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Stellaris Dev Diary #180 - DLC Visibility Experiment

Hello everyone!

We hope you are enjoying your time with 2.7 and the 4 year anniversary of Stellaris! It’s very fun to see how far the game has come, and just as interesting to imagine what the future can hold.

We want to make sure that Stellaris is well-prepared for more content in the future. Something we’ve learned, especially with CK2, is that a long tail of new content can make it very difficult for players to see what kind of DLCs are available for the game. As we recently announced, Stellaris has more than 3 million players, and we want to make sure that players – both new and old – have an easier time finding content that they might like.

In order to improve visibility, starting today and lasting for a couple of weeks, we’re going to be running a couple of experiments that will be looking at DLC visibility within the game. We will be running a controlled experiment that will split up the player base into different groups, where each group will get a slightly different experience (or no change, in the case of the control group). The experiment will only affect the main menu and empire creation/selection, and will not have any effect on the game as you are playing. The purpose of this is to gather some insights into what kind of visibility features are actually helpful.

Before you grab your laser-powered pitchforks and plasma-illuminators, and complain about development focus, rest assured that all of this work has been done by an external team (who has done a great job btw!) and has had no effect on the development of Stellaris as a game :)

I want to emphasize that even though we want to improve the visibility of content for the game, it will never come at the expense of the game experience itself, so you don’t need to worry about that. It is very important for us that our players are able to immerse themselves in the Stellaris universe and to have fun while they play.

And because a dev diary can’t be complete without pictures or teasers, here’s two icons related to some future content. What could it be..?
merciless_teaser.png
 
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Imagining what you might describe in your OP, I really hope you will come to the conclusion to keep the information about already owned and not yet purchased(!) DLCs out of the main game! And this “main game” includes the game setup screen!

Do we not have the launcher for that reason? Isn’t there already enough information about installed DLCs and commercials for new ones?
Why does this have to intrude also the actual game? Will there possibly be an “in-game one click purchase option” as well? (Baseless speculation, but a horrifying one nevertheless.)

If you have to, please update the launcher's functionality to highlight available and not yet owned content. That’s its purpose, so use the appropriate tool!

(Edit: sorry for the rant, but I know in-game adds from other games like ‘Railroad Empire” and ‘Planet Zoo’ and I hate it with a passion!)
 
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So it's starting later today (or I'm just not part of it)? I just went to create a Megacorp for the future, but I didn't notice any change.
 
it will never come at the expense of the game experience itself, so you don’t need to worry about that

I don't dare to open the slave market anymore because the pops shown always go from the top of the screen to the bottom, out of the border of the market window. So, how about better UI support for higher resolutions? Everyone has been using mods like UI overhaul 1080p plus and Tiny outliner for a long time now.

Also please fix the existing content before you add more. The Crisis must learn how to conquer the galaxy and not be stuck on 50 systems and not expand further.
 
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Seeing all options during empire creation with symbols for which DLC they need and if you have them would be nice to help you to decide which one you should buy.
BUT this would give a strong feeling of microtransactions and a money hungry developer who let's you pay extra for every single choice. And that's what you are definitely NOT.

So will be interesting how this turns out.

BTW: I got all DLCs so far, even if they offer empires I'll never play myself. But having them present in a game is still great.

Keep up the great work, really love your game.
 
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Before you grab your laser-powered pitchforks and plasma-illuminators, and complain about development focus, rest assured that all of this work has been done by an external team (who has done a great job btw!) and has had no effect on the development of Stellaris as a game

Well as long as it's not the ones that did the mobile game.....or the forum "upgrade".....or the launcher "upgrade". Need I go on?

It’s really really gutting to see the development of Stellaris feel more like it’s Bethesda working on it, where new patches and features breaks about as much stuff as it fixes, while years long bugs/issues continue to remain un-addressed.
 
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We want to make sure that Stellaris is well-prepared for more content in the future.
New stuff is always great, but can you please first polishing the game in order to get a better balancing between several empire types. There are a lot of ethics, which are not viable if you want to win a multiplayer game. With spiritualists being the worst by far. The current meta for organic empires only consists of one empire type - Fanatic Materialist + Authoritarian with Technocracy + Slaverguilds. You guys made great changes to empire sprawl and unity costs in 2.7. Imho, now its time to make ascension paths more impactful and make tech locked stuff, unity locked instead.
 
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Please don't advertise in the game itself. Planet Coaster, Cities Skylines and others already do this and it's just very tacky and distracting. As others have said, you already have a launcher for ads. And some of us already own all the DLC for the game and have even less reason for this nonsense.

Now if you want to promote mods in-game, now that would be something.
 
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Seeing all options during empire creation with symbols for which DLC they need and if you have them would be nice to help you to decide which one you should buy.
BUT this would give a strong feeling of microtransactions and a money hungry developer who let's you pay extra for every single choice. And that's what you are definitely NOT.
What if there was a simple check box in the corner somewhere "show items from non-purchased content"?
You have it on and it shows all items you could get from a DLC but don't own with a red coloured shade out, you untick it and you see only what you actually own.
 
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I've read this diary several times, and I still have no idea what it is actually saying.

Are there going to be proper separations between DLC/non-DLC content in-game, or what?
 
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Stick me in the "won't play 2.7 until the performance is fixed" and "won't play 2.7 multiplayer until the performance and infinite energy credit buying bug are fixed" buckets, wouldya?

Everything else is secondary to those as far as I'm concerned.
 
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Stick me in the "won't play 2.7 until the performance is fixed" and "won't play 2.7 multiplayer until the performance and infinite energy credit buying bug are fixed" buckets, wouldya?

Everything else is secondary to those as far as I'm concerned.
what's the issue with the performance?
 
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Uhm really?? After fiasco with performance your write this? Yes other changes are quite welcome but REALLY?????

Did I miss something? I haven't really played a game in 2.7 yet, but I don't see any threads complaining about performance in the forums. What happened? Can you explain please?
 
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View attachment 577156
That would be the new “necromancy” species origin.
Centuries ago your species came to dominate your home planet. But then the catastrophe happened. Within years every member of your species was dead. Your last hope had been a radio message sent to the stars begging anyone who hears you for assistance.
Centuries later a helpful ship of nomads received your message and came to help. Realizing they were far too late to save you, they instead resurrected your race from extinction using biomatter found in naturally frozen regions of your planet and brain scans you had stored away in giant computer banks.
With their help your civilization new stands ready to seek the stars!
 
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As somebody who is fully aware of what I do and do not have for dlc, and why I as an adult have made those informed choices, feel free to tell this external entity to put me in the control group so as not to waste either you r or my time, thank you.
 
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