Brutal Honesty from a game developer, this is whats wrong with stellaris.

[moridin84]

This doesn't make any sense.

One could rack hundreds of hour of early games because he likes the initial phase of discovering the galaxy, then drop every playthrough as soon as he discovers it, because midgame is intolerably boring to him. Another guy could have racked up hours just for achievements because he is a completionist. Some others could have sunk many hours just to try and see if the game was worth the money spent on it, and then drop it. Another important factor is the sheer number of patches/DLC that allow a player to try new things quite ofted, maybe hoping the new features will ease midgame boredom, then discovering they don't and dropping the game again.

I would actually understand how frustrating someone might find this. Play the 2-3 of hours of Stellaris, get bored and start again.

So frustrating that I would consider the type of person actually willing to do it, 50 or 100 times, insane. After all, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I think a normal person would just uninstall Stellaris and play something else.

Do, please, tell me more about how my lengthy experience makes one somehow LESS perspicacious than a n00b.
One feels that such an assessment may be somehow... self-serving.

My point is that some posters are very exaggerated in their complaints. And it's rather silly.

I think it's fine to dislike parts of Stellaris and complain about it. Within of context that there are a lot of aspects of Stellaris that you like, since logically it doesn't make sense that you'd keep playing otherwise.

I think this thread is a good one to make these comment due to the condescending and exaggerated tone of the OP. Starting with the title but even in the post it's like

friendly heads up to Paradox (A forum thread not a conversation with the developers)
Horrendously stupid AI (Very exaggerated)
killed the enjoyment for so many people (Also exaggerated)
continue to enjoy for years and years after their purchase (You're still playing it after three years)
Once you hit that mid game, there is nothing engaging for the player anymore than to mindlessly start wars and take over the galaxy in one boring war after another (Nothing? At all? So is the only worthwhile thing in the game exploration?)
Stellaris to truly dig itself out of the rut it's been in for the last 4 years several (In a rut? It's a dramatically different game from launch)
You have the pieces of a game to stand the test of time here.. A jigsaw puzzle of a great piece of art, it's just a matter of putting them together in the right order. (...)

 

[LWE]

I guess they could find the exploration minigame fun? I wonder how Stellaris will play if you set endgame date at 2300 with a weak Crisis. I may write an AAR about it.

There’s some idealization of other games going on, I think... the “wonderfully distinctive factions of ciV” or “meaningful peace in older Paradox games” thing.

 

[sillyrobot]

This doesn't make any sense.

One could rack hundreds of hour of early games because he likes the initial phase of discovering the galaxy, then drop every playthrough as soon as he discovers it, because midgame is intolerably boring to him. Another guy could have racked up hours just for achievements because he is a completionist. Some others could have sunk many hours just to try and see if the game was worth the money spent on it, and then drop it. Another important factor is the sheer number of patches/DLC that allow a player to try new things quite ofted, maybe hoping the new features will ease midgame boredom, then discovering they don't and dropping the game again.

Having a lot of hours in a game doesn't mean it can't be a boring game.

I agree with the rest of your post, though.

I do this. I've never finished a game to the point of actually meeting a crisis. The games are getting shorter in years as well. My current game hit 2335 before I stopped (1,000 stars, 5x planets, 3 AI empires, 4 FEs). Under 1.9, I typically went about 100 years farther before giving up in boredom.

The exploration / initial expansion / initial war phase is fun. Mid game consolidation is tedium boiled over.

I pick up Stellaris less frequently than I used to, but still try different things from time to time. But then again, I still play the original Master of Orion and Master of Orion 2 from time to time as well.

 

[LWE]

I pick victory year as 2450. I guess you could try picking it as 2350...

 

[sillyrobot]

I pick victory year as 2450. I guess you could try picking it as 2350...

Why? It takes another 50 years for the crisis to hit, minimum. It's not like a crisis in 2400+ is going to get seen. I could set it for 2250 I suppose, but without a midgame consolidation, it's not like my forces would stand a chance anyway.

The crises have been broken for exactly how many patches now? I don't think I'm missing much.

 

[LWE]

It usually takes far less than 50, in my experience. I set the Victory Year at 2450, and it hits around 2440 (in my Plantoid game it hit at 2432). The crises work all right nowadays, with only minor issues. Their being "broken" is exaggerated. You can just set it to 0.25x strength.

I wonder how do those who consider Stellaris boring play any game from the EU series. I guess they don't.

 

[sillyrobot]

It usually takes far less than 50, in my experience. I set the Victory Year at 2450, and it hits around 2440 (in my Plantoid game it hit at 2432). The crises work all right nowadays, with only minor issues. Their being "broken" is exaggerated. You can just set it to 0.25x strength.

I wonder how do those who consider Stellaris boring play any game from the EU series. I guess they don't.

LOL look at my tags. I own Stellaris and Utopia, CKII (which I got for free as part of a promotion), the original CK (the first game I tried from Paradox) and EU:Rome Gold. I lke CK, don't much like EU:R and didn't even try the rest of the series.

 

[moridin84]

I do this. I've never finished a game to the point of actually meeting a crisis. The games are getting shorter in years as well. My current game hit 2335 before I stopped (1,000 stars, 5x planets, 3 AI empires, 4 FEs). Under 1.9, I typically went about 100 years farther before giving up in boredom.

The exploration / initial expansion / initial war phase is fun. Mid game consolidation is tedium boiled over.

I pick up Stellaris less frequently than I used to, but still try different things from time to time. But then again, I still play the original Master of Orion and Master of Orion 2 from time to time as well.

... I can understand getting tired of a game with 1000 stars, 5x planets and only 3 AI empires.

With 5x planets, you have to suffer massive micromanagement or terrible auto build. With 1000 stars turns are probably slower and it takes ages to travel from different sides of the galaxy. And with only 3 AI empires (fallen empires don't matter much) there's not a lot going on in the galaxy.

 

[LWE]

I play 400-800 stars, 1x guaranteed habitable worlds, 1-2 extra AI's over default, 1 extra Maradeur. Although I doubt it's going to help much to someone who dislikes the overall gameplay save exploration.

 

[sillyrobot]

... I can understand getting tired of a game with 1000 stars, 5x planets and only 3 AI empires.

With 5x planets, you have to suffer massive micromanagement or terrible auto build. With 1000 stars turns are probably slower and it takes ages to travel from different sides of the galaxy. And with only 3 AI empires (fallen empires don't matter much) there's not a lot going on in the galaxy.

I play with a lot if different settings though 1,000 stars is overwhelmingly common and 5x habitable is typical. Pre-economic update, 5x habitable was quite tolerable; by the time slowdown was happening, you could pre-build a colony and drop it into a sector for upgrade/handholding. Since not so much.

My last game I went 'Tall' for me -- by 2300 I had less than 100 colonies and only 1400 empire sprawl. I hit about 90 colonies when I stopped. Exploration was complete. I had fought 2 wars; exterminating the fanatic purifiers and the spiritualist FE that declared war on me. The other 2 empires were moderately friendly and though I expected relations would sour a little bit now that border friction was becoming a thing, I was looking at a few decades of peace just constructing buildings, shuffling pops, constructing gateways wilth most of my Influence, building even more battleships to sit idle, building new colonies as space became necessary, and clicking on whichever repeatable tech pops up as research completes.

Star count doesn't affect speed much. Pop count and ship count on the other hand can feel crippling,

Normally, I have a lot more empires 12 - 24 or so depending on the game. I wanted to (a) maximize my exploration and (b) hoped I'd get a DE of other snowball empire to have larger fights with once we struck. (a) worked fine. (b) not so much.

 

[deeze03]

People don't get over 1k ingame hours in boring games. And midgame Witcher is boring, so Stellaris must not be. Mm, ok.

I have 567 hours playing and I've only actually finished the game once and I didn't enjoy it. Eventually I reach a point where I've explored everywhere and am dominating everyone and it just becomes a repetitive slog. So I usually play for however many hours I feel like that day, and maybe the next, and then next time I start a new game with a new species with different traits and try different ascension perks, etc. I absolutely love the idea of more tiers of exploration (a-la Endless Space only better). You could add tiers of archaeological sites and tiers of precursor discoveries to that. Tie that to an expansion on later game techs that allow for more options in megastructure upgrades and fallen technologies along with a broader range of techs tied to your ascension path and maybe even the abilities to combine ascension paths in some way. Hive minds that can ascend into machine empires. Gene ascension that allows you to morph your society into a hive mind, maybe tied to the new Boal precursor line. Spiritual machine empires that come to worship the cybrex or the infinity machine or the L-gate builders. It's a great game but it could be so much more.

 

[FinellyTrained]

I guess, I will include this into my signature:

General recommendation to all people who have ever uttered the words "i am sitting there doing nothing waiting the crisis" is to increase the difficulty in settings. If you are getting bored you obviously have more skill, than your current settings provide the challenge for.

 

[Rinholm]

I have 567 hours playing and I've only actually finished the game once and I didn't enjoy it. Eventually I reach a point where I've explored everywhere and am dominating everyone and it just becomes a repetitive slog. So I usually play for however many hours I feel like that day, and maybe the next, and then next time I start a new game with a new species with different traits and try different ascension perks, etc. I absolutely love the idea of more tiers of exploration (a-la Endless Space only better). You could add tiers of archaeological sites and tiers of precursor discoveries to that. Tie that to an expansion on later game techs that allow for more options in megastructure upgrades and fallen technologies along with a broader range of techs tied to your ascension path and maybe even the abilities to combine ascension paths in some way. Hive minds that can ascend into machine empires. Gene ascension that allows you to morph your society into a hive mind, maybe tied to the new Boal precursor line. Spiritual machine empires that come to worship the cybrex or the infinity machine or the L-gate builders. It's a great game but it could be so much more.

Now Im not against new features but if your getting to the point of completely dominating the galaxy before your victory date every game then why havent you scaled back your victory date? Games of Stellaris are only as long as you make them.

 

[AlanC9]

I play with a lot if different settings though 1,000 stars is overwhelmingly common and 5x habitable is typical. Pre-economic update, 5x habitable was quite tolerable; by the time slowdown was happening, you could pre-build a colony and drop it into a sector for upgrade/handholding. Since not so much.

If I played with those settings, I would expect the midgame to get tedious.

 

[LWE]

I guess, I will include this into my signature:

General recommendation to all people who have ever uttered the words "i am sitting there doing nothing waiting the crisis" is to increase the difficulty in settings. If you are getting bored you obviously have more skill, than your current settings provide the challenge for.

Even when the game as a whole is challenging enough, there's still around 30 boring pre-crisis years for me. It's not that much, anyway.
Mind you, there are people who totally dominate the galaxy at Glavius Grand Admiral.

 

[FinellyTrained]

Ok, don't take anticrisis perk, don't take ascension, limit yourself to 5-6 perks only and bet yourself, that you can end x5 crisis in 10 years, after you give them 10 years to develop. Should make for a pretty pressing lategame. But if that fails to entertain you, you can always move that endgame slider 25 years to the left.

 

[the glory of plain]

the real problem are the old useless content that will never be take out of the game
like build hundreds of starbase one by one
than build research and mining station one by one
in a 400 system galaxy it will be more than 2000 click
give every player carpal tunnel syndrome

 

[LWE]

There is "build all research" and "build all mining" buttons, and you won't have to build everything in a 400 system galaxy, unless you're playing with no AI at all.

 

[Rinholm]

the real problem are the old useless content that will never be take out of the game
like build hundreds of starbase one by one
than build research and mining station one by one
in a 400 system galaxy it will be more than 2000 click
give every player carpal tunnel syndrome

Are you playing with no ai, because you dont have to build things you take through conquest.

 

[FinellyTrained]

Are you playing with no ai, because you dont have to build things you take through conquest.

There is a difference of opinions on this. Some people prefer to just build everything themselves, than trying to make sense of the spoils of war (these are the people, who tend to use world crackers to avoid dealing with conquered planets ).