Stellaris Dev Diary #140 - 2.2.x post-launch patch v2

[Peko?]

P.D.: Nobody is going to say anything about the Ecumenopolis with a fixed amount of non-city districts?

There are quite a few districts already built, it just shows how many that are built and can be built of a particular type.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

Hello everyone!

We don’t have anything specific to talk about or show, but we thought it would be suitable to let you know we’re still working on the final post-release patch. We’re aiming to release the patch sometime in late February.

Our focus has been on improving and polishing the content we already have, so there won’t be many new features. We’ve been making improvements from everything from AI to UI to balance. I won’t talk about all the stuff we’ve done, but here’s some stuff I’ve been posting on twitterCheers!

This is the most concerning thing I have read about 2.2 since its release. If this is the "final" post-release patch, then for the sake of PDX's integrity, I really hope you guys drop a miracle patch on us, because there are a lot of issues in the game right now.

Cleaner display of districts! This arcology now display its districts with boxes, and in different colors!

Grekulf: "Look at this UI! It now comes in 4 shades of grey!"

I'm sure the new display looks nice and easy to distinguish. I say "I'm sure" because I'll have to take everyone's word for it. 3 of the 4 districts are the same color as far as I can see.
Maybe have some people with color deficiencies look at it? The UI otherwise looks much easier to navigate. The collective effort of you and your team really shows. Now please add an "Upgrade All Defense Platforms" button somewhere while you're at it.

Expansion of the districts' color-coding is a good idea, and I do agree it makes the interface look more polished. Not a very important change IMHO (personally, I never felt put off or misled by the "inconsistencies" of district numbering), but a nice touch.

The color-coding is nice, but the color choice is not. Those of us with color deficiencies can't tell these apart.

I'd agree, but at least two of the district colours are indistinguishable to me. The two of the left are both off-blue.

It's be really nice if the hue and saturations were different enough that those of us with colour deficiencies could notice easily.

Hello comrade. To my eyes, the artisan district is a dirty yellow and the rest are different shades of grey. I'm all for a more colorful UI, but hopefully we can get some more accessibility in the future.

 

[CMDR_HERNE]

So 2.2.5 when it comes out of beta is the last patch of the 2.2.x branch

 

[Defiler99]

So 2.2.5 when it comes out of beta is the last patch of the 2.2.x branch

I think specifically not, because at least the changes shown to the Ascendancy Perks aren't in v2.2.5; there will need to be at least one more release that adds those. (Along with any possible new bugs they want to add.)

 

[laptor]

grekulf decided to take the right path!

 

[Roddo]

Why buff the already powerful & most enticing options for first picks in ascention perks?
Balancing a mechanic doesn't automatically mean a buff, please. Stellaris is filled with OP mechanic after OP mechanic. Consider toning it down now that you still can

 

[laptor]

Has Transendent Learning been buffed too then? At the moment it feels a bit useless, with so many traditions giving level bonuses now.

Damn true! Everyone can become a level 10 leader nowadays :/

 

[laptor]

I guess, you are fixing the purge and slave mechanics in this post release patch also? Like the "no matter which purge type you chose, it is always 600% killing and annoying other empires, also if you chose displacement only" and the more annoying "battle thralls can't be enforcers" bug ..? thanks in advance.

That is crushing my relations regularly, as well!

 

[Averath]

It pains me to say this, but Wiz leaving seems to have put Stellaris in a very difficult place. The new lead does not seem to be as good at PR as the previous, and also seems to be a bit disconnected from the players. There is a lot of frustration with the current state of the game, and it's driving a lot of players away. Focusing on new content when the current content still feels broken is going to cost this game early.

Why should I spend another dollar on Stellaris when the AI is broken? When performance was supposed to get better with 2.2, and it got dramatically worse? When the design goals of 2.2 were to make gameplay lest frustrating and tedious, and certain aspects of it made things far, far worse? (I'm looking at you, Sector System).

Up to this point I was one of those individuals who thought people saying "I don't like the direction this game is going" were being ridiculous. However, now I'm finally starting to see where that train of thought might have some merit. It's not an issue with the fact that things are changing. It's that the team behind Stellaris are implementing changes, and then dropping support for them.

Apocalypse was supposed to be the big patch to help make warfare more interesting. Instead of the combat overhaul we needed, we got some tweaks and Titans that only have a single basic loadout. The issue of mono-fleets was made worse. Certain ship classes still remain inferior and worthless. The overall balance is still all over the place.

And now we have Megacorp that was supposed to overhaul the economy. I would say that it mostly succeeded, but it crippled performance in the process. It also requires a lot more work to make the AI at least semi-competent. The latest beta patch over-buffed Machine Empires, but that's something that could be addressed. The dynamic sector system is arguably an exercise in frustration. Why the geographical sector system was removed in place of this is beyond my comprehension.

All of these are problems that I feel the Stellaris team is capable of solving. I think they have the skill and expertise to make an excellent game even better over time. Is this a case of poor management? Unreasonable upper management demands for quarterly profits? What's going on? Why do all these ideas feel half-finished?

 

[FiddleSticks96]

Damn true! Everyone can become a level 10 leader nowadays :/

You don't even need traits to boost leader level if you're an organic empire, techs and traditions will bring all your leaders to the lvl 10 cap. MEs are stuck at lvl 9 without lvl boosting traits. This makes the Transcendent Learning basically only increase your leader pool by 2 (which is a stupid and useless bonus) without offering any other real benefit, making it by far the worst AP in the game, and considering Imperial Prerogative is a thing, that's saying a lot.

That is crushing my relations regularly, as well!

The purge mechanic being broken is really grinding my gears. I have resorted to waiting for 100s of organic pops to "die" by turning all my planets into Machine Worlds. This takes forever because the decline rate in this case is so slow and I have to just deal with the -50 Xenophage opinion penalty in the mean time. It beats getting -1000 opinion because displacement is somehow "genocidal" though.

 

[makaramus]

Acension Perks that just give buffs (instead of Mechanics/Unique stuff) are still boring - but good idea to make them more vaiable anyway

actually idea of getting rare technologies faster and more often sounds very cool idea and offering new gameplay too. especially if you are not spirutalist wich you can use to find psiconic tech.

 

[Cahokia]

I'm just hoping that the new content is either a redesigned sector/AI or a new art content pack so they can work on said sector/AI. Or that this new content is towards the end of the year so they have time to work on these items. And a focus on fixing the performance please, my new computer barely registers it's doing anything while playing this game but its still taking a second per day on the fastest setting. But the 2.2.5 beta branch seems slower for some reason so maybe thats part of it. I'm not going to spend over 10 hours to reach 2300, I'm just going to go play Wargroove.

 

[Badesumofu]

Okay - Tech Ascension is currently NOT a good first pick, let alone a 'no-brainer' as some are asserting. Interstellar Dominion is vastly stronger in its ability to help you gobble up more valuable territory faster. I generally play tech-focused empires but even still, TA just isn't that appealing. I'd rather snake off more good-quality space more quickly and get more planets with more labs up and running. Influence is just too valuable early on to consider not taking ISD first as things stand. At 15 influence per system saved, you can afford to keep research grants up permanently by taking ISD if you really want to anyway.

I like this buff to TA because it both makes it more appealing and more interesting.

 

[FiddleSticks96]

I think it would be great if the caravan fleet stopped asking me to give them Zro when, being a gestalt (and an ME no less), it is literally impossible for me to acquire Zro. Since the caravan often gets "stuck" on the same deal forever once you reject said deal, this is annoying. Infuriating actually, since they ask me about ever 5 minutes. I think I'm going to blow them up soon, just to shut them up.

Okay - Tech Ascension is currently NOT a good first pick, let alone a 'no-brainer' as some are asserting. Interstellar Dominion is vastly stronger in its ability to help you gobble up more valuable territory faster. I generally play tech-focused empires but even still, TA just isn't that appealing. I'd rather snake off more good-quality space more quickly and get more planets with more labs up and running. Influence is just too valuable early on to consider not taking ISD first as things stand. At 15 influence per system saved, you can afford to keep research grants up permanently by taking ISD if you really want to anyway.

I like this buff to TA because it both makes it more appealing and more interesting.

Try taking ISD when you're a fanatic xenophobe. Outposts cost just 60 influence (45 once you go expansion).

 

[Methone]

Why buff the already powerful & most enticing options for first picks in ascention perks?
Balancing a mechanic doesn't automatically mean a buff, please. Stellaris is filled with OP mechanic after OP mechanic. Consider toning it down now that you still can

But Tech Ascension and One Vision did need a buff. Interstellar Dominion is just insanely powerful. With these buffs maybe, just maybe, they can compete.

 

[AlanC9]

Okay - Tech Ascension is currently NOT a good first pick, let alone a 'no-brainer' as some are asserting. Interstellar Dominion is vastly stronger in its ability to help you gobble up more valuable territory faster.

At the time I'm picking my first perk, I'm still alloy-bound rather than influence-bound.

 

[Lord Ruby]

So, the One Vision buff is cool and all, but it feels like it's making it even more similar to Consecrated Worlds, when they're already very similar. Less amenities used, more amenities generated. More unity on both. More governing ethics attraction, more spiritualist ethics attraction. Maybe you should try something more flavorful for One Vision? Consecrated Worlds is one of the most flavorful ones in the game.

 

[Methone]

At the time I'm picking my first perk, I'm still alloy-bound rather than influence-bound.

And? That just means you get ahead of the problem sooner rather than later.

 

[Riftwalker]

View attachment 450737

realizes that there's no longer the 2 buttons, freaks out and can't find the terraform button, looks for a solid 10 seconds before realizing it's the giant button that says terraform....


fuck

 

[pmchem]

Final post-release patch in two weeks? There are way too many problems with the game right now...

I'm not buying any more DLCs until the performance is fixed. It is still worse compared to 2.1 and on top of that we have the insane stutter still going on...

Didn't you promise extended support after release? As in more than usual. And now you're talking about the final patch already. This makes no sense. There are so many bugs in fundamental systems (many of them longstanding) that you could release many more patches.

Reading that the next patch will be the last one that focuses on bugfixes and performance improvements scares me A LOT. I just hope it will be a massive patch because if not, the game will still be broken and/or unenjoyable. I cannot talk about a patch that hasn't been released yet, but Paradox please, be aware that this game needs a lot of work and effort to be fixed and most players prefer stability over new features that may break the game even more... Do not repeat the same mistake.

Agreed with all those posts. The state of the game is TERRIBLE, and yet PDX is already talking about minor cosmetic things and moving on to the next broken thing they can try to sell us.

FIX THE GAME.

WE DO NOT WANT NEW THINGS YET.