Something to keep in mind is that it might have been working the entire time but one change on the final day caused a new bug to pop up here. It’s not good, but I am really suspicious of any claims noone actually played the game.
If you’re concerned about quality you don’t make last-minute changes without proper testing. So a problem remains, even if it’s a different problem.
From talking with the Game Director at PDXCon I got the impressions the Stellaris team has had a tough time of it lately. I didn’t press for details but there were struggles around MegaCorps, and I think they’ve lost people to other projects and are having to get new people in and train them up.
Seems the least stable of the GSG teams at the moment, and Daniel mentioned he was doing a lot of work in terms of ‘internal’ team development.
They were too aggressive with Megacorp. I think they really wanted it out the door before Christmas and for their IPO which was happening around the same time. Considering that Megacorp tossed out and replaced the economic underpinning of the entire game it led to all sorts of issues, especially with the AI. And with the release happening just a couple weeks before Christmas (if I remember right) those issues lingered for far longer than they should have. Months. I could see that being extremely demoralizing for the team and I think it says something that they’ve only released a single immersion pack since then.
I like Stellaris, although it’s not my favorite PDX game by a margin. This is one title I really wish they’d go back to the drawing board and make a sequel for, though. This was their first time trying to make a game like this and they had some stumbles early that it feels like they’re perpetually recovering from. I think it’d be cathartic to start with a clean slate of what works vs what doesn’t and go from there.
It’s kind of tough to go from Wiz to Daniel as Game Director. Wiz posted almost daily on the Paradox Forums or Reddit, answering small questions or talking about what he was thinking. The new game director definitely does not consider community engagement a priority comparatively.
I don’t really feel like I have any great sense of what Daniel considers the games biggest problems or what he is going to do about them.
Then again, I don’t even know if the new diplomacy DLC will even have any new diplomatic options (which the game direly needs) or if it’s just a few new flavors of Federations (which is a want, not a need). They didn’t highlight any new diplomatic interactions outside of the Federations that I saw, though in fairness I was working while the stream was on and it didn’t have my full attention. You could basically just go down the EUIV diplomacy window and add all the relevant ones and you’d be good to go.
Edited to add: Are we going to have Royal Marriages for Xenophile Monarchies? If not, they really missed an opportunity there. :P
Just getting back into this after a long layoff. Sounds like I should give Megacorp and the new rock people DLC a pass for now. I have most of the other DLC’s so plenty of stuff to relearn. Just started a new game and it’s fun so far. It still has that “one more turn” feel for me even though it’s not turn based of course.
The issues weren’t with the Megacorp DLC, it was all the changes to the base game that went along with it. I think Megacorps are a lot of fun, personally.
There originally wasn’t going to be a dev diary today but it looks like the mob drove Moregard to write one.
Ah, OK. Have the the changes in the base game been “fixed” then? It’s been a long time since I played so I won’t even notice the differences unless they are glaring bugs.
Yeah they eventually patched things up. There’s still some issues with game performance and that sort of thing, but the completely braindead AI and other major showstoppers like that aren’t there anymore.
FWIW Daniel also said in our interview that he wasn’t as good at talking to the community as Martin was, and that it was something he wanted to improve on.
But there’s a slight implication that by comparison Martin my have neglected the team a bit more. I dunno - Martin was always very vocal and clear about what he thought Stellaris was and that wasn’t always a good thing imo.
Well whether or not you agreed with Wiz’s vision for the game, it was at least clear that he had one. Maybe Daniel does too but he isn’t nearly as vocal about it. I’ve got no clue what his priorities are. Or even if he thinks the current amount of micromanagement and resettlement required are acceptable. Because he may, but if so, our ideas about what makes a fun game seem to have diverged. I’d just kind of like him to be vocal enough that I had any idea what he thought at all.
I mean the fact I’m calling him Daniel because I don’t even know what his forum handle is… is somewhat telling (grekulf, just looked it up). It’s not like he and I are on a first name basis. I hope he’s successful at improving on his communication.
On the one hand, I like this stuff. On the other hand, it’s seems a lot like more skill trees and progress points. Before it released, I really thought Stellaris was on to something with the idea of internal empire cohesion and politics, civil wars, deep diplomacy in space, etc. That never materialised and it doesn’t look like it will be coming soon.
Yeah, I think it needs a redesign from the ground up. I think a lot has been learned from all the changes Wiz made, but it’s still not really satisfying, and I think they’ve shown that making those changes as version updates is very painful to accomplish.
I’ve been meaning to write a few more thoughts after my last endeavour with Stellaris. I talked earlier upthread pondering tall vs wide. My final time around, I decide to just try and respect the Admin cap as much as possible and focus on building a space empire. And to build my empire, I chose to go with a preset race - The Maweer Caretakers who are xenophobic pacifists with the Inward Perfection trait. And they rock the tree look really good.
My game revolved around building up and expanding borders when I had the chance thanks to growing my admin cap through techs and civics. I made contact with different aliens, but there was no further diplomacy thanks to the Inward Perfection trait. No declaration of war, I could just meander about in my own corner of the galaxy. All my planets were solely my people and a few robots scattered about that were mostly used for mining operations. The extra boost to mineral output wasn’t needed but it helped to float my economy along with a significant surplus of food that was definitely used to counteract my energy deficit.
I started facing troubles the moment my planets started having unemployed pops. I had to keep upgrading my buildings to create more employment spaces, to then end up importing more resources to maintain those buildings, and given their higher upkeep, my energy deficit was growing. Food was keeping me afloat for a short time though my minerals were dwindling away. What I did have on my side was extra habitability bonuses so those lesser worlds around me started to look more appealing. Thus began the great exodus as colonies were rapidly founded to start housing my unemployed population. I love the moment in these grand strategy games where one moment the economy feels like it is tanking hard, then I look up and see that pushing through the struggle brings rewards. Those unemployed populations were working and contributing, the energy deficit became a major surplus and the minerals were flowing in fast enough to transform a relic world into an Ecumenopolis. What a fantastic move that was, getting extra crystal, motes and gas. Everything was going great.
Well, when I say everything, I mean nearly everything. It felt like I beat the game by that point… again. The Sentry Array was the first wonder I built, then I moved onto Dyson Sphere and Matter Decompressor quickly after that. Surplus food and minerals would be sold to become energy, and I’d use that energy to buy alloys to keep up construction. The Dyson Sphere and Matter Decompressor were online just in time for the game to start slowing down to a crawl. A slideshow like crawl. It became tedious. I was researching repeatable techs and waiting for the end game crisis to hit. And as each year ticked by, the game performance was steadily deteriorating and there was nothing new to get excited about. “Yay, +5% to laser damage” as I try to convince myself to keep playing.
Here’s the thing. I think the scope of the game is too long. I like the idea of the end game crisis. I want a strong enemy at the end to challenge everything I’ve built and developed in my empire. I like the idea of testing if I was efficient enough in my strategy to play the game effectively and adapt to my surroundings. To make the right choice of friend and foe. But when I’m recycling techs, running out of civics and waiting for the end game without feeling any time pressure, it is a symptom I believe of it outlasting its welcome. The Civ games are a classic example of this too. And yes, I know I can bring the end game event to occur sooner, I was simply playing on default settings in the hope the AI would function best. The AI didn’t really function at all. I adore Stellaris for the many and varied ways to play. But damn it frustrates me that I get to a point and it all comes unstuck.
tl;dr: I think what I want is a space version of Sid Meiers Colonisation.
You want some diplomacy? You got it.
Excited it to play it if they ever improve AI+performance (and I’m not that picky).
Per last week’s dev diary it sounds like they’ve pushed back the release date a little so they can have a couple developers focused solely on those areas.
Those diplomacy changes sound nice.
AI, performance, these are what I want to hear about…
Here’s the link:
Well that’s encouraging. But I don’t trust them, having heard similar in past updates. Will wait on the angry mob sentiment a few weeks after release…
Yeah, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Not that I think they’re being insincere, it’s just that this is an issue they’ve been battling a long time. The other PDS games don’t seem to suffer like this title does, so I have to think the codebase is difficult to work with as opposed to them just not caring. It wouldn’t surprise me given the major overhauls the game has received post-launch.