They are also a company that took my money and gave me a defective product. Money that I also had to work to earn. Including btw over the holiday season. Going back to 2.1 doesn't really work as a solution. Not when I have already bought the expansion. You want me to say that I take issue with the company policy that rushed this release out in that state just to win a few extra sales during the Christmas season? Fully aware that their people are about to take several weeks off? You want me to say that it's not personal, since I can't know who in particular made that call? Fine, I will state the obvious. It's not personal, I am mad at the company for treating me, the customer this way, not for individual people taking their legal holidays. But still the sigh is there. And it's a big one.
I can tell you how slow it was in the late game for me, since I actually timed it. It took me ~2 minutes for a month to pass. My specs, as I have stated before:
i7 8700k, 32GB RAM, 1080GTX, Samsung 960Pro
I have by now given up on that run.
Calculate out how much money you'd spend to go to a concert, a restaurant, a social event, etc. and compare the dollar per hour rate of those things to the dollar per hour rate of Stellaris. Stellaris is a fucking STEAL. The fact that they've produced this much content over two years for, what, $150 base game + DLC (the latter is optional for all players), potentially a lot less if you get it on sale, means you are getting a huge amount of entertainment value for basically nothing.
The game is offered with no warranties or guaranteed support. There is software in the world that does that, and it costs a lot of money. The company I work for does that, and we will drop everything to make sure even small bugs are fixed because people are literally paying us for that guarantee. We have a contract with them and the details are spelled out and read over by lawyers. Stellaris is sold as-is. You don't like it, then don't play it or don't buy it. You aren't guaranteed to get perfect performance, perfect balance and no bugs. They never promised that. Indeed, they can't promise that, certainly not for the small amount of money you're paying for it.
And finally, let's still remember that this is a GAME. This is not a life-saving drug, a critical medical procedure, a car part, a fix to a part of a house, or even food. It's an entirely unnecessary part of life that you, having disposable income that you do, have the privilege to enjoy aside from all of the other important things in life. That means you should get some perspective and realize that whether or not Stellaris is buggy at some point in time really just doesn't matter that much. Get the fuck over it. Seriously.
Going back to 2.1 absolutely works. You don't get MegaCorp, but you get a game that functions for you and you get most of the content you've paid for. Don't whine to me about the $19 bucks you dropped on MegaCorp as if you've been screwed out of your family inheritance. Where I live, that's two meals eating out. Get over it.
All that said, I wish they had waited two more months to let this bake. It's clear they had a deadline set, probably by management, and they were never going to make it with the size of changes in the game. I think we'll get there, as we have before, but it'll take until late January or February for it to be less rough. Management being management, this will probably not change. It sucks.
