How can so many major game aspects be broken?

[Madzai]

Be transparent and tell the community what went wrong and how and when you'll fix things. Paradox used to be all about open communication but that seems lacking at the moment.

It's quite obvious that went wrong. It's the team of around 15 people (taken from a reddit post of PDX employee, about average team size) not being enough to fix the game and add new content at the same time. Or to do one of those, if you think about it seriously. And it's quite obvious even without those inside info, it clear as a day that there is not enough people in all aspects. Like those "we can't add more art since our artists are busy elsewhere".
The question is why it's so. Do they really pay so much money in taxes and other stuff in Sweden that they can't hire more, even if their games now sale in million copies and games they Publish are mostly successful?

This constant cycle of refining a system for years only to completely knock it down and start over has damaged the game in a fundamental way that I don't think it will ever truly recover from. It seems like these builds aren't even tested, sometimes, because some of these oversights are so obvious that the community catches them almost immediately.

And i was telling people that those changes should be in Stellaris 2, while for Stellaris 1 they should experiment on less groundbreaking aspects. But, again, it seems they just can't support Stelleris 1 and develop second version at the same time. Even if real development to start in like end of 2019.

 

[MrMess85]

It's quite obvious that went wrong. It's the team of around 15 people (taken from a reddit post of PDX employee, about average team size) not being enough to fix the game and add new content at the same time. Or to do one of those, if you think about it seriously. And it's quite obvious even without those inside info, it clear as a day that there is not enough people in all aspects. Like those "we can't add more art since our artists are busy elsewhere".
The question is why it's so. Do they really pay so much money in taxes and other stuff in Sweden that they can't hire more, even if their games now sale in million copies and games they Publish are mostly successful?

Then the fault lies in poor project management. Set realistic goals an work to achieve them. If it means lowering the potential of Stellaris then fair enough, if it results in a playable game.

 

[Madzai]

Then the fault lies in poor project management. Set realistic goals an work to achieve them. If it means lowering the potential of Stellaris then fair enough, if it results in a playable game.

It won't work out with such a small team. They'll need a lot of time for bug-fixes and developing new content. It will be like one major update per year. PDX game just won't work this way. They are built upon hyping new stuff right after latest DLC\patch is released. It may be a wrong approach while their game are as big and complex as they are now (and Stellaris also being a new thing for them), but they refuse to change it and also refuse to expand their teams. The question is: why?

 

[Wolfgang I]

The only important thing is sales and I suspect things are working out ok for Paradox.
For PR reasons MP is most important because that seems to be the kind of lets play people enjoy the most.
They do not seem to care at all about people who enjoy non-sandbox/RP single player.
I suspect most people quit after an AI or a crisis takes a few systems but usually you only notice afterwards how broken the AI is.
If you enjoy conquering a galaxy, which is not fun at all now thanks to the planet management mechanics unless you go full purge, and can deal with a slightly broken AI I think sticking to the last patch before 2.2 is the way to go though if you would like to avoid mods.
I think that most players do not need an AI which is a threat to enjoy this game. I mean most players enjoyed 2.0+ and the choke point mechanics alone crippled the AI in my eyes.
I would not expect a proper AI/crisis fix only some kind of band aid fixes.
I mean the AI still seems to decide some things with the old border system in mind. AIs with the dominator characteristic still send fleets and troop transports to pre-FTL planets outside their borders for example.

 

[AlanC9]

They do not seem to care at all about people who enjoy non-sandbox/RP single player.

Not sure about that. Way too many features in the game can't be used in MP because they'll kill your competitiveness. And yet, they're in the game.

 

[Wolfgang I]

Not sure about that. Way too many features in the game can't be used in MP because they'll kill your competitiveness. And yet, they're in the game.

Most of that stuff is only viable in SP if you play a sandbox game in which the AI is no threat which even GA with only advanced start AIs is now.

 

[ragehavoc]

paradox release policy is quantity over quality, havnt bought a dlc for a very long time because of it, the irony is, the new ceo said they wont be releasing "buggy unfinished games anymore", back in july, and yet here we are. its interesting how this company is smaller than say EA, but is way worse in its greediness.

 

[Spyhawk]

It won't work out with such a small team. They'll need a lot of time for bug-fixes and developing new content. It will be like one major update per year. PDX game just won't work this way. They are built upon hyping new stuff right after latest DLC\patch is released. It may be a wrong approach while their game are as big and complex as they are now (and Stellaris also being a new thing for them), but they refuse to change it and also refuse to expand their teams. The question is: why?

Here's a potential reason: nine women won't give birth to a single baby in a month. In the same way, bigger teams don't necessarily produce better results. At each team size increase, you also increase overhead and inefficiency. Projects become harder to manage, coordination can become more erratic and so on. I don't count "artists" in this since their work doesn't directly affect the state of the game but you get the idea for programmers. If you want to move fast and be flexible, you have to be (relatively) small. Agile methodologies are more suited for smaller teams.

The current management issue is imho more due to lack of realistic priorities, too tight budget constraints, technical debt, lack of long term vision for the game, and greater focus on milk milking.

 

[Arnovitz]

The last version of the game that has been truly unified in design, with everything working more-or-less as intended was 1.9. I'm not saying the 1.9 mechanics were better, but taken as a whole, the the game simply achieved a better symbiosis between all its moving parts in 1.9 than it ever has since.

When 2.0 came out, there were a lot of problems. To the point that people here, on reddit, and on the steam forums told me to come back in six months when they'd be fixed. It's now been a year, and it feels like the developers have no actual vision for what they want Stellaris to be.

Any given system that was introduced post-1.9 could work in a vacuum. New war and white peace, the market, piracy, static defenses, new planetary management, and new sectors. All of them could be refined to be solid... on their own. The problem is not the systems and mechanics themselves -- the problem is that PDX has seemingly given zero thought as to how these systems interact with each other and how one problem can have a butterfly effect that breaks other parts of the game. This is no more obvious than it is when we look at how the AI has been on a steady descent ever since 2.0 launched. Each major patch has damaged the AI worse, because they simply cannot juggle all of these systems at once in such a way that lets them succeed.

But you see it other places, too. This planet overhaul has lead to odd changes in certain playstyles (you can see all the posts here about robot empires, fanatic purifiers, etc.). It's made ascendency perks less useful or even out-and-out useless and harmful.

This constant cycle of refining a system for years only to completely knock it down and start over has damaged the game in a fundamental way that I don't think it will ever truly recover from. It seems like these builds aren't even tested, sometimes, because some of these oversights are so obvious that the community catches them almost immediately.

Making a good system isn't good enough if it sucks when it's combined with the rest of the game. There are tons of interesting mechanics that you could add, but they have to go well with everything else. The new planetary system is excellent example of this. In a game about managing planets and nothing else it would be pretty good. But Stellaris isn't that game. When you add it to Stellaris, you just get an insane amount of micro that takes your attention away from so many other parts of the game. Stellaris has become a Frankenstein game of disparate mechanics, instead of a harmony of systems that all contribute to one, unified whole.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that this has been the worst year for Stellaris when it comes to reviews on Steam. Every DLC has stayed at "mixed", and the main game has had its main review score fall ever since 2.0 came out, with big batches of bad reviews coming in with each subsequent update. At what point do you stop blaming the audience, and start acknowledging that something is going wrong with the direction of the game? I don't think it's unfair to call 2.2 and 2.2.3 "unplayable" with how badly performance and AI have tanked.

Every update, I find myself inevitably going back to 1.9. The game simply worked better then than it has since. I don't even buy DLC anymore because I know that I won't be able to play it after rolling back.

I loved Stellaris, and I want nothing more than for it to get better and improve again. But if 2019 is the same as 2018, I'm just not holding my breath.

I agree with you that these disparate parts don't work well together and weren't given enough thought as to how they would progress with the new redesign. Too many of the DLC entities (e.g., enclaves, caravaneers, marauders) are simply "point and click" for a bonus -- they lack any strategic depth and operate entirely the same regardless of your ethics or actions (save purifiers, swarms, etc.). Indeed, their abilities have changed haphazardly each patch which clearly shows Paradox doesn't really know what to do with them. The war system and diplomacy also remain poorly implemented, but I think we all know the next DLC will be addressing this part.

On the other hand, I strongly disagree with you that the new planetary district system is a bad mechanic. I think it is, in fact, the most important feature that has ever been introduced. Planets can now specialize, buildings matter, and you have to think long-term to make a lot of this happen. Plus, pops add another useful dimension to the Utopian DLC's species rights, even if it is somewhat imperfect at the moment. This "micromanagement" is what makes Stellaris enthralling and more of a grand strategy game where you have to think ahead (e.g., "I need to conquer that big mineral planet from the squirrels to fuel my war machine.").

That said, the implementation of all this has been poor and my thoughts were laid bare a few pages back in this thread. As many have noted, the AI is incapable of using these mechanics well and/or was simply passed off to be fixed on another day (if ever). Performance is worse, not better. And, most maddening, Paradox has once again pushed out another DLC forgoing any polish, open beta, or community feedback. Why leave your customer base with a "broken" product over the holiday season? This shouldn't be happening to a 3-year old game.

 

[Madzai]

Here's a potential reason: nine women won't give birth to a single baby in a month. In the same way, bigger teams don't necessarily produce better results. At each team size increase, you also increase overhead and inefficiency. Projects become harder to manage, coordination can become more erratic and so on. I don't count "artists" in this since their work doesn't directly affect the state of the game but you get the idea for programmers. If you want to move fast and be flexible, you have to be (relatively) small. Agile methodologies are more suited for smaller teams.

As someone working in QA in large software company, i must say "nine women won't give birth to a single baby in a month" saying is over-used and wrong for most part. It's a fairy tale for people who doesn't know how it works. Most of the the things Stellaris (or any other game) lacks, including tech debt can very well be fixed by random people with basic knowledge in the field. Sure, some product require unique approach and unique skills but i don't think it apply to areas Stellaris lack, that mostly are about lack of play-testing (as bugs, balance issues, and feature not working as intended) and following fixes. If like two weeks before release they show us hot code with placeholder art it is an issue.

Also about team size. Sure increasing it may result in issue, but current situation cause issues already. Major ones.

 

[~Robbie]

On the other hand, I strongly disagree with you that the new planetary district system is a bad mechanic. I think it is, in fact, the most important feature that has ever been introduced. Planets can now specialize, buildings matter, and you have to think long-term to make a lot of this happen. Plus, pops add another useful dimension to the Utopian DLC's species rights, even if it is somewhat imperfect at the moment. This "micromanagement" is what makes Stellaris enthralling and more of a grand strategy game where you have to think ahead (e.g., "I need to conquer that big mineral planet from the squirrels to fuel my war machine.").

For sure I think there is a good overhaul somewhere in the new planetary system. I just think the implementation is very wrong, especially within the context of Stellaris.

Giving planets actual depth and meaning is good. The problem with planets as they currently are is that there isn't depth, it's just a lot of management that's disguised as depth. It adds the requirement of many more clicks, but it doesn't provide me with any kind of interesting decision making or strategy. As negative as that sounds, I think it's a good bedrock to build a system that has legitimate depth onto, it's just not that yet. And the tools simply aren't there to make managing the planets interesting or engaging. Take the pop shuffling that lots of folks are talking about: The act of shuffling pops isn't deep or complex, it's just the result of not having good tools or automation to properly manage pops in a way that doesn't require excessive micro.

What we're left with is a planetary system that feels almost like it's from a sim game, where all of your attention has to go to managing planets, more than it feels like a mechanic in a broader strategy game with many other moving parts. And to be honest, it almost feels like it was designed, in part, to pad out the excessive down time that the game has suffered from since 2.0 came along and introduced a lot more time spent waiting.

And again, that may sound negative, but I do think it's a foundation that can be built upon. The question is just the same question I keep asking myself... why do I want to spend another year waiting for this feature to be refined when I can jump back to 1.9 and play the version where everything was working? Because based on PDX's typical development cycle, there is no way the current feature set will be refined for at least six months, possibly a year or more. And THAT is what I'm just kind of... over.

 

[Spyhawk]

As someone working in QA in large software company, [...]
Also about team size. Sure increasing it may result in issue, but current situation cause issues already. Major ones.

I certainly won't dismiss your experience as QA engineer (I myself only worked in small teams, so not first hand experience in big software companies), but I guess what I was trying to say here is that increasing the size of the team won't do shit if the underlying management issues aren't taken care of first.

In fact, I'm quite certain they knew the state of the code when they released 2.2, they just choose to release it anyway, or the devs were forced by upper management to do so.

 

[AlanC9]

Most of that stuff is only viable in SP if you play a sandbox game in which the AI is no threat which even GA with only advanced start AIs is now.

I get the feeling we're talking about different stuff. Which stuff are you talking about?

 

[methegrate]

I agree with you that these disparate parts don't work well together and weren't given enough thought as to how they would progress with the new redesign. Too many of the DLC entities (e.g., enclaves, caravaneers, marauders) are simply "point and click" for a bonus -- they lack any strategic depth and operate entirely the same regardless of your ethics or actions (save purifiers, swarms, etc.). Indeed, their abilities have changed haphazardly each patch which clearly shows Paradox doesn't really know what to do with them. The war system and diplomacy also remain poorly implemented, but I think we all know the next DLC will be addressing this part.

On the other hand, I strongly disagree with you that the new planetary district system is a bad mechanic. I think it is, in fact, the most important feature that has ever been introduced. Planets can now specialize, buildings matter, and you have to think long-term to make a lot of this happen. Plus, pops add another useful dimension to the Utopian DLC's species rights, even if it is somewhat imperfect at the moment. This "micromanagement" is what makes Stellaris enthralling and more of a grand strategy game where you have to think ahead (e.g., "I need to conquer that big mineral planet from the squirrels to fuel my war machine.").

That said, the implementation of all this has been poor and my thoughts were laid bare a few pages back in this thread. As many have noted, the AI is incapable of using these mechanics well and/or was simply passed off to be fixed on another day (if ever). Performance is worse, not better. And, most maddening, Paradox has once again pushed out another DLC forgoing any polish, open beta, or community feedback. Why leave your customer base with a "broken" product over the holiday season? This shouldn't be happening to a 3-year old game.

I agree so much with everything you said. The overwhelming reliance on pop-up events and rewards to substitute for mechanical depth is probably Stellaris' biggest weakness, and a lot of why I think the most accurate description I've heard of the game is "idler." I once watched an entire movie without a moment of interaction other than to click away the occasional event and unpause the game.

 

[Madzai]

I was trying to say here is that increasing the size of the team won't do shit if the underlying management issues aren't taken care of first.

You're right. But issues with management is a part of approach issue. And it all boils down to the fact that their current approach is become ineffective fast, yet they somehow show no sights of changing it. And it puzzles me. 2018 was a year of major trashing of a lot of GameDev companies. Most of it was quite deserved. Hope nothing of sorts happen to PDX. To me, it looks like they have everything to make things better.

 

[Anemetius]

They never fixed bugs. They just add more (broken) content to hide bugs.

 

[BlackholePD]

I don't think Paradox is some evil conglomerate cackling atop their money piles while laughing at their customers. That's kind of absurd.

I don't really think that the individual staff members/developers are to blame for anything here, and even if they were, I don't want to demonize them. After all, we are only talking about a video game, and despite how some people might act, it's not actually that big of a deal in the scheme of things...

That said, I am still not happy, but I think the blame here lies with the corporate structure and pressures, and improper resource management. I'm sure that we're going to get fixes, so I'm not too put off in the long term, I just wish that the people in charge of setting priorities would keep these things in mind before they release content before it can be properly finished.

 

[magickware99]

I don't think Paradox is some evil conglomerate cackling atop their money piles while laughing at their customers. That's kind of absurd.

I don't really think that the individual staff members/developers are to blame for anything here, and even if they were, I don't want to demonize them. After all, we are only talking about a video game, and despite how some people might act, it's not actually that big of a deal in the scheme of things...

That said, I am still not happy, but I think the blame here lies with the corporate structure and pressures, and improper resource management. I'm sure that we're going to get fixes, so I'm not too put off in the long term, I just wish that the people in charge of setting priorities would keep these things in mind before they release content before it can be properly finished.

I frankly don't see a huge difference between Paradox releasing a buggy game for financial purposes and EA releasing Star Wars Battlefront 2 with a bunch of micro-transactions for financial purposes.

Both are banking on the assumption that their target audience does not care all that much about these things.

And at least Star Wars Battlefront 2 works as intended with no game-breaking bugs (I assume; never played it and didn't read anything about the game being unplayable at launch).

 

[BlackholePD]

I frankly don't see a huge difference between Paradox releasing a buggy game for financial purposes and EA releasing Star Wars Battlefront 2 with a bunch of micro-transactions for financial purposes.

Both are banking on the assumption that their target audience does not care all that much about these things.

I think microtransactions are a little more predatory than broken game mechanics, because they actively seek to further exploit the player. Plus they're an intentional "feature", as opposed to merely the product of lacking development time.

But regardless, I still wouldn't be running up to some hapless programmer at EA and yelling at them about this. They don't make these decisions, it's the corporate leadership that does.

I mostly just don't want this to turn into "let's shit on the Paradox development staff, and then get the thread locked".

 

[magickware99]

I think microtransactions are a little more predatory than broken game mechanics, because they actively seek to further exploit the player. Plus they're an intentional "feature", as opposed to merely the product of lacking development time.

But regardless, I still wouldn't be running up to some hapless programmer at EA and yelling at them about this. They don't make these decisions, it's the corporate leadership that does.

I mostly just don't want this to turn into "let's shit on the Paradox development staff, and then get the thread locked".

You're right; what I wanted to argue is that both are essentially done by the higher-ups who want to see financial profit.

And I do blame the developers for creating a planetary system that their AI cannot handle at even the most basic level (managing the numbers on your planet like amenities and unemployment). Seriously, look at any of the AI planet after the mid 2300. It doesn't know how to deal with these basic game mechanics.