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Stellaris Dev Diary #214: Announcing “The Custodians” initiative and the free Lem Update

Greetings!

Today I am here to announce some very good news! Stellaris is not slowing down, but rather picking up the pace! We at PDS Green are very happy to announce our new “Custodians” initiative as well as the next free update, coming sometime after summer.

The Custodian Team
Stellaris as a game has been very exploratory, and the game has seen a lot of big changes over the years. I want to start by giving some insight into why we’ve chosen to focus on this initiative.

As we’ve released more expansions we’ve had to take longer and longer between each release, as we’ve needed to spend more time on focusing on quality, making sure each release is as stable as possible. Paradox Development Studio also looks very different today vs. how it looked just a few years ago. Things take longer, there are more processes in place, and there are a lot more people involved. Because each release is now further apart, it makes it harder for us to address some of the outstanding issues that might be affecting the community between DLC releases.

As we’ve added more content it's also been harder to polish and maintain all of the amazing existing content that we’ve added over the years. We want to keep creating new cool experiences for Stellaris, but we also want to be able to maintain a high quality for the base game itself, and for older content.

What we have done now is that we’ve staffed up, and split the Stellaris team into two teams that focus on different aspects of the game. One team, that we call “the Custodians” team, will focus on free updates that we aim to release every 3 months, while the “expansion team” will focus on creating new content for the game.

Examples of what “The Custodians” could be working on:
  • Tweaking game balance
  • Adding new content to old DLC
  • Polishing existing content
  • Bug fixes
  • Performance improvements
  • AI improvements
  • Multiplayer stability
  • UI and quality-of-life improvements

This does not mean that the game will suddenly “be fixed” or done (whatever that means). Together with you, the community, we now have a better opportunity than ever to keep improving the game. In fact, I think working with the community is going to be crucial to really make this work well. We are going to need to improve how we communicate with each other, so that we can better understand each other.

What “The Custodians” initiative is not
It is very important that you understand that “The Custodians” initiative is no magic bullet or quick fix. We’re in this for the long run, and we hope you are too.

We will need to manage our expectations and small, incremental improvements with more regular updates should be our approach.

Honoring Stanislaw Lem
The first free Update, the Lem Update, will be named in honor of the Polish sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem, whose 100th anniversary is being celebrated this year. Stanislaw Lem is famous for works such as Solaris, which has already inspired the Stellaris you know today. The Lem Update is currently scheduled for release sometime after summer.

To set expectations more clearly, the Lem Update will be a bit more ambitious and larger in scope compared to what you can come to expect from “Custodian” updates in the future. The reason is that we’ve had a longer time to work on it than what is planned for future updates. It’s also important to note that as of now, the Lem update is scheduled to be a standalone free update, and will not be associated with a paid DLC.

The Lem Update planned features:
  • Buffing the Backlog: We’re reviewing some old DLC to revitalize them with some new content. Humanoids Species Pack and Plantoids Species Packs will now feature some new gameplay features. By the way, did anyone say Necrophage Hive Minds?
  • Selectable Traditions Trees: You will no longer be locked to the same 7 tradition trees, but you will instead have 7 slots that can be filled with a tradition tree of your choice. The number of tradition trees will be expanded, and previous tradition-tree swaps will be broken out into their own trees (Adaptability will no longer be a swap of Diplomacy for example). Some new tradition trees will also be added to existing DLCs.
  • Balance Pass: We will be doing a balance pass on some existing gameplay systems and features.
  • And more..!: Quality of life improvements, bug fixes, AI improvements...

We will go into more detail about these features in future dev diaries, but for now I will leave it at that. We’ll be back next week to talk a bit about some thoughts regarding game balance.

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No longer will your empire have to suffer the mediocrity of artisans.
 
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  • Buffing the Backlog: We’re reviewing some old DLC to revitalize them with some new content. Humanoids Species Pack and Plantoids Species Packs will now feature some new gameplay features. By the way, did anyone say Necrophage Hive Minds?
  • Selectable Traditions Trees: You will no longer be locked to the same 7 tradition trees, but you will instead have 7 slots that can be filled with a tradition tree of your choice. The number of tradition trees will be expanded, and previous tradition-tree swaps will be broken out into their own trees (Adaptability will no longer be a swap of Diplomacy for example). Some new tradition trees will also be added to existing DLCs.
Ooooh! :D
 
I'm leery on the tradition changes. On one hand it is awesome. On the other hand I can see how we might run into a scenario where we have traditions that just simply gather dust or worse we get a whack-a-mole approach, where tweaks results in different traits being in the dustpan each patch. If anyone wonders why I consider whack-a-mole worse, even though it means stuff sees use, well there is nothing more obnoxious than having to relearn how do everything each patch.

I'll just hope that they find some way to ensure that each tradition can enjoy some time in the sun, while also avoid both the whack-a-mole setup and ones where you have the unloved and forgotten traits.

Can't wait to see what they do though. I'm hoping we see things like tweaks to trade where clerks are made more relevant for megacorps. Maybe giving Gestalts personalities that work similar to ethics and also result in limiting what civics can be chosen. Have gestalts given some limited trade options, namely being able to do commercial packs that might not be as good as what normal empires get because as gestalts they don't have an internal market the way non-gestalts do. Doesn't mean they can't trade with private parties of a normal empire though. More in depth ship customization, I want to do more with my ship design than just picking ship sets and changing up a few sections and components. Also more flag customization.

Someone mentioned making tech more of a choice and it would be hella cool if we did have some tech that you chose at the start of the game and we're essentially locked into and it was done in a way where only limited parts of that tech could be gained by other methods. It would make empires feel a little more unique. Only real risk, is that you see what happens with some systems, where you get the meta stuff constantly used, while some things simply gather dust.

Also for gameplay stuff in regards to the really cool idea of revisiting old dlcs. Would this be a complete list of things that the devs would consider possible gameplay areas to visit such things.

-Species traits (be they locked behind a civic, made specific to a portrait type the way lithoid is or in one of the general pools).
-Civics
-Origins
-Traditions
-Techs

Does that cover everything? Anything else we should look out for? Anything on there that isn't up for consideration?
 
A workshop should in my opinion contain stuff like Giga, More Events Mod, Planetary Diversity or Guilli's Planet Modifiers, not essential maintenance.
That should be the job of the devs, which they hopefully live up to now with the reorganization.

As a modder who makes lots of small fixes:

I'd rather be able to push out small fixes that got overlooked. No software is perfect - but I can help it get better. And maybe my mods will help provide the initiative to get the same or similar fix moved into the core game.

As players we (collectively) see and experience so much more of the game and its quirks than any amount of professionals can. There are so many more of us it's natural that we see things or brush up against issues that were considered "rare."
 
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Just wanted to give a heads up on a couple things you might miss since it's far from the main focus.

First, if you guys going to update old DLC, please do remember to update their descriptions and features on online stores too (PDX Store, Steam, MS Store, etc.)

And second, please do take a look to the Soundtracks DLC's id3 tags which have consistency errors since probably years ago:


Thanks!!
And please add the soundtrack DLC's tracks to the game's soundtrack for people who own the DLC. That's how music packs work with every other Paradox game, and it's a little strange that Stellaris didn't follow suit.
 
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As a modder who makes lots of small fixes:

I'd rather be able to push out small fixes that got overlooked. No software is perfect - but I can help it get better. And maybe my mods will help provide the initiative to get the same or similar fix moved into the core game.

As players we (collectively) see and experience so much more of the game and its quirks than any amount of professionals can. There are so many more of us it's natural that we see things or brush up against issues that were considered "rare."
I personally agree with this a lot. Even if Paradox had 100 internal playtesters playing Stellaris for a full time job for a month before release, that's about 16,000 hours of testing. Stellaris has sold over 3 million copies, and if everyone played for a single hour after release, that's 1000 times as much testing as what Paradox did. I can only assume that players would find more "rare" things than the developers would at first.
 
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For collecting and focusing feedback it almost sounds like the custodians team needs something like a Trello board. With upvoting and downvoting if that's available there, I have no idea.
 
For those of us under the Equator, what does “after summer” mean? After August?

Swedish people go on mass strike during June and July, as they belong to a sun cult. Those two months are the time of the year that the mighty orb deigns to visit their country.
 
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Being able to choose our focus trees and having a greater variety of trees will allow us to customise our Empires in ways we have never seen before.

This was actually one of my big hopes for Stellaris, as having the same seven trees meant the only choice was the order in which i got the bonuses rather than choosing what kind of bonuses I want.

I boggle at the possibilities. An Espionage focused tree? A Diplomacy focused tree? A slavery focused tree? Trees for your ascension path?

It's really EU4's idea groups with a Stellaris skin, but given that idea groups are one of EU4's best systems I am not complaining.

Stellaris keeps getting better. Back in the 1990s, playing Masters of Orion 2 countless times, Stellaris is the game I dreamed of playing one day as space based strategy game. I am excited for the future!
 
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Those high expectations apply to modders too, sir. Content development is content development, except modders don't get paid and thus do not need to meet quality expectations that 'customers' have. And if you're really just refering to "fix" mods, the reality has been commercial concerns, which grekulf will still face. And I, for one, don't want another half-baked merge of an over-hyped AI mod.
That's why I never said "implement" but just "take a look at". And yes, I was only refering to all the fix and AI improvement mods on the workshop.

As to your first point. I think one cause for all the friction is you unpaid modders constantly meeting quality expectations and outdoing the devs on many fronts.
Obviously a devs work environment is much more restricted than a modders.
But a lot of players don't know that and only take note of that discrepancy.

Hopefully this (much needed) reorganization will alleviate this issue a bit.
 
Greetings!

Paradox Development Studio also looks very different today vs. how it looked just a few years ago. Things take longer, there are more processes in place, and there are a lot more people involved.

Also more bureaucracy?
 
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Swedish people go on mass strike during June and July, as they belong to a sun cult. Those two months are the time of the year that the mighty orb deigns to visit their country.

Swedish summer is far too sunny and makes me miss the grey of Britain.
 
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I'm not sure if you've previously considered this, but what about gradually integrating older, gameplay-vital DLC into the base game over time? A number of other game franchises do this, such as World of Warcraft and Elite: Dangerous. This way, development will become easier as it counteracts the exponentiating number of permutations of DLCs that players could have and will reduce the barrier to entry for new players. For example, integrating the Utopia DLC into the base game would be ideal for this process - it's nigh unimaginable playing without Ascension Paths now, and so many things build upon habitats and megastructures that it would be weird to have the newer stuff without the originals.
 
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Bureaucracy and Empire Sprawl maybe a system the Custodians should take a look at.

The former makes the later redundant. In hindsight, I think this was a mistake.

Perhaps they can create focus trees that allow you to choose between tall and wide?

The problem with bureaucrats isn't that they make sprawl obsolete, per se, it's that it makes the sprawl penalty functionally a linear one, a tax on your pop count, building slots, and the items required to support the job. Those are all real costs and it's noticeable how much more efficient an empire can be when, as you get admincap from other sources, those jobs are swapped out to researchers.

But they're functionally a flat tax on your empire and so if you go wide you just have more resources with which to pay for it, because sprawl increases linearly and admincap is produced linearly. To change that, and change it in such a way as to favour tall over wide, you'd need to fiddle with the way sprawl is generated. Maybe make the sprawl cost of systems and colonies scale with distance-from-capital?


Also:

Selectable Traditions Trees: You will no longer be locked to the same 7 tradition trees, but you will instead have 7 slots that can be filled with a tradition tree of your choice. The number of tradition trees will be expanded, and previous tradition-tree swaps will be broken out into their own trees (Adaptability will no longer be a swap of Diplomacy for example). Some new tradition trees will also be added to existing DLCs.

This sounds fantastic, and something I've wanted for a long while. I hope there's a balance and/or flavour pass on the currently existing traditions, though, because while some are wildly useful for nearly every empire -- Expansion and Supremacy have basically no dead picks, almost regardless of where the game state is -- others have either garbage picks that you only take for the eventual AP (Diplomacy, Domination) or have traditions that suggest very peculiar things about your empire.
 
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Awesome news! Really excited about this, it's exactly what Stellaris needs!

If I could suggest one potential improvement to this it would be to consider a shorter release cycle.

I work on a software product that also releases free updates, and each of these draws attention to our paid offerings and convinces some people to purchase.

However what we've noticed is that the amount of people purchasing doesn't linearly correlate to the size of an update. An update twice as big may only convince 1.5 times as many people to purchase something new.

So releasing more smaller updates not only reduces the risk of bugs and regressions as there are far fewer interactions but, for us at least, has also had a very positive impact on sales.

Every update means renewed attention and thus a renewed chance at sales.

For a simple example, I think a patch with as the most major feature being necrophage hives would already be enough to convince many people to start a new playthrough, many streamers to make content for it and many to consider buying the relevant DLC to enable or enhance ( Nemesis especially would combine well ) that playthrough.

That patch just needs a few additional bug fixes and it's already great. Adding more will just draw attention away from other features, many players and streamers would focus on only one of the major new things and after that forget about the others.

Whereas if another feature was to be released on it's own 2 weeks later ( say the artificer civic ) it'd get more attention and thus have more impact.
 
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