The "AI not building fleets despite having an abundance of resources" issue sounds both more detrimental and simpler to fix than things you're generally talking about.
Looks like AI and performance are in the shitters again
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Think the big problem is that people started being apathetic about Paradox's bad QA policy, this should not be the case ever ...
It's easy to be apathetic though when 2 years down the line and they haven't changed their process it seems since around 1.3. People complained and the criticism was mostly waved away. They still release a buggy first version and get the free QA, and that won't change so long as hasty players are eagerly purchasing tickets on the hypetrain before they know the destination.
You are 100% right, but it's still a kinda bad thing to do because: you are realising a DLC people will pay for, and it's barely playable because the base game AI is somewhat broken. People paid for something that don't really work as intended. You are releasing it because you want people to pay for the aforementioned DLC when they afford it, regardless of the game being actually playable as intended or not.
Do I understand that policy? Yes. It clearly works.
Do i approve of this? No. It isn't really fair. It doesn't matter it's more or less the standard practice in gaming business.
Am i in any way surprised of this? No. Based on earlier big patches, everyone could predict it. That's why i absolutely will never understand "seasoned" players who paid full price for Megacorp DLC when they should have know that the DLC wouldn't be fully playable at release. Chances are it will be a month or more later, and maybe by that time it would be available at discount prices.
Seriously, people, why do you do that?
Just to clarify: i'm a big PDX fan and i bought a lot of their DLC for every PDX game i own.
But i never paid them full price at release because i know how they work, and even if i like to give my money to them, i don't like being """used""" as a betatester while paying full price for "defective" products.
But i never paid them full price at release because i know how they work, and even if i like to give my money to them, i don't like being """used""" as a betatester while paying full price for "defective" products.
I have 4,000 hours of play in Stellaris. I own every DLC except for Plantiods and I got each one at release.
Did I expected a polished unbuggy experience with 2.2? No, no one expected that. But from what I've read so far the single player game will be unplayable. That's a good reason to give "easily enthused" criticism about 2.2
You are selling paradox WAY short. From what I have gathered, making big complex games like these are hard, and they usually (almost always I would say) give you a playable and enjoyable version from day one. If what we heard from the reddit post is true, then this will be the first dlc release I have been a part of that renders the game unplayable to me.
Lets not pretend this is usual paradox procedure, give them more credit than that.
As long as all parties involved are satisfied I don't see a problem. PD gets cost-efficient QA, impatient get the game sooner and patient get the game sooner as well, since thousands of players will find everything faster than a limited QA team.
It's not 1.0 new game from some unknown studio, everyone knows the drill by now.
Yeah man, I've seen the reddit post. Safe to say that it's "doing the rounds" at this point.
Thinking about it critically for just a moment, a few points come to mind.
- I have no idea who this man is. His claims could be spurious. I have no idea. I'm not calling him a liar, but the fact that he's come from nowhere to make this post doesn't do him any favours
- He's looking consistently at one AI empire. This could as easily be a problem with a single AI Personality or the AI from a certain civic or the AI from a certain ethic as anything else. I'd like to see this be a problem with numerous/all AI empires before I start throwing dust over my head and wailing and gnashing my teeth.
- The problem doesn't look that bad. Hear me out. Before we had issues with AI being unable to build an economy and starving/revolting to impotence and death. Now the issue is that the AI can build a robust and well functioning economy (judging by the fact that they're sitting on massive surpluses in spite of mass unemployment) but doesn't care to turn that in to military output or further internal development. It looks like they've fixed the existing issue and the next logical issue has arisen. Calling this unplayable compared to the previous deathspirals that AI empires would regularly find themselves locked in to is a bit much.
- Related to the previous two, did this AI need fleets etc.? There's no mention of ethics or civics, and no detailed look at any planets or job lists. It's a republic so I'm guessing some manner of egal, maybe pacifist. Could be a Utopian Abundance situation where the unemployed produce unity. And that empire is producing a fuckton of unity. Are they being aggrieved by a neighbour and failing to defend themselves? Or do they not need to take part in any arms race? Surely if their unemployed were becoming unhappy criminals, or if the neighbouring mil/phobes were taking their territory, or if the neighbouring mil/phobes were equally unable to build fleets, then that would be worth mentioning? We're missing out on practically every piece of context that could elaborate on the issue, one way or the other.
I thought QA is mostly about preventing issues in first place, not identifying them (that sounds like QC stuff). I got it wrong or in software world they use different terms?
Im usually in here, fighting for paradoxes good name in the forum wars, and somehow, I am doing the same by criticizing their potentially broken release.
I swear, they arent THAT bad, I have been here release after release, seen the forums blow up, while enjoying my perfectly playable game albeit with a couple of bugs here and there.
So, after years and years of day 1 releases, do I expect to yet again get a playable and enjoyable experience from paradox? Damn right I do.
Okay....
Some of those issue i fully expect - like AI. I have absolutely zero expectations for it to work in initial release, at all. At lease, you'll have time to explore all new feature without AI meddling.
Some of those, like performance, make me want to post a snide comment. Because "performance issues" was supposedly one of major reasons to remove tile and POP system.
Some of those, like issues with Slave Market (and Market overall), make me sigh a bit. Because "will it be usable and will anyone actually buy\sell anything on it" was my first thought after i read a DD on Slave Market.
Some of those issue i fully expect - like AI. I have absolutely zero expectations for it to work in initial release, at all. At lease, you'll have time to explore all new feature without AI meddling.
Some of those, like performance, make me want to post a snide comment. Because "performance issues" was supposedly one of major reasons to remove tile and POP system.
Some of those, like issues with Slave Market (and Market overall), make me sigh a bit. Because "will it be usable and will anyone actually buy\sell anything on it" was my first thought after i read a DD on Slave Market.
That's a difference in scale. Not a difference in kind. One man's rough is another man's unplayable. This isn't unacceptable to me. For one thing I haven't actually played it and neither have you. I'm not going to declare anything unacceptable or unplayable until I, yaknow, actually play it.
If one reddit post makes you believe that it's actually literally unplayable and that particular straw has broken whatever camel's back that makes it now unacceptable to you, then don't buy it, boycott Pdox, whatever makes you feel happy. You have no requirement to play this game and no requirement to give Pdox your money. Then slink back in 4-6 weeks when 2.2.2 is out and the game's working fine and we can forget this little freak-out.
You're mad because your excitement for 2.2 has turned to fear that Stellaris is about to explode based on what amounts to hearsay. You need to relax. Remain skeptical of scaremongering. Glaring bugs will be fixed, sooner or later.
Then wait for a hotfix or two before diving in.
I'll be playing at release either way to get a head start on learning the new systems. In the meantime any feedback they receive will be a benefit in the end. Ends justify the means.
My only hope is that a hotfix is able to be released before they break up before the end of the year sorting out the most critical issues.
Then where were you for 1.5+? Almost every update has been buggy on release since then. They even had 1.7 - the bug fix patch which ironically broke the game even more so than 1.6 did. This is not new and people need to lower their expectations. 2.2 will probably be relatively big free around Feb '19, like Apocalypse was around 2 months after its release.
That's the issue though, not all parties are satisfied. I personally find it frustrating as various elements that you like the concept of don't get worked on fully (crisises, factions, unrest and rebellion), or get left in a half-baked status without consideration for months (WiH, robot rebellions etc) because these get left behind in order to make the game semi-functional.
And the purpose of my post was to point out that simply this exists and will do while people pre-order something without really knowing what it will look like on release.
I see what your saying but let me say somethings about each of your points
The person who originally posted in redit is Republic of Play, he has a YouTube channel and a large sub base. That doesn't mean we should automatically trust what he's saying but he's not just a voice coming from the ether.
The one AI empire he cites was (according to him) the largest empire in his game. If other AI empires weren't doing as well but were using the mechanics of 2.2 properly than something is wrong. The AI empire also had 100 years to max out it's resources before he shows them to us.
I've never seen the AI not build fleets unless it lacked resources to do so. That isn't the case here.
I totally agree with you, we should wait and see, but I'm concerned. If these issues are true than the single player game will be unplayable imo.
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I agree with such an approach, but still, some things are disappointing. Like Slave Market, that is a part of paid DLC being useless. As i said already, inability of AI to use it was the first thing that come to my mind after DD about it, meaning it's really basic scenario everyone need to check then implementing such feature. But AI still refuse to use it, even, according to the guy, there were tons of unemployment around so selling those POP could actually save AI from misery( not everyone as it probably limited by ethics).
The AI issue describes sounds like the latest iteration of an AI bug that has plagued Stellaris since the beginning: the Stellaris AI works on a budgeting system, and it has a habit of not allocating enough resources to planetary development. In previous releases browsing any given selection of AI worlds would show worlds with full pops tile blocks and only a handful of buildings, no upgraded ship shelter etc.
It's not normally as... widespread as the Reddit posts describes, though, and seems to have gotten a lot better in the latest release version. I almost never saw it in my more recent games.
I would hope they get this fixed for release, as it sounds game-breaking. Remember that the build republicofplay was using is likely to be quite old, so it's not like they've just this second found out about it and have got two days to fix it.
It's not normally as... widespread as the Reddit posts describes, though, and seems to have gotten a lot better in the latest release version. I almost never saw it in my more recent games.
I would hope they get this fixed for release, as it sounds game-breaking. Remember that the build republicofplay was using is likely to be quite old, so it's not like they've just this second found out about it and have got two days to fix it.
You make it sound like I should feel bad for expected more out of paradox. Maybe instead of lowering my expectations we should hold paradox to a higher standard.
As for 1.3 and on, I use NSC mod and didn't play until the mod was ready. I don't remember any issues like this for Apocalypse or Distant Stars.
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