that matter, I appreciate that the bug reports that come out of that benefit me down the road. For me, hitting a game breaking bug 20 hours in (which happened when I played 2.1 after only one hotfix) is a serious concern, and even the idea that it might happen is enough to keep me away at this point.
That seems fair.
I play Stellaris mostly to just “experience” the game and generate some fun stories; I don’t really care about “winning” it as such (I’ll fire up Master of Orion for that). So I don’t worry about whether or not something might break, because I usually start a new game before reaching the end anyway. There’s plenty of fun to be had that way, like when a roving alien species decided to band together under a Khan and conquer two-thirds of the known galaxy, reducing my empire to a mere handful of mostly terrible planets in the process.
I can appreciate that. I do tend to play to the end, though it’s the journey that really matters in these games. The bug in question, for example, resulted in the Khan perma-bombarding several planets, even after I surrendered. That’s… disruptive. I could have destroyed those colonies to fix it, but that appeared to be the only fix and wasn’t appealing. It kind of broke the narrative, and at the end of the day the self-generated narrative is why I’m here.
This is a valid perspective, but doesn’t it essentially mean you shouldn’t play any game until it’s been out in the wild for awhile and had a number of bugfixing patches? Do you think Paradox is especially poor in this regard?
I think grand strategy games are especially difficult to test, compared to a more linear scripted game. So for a given amount of testing, there is a much higher chance that your game is going to run into trouble.
As noted above, because of the sheer scale and complexity of Paradox’s games this problem is wildly worse for them than for many others. It’s also exacerbated considerably by the DLC/update treadmill they work on. The game never really has a chance to get polished, because the instant it’s even half way solid they’re (of economic necessity) off to work on a new DLC/update to break it again. It’s… frustrating.
I love these games, and I love Paradox Development Studio (been playing their games since the first EU, and was briefly in a D&D game with Johan), but the constant need to push forward means their games are rarely at the level of “settled and polished” that I really want. It seems absurd to be complaining that they provide too much new content too fast but that’s kind of where I’m at.
I agree with Vinraith.
I don’t have any time off until the X-mas holidays, so the 6th is perfect for me. It will give extra time for the hot fixes that come with a major release of an expansion for a working game, especially one with this many changes. I have over 1k hours in this games as is, don’t need to waste hours on a bug.
I also have too many games and not enough time. For Christ’s sake, the wife wants a repaint of the entire house, if you know what I mean, and that is only what is on the short list.
I make a point of never having any tools around the house. That way my wife can’t find things for me to do with them.
Fanatical has Megacorp marked down, and if you apply their BLACKFRIDAY10 code you can get it for $15.29 for folks looking to save a couple bucks.