Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[LizardWizard]

Yeah, because the patch was in beta for one week and some of the bugs identified the first day were still there on release. They only had two weeks before vacation to fix them, it's not like it's their job, right?

Who needs multiple candidates for election anyway, one is all you'll ever need! Just release it and be done with it.

And let's not say anything about the myriad of new bugs with each patch. They're not meant to fix the game after all.

Are you a Paradox employee? Because you'd fit right in apparently.

I'm pretty sure the QA team went on vacation last week

Though Stellaris and HOI4 were both rushed out the door due Paradox going public imo. Stellaris certainly shouldn't have been released before Asimov at the very least and the HOI AI is so hilariously broken even after being delayed 2 years I doubt it ever gets fixed.

 

[Kuattro]

Not really but I'd be interested if there's a good position for me.

Try beta tester. I hear the 30.000+ that signed up when they bought this are not enough.

I'm pretty sure the QA team went on vacation last week

Though Stellaris and HOI4 were both rushed out the door due Paradox going public imo. Stellaris certainly shouldn't have been released before Asimov at the very least and the HOI AI is so hilariously broken even after being delayed 2 years I doubt it ever gets fixed.

Then they have an even worst patch policy than I thought. They did basically the same with a hotfix they released for the Clarke beta. It broke the game, caused random CTDs, and they released it (allegedly without testing it) just before the weekend. By the time the forums were flooded with reports of said CTDs, they were all in some company party, and some poor soul had to revert the hotfix from his mobile phone because that was the only thing he could do. Who the fuck releases an untested patch just before the weekend or before vacation? Paradox, that's who.

Look at this "just one candidate per election". It takes half an hour, at most, of playing with a democratic government, to see it. Either everyone is stupid, and they thought one candidate is WAD, or they just release it and gods be damned if it breaks anything, they are just coming to the shitty spanish beaches and that's it. You don't even need a QA team, just a developer that plays the game for ten minutes to see if it doesn't burst into flames when you start it and fiddles with it a bit.

Stellaris was rushed no doubt, I don't know if because of what you said or because they wanted it out before HOI 4 (which, as you said, is another barrel of laughs), but I think that saying that NOW it is ready for release is incredibly generous. It lacks things that are the norm for any 4x, espionage, trade, diplomacy (what's there is... not diplomacy) you name it. It could very well be a case of "we are doing things differently than other 4x", but they are not doing it differently, they are doing LESS than other 4x. If they expected to complete it between patches and DLCs, it's going to be an utter disaster, because they seem incapable of releasing any new content for Stellaris without breaking at least half a dozen other things. Sector AI, Pre-sentient robots, one candidate elections... every patch the game, that at release was nothing special but at least was tolerable, becomes more horrid. Sector AI is the prime example, it was bad but you could cope with it in release as long as you didn't pay much attention to what it was doing, now it actively sabotages you.

They fired the first director (sorry, they put him in other projects, more adequate to his capabilities) and put Wiz there. He's the creator of CK2+, and I can imagine him with a gigantic excel spreadsheet, touching a number here or there, while the game goes unfixed. Nitpicking numbers is very much ok when you are a modder and fixing the game is not your responsibility, or when you have a product that already works and just need fine tuning, but I am incredibly skeptic that he is what Stellaris needs right now, which is someone pragmatic and firm that, with a whip in one hand and an enormous list of bugs and lacking features in the other, gets the team working on it at the double, and doesn't try to rebalance all the government an ethics like a mad butcher with a mechanical saw, at least until the game works as intended.

We'll see I guess, but I don't see this game ready. Not now, and not in a year or two if they keep going like this.

And now a mea culpa: They are, as a matter of fact, working on a hotfix (another one) to the election problem, and, I expect, some others. Let's pray that they don't introduce even more game breaking bugs with this latest hotfix, because then they will have to hotfix the hotfix, ad nauseam, and the spanish beaches will have to wait because they will spend their vacation time in bug squashing hell.

 

[rezaf]

I fear the unfortunate reality us old fart players are going to have to accept is that "nobody" cares about depth or plausibility or anything like that any longer. And since game developers can get away without having those things, they do.

Both Stellaris and HoI4 seem to sell decent enough. Stellaris is getting pretty favorable reviews despite clearly having been shipped at least a few months early. HoI4 is praised even by reputable wargame critics despite being a totally derpy game that only superficially has to do with ww2 at all.

It's like if you'd realize one day that your boss would neither notice nor care about you only showing up at work every other day. So you'd try to keep this up for a while. And you'd be praised for making only half as many mistakes as your collegues (still working all days). And then you'd be named employee of the month. Would you see any incentive to go back to your old ways of showing up at work every day under those circumstances?

 

[Lightsinthesky]

Paradox releases broken patches before going on holiday all the time. Sometimes it's broken DLC too so the product they rushed out for the holiday release crashes every five minutes or the ai clogs and makes the game unplayable. Their fans will defend this to the last though so I suppose the market fixed the idea of professional standards

 

[Average Manatee]

Paradox really needs a competitor. Any other industry would eat the developers alive if games were randomly rendered unplayable for 2-3 weeks straight because of lol swede holidays.

 

[Endlösung]

HoI4 is praised even by reputable wargame critics

Tbh, wargame critics are even worse autists than the Paradox target audience. Most of those people have a borderline retarded fixation on some kind of fluff - setting, time period, location, something. They are not interested in game mechanics at all. Boardgames for children have tougher critics.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, wargamers are a really weird bunch. It's like they are interested in a simulation, but often don't care about the actual simulation part, only the historical window dressing. If they played a flight sim they'd rather have a photo-realistic cockpit view and a completely arcade flight model rather than vice-versa.

 

[Norfleet]

Flight simmists, on the other hand, are absolutely obsessed with the details of the flight model, too. They're WAY more demanding. Many of them are actual pilots and will attempt to wreck the plane in the simulator just to see if it behaves like it should.

 

[Grotesque]

I tried playing again with some mods that made solar systems extremely large

that sounds very sexy
would you happen to have a link to it?

 

[Average Manatee]

Won't bigger systems make chasing the AI even more of a PITA?

A big problem is that, with hyper/jump speeds increasing while in-system speeds decrease, you get into situations where it takes longer to cross a system than it takes to travel across half the galaxy. This leads to inane things like needing to jump past a planet under attack so you can enter it from the right side to have a chance of catching the enemy.

 

[Destroid]

I can understand HoI and Stellaris reviewing well, it's difficult to give a fair judget to these sorts of games without dropping quite a few hours on them, which rarely seems the done thing in videogame reviewing. Both of them are fun games to play until you understand what's going on and witness some of the severe limitations.

 

[rezaf]

I can understand HoI and Stellaris reviewing well, it's difficult to give a fair judget to these sorts of games without dropping quite a few hours on them, which rarely seems the done thing in videogame reviewing. Both of them are fun games to play until you understand what's going on and witness some of the severe limitations.

I dunno. You're right about Stellaris, it's a very nice game for hours before the seams come apart, but HoI4? I haven't picked it up, but I've watched a number of streams, and ... it's like a fistfight between a heavyweight champion and a third grader. Even a novice reviewer ought to notice that.
And they do. I watched (or listened to?) a review where they admitted all the flaws the game comes with and essentially go like "who cares, it's fun to derp around and invade the US playing as a gang of kongolese bonobos.

Kinda reminds me of that scene from DS9.


These are supposed to be the reviewers that DO care about what lies beneath the fancy surface of the newest fancy graphics engine. If they are willing to give games like this a free pass, what hope is there for gaming journalism?

 

[jeroendstout]

I tried playing again with some mods that made solar systems extremely large

that sounds very sexy
would you happen to have a link to it?

These are the ones I used:

• Improved space battles (balance) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=693447055
• Improved space battles (graphics) http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692028161
• A Better System Scale https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=683230711&searchtext=scale

I think you need a battle rebalance or the larger solar systems just make fighting more about fleets flying than fighting.

A big problem is that, with hyper/jump speeds increasing while in-system speeds decrease, you get into situations where it takes longer to cross a system than it takes to travel across half the galaxy. This leads to inane things like needing to jump past a planet under attack so you can enter it from the right side to have a chance of catching the enemy.

Yeah, it has that, but... I was going for a Mote In God's Eye type of setting, where you can travel between stars very quickly, but need to travel regularly between jump points. It could take days to travel between planets that way, even at a high-G acceleration.

Its a bit like wormholes and being able to jump 'over' someone's empire. That to me makes it more sci-fi; it has odd rules that still make sense. FTL that makes you travel for days between planets to me just is really exciting, especially if it makes you want to jump in at the right side of a solar system. Elevates it above simplicity.

 

[Eirikur]

Anybody seen this game?
http://www.riffraffgames.com/milotosser/webgl/
You control a group of IS thugs tossing Milo off a tall building for being gay, you get points for hitting targets and/or bystanders.

It's better than Stellaris but I assume we'll have a very cluttered thread if one would just post every game that falls under that criteria.

Haha, the post was actually meant for the GamerGate thread I'll ask a CONDUCTOR to fix the PROBLEM.

You're making a Spectacle of yourself.

 

[Quigs]

Let the game sit for a bit. Picked it back up, saw the two patches had come out. Gave it a shot.

Despite playing a diplomatic xenophile, any form of faction making and peaceful diplomacy was not possible. Paradox didn't like their earlier embassy system which allowed you to increase your relationship, so they did away with it entirely. In its place, your affinity will increase if you trade. Unfortunately, no one will trade with you because they'll dislike you from the start. So you kind of wait around hoping the AI offers you a trade that it wouldn't accept if you made the proposal. Fast forward some. Turned my only neighbor into a vassal. A faction about the same strength borders my vassal. Dimensional invaders show up, are wrecking everything. Together, this faction and I might be able to turn the tide. I open diplomatic channels, and I'm receiving a very large penalty because I'm 'irrelevant'. So I rush to colonize a worthless planet next to their space so we can share a border. Now irrelevant has been replaced with another negative penalty : 'Border Tension'. Motherfucker.

As the invaders wiped away their home system, I quit the game. Diplomacy was bad to begin with, and they've taken some large leaps backwards. It might be a while till I give this a try again. As it stands, it's just dumb design decisions all the way down.

 

[thesheeep]

Unfortunately, no one will trade with you because they'll dislike you from the start. So you kind of wait around hoping the AI offers you a trade that it wouldn't accept if you made the proposal.

Is that really how it goes?
That does sound kinda retarded.

 

[Quigs]

Unfortunately, no one will trade with you because they'll dislike you from the start. So you kind of wait around hoping the AI offers you a trade that it wouldn't accept if you made the proposal.

Is that really how it goes?
That does sound kinda retarded.

Yeah. You can technically do things like give them your star charts for a few bucks, but it doesn't have the impact like a long term trade agreement does. Those I've only found work when they're proposed to you.

On the plus side, I'm not being bothered to join pathetic strength federations and alliances every few moments like I was pre-patch. On the downside, even tiny factions being swallowed by the game's end state won't consider joining your federation as it stands now.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

a 30 years long strategic source gift does wonders.
solaris diplomacy tends toward isolating nations but there are some who are easier to trade with, like xenophiles and pacifists. having similar doctrines also *can* work or go in the opposite direction.
sometimes you have to build your own allies, that's what liberating planets is for: it will create a new nation with your same doctrines, already guaranteed, with positive attitude and +100 relations. i liberated a single planet from a fallen empire and vassalized it so i could exploit their superior technology.

stellaris is a simple game, but not as basic as you're picturing it.

 

[Average Manatee]

i liberated a single planet from a fallen empire and vassalized it so i could exploit their superior technology.

Last I checked the way research agreements worked made them useless due to how the bonus was applied (additive with the penalty for empire size).

Unless you mean exploiting them for colonization or some better ships or something.

 

[Tigranes]

Having finally played one game to late stage and many games to middle stage, yes, it's half-baked but it could be great fun. Seems, sadly, like a mix of probably-fixed-in-expansions and always-borked.

Lack of events and shit in midgame, lack of support for meaningful slave rebellions / factions play, lack of differentiation through personalities / government types / etc., lack of difference across planets / planet types, etc. - all probably will be addressed in some form over the next year or two.

What seems incurable is the shitty combat/war model (just like EU, with literally nothing interesting or cool re. space theme, with even less tactics, and more makework) that makes every war about as fun as sorting out trash from recycling. And possibly incurable, across the whole, is the sheer lack of personality (xeno armies, slave armies, clones, nobody gives a shit), though maybe megamods can do a job there.

It was fun for a few half-playthroughs and the early game is delightful, but meh.

 

[Quigs]

that's what liberating planets is for: it will create a new nation with your same doctrines, already guaranteed, with positive attitude and +100 relations.

It shouldn't take conquering a nation to make them an ally.

 

[rezaf]

Finally!
At long last, Paradox starts adressing the game's major flaws with the first DLC.
Extremely content rich for $8, I'm sure yall will agree...

 

[Fry]

Ridiculously overpriced for cosmetic shit, obviously.

Given their history, we can probably expect missing features to be added in $15-$20 DLC.

 

[Kane]

Ridiculously overpriced for cosmetic shit, obviously.

The advantage of the DLC model is that you poor fucks don't need to spend a dime while us good looking (and therefore well-earning) people keep the game financed for you plebs to enjoy with free patches and stuffies on end.

 

[Lightsinthesky]

Yesh Paradox sure is lazy with their alien design. Only venus fly trap doesn't look like a modification of a existing alien.