How can so many major game aspects be broken?

[The Boz]

What now is grinding my gears is that I remember seeing Wiz showcasing the "better performance with the new pop system" in one of the 2.2 dev previews on twitch. And he did it very hush hush and moved on quickly from it - like someone who doesn't anyone to look to closely at what is actually going on.

You can no longer micro them well, so... maybe that?

 

[UltimateTobi]

Well, now the AI becomes non-competitive by 2350 or so instead of 2450, sure. But the AI always fell behind.

I know you can't take mods as a measurement but in my opinion Stellaris' AI should at least be as good as modders can make it (without resorting to cheats).
And in that case, the AI rarely fell behind if you maintained an equal footing (AI developed as long as you did). Of course, if you conquered and started snowballing, no one could stop you. But the same went for the AI. I had one AI snowball on the other side and I did not have a chance to catch up since I was boxed in. (Granted, I don't play min/max. I am no bad player, but I don't micro everything to perfection to quench out every bit of Mineral.)
If a modder can achieve said experience, Paradox can and more.

But now? Modders need to FIX the AI before they can improve. That should not happen. So Paradox needs to fix and improve so modders can build ontop.

 

[AlanC9]

Sure. I was only talking about the vanilla games.

 

[BigPony]

Paradox should just hire Glavius from the AI mod. I just looked at his changelog and it is absolutely stunning how much work he has had to do to get this game even close to playable.

And it still looks like there are quite a few bugs that are beyond even him -- such as the performance.

This has happened before. Many years ago a Company called Gas Powered Games released a game called Supreme Commander. The rest of the game worked ok, it was not nearly the train wreck that Stellaris 2.2 was, but the original ai was .. well.. pathetic. Like the 2.2 ai in Stellaris. The community had a modder step forward and pretty much fixed the ai entirely himself and guess what? GPG hired him. Would be nice to see someone doing basically the same thing for PDX get the same break.

 

[Ramiren]

I'd add my voice to your complaints about AI and bugs, but I haven't been able to play anything past the midgame since December 6th. A month stuck with a game I can't play is attrocious.

 

[Amyntas]

I'm honestly surprised these forums aren't on fire. I am relatively new to Paradox games, Stellaris being my one and only empire game of theirs that I've ever played but this is one of the most botched releases I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing, second only to that time an EVE-ONLINE patch deleted boot.ini from the windows directory.

Had something like this been put out under the umbrella of EA you wouldn't hear the end of it but it seems Paradox game veterans are just.. meekly reiterating the obvious issues over and over again for weeks on end while the developers enjoy their holiday break. Am I to assume things like these are normal and expected, for the game to be practically unplayable if you play solo and only halfway broken if you're engaging in multiplayer for weeks (months?) after release?

The developers have the nerve to make fun of EA and loot boxes when they themselves push a broken update during the holidays to cash in on that sweet december revenue. That they're not on here begging for forgiveness offering up a roadmap to fix Stellaris up from top to bottom is honestly surprising. This is shameful, absolutely shameful. This entire affair has tarnished PDX's rep for a long time to come, I will no longer be recommending Stellaris to anyone until they put in some serious work into how they do business.

They are on fire. There have been threads that voiced true anger. I made one myself. It was picking up steam and then they locked it, presumably because it was too nakedly critical of company policy. Still, the agree/disagree numbers were high enough that I felt content. My message got out and I said what I wanted to say.

Paradox is also blessed with a legion of people who will defend their less popular and blatantly objectionable decisions out of brand loyalty, and those folks do a lot of the grunt work of justifying this PR disaster day to day on these forums.

 

[Ramiren]

They are on fire. There have been threads that voiced true anger. I made one myself. It was picking up steam and then they locked it, presumably because it was too nakedly critical of company policy. Still, the agree/disagree numbers were high enough that I felt content. My message got out and I said what I wanted to say.

Paradox is also blessed with a legion of people who will defend their less popular and blatantly objectionable decisions out of brand loyalty, and those folks do a lot of the grunt work of justifying this PR disaster day to day on these forums.

The steam forums are on fire, and given that's the only place you can voice your opinion on this game without fear of repercussions I'd say that combined with the huge spike in negative reviews is a true picture of the mood in the room.

 

[nuyu]

Endless Space.

I also have Endless Space, but that game are more into Galactic Space Opera. Now I'm craving for Galactic Empire space sim, which is Stellaris could offer, but well...

 

[Beardy-Bard]

i feel the same as most in the forum.
Was on mobile duty the holidays and realy happy that stellaris got an update + DLC (i was one of the ppl who buyed on first day)
i started with Stellaris 2.1 and have other games from Paradox (recognised that after Signing Up on this forum )
So far as i can remember this is the first time that i come in contact with a patch (not addon or DLC) who changes the game nearly completely
i know that i can change back too 2.1 but i did buy Megacorp so maybe i just stop playing Stellaris and search for another.

I normaly trust a company and buy DLCs/Addons when i have good feeling about game and community even if i dont play them right now.
They lost my trust now, like many other companies in 2018
Maybe they have the same problem as many countries in europe right now "lack of skilled employees"

i dont say the dev right now are bad, just maybe too less for that many projects and games running at the same time

iam a bit astonished that the media is so silent about that, isnt that a welcome meal for them?

and btw i think that tread will be locked too

 

[Space Roach]

Not enough time and bugdet put towards increased quality before release, that's how.

Despite a blatant flaw in the management model, players keep buying, so I don't see why management would change anything 'that works' in their business model. Stellaris is very successful from a financial point of view.

That is why I held off on purchasing Megacorp. Will wait for bug fixes, balance patches and a sale.

 

[magickware99]

"Unplayable"'s a bit much. I'm playing it right now, and having a pretty good time. Had to give up on playing large galaxies because of the lag, but smaller ones play fine.

The AI is brain-dead. The AI breaks down soon as it stops finding planets to expand to/starts hitting some actual decision-requiring numbers on planetary management.

You may not notice this until you get to the mid-late 2300s depending on the settings you've set. The best way to find out is to build a sentry array so that you can actually look at their planets.

I'm honestly convinced at this point that folks who say the AI isn't as bad as it sounds is because

They're having too much fun managing their planets to notice how the AI empires are doing.
They haven't gotten into the mid/late game time yet (early-mid 2300s)
They installed the Glavius AI mod before playing a 2.2 game to its conclusion/late-game because everyone kept saying that the AI is brain-dead.

 

[Radix_Sal]

They are on fire. There have been threads that voiced true anger. I made one myself. It was picking up steam and then they locked it,

Same here, they've locked my whine thread because to them it was 'silliness'. My opinion about Paradox is hitting rock bottom when they act like some authoritarian evil government that suppresses all dissent and whomever they do not like. Instead of apologizing and offering for example some discount on the next DLC for those that bought license for this unfinished DLC now they choose the as*hole way.

Yeah I know DLC and 2.2 patch are different things but they've shipped together and every stellaris fan got them together so...

 

[Dust"Dusty"Finn]

Honestly the problem here stems from technical debt

 

[Radix_Sal]

Honestly the problem here stems from technical debt

That should have been made a lot smaller once they moved to 2.0. When you overhaul your product into a new major release you should only be left with a minimal technical debt.

 

[Radu]

Honestly the problem here stems from technical debt

Quite right. They badly need to address the quality of the game. (Bugs, performance, etc)

 

[Ramiren]

Instead of apologizing and offering for example some discount on the next DLC for those that bought license for this unfinished DLC now they choose the as*hole way.

Yeah I know DLC and 2.2 patch are different things but they've shipped together and every stellaris fan got them together so...

Honestly I could care less about a discount, I already paid for the game. My problem is we can't get any sort of fix because they took a month off. I mean that's the biggest insult in my opinion, they decided a holiday they could quite easily have postponed was more important than providing us with a working product. They're haemorrhaging goodwill, paying customers like myself are being banned over nothing and their review scores are tanking all because they've left this wound to fester.

As for the DLC and patch 2.2 being two separate things. I mean it's kind of a moot point. Imagine if we go go-karting, and we're rented Karts only to find the track we're supposed to drive on looks like a meteor hit it. Sure we're paying rental on the Karts and not the track, but we're paying to use a product, and if we're unable to use it that product wasn't described as sold. The kart requires the track for it's use, just as megacorp requires the base stellaris game, the kart doesn't work if the track doesn't work just as megacorp doesn't work if stellaris doesn't work.

 

[monkeypunch87]

What are you talking about? How do you postpone the Christmas Holidays? Between December 24th and at least January 2nd, there wouldn't be any work, that was clear. And I'm not sure how important January 6th is in Sweden.

I'm just wondering when the holiday ends or if it has ended already.

 

[Ramiren]

I didn't say postpone the christmas holidays, but most working class people get christmas day and new years day off, and that's it.

I can forgive them taking the actual holidays off (December 25th & January 1st) even if the game is a mess. But taking an entire month off on top of that is a joke when they could have just taken it after the game was fixed, as a emergency measure.

 

[exi123]

In my business (B2B) i would be recalled to work with a mess like this. Holidays cancelled due to bad management... This happens everyday somewhere. And after the workphase you have to do an internal QA that stuff like this never ever happens again.

 

[monkeypunch87]

I didn't say postpone the christmas holidays, but most working class people get christmas day and new years day off, and that's it.

I can forgive them taking the actual holidays off (December 25th & January 1st) even if the game is a mess. But taking an entire month off on top of that is a joke when they could have just taken it after the game was fixed, as a emergency measure.

Is a gaming studio a working class environment? Wouldn't think so. And my understanding is that in Sweden they do get a lot more days off than me personally in Germany. And a holiday break starting December 23rd isn't a month until today so far.