[Dev Team] We're back.

[Onkel_Bums]

Alright, so this thread has been on the watch list since Jamor posted it and I'm all for open, unhindered discourse but let's tone it down a little.

We are always trying to maintain this openness and closeness with the community and try to be as transparent as possible, hence why Jamor posted this thread and let everyone know what is being planned.

There is a finite amount of time and resources available, but prior to release we had extensive QA testing, we played the game live on stream for the Dev Clash on hot code, we have weekly multiplayer sessions internally among the team, staff who are both involved in the project and outside of the project play in their spare time at work and as many issues are caught and fixed as possible. This will never compare to thousands upon thousands of people playing at launch but we're scouring forums, reddit, youtube, twitch, twitter, etc. and trying to address as much as possible. A day before vacations started where most people would think to start winding down, Jamor and his team released a patch to make sure that the community had the best possible version of the game to play over the holiday season. We've specifically allocated and budgeted a large chunk of time - because everything inevitably costs time or money - to fixes as Jamor said in his OP. If this is not enough to show the team's dedication and loyalty to making Stellaris the best game possible then I'm not sure that anything will convince you of this, unfortunately.

The team take great pride in what they do and try to make sure they're servicing those who play the game as much as possible. Trying to give people as much of what they want as can be created in the time that's available. They take time out of their day to interact directly with the community outside of working on the game, giving as much transparency and openness as they can to what's coming. They don't need to do this, but the culture within the team is that they enjoy having the open transparent way of communicating.

The level of lambasting displayed is diminishing that desire to maintain this level of openness. If it continues, the professional recommendation I will make to the team is to disengage from that open line of communication and simply stick to making announcements and patch note posts - relying on a filtered report to get a sense of what the community is saying/doing/reporting. This is not what anyone wants, I expect.

All I ask is you keep the discussion civil and free of toxicity, report issues to the appropriate sections, and if you want to rant and post vitriol on the forums, do it directly to my inbox here on the forum. What I won't stand for is for that to be directed at the dev team who are working tirelessly to give everyone the best game they can.

I think You are confusing some things here. I will try to be as civil as possible, but I think this will be deleted anyway.

The main points of grievances are not aimed at "The Devs", or at any "one Individual", but towards the decision to push 2.2 + Megacorp out in the state it was, regardless of who ever actually made that decision. Since we do not have the information on how this decision was made, and for what motives, your point regarding "transparency" is a bit moot. The way things are being handled are neither transparent, nor are they perceived as being honest, despite what you are pointing out you strive to do;

Warning: polemic language ahead:
All your transparency ambitions aside, a threat to not interact with the community further is one more suboptimal decision in a chain of suboptimal decisions. As I already said, I think an attitude of "taking responsibility for mistakes, evaluate the causes and avoid them in the future" is something that is requested by most people complaining here.
That includes admitting to fault, explain the causes and lay out the measures taken to avoid in the future. It's called "being an adult".
And: "yeah we know it's broken, but we will see how much we can fix in the time we budgeted for it". This. is. a. slap. in. the. face. of. buying. customers. So don't be surprised if you are being called out on that. And with "you", I don't mean anyone personally, but the company as a whole, or the decision-making-organs in particular, whoever that may include.

People were looking forward to playing a game they paid for, including a DLC they paid on top during their holidays. A lot of people were not able to enjoy that to the fullest, because the product is not in a fully functional state. Not only dev time, but also the free time of the people who play your game is valuable, and to be polemic, if you don't honour that, then your attitude needs a reality check: We pay your wages with our money.

Regards.

 

[magickware99]

Alright, so this thread has been on the watch list since Jamor posted it and I'm all for open, unhindered discourse but let's tone it down a little.

We are always trying to maintain this openness and closeness with the community and try to be as transparent as possible, hence why Jamor posted this thread and let everyone know what is being planned.

There is a finite amount of time and resources available, but prior to release we had extensive QA testing, we played the game live on stream for the Dev Clash on hot code, we have weekly multiplayer sessions internally among the team, staff who are both involved in the project and outside of the project play in their spare time at work and as many issues are caught and fixed as possible.

This sounds like a lot of MP. Did the development team do extensive SP testing to see whether the AI can handle the new game mechanics?

Isn't 4-5 runs on observer mode all you need to start getting an idea of how the AI behaves?

Could also do it on the multiple levels of galaxy sizes to get an idea of how performance is too.

 

[Roz]

Even though I don't have that many serious performance issues and did enjoy my time with the patch and DLC in general, I just have to express my disapointement at the way this is being dealt with by Paradox. It's clear by the reaction here in the forums, reddit and the newest Steam reviews that people are not happy with the state of the game and the lacking communication. Some posts in this thread are indeed hard on Paradox and I understand as well that they must be hard to swallow for all the passionate and talented devs in the team. It's a tough situation to be in.

But these are posts made by hardcore fans that are taking time off their day to express feelings about a game they love. Ideally it should be read as symptom of the problem and not as a cause. I would never defend trolls or rude people and they have no place in this thread. But threatening to cut off communication to protect the devs because of vitriol or toxicity, when the vast majority of the posts here are fair (but hard worded) really doesn't pass the best image and intention.

People are looking for recognition of multiple pre-release and release problems, not just a "we're fixing it with the budget we have" response. Obviously allocating a budget to fix everything is a great move, but it says nothing about recognizing that the product was/is broken in multiple parts. And it also doesn't reassure fans/customers about the the attitude for the next Stellaris releases. If the plan moving forward is similiar to this one, then I'm afraid I will stop buying DLC at release and maybe even stop supporting Stellaris in general, since this is starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I sense I'm not the only one thinking and feeling this way.

 

[Leon12]

Yeah, I think we all appreciate the devs and I for one dislike personal attacks and accusations of laziness/greed/etc. I find those sorts of attacks to be quite lazy themselves, and tasteless to boot.

But I think the community agrees that post-release fix time would have perhaps been better used if budgeted as pre-release development time. Of course the exposure of release catches many more bugs and edge cases than QA ever will, but fairly basic things like a borderline non-functional AI and performance issues across many setups ought to show up in testing - I personally would have been happier if Le Guin had been delayed to March rather than released in December with (I'm guessing) three months post-release fix time. It frankly makes me feel like a beta tester who paid for the privilege of beta testing.

That's not to disparage the dedication of the team. It just seems to me (and many others) that Le Guin was rushed for a holiday release with significant issues left unresolved.

Anyway, I do love your work, guys, and mechanically and narratively I think Le Guin knocked it out of the park. It's a shame the release was marred by these technical issues.

 

[Scottbert]

Hey devs, I just wanted to let you know, we're not all full of salt for you. Le Guin's changes make the game much more interesting, and it's unfortunate that there are bugs that especially affect certain playstyles (including my own).

I would 100% prefer to let Stellaris grow into the game it can really be, and not have the devteam feel that they can only make 'safe' changes. These early post-patch times are annoying, but we'll forget the problems when they're fixed, and I believe that in the future people will get more enjoyment and have more fond memories of what Stellaris will become, than if it had stayed pre-2.0 forever.

You could have refused to force us into hyperlanes and refused to abandon the tile system. You could have stopped support except for bugfixes after the first big expansion pack, like some other games. I don't think as many of us would be playing Stellaris now if you'd done that.

Keep up the good work and don't lose hope. It sucks that in this business you pour your heart into projects and so many of the people you make them for yell at you for it; It may be because you made something they can truly care about, but I hope one day being a game dev won't mean taking so much abuse. Despite it all, I still dream of being a game dev myself oneday.

 

[Nyrael]

Thank you, however the dedication of the development team isn't at question (Some people will disagree I'm sure).

The nub of the matter is the launch went ahead despite the condition Stellaris was in. Somebody somewhere was OK to push this out the door, and that is most certainly not ok.

The marketing departments in Gaming Industry are generally like that: they define the Release Date and once the Release Date comes, the Release Date comes. They are annoyingly unflexible that way.

Threatening to cut off communications is just adding fuel to the fire. Lack of communication over the last few weeks being a major reason for much of the annoyance on display. Not to mention that it hurts your brand anyway. Open communication is a selling point, is it not? And besides to echo previous statements. You think I wanna be here complaining, instead of enjoying the game I bought? You don't want to be severely criticized? Don't mess up this bad.

Last few weeks have been "Vacation Weeks" for many European companies, Paradox included (especially since they are in Sweden where minimizing vacations is not really a thing). In other words, nobody worked so naturally nobody said anything in those weeks.

Iam still a bit dissapointed that a company cannot make a clear statemant positions itself behind its (else very good) product. Still it all sounds like "we do some/most stuff, and other will be buggy if time runs out", why cant it be such a good product like CK2 for example?

Ah, the bad memory of Internet Users, who have forgotten that CK2 has gone numerous times through the same crap.

It would still be helpful if someone like the Community Manager could post something like "Hey guys, we will be back around January 7th" beforehand, so we don't sit here and wait for any kind of communication. I'm also European, but still had to work one week earlier than Paradox.

A simple forum search would have given you that answer.

 

[Alastor]

Last few weeks have been "Vacation Weeks" for many European companies, Paradox included (especially since they are in Sweden where minimizing vacations is not really a thing). In other words, nobody worked so naturally nobody said anything in those weeks.

And how exactly does that invalidate my observation?

 

[monkeypunch87]

A simple forum search would have given you that answer.

Show me the official announcement, please.
And it would still not hurt to create a Sticky thread in every subforum.

 

[Olterin]

@badgr

I, and I assume many others, appreciate the dedication of the devs and we all know how much love went and keeps on going into the game. It is clearly a work of love.

This is exactly the reason why we want to see it succeed - much of the criticism levelled is not towards the developers, who very clearly did everything in their power to get as much of a working product to us as they could on the deadlines they had. That's not the problem. The problem lies in said deadlines - it was very clear from dev diaries leading up to 2.2 release that it needed at least another month in development/testing - if previous dev diaries are anything to go by in terms of language used (this can be seen in the thread where people were to guess at the 2.2 release date - consensus was that a mid- to late-january release was the realistic date, given the state of the game shown on stream and the dev diaries posted, people were surprised at the early release). The only time that has not been the case was the "other" big update that also ... accumulated significant technical debt.

The fact that a decision was made to not postpone the release to finish/polish the product those extra two-three weeks is what is putting people off. That is very clearly not a fault of the actual game developers who write code, and as such none of them should be disheartened by the criticism. We want to help, we want the game to be successful. What is being said is that making "early" releases such as this one is hurting said success in the long-term.

 

[wickermoon]

I actually believe that all of this testing effort happened. I won't say you didn't test. I believe you that you did. But the two options are: None of you noticed how bad the game performs come ~2370, or you did notice but decided to release the game in that state anyway.

As many have said, nobody attacks the devs directly. (Hopefully) nobody is hating on any person. But releasing a game in that sorry excuse of a state before leaving for christmas holidays (and it's not like the holidays came as a surprise to you) is audacious. Even I could've told you that this *points around* is what's going to happen. I mean people were expecting a February release. They were okay with waiting another month or two, many said so in these here forums. And still, you just released the game, buggy and massively underperforming (I never had enough trouble with performance to actually complain, up until now), before an extended holiday season, knowing full well the state of the game. And then you're surprised to find out that people got angry. And not enough of the audacity, you tell them that they should be grateful that you released a beta patch to something that shouldn't have been released this early.

I'm not even blaming Jamor. He and his team probably did all they could to assure quality and help with the suffering this patch has brought. But you come in here, tell us we're all ungrateful for having received a patch to something that shouldn't have been released in the first place, and threaten us with lowered community interaction. That is the most aggravating thing.

I don't want much, but what I want is a game I can play that isn't aggravating me but because reacting to anything is just an annoying pain.in.the.ass. because every click takes ages. I got a robot rebellion today, just minutes ago, that was so feeble it was a bit of an annoyance but nothing big. Had to shift my fleets from the war to my own territory. But it was one of the most annoying experiences, because of how the game performed.

I love the new planet system and even the trading system, although lackluster as it is. I actually like most of the stuff that comes with the patch and DLC. I could complain about a thing or two, but in the end, I'm happy with how it works. It's engaging and keeps me engaged. But with the current performance, I am loath to load an advanced save. I am loath to even start Stellaris/ a new game knowing full well that I will not be able to enjoy the late-mid-game and everything thereafter.

 

[Major Chaos]

How do you know they got the message?

How could they not with all the critical posts. But that does not mean they agree or will do anything other than what they said they would do.

 

[BigPony]

I concur. I think the vast majority are on board with changes made and appreciate how much more in depth the game has become.

We just want what we both hoped for AND paid for to work out.

If nothing else, I think this entire affair should really lead PDX to consider either early access to DLC or full on community Beta Testing.

 

[Razzlie]

The time and budget allocated to the fixes in the first part of this year is to address that very thing. Business practices are always a point of contention in the the community (both from PDX games and the wider gaming community) and getting into that debate is always going to be a difference of opinion. The team have identified this as an issue and have made sure time is allowed from all levels of the company to ensure that the quality of the game is improved through fixes and quality of life improvements to the game.

Assurances of this level cannot be made beyond that, but it's something that is actively being reviewed. The fact that we have allocated the resources necessary for that should - hopefully - show that this is on the minds of the company.

But how much time has actually been assigned to fixing 2.2?

Just curious.

 

[MaXimillion]

The level of lambasting displayed is diminishing that desire to maintain this level of openness. If it continues, the professional recommendation I will make to the team is to disengage from that open line of communication and simply stick to making announcements and patch note posts - relying on a filtered report to get a sense of what the community is saying/doing/reporting. This is not what anyone wants, I expect.

If your response to criticism for a botched release is digging your head in the sand and pretending there's no problem, I don't hold high hopes for the future of the game.

 

[Major Chaos]

This is like a boxing match between a guy with long arms and a guy with short arms. The guy with long arms holds the guy with short arms back but the guy refuses to stop swinging even if he is just swinging in the air.

I'm trying for the most disagrees award.

 

[danfarnsy]

I'm all for open, unhindered discourse but let's tone it down a little.

The level of lambasting displayed is diminishing that desire to maintain this level of openness.

Lambasting?

I'm sorry, what? Your customers pay for a broken release, get broken patches, and then it's toodles for the extended Swedish Christmas while your customers DONATE THOUSANDS OF HOURS OF THEIR OWN TIME TO TROUBLESHOOT A GAME THEY ALREADY PAID FOR. AGAIN. And you want to lecture us about how we need to tone it down or Jamor won't want to talk to us? You make it sound heroic that they're going through the forums/reddit/youtube, but HOW DID ALL THOSE REPORTS GET THERE?! And then tell us these things cost time and money? REALLY? Do you think the people WHO ARE THE SOURCE OF ALL THE MONEY you get (and some you don't), who willingly donate their many hours of time for QA testing and bug reporting, need to be told about how heroic you are because you've scheduled time to fix what never should have been broken? End game crises, for crying out loud, were commented out with TODO lists! Pop jobs were butchered in copy/paste sloppiness. Glavius just spent his vacation, while you were on your own, fixing the thoroughly broken AI of your game (multiple updates/tweaks per day). Now that's heroic.

I'm grateful you're back. I'm excited to see some progress on the test and official branches, when it comes. In the meantime, please give some recognition how valid your customers' frustrations are. Something that might make us think you give a crap about what it means that we're giving you our hard earned money, where that money comes from, and that when we're upset, that means something to you. Also, some gratitude is due from PDX for the customers who worked so hard to put so much bug information together during vacation. That's a lot of tireless work, too, donated, for everybody's benefit. This community is wonderful. Hard to beat. Incredibly willing to pitch in and make the game better (supporting your team). And all you see is lambasting. Y'all did something wrong. Let people be upset about it for a bit. Then move forward and fix it.

 

[Knotz]

Polite, well-articulated criticism gets labelled as toxic and deleted along with the inarticulate screeching. That isn't fair but okay, it's not my house and I don't make the rules. Couple it with the seeming disinclination to acknowledge the current state of the game and validate the feelings of the playerbase, it wouldn't take a lot just a "Yeah, everything is on fire but we'll fix it. Our bad, sorry" instead of corpspeaking into somehow making it sound like a strength + talking about transparency and community while at the same time deleting any comments that aren't borderline servile, as if equitable transparency can exist when you can't express your discontent without apologizing, qualifying and pausing to praise in every other sentence + offloading the source of the problem to the community (ie a diffuse collection of people many of whom aren't participating in or contributing to this in any capacity) + threatening to retract dev interaction = something that vaguely resembles gaslighting.

Very megacorp-y tho so props for being apropos.

 

[badgr]

I'm not going to reply or quote anyone directly, because several of you have mentioned this and I already write walls without quotes padding the post...

I maybe communicated a little bit in a rushed manner and didn't convey exactly what I meant. Sorry about that.

There is a time and place to bring up feedback and concerns regarding overall business practices and how we handle DLCs and releases, but I don't believe this to be the place. In a thread where Jamor outlines some of what we're doing in the immediate future which was a result of feedback from the community, to have what is essentially "you didn't do a good enough job with this release" on this very thread hits hard to the people working hard on the game. It hits hard whether that was the intent or not.

100% hold us accountable for business practices. 100% let us know when you're dissatisfied and want to see a change. It would just be good not to do this on a thread that is to let people in on what we're planning to do, though.

Now, DLC release practices, betas, testing times, pricing, and higher level business decisions: I have made note of these over the past couple of months. It's certainly not a new topic, but not something I can personally give assurance on. Important topics, nonetheless, just not right here in this thread imo. We cannot retroactively go back and delay MegaCorp and 2.2.x patches, but your dissatisfaction isn't ignored. The quality of life/fix phase is something that came from that. The bigger decisions I can't promise because then I'd just be talking out of my ass. If we can make major changes to the way we operate this year, we'll communicate that.

Again, sorry if my previous messages perhaps came across as aggressive, that wasn't the intent. It was meant as a way to make sure comments that are likely to affect the morale and motivation of the team are still able to be given without causing detriment to that motivation. You can definitely @ mention me any time, or inbox me directly.

 

[danfarnsy]

@badgr

Thank you.

 

[OfficerBrennan]

Where is the correct place to highlight PI's overall business practice?

Just so the mistakes realised with this release doesn't happen again.