[Dev Team] 3.0.3 Patch Released (Checksum d281)

[sillyrobot]

From what I can see they removed the options of having a different empire growth scale for assembled and growing pop and that is quite bad as they are very different in how they mechanically work... this is quite stupid to be honest. They should at least have left a define value for modders for an offset for regular and grown pop to differ... to me this was quite important factor in balancing.

I used very different set of values for grown and normal pop, grown pop had a much smaller impact from empire growth than normal pop or they become too irrelevant at some point.

Ah, yes, that case is screwed. It was compressed to the single slider.

 

[HistoricalScore1]

Didn't sleep long, so I'm here again briefly. I understand bugs are not fixed overnight. But as it is I still struggle to enjoy the game currently with some of the current new bugs: Indentured Servants and Unemployed Pops Demotion. I suppose I could play a slaveless empire, but I wanted to do that after my Ork campaign.

Honestly didn't think of PDXCon. PDXCon is soon right? I bet a Decision Maker has made folks tight-lipped on anything significant really so that it's saved for a PDXCon "Announcement" to try to increase the activity there. I respect the basic business sense, as I suspect it will indeed influence some to tune into it just hoping for that announcement. I won't be. So I'll just have to wait until after this event in order to have a less limited engagement with staff here with "soon, in the works, we can't disclose yet". Again, I get it. You're just doing your job.

But I'll at least post what I already had typed out. Don't feel like you need to respond.

Believe me, us in QA have a lot of attention focused on balance and raising our concerns to design team (in particular @Eladrin).

You may be raising your concerns, but are they actually listening to them? Time will tell.

That said, some imbalance in intentional.

I can understand some imbalance being intentional. But, @Eladrin @grekulf @Obidobi @DecisionMaker....is it really intentional that Synth path is SS tier, while Psi/Bio is Aish tier? Or certain Origins are clearly in the Dumpster tiers? Is that intentional? Do you want to remove meaningful decision making from the player, especially when they play on higher difficulties or multiplayer?

Agreed, seems pointless to spend time running games in observer mode to highlight AI shortcomings with save games, when there is no action on said reports during a beta.

The information provided has been and is still being used but it's a big task and work is ongoing.

More transparency on what is discarded/accepted/agreed upon/in the works would help alleviate these perceptions.

declining revenue.

I find it intensely amusing that this keeps being brought up when the last quarterly report was for a quarter that didn't have many releases in it (Nemesis was Q2 not Q1)

I suspect that trying to appeal to them to 'just make more profit' will encourage bean counter behavior that terrible companies subscribe to, Such as a focus of new content over polished/quality content, because people (even those unhappy with the changes/decisions in a game/company) will still buy it. Free patches/bug fixes don't really make Paradox money as say, a DLC. Though it certainly does retain current folks.

Ah s**t, here we go again... Time to get "excited" for next DLC i suppose.

Demonstrates my point above. Some will still just buy the DLC (which is 100% their choice).

 

[Alfray Stryke]

'they time we had left', lol

They amount 'time you have left' is something that is entirely within your gift as a company to decide. It's not, like, just a brute fact about the universe that you can only spend [x] hours on the 3.0.x branch. All you said that you've decided to prioritise something else, which is what people are upset about.

Nice try, though.

If there's one thing I've learnt in my time in the video game industry is you never have enough time for everything you want to do.

 

[Aerolfos]

I too mourn the loss of
REQUIRED_POP_ASSEMBLY_SCALE
as separate from organic growth, one growth being exponential and one being linear really needs different values.

In fact what they both really need are not just linear multipliers * number_of_pops but an available exponent to make formulas that scale differently and punish 10 000 pop empires much more harshly than the current one, while effectively not touching 1000 pop empires.

 

[sillyrobot]

oh ye of little faith.


on the hit list still, but a little out of scope for the time we had left.

In an ideal world, one has faith based upon previous behaviour. In other words, it needs to be earned.

 

[Juboboman]

'they time we had left', lol

They amount 'time you have left' is something that is entirely within your gift as a company to decide. It's not, like, just a brute fact about the universe that you can only spend [x] hours on the 3.0.x branch. All you said that you've decided to prioritise something else, which is what people are upset about.

Nice try, though.

And they don't make that decision for the company. Higher ups do. Do you expect them to quit their job unless they get another week to work on a patch? There comes a point when you have to do as your told, especially considering in the grand scheme of things this update cycle has been a major step forward on a variety of fronts. Yes it would be great if the corporate suits said "take as long as you need to do whatever you want", but that's not the real world, and it comes with downsides of its own. Star Citizen has been in feature creep hell for a decade because there are no corpo rats setting hard deadlines from on top. So it cuts both ways.

 

[sillyrobot]

WIth all due respect, do you want the quotes on the 'we're still working on these systems' from 1.2, 1.9, or 2.2? The 'follow-up' track record on systems is a bit rocky.

Actually, the track record is rock-solid. Just not good.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

You may be raising your concerns, but are they actually listening to them? Time will tell.

Time has already told

The team as a whole is constantly in discussion of the design and direction of the game.

 

[Obidobi]

Save games shouldn't be adversely affected by the switch from 3.0.2 to 3.0.3, but just in case you do encounter issues, you can roll back to a prior version via right click on Stellaris in library -> properties -> betas -> choose the desired version.

Hi all, sorry for the delay. But the rollback version should now be available in Steam!

 

[Enfield_PDX]

WIth all due respect, do you want the quotes on the 'we're still working on these systems' from 1.2, 1.9, or 2.2? The 'follow-up' track record on systems is a bit rocky.

Nah I've actually got a list of those already I've only been on Stellaris specifically for close to a year now, but I'm well aware of the previous track record. I make no apologies for it, stuff happens. But given what we've been able to achieve while in depths on quarantine, I am trying to reflect the teams optimism for the future.

'they time we had left', lol

They amount 'time you have left' is something that is entirely within your gift as a company to decide. It's not, like, just a brute fact about the universe that you can only spend [x] hours on the 3.0.x branch. All you said that you've decided to prioritise something else, which is what people are upset about.

Nice try, though.

We had a set amount of time set aside in our schedule, buffing up operations and the like did not fit within the time window when competing with all the other things in the patch that needed dev time. That's just how it is, our priorities are in the right place, as you will find out soon enough

 

[Tim_Ward]

And they don't make that decision for the company. Higher ups do. Do you expect them to quit their job unless they get another week to work on a patch? There comes a point when you have to do as your told, especially considering in the grand scheme of things this update cycle has been a major step forward on a variety of fronts. Yes it would be great if the corporate suits said "take as long as you need to do whatever you want", but that's not the real world, and it comes with downsides of its own. Star Citizen has been in feature creep hell for a decade because there are no corpo rats setting hard deadlines from on top. So it cuts both ways.

I'm not really addressing these critiques to the developers as individuals - I have a fair amount of sympathy for them - but to the company as a whole, which includes the higher ups. If they're making short term, selfish decisions and then hiding behind QA and Devs and leaving them to take the heat, then that's really on them.

Star Citizen is not an apt comparison. No one is asking for them to endlessly add new features and expand scope, in fact we're asking for the opposite: to stop doing that and focus on fixing the stuff that's already in.

 

[Thoughtful Gaming LP]

A lot of bugfixes and the Growth Sliders are a good step forward. All the other fixes and changes show there's been a lot of work done as well. I'm kind of expecting more changes as there are still a lot of loose ends, but this has been a very nice and prompt response, so I have a good feeling for the future. Thank you for your work

 

[johnty5]

That's just how it is, our priorities are in the right place, as you will find out soon enough

I wonder if this means we're getting a Stellaris roadmap at PDXCon?

 

[Inny]

Thanks for your work!
Devs, I'd really appreciate if UI-related crashes would at least write something in the error.log before sending us to the desktop. That would help a lot to find what's going on.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I too mourn the loss of
REQUIRED_POP_ASSEMBLY_SCALE
as separate from organic growth, one growth being exponential and one being linear really needs different values.

In fact what they both really need are not just linear multipliers * number_of_pops but an available exponent to make formulas that scale differently and punish 10 000 pop empires much more harshly than the current one, while effectively not touching 1000 pop empires.

Sure... you can write a script that check if a planet build POP and add some deposit that grant base pop growth construction rate based on number of POP in the empire so the effect is nearly the same as before... or you can do this with a country wide bonus as well, several choices... but WHY do this when there were a perfectly good way to do this before... I simply don't understand why they just didn't leave a modifier for this in the define so we could have a different value for grown POP!?!?!

 

[johnty5]

If they're making short term, selfish decisions and then hiding behind QA and Devs and leaving them to take the heat, then that's really on them.

None of us have any inside information, but all the tone of the QA/Dev posts in this thread paint a picture of QA/Devs having a good relationship with higher ups and a collaberation they're happy with.

Not every problem has to be the fault of a cackling villian somewhere. Sometimes people make mistakes - sometimes big ones.

 

[Juboboman]

I'm not really addressing these critiques to the developers as individuals - I have a fair amount of sympathy for them - but to the company as a whole, which includes the higher ups. If they're making short term, selfish decisions and then hiding behind QA and Devs and leaving them to take the heat, then that's really on them.

Star Citizen is not an apt comparison. No one is asking for them to endlessly add new features and expand scope, in fact we're asking for the opposite: to stop doing that and focus on fixing the stuff that's already in.

I understand, and a year ago I would have agreed with you. There is a proper balance. There was a time in Stellaris history where it felt like deadlines were so hard that things got released in whatever state they were in, regardless of how severe the bugs were. That's not the case now though, 3.0.1 came out the most polished and major bug free as any release for the game so far. So the fact the major issues now boil down to balance issues and AI tweaks (that are easily moddable and therefore fixable by the player for their playstyle in the meantime) means those deadlines are back in the reasonable category.

Like I said in Stellaris history there are times when you would have been 100% right that hiding behind "sorry we had a deadline to ship" would have been absolutely unacceptable, and I said as much on these forums during those times, but I just think this situation is much different. And the improvements we've seen in terms of development, QA and communication for this update cycle leave me very optimistic moving forward. But certainly the threshold from acceptable to unacceptable is a personal opinion, so neither of us is truly wrong in that regard.

 

[sillyrobot]

None of us have any inside information, but all the tone of the QA/Dev posts in this thread paint a picture of QA/Devs having a good relationship with higher ups and a collaberation they're happy with.

Not every problem has to be the fault of a cackling villian somewhere. Sometimes people make mistakes - sometimes big ones.

Anyone can make a single mistake. When the behaviour becomes chronic -- the same behaviour occurs again and again, it is time to find and correct the source.

 

[Felaeris]

For high crime planets and Crime Lord Deal exploits, why are players allowed to deprioritize Criminal Jobs? The effect is that even maximum crime planets maintain 0 criminals even if 6+ slots are available. As a routine Syndicate player, I find it vexing.

Is this a bug, exploit, or intended? Can someone please explain why this is intended or what the difficulties are in fixing it?

 

[Pornek]

But given what we've been able to achieve while in depths on quarantine, I am trying to reflect the teams optimism for the future.

I expect great things!