Stellaris Dev Diary #185: Announcing Necroids

[James Fire]

you gotta have faith! Hallelujah! Ignore everything that was before! The Messiah never came but someday it will! and the promised land of fixed stellaris will arrive and the faithful will life in bliss.

Stellaris has been in a good place before though.

Granted, it was years ago before 2.2, but it has been mostly without issues at various points.

 

[Ambereyed]

There are a bunch of things that we're working on, including some quality of life and micromanagement changes that are too big to go alongside a species pack. We'll start discussing those once they bake a little longer and I can give firmer information.

I'll translate this for you:
Don't expect fixes with "Necroids". Some fixes might be released with next full-price expansion. We see forum rioting, but we won't adress main problems. Wiz broke our game with revolutionary changes introduced few years after the release, and now since he's gone we don't have enough time, crew and money to fix the game. We love this game, but we're underpaid, stressed, overworked and we are forbidden to talk to you by our CEOs. We agree with you and we would love to make Stellaris great again, but decisions have been made and we can only prolong inevitable death of this great game, at least until sequel will be ready.

 

[James Fire]

Having caught up more, the answer I get at this point is two-fold.
1- To these players, its not a pet issue but serious business. but also...

2- Yes, they'd probably rather have that at this point.

Paradox would still release the species pack, so I fail to see how stopping communication would do anything.

 

[CrazyJ]

No. It does not work that way. Artists cannot work on the AI.

i was referring to other new content, non portrait stuff

 

[JosunUrashima]

Uhm so AI works for you? Crysis actually expand when they spawn?

I mean, the AI sometimes has issues, but honestly that's been a problem I've seen in many games (including paradox games) and so have come to the conclusion its just something you deal with and work around. As for crisis's, I'm usually in a position to help squash them when they pop up.

Granted, I'm probably the wrong sort to ask. I play more for creating a story than for going "get the numbers higher"

EDIT: To build on this, even the mod I do use extensively, a total conversion mod, sometimes goes from having things working just fine to one update suddenly the AI is acting like a complete idiot. I just shrug and either do a new game and hope it cooperates or just chug along playing anyways.

 

[Pancakelord]

Body snatchers, Goa’uld, and the like are staples of sci-fi. You don’t necessarily need to go the disgusting route, but it would be nice to have a bio equivalent of assimilators.

I think something like that might actually be coming, this is one of the screenshots on steam, have a read:

Now, either this is bio-ascension with the pops mutating in to the necron necraloid necroid pops.
OR this is actually the Reanimated armies civ at work - in which case killing pops to gain assault armies (without a ground rework) sounds pointless.
Though the reanimated armies civic may be an intentional misnomer, and the actual effect of that civic is you kill the target pop and "resurrect" them as a necroid pop. (I REALLY hope it's this and not trading pops for armies lol)

But this would count as a kind of bio-assimilation, like the protheans eventually becoming subsumed and mutated into collectors from Mass Effect.​

​

Edit: this DLC name is nowhere near unique enough, I'm mixing it up with like a half dozen other necro-named things.

 

[James Fire]

If. "If" the game is fixed. That's a huge "if" at this point. Financing improvement through DLC has been the strategy for years now. And it certainly makes sense in an abstract way. But in practice with Stellaris it has failed. It has been years of that and many fundamental game systems just don't work. You can only string along people so far with promises of fixes until they don't believe you anymore.

Has the game not been improved every patch? Discounting the new content, did 2.6 and 2.7 do nothing?

 

[-Marauder-]

The problem is this isn't what the thread is about. The child that whines about getting a new toy just because they're at the store should be ignored.

This is not the place to voice your complaints. A species pack means the programmers are working on the game, not shiny new features. And all everyone can do, apparently, is whine about how they weren't told about the fixes that are probably not concrete enough to say anything on... as Eladrin already said.

Comparing everyone else to "children that whine" is incredibly condescending and arrogant. It somewhat discredits everything you're seemingly trying to convey here.

As for "this not being the right place", I wholly and utterly disagree. People have tried all the venues, to absolutely no effect. Stuff is broken beyond belief for an absurdly long time and many of the changes introduced have made things all around worse. There have been several species packs, some of them after the problems were created/made worse. And no fixes have been forthcoming so far.

The reason people are now complaining, even here. Is because they've been ignored pretty much entirely. And the devs don't even address criticism at large anymore nor have they given any indication that they're aware of the problems or care about them. Given the length of time over which these issues have remained in-game, and how impactful many of them are. They should very much have something concrete to give to people. Instead, they're getting nothing.

 

[FleetingRain]

Yeahhhh ok not this time. You got me on Lithoids but I'll wait till the game is playable now.

 

[-Marauder-]

Has the game not been improved every patch? Discounting the new content, did 2.6 and 2.7 do nothing?

No, it has not. The new planet system was touted as "progress". In many ways, it made things worse. It shot micro management and pop issues through the roof without improving the AI. It increased complexity solely for complexities sake. Things like the Great Khan, AE, and the endgame crises USED TO WORK. Many of their changes and alteration broke parts of the game, parts they never bothered to fix!

 

[FleetingRain]

The problem is this isn't what the thread is about. The child that whines about getting a new toy just because they're at the store should be ignored.

"daddy my diapers are dirty"
"what? you want a new iphone? k then"

 

[James Fire]

Comparing everyone else to "children that whine" is incredibly condescending and arrogant. It somewhat discredits everything you're seemingly trying to convey here.

As for "this not being the right place", I wholly and utterly disagree. People have tried all the venues, to absolutely no effect. Stuff is broken beyond belief for an absurdly long time and many of the changes introduced have made things all around worse. There have been several species packs, some of them after the problems were created/made worse. And no fixes have been forthcoming so far.

The reason people are now complaining, even here. Is because they've been ignored pretty much entirely. And the devs don't even address criticism at large anymore nor have they given any indication that they're aware of the problems or care about them. Given the length of time over which these issues have remained in-game, and how impactful many of them are. They should very much have something concrete to give to people. Instead, they're getting nothing.

So throwing a tantrum is the right reaction? The right reactionto a tantrum is to ignore whoever is throwing it.

The devs have already shown willingness to cut communication if the forums continue to be toxic like this. Why do you insist on doing it?

 

[James Fire]

No, it has not. The new planet system was touted as "progress". In many ways, it made things worse. It shot micro management and pop issues through the roof without improving the AI. It increased complexity solely for complexities sake. Things like the Great Khan, AE, and the endgame crises USED TO WORK. Many of their changes and alteration broke parts of the game, parts they never bothered to fix!

...guess the 3x performance boost and various other bugfixes in the bugfixes patch of 2.7 are worth nothing. Got it.

 

[James Fire]

i was referring to other new content, non portrait stuff

What other new content are they doing now?

 

[Juboboman]

So throwing a tantrum is the right reaction? The right reactionto a tantrum is to ignore whoever is throwing it.

The devs have already shown willingness to cut communication if the forums continue to be toxic like this. Why do you insist on doing it?

The only toxicity here is yours. Please stop spreading it.

 

[CrazyJ]

...guess the 3x performance boost and various other bugfixes in the bugfixes patch of 2.7 are worth nothing. Got it.

they did that after 2.2 cut performance to a tenth of what it was and then added an entire arthropoid buffet of bugs to the game. for every problem they fixed with 2.6 they left ten

 

[Spartakus]

There are a bunch of things that we're working on, including some quality of life and micromanagement changes that are too big to go alongside a species pack. We'll start discussing those once they bake a little longer and I can give firmer information.

Still no. I am sorry, but the fact that the state of the AI that so many posters before have so aptly described isn't even mentioned in the very first dev response here tells me more about the direction Stellaris is headed the the last three dev diaries combined.
Which is a shame, because I want to like this. It looks like your artists did a good job and I'm sure your cobtent designers did as well. Heck, I'm not even mad about the fact that your coders spent their time on speeding up game start. I can understand why this would take priority.
But at the end of the day Stellaris remains in an unenjoyable, broken state and unless this is fixed it doesn't matter how great your DLC is.

 

[JosunUrashima]

The problem is this isn't what the thread is about. The child that whines about getting a new toy just because they're at the store should be ignored.

This is not the place to voice your complaints. A species pack means the programmers are working on the game, not shiny new features. And all everyone can do, apparently, is whine about how they weren't told about the fixes that are probably not concrete enough to say anything on... as Eladrin already said.

I mean, I can grasp the idea of coming in here to complain about a lack of much word from the devs, and especially if there is basically a general single thread for complaints about AI and such and no one seems to be paying attention to it.

And there are several posters here who have actually listed their problems in ways that don't come across as whining and complaining, but as valid and reasonable critiques.

The others however have come across as doing as you mentioned- whining and complaining.

 

[Hundar]

...guess the 3x performance boost and various other bugfixes in the bugfixes patch of 2.7 are worth nothing. Got it.

You are correct, since said fix doesnt address the root of the problem, but merely delays its appereance.

 

[James Fire]

they did that after 2.2 cut performance to a tenth of what it was and then added an entire arthropoid buffet of bugs to the game. for every problem they fixed with 2.6 they left ten

So they did make progress. Everyone here is acting as though they didn't.