Looks like AI and performance are in the shitters again

[WhapXI]

I see what your saying but let me say somethings about each of your points...

I don't disagree with anything you're saying. There's definitely something not working well here. Like I say, I'm not calling him a liar or saying that he's trying to intentionally spread fear. He's sharing his concerns and that's fine and important to do. But there's a lot of context missing. And a lot of people are seeing a reddit post and three screenshots made by a man who admits to not being an overly experienced Stellaris player and taking it as gospel that the game is now ruined.

I'm just trying to balance the doom and gloom that seems to have immediately beset the whole forum.

 

[Knotz]

It's not surprising, the big question is whether the game will be in a reasonable state before the devs go on winter break. It'll be sucky if the game is broken for a month or two. It's odd, CK2 had a reeally long Dev time for HF and it's been a mostly smooth ride with a patch being released this week. I wasn't expecting that long a Dev time to set the tone for all releases but I'm not sure why, if Megacorp really does have such glaring issues, why it wasn't decided to wait until after Christmas when support and patching could be reliably guaranteed.

 

[Ekufa]

Apocalypse ai couldn't declare war unitil first hotfix as far as I remember and also fell into food shortage death spiral so it was pretty broken.

 

[HandicapdHippo]

While a hotfix or two will definitely come for these issues, its entirely possible no major patch is going to come out until after Christmas leaving a bunch of rough edges on the game for ages. CK2's Holy Fury came out on the 13th November and the first patch is scheduled for sometime this week. And the Stellaris overhauls to the core gameplay are even greater than CK2's changes.

From what I recall this wouldn't be the first time they have dropped a release right before a major holiday.

 

[Bayes]

I don't disagree with anything you're saying. There's definitely something not working well here. Like I say, I'm not calling him a liar or saying that he's trying to intentionally spread fear. He's sharing his concerns and that's fine and important to do. But there's a lot of context missing. And a lot of people are seeing a reddit post and three screenshots made by a man who admits to not being an overly experienced Stellaris player and taking it as gospel that the game is now ruined.

I'm just trying to balance the doom and gloom that seems to have immediately beset the whole forum.

I dont know about you, but I got the impression we were all discussing a hypothetical scenario.
It is ok to be dissapointed, we all have different expectations and standards.
If what the reddit post was saying is true and widespread that would mean unprecedented release "borkedness" to alot of us, including me.
I think I could make a good case as to why this is different than your typical paradox release, but in the end it is all relative as you point out so lets just hand wave everything?

 

[Cat_Fuzz]

I'm just trying to balance the doom and gloom that seems to have immediately beset the whole forum.

I would argue though that the 'doom and gloom' exists largely because of this games history with new patches...

I would say though that having the dev clash and releasing the game early to youtubers is a good step to getting a test game out there to patch things up before release.

 

[LuPoNe]

Typically, when Paradox gives streamers/YouTubers advance copies they also put in place a review block up until game release. I wonder if that reddit poster is breaking his NDA by posting a "review" before the release date.

I'm not saying his/her points aren't helpful. They are. He or she probably should've waited a few days before posting the review, depending on what the conditions were for the pre-release copy.

ASpec, to name one, among other content producers, is uploading a series of playthrough of a pre-release version of the new expansion, so I guess he isn't breaking any NDA.

 

[Dr. Chaos]

Drew Durnil "played" an AI only battle (what a surprise!) already with 2.2 megacorp, it looked fine to me, the normal AI empires handled an awekened fallen and the prethoryn after a while. It means that even the fallens and crysis are broken too... or it is not as much of a problem as it seems.

 

[WhapXI]

I dont know about you, but I got the impression we were all discussing a hypothetical scenario.
It is ok to be dissapointed, we all have different expectations and standards.
If what the reddit post was saying is true and widespread that would mean unprecedented release "borkedness" to alot of us, including me.
I think I could make a good case as to why this is different than your typical paradox release, but in the end it is all relative as you point out so lets just hand wave everything?

I guess so. I know that if the AI isn't working in the way the post described then I'll be pretty disappointed. But I know it'll be fixed pretty soon.

There's a hypothetical in the sense that if what he's saying IS true, it doesn't necessarily mean that the AI is broke. There's a lot of context missing that could hypothetically mean that pretty much anything's actually happening, broken or not. It's not exactly a detailed break-down. It could be that it's totally broken and boring to play against, or it could be a perfectly fine non-aggressive Utopian AI. The answer is almost definitely somewhere in the middle.

I'm not suggesting that any issues should be hand-waved. There's a middle-ground between hand-waving any issue and declaring a game fundamentally ruined two days before you're able to play it. Something about the internet elicits extreme reactions from people. I'm just trying to counsel some restraint, and for some rational thought. Nothing is ever as straight-forward as some guy on reddit claims.

 

[WhapXI]

ASpec, to name one, among other content producers, is uploading a series of playthrough of a pre-release version of the new expansion, so I guess he isn't breaking any NDA.

I'd argue there's a difference between a preview LP and a formal written review. Showing something off vs. passing personal judgement.

 

[Calvax]

Drew Durnil "played" an AI only battle (what a surprise!) already with 2.2 megacorp, it looked fine to me, the normal AI empires handled an awekened fallen and the prethoryn after a while. It means that even the fallens and crysis are broken too... or it is not as much of a problem as it seems.

Drew’s game was interesting because like the reddit post for the first few hundred years most empires only had 1-2k in fleet power. However there were a few wars and the combatants ramped up, some of them to multiple tens of thousands of fleet power. It makes me wonder if the AI is prioritising expanding its economy rather than its fleet now and will only build larger fleets when it is threatened.

Video here for those interested

 

[Danarcis]

I'd argue there's a difference between a preview LP and a formal written review. Showing something off vs. passing personal judgement.

Darren has also retracted his post and said that he broke the review embargo.

 

[Aepdneds]

Honestly this doesn't sound so concerning to me after thinking about it twice.

The market is most likely not used because the AI is in the stockpile limit. It would be irritating if the AI would still use the market in the case.

The AI was able to build a stable economy without running out of anything, it only has to get keener to use these resources. This is now playing with variables to find a better solutions, not rewriting the whole code.

From my experience with freezes in earlier versions they were always occurring when a new faction was founded. This was fixed before but we have now more pops but it should still be fixable.

The lack of visibility of the branches in the galactic view on the other side is an annoyance which I am worried more about. While it would be easy to fix, PDox is somehow allergic to any changes regarding the presentation of the map or of introducing new map modes in Stellaris (somehow this was never a problem in CK, HoI or EU. I would be interested in the reasoning why this is handled differently in Stellaris. Even in the Devclash they had problems to find the ruined megastructures, why is there no megastructure map? Searching for a specific rare resource on the map? You have to search it by looking over the map for tiny symbols, no extra map mode)

 

[LuPoNe]

I'd argue there's a difference between a preview LP and a formal written review. Showing something off vs. passing personal judgement.

Yes there could be, but bugs can arise in both cases, and hopefully, get notified to PDX so they know about them.

The reddit post was more of a "bug analysis", in my opinion, rather than "formal written review"

 

[sortulv]

Yes there could be, but bugs can arise in both cases, and hopefully, get notified to PDX so they know about them.

The reddit post was more of a "bug analysis", in my opinion, rather than "formal written review"

If the goal was to have the bugs fixed, the "bug analysis" would have been sent to Paradox, not a forum post on a non-paradox forum...

 

[WhapXI]

The reddit post was more of a "bug analysis", in my opinion, rather than "formal written review"

Quote from the reddit post: "When writing out my list of issues here it was also meant to let PDX know in case they weren't aware of some issues late game."

If it was a bug report, why post it on one of Paradox's biggest public forums on the internet. Bug reports have proper channels. Megaphoning about them and creating a wave of negativity isn't a bug report.

 

[hewhoispale]

Looks like people are wildly speculating from one data point again.

 

[Madzai]

If the goal was to have the bugs fixed, the "bug analysis" would have been sent to Paradox, not a forum post on a non-paradox forum...

And it would also allow PDX to ignore it. Since most of those issue were already know. Now they have to somehow answer at least some of those issues.

 

[The Kombinator]

AI was not always

Spoiler: the following part contains negative feedback on the game

this bad, but the performance was always such. In 1.9 people often argued whether the lowest AI

Spoiler: the following part contains uncomoftable word to certain peple

cheats

, or not, because it was that good.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

While a hotfix or two will definitely come for these issues, its entirely possible no major patch is going to come out until after Christmas leaving a bunch of rough edges on the game for ages. CK2's Holy Fury came out on the 13th November and the first patch is scheduled for sometime this week. And the Stellaris overhauls to the core gameplay are even greater than CK2's changes.

From what I recall this wouldn't be the first time they have dropped a release right before a major holiday.

However the Stellaris team has usually released one hotfix about a week after release, albeit a small one that addresses the most pressing concerns. The actual later bugfixes occur months later, but I'd expect one hotfix before Christmas.