Losing confidence in the dev team

[Noomie]

Seeing that Wiz is busy working on a complete replacement for the AI rebellion instead of fixing it or working on other fixes for 1.6 after the horrible release and insufficient hotfix, I have now entirely lost confidence in what the dev team is doing.

They are absolutely not hearing the complaints around the current state if the game of this is how they are addressing it.

So much for Jamor saying they busy working on fixes. Instead they're busy making a new crisis.

AI Crisis does need a replacement. It wasn't that long ago that it didn't function, but currently so much is weighed against it ever popping up between empires that'll actually research synths and empires that aren't AI liberators, and lastly on the off-chance it does happen it's the weakest of the three in impact.

These were complaints people have had about AI rebellion for a while because well, everyone has their own favorite rise of evil machines I suppose.

 

[Keltosh]

I have zero problems with them working at repairing the AI rebellion crisis. I want that crisis and I can't have it now. I would like a closer update fixing the worst standing bugs though.

Of course, if the AI rebellion rework ends up being a pay-only DLC, then that's not fine.... We will see.

 

[Aotrs Commander]

I, by no means being a software person, also would nevertheless think it it probably not possible to be working on the bugs all the time (lest things become even more confused); I imagine there has to be at least some time while they have the game tested by the testing folk (especially after last time!) and one imagines that Paradox would rather them chaps and chappeses do something oter than twiddle their thumbs duirng that period.

But this is an uneducated guess, of course.

 

[Nussor]

Instead of fixing the not-really-a-problem issues remaining after 1.6.1 they're addressing longstanding AI issues and a completely defunct crisis, that has been a problem since launch. Damn them!

Dude, draining sectors is still not working.

 

[Shoobs]

Dude, draining sectors is still not working.

There are much more important bugs than something that was a minor QOL update that could have been implemented differently.

 

[Emraldis]

Dude, draining sectors is still not working.

Could be, but that's not a game breaking issue, and not something I ever needed tbh. While I agree that I did probably hyperbolize a bit, I stand by my claim that the game is currently fully playable and enjoyable with only a few minor issues, and I feel like there are less problems now then there were at launch.

 

[Keltosh]

Could be, but that's not a game breaking issue, and not something I ever needed tbh. While I agree that I did probably hyperbolize a bit, I stand by my claim that the game is currently fully playable and enjoyable with only a few minor issues, and I feel like there are less problems now then there were at launch.

Minor, like the AI crippling itself to bits by continuously terraforming its own planets so that the population gets unhappy all the time? I don't enjoy beating a cripple. Or like food shortage not working, so any multiplayer game will consist of people going with zero farms and only building mines and power plants?

Sorry, not trying to be snarky, but these are not minor things. These are things that need fixing.

 

[Emraldis]

Minor, like the AI crippling itself to bits by continuously terraforming its own planets so that the population gets unhappy all the time? I don't enjoy beating a cripple. Or like food shortage not working, so any multiplayer game will consist of people going with zero farms and only building mines and power plants?

Sorry, not trying to be snarky, but these are not minor things. These are things that need fixing.

I don't know about you, but in my games, the AI isn't constantly terraforming, it does so occasionally. So not really a huge issue. Plus since when was -10% happiness a huge deal? And that's an AI issue, and the AI issue is not related to 1.6.1. As for the multiplayer thing, sure, that one can be bad, it's not game-breaking, it's more friendship-breaking, and exploits like that are why I don't play with people who play to win. But yeah, fair point on the second one in some cases. Not something that can't be remedied with some agreement between players before a game though, so not really game breaking IMO.

Also, for the record, I'm not trying to argue that these issues shouldn't need fixing, I'm saying that these issues aren't worth giant complaints when the dev team indicates they are fixing other things as well. I guess what I'm trying to say is "calm down people, wiz isn't the only dev, and I'm sure bugfixing is also still on the list".

 

[Hype]

Because you don't notice the bug it's not a huge issue? Maybe you can ignore it but that does not mean it's not happening. I don't know what the Devs are doing, but they are certainly not fixing all the broken stuff they already have in the game.

I have zero problems with them working at repairing the AI rebellion crisis. I want that crisis and I can't have it now. I would like a closer update fixing the worst standing bugs though.

Of course, if the AI rebellion rework ends up being a pay-only DLC, then that's not fine.... We will see.

They're not repairing the AI rebellion. They're removing the rebellion and making an AI external threat like the other two crisis. Personally I think this really sucks. The AI rebellion, if it worked and actually was triggered, was the most interesting crisis as it's an internal threat happening to multiple empires across the galaxy.

 

[Sarmatian]

I stand by my claim that the game is currently fully playable and enjoyable with only a few minor issues,.

I disagree strongly.

I did like the inital idea of the game, but after the novelty wore off, there wasn't a single aspect of the game that felt like it was working properly.
1) FTL - unbalanced and weird.
2) Combat - always something missing, never enjoyable
3) internal management - rudimentary
4) sectors - a mess still, after a year
5) foreign policy/diplomacy - rudimentary
6) economy/trade - rudimentary

I really want to like this game, not only because I'm a huge sci-fi fan. I re-visit the forums every few weeks to see if there's an improvement that will make it worth to invest time and money in it and I'm dissappointed every time. And the underlying problem is that once the novelty of finding anomalies, designing your species/ships, colonizing and terraforming planets and going through the technology deck wears off, it becames evident that there's very little else there.

It is time for some hard decisions, like cutting one or two FTL types, cutting sectors and so on. I've said this a year ago, and after a full year, nothing fundamentally changed for the better. If they had cut their losses then, and used that time to improve other, crucial aspects of 4X strategies, we might have had a good game. Because devs are still chasing their tail, trying to improve that's inherently broken, we have a mess.

 

[Emraldis]

I disagree strongly.

I did like the inital idea of the game, but after the novelty wore off, there wasn't a single aspect of the game that felt like it was working properly.
1) FTL - unbalanced and weird.
2) Combat - always something missing, never enjoyable
3) internal management - rudimentary
4) sectors - a mess still, after a year
5) foreign policy/diplomacy - rudimentary
6) economy/trade - rudimentary

I really want to like this game, not only because I'm a huge sci-fi fan. I re-visit the forums every few weeks to see if there's an improvement that will make it worth to invest time and money in it and I'm dissappointed every time. And the underlying problem is that once the novelty of finding anomalies, designing your species/ships, colonizing and terraforming planets and going through the technology deck wears off, it becames evident that there's very little else there.

It is time for some hard decisions, like cutting one or two FTL types, cutting sectors and so on. I've said this a year ago, and after a full year, nothing fundamentally changed for the better. If they had cut their losses then, and used that time to improve other, crucial aspects of 4X strategies, we might have had a good game. Because devs are still chasing their tail, trying to improve that's inherently broken, we have a mess.

Sure, but this is just that you don't really like the base game, not really related to the issues I was talking about. Which is fine, and entirely subjective. And while I agree that I too would like to see these things improve, I cannot deny that I am fully enjoying this game as is, which is also entirely subjective.

 

[Emraldis]

Because you don't notice the bug it's not a huge issue? Maybe you can ignore it but that does not mean it's not happening. I don't know what the Devs are doing, but they are certainly not fixing all the broken stuff they already have in the game.



They're not repairing the AI rebellion. They're removing the rebellion and making an AI external threat like the other two crisis. Personally I think this really sucks. The AI rebellion, if it worked and actually was triggered, was the most interesting crisis as it's an internal threat happening to multiple empires across the galaxy.

And how do you know that?

Literally the only thing they showed was a splash screen, nothing else. Then a bunch of people assumed a bunch of things, and now everyone seems to think that the AI crisis is being replaced. Why do people think this? All we know is that there's a cool new splash screen, and that they're reworking the non-functional mechanics of the AI crisis. Sounds an awful lot like fixing it to me.

 

[Sarmatian]

Sure, but this is just that you don't really like the base game, not really related to the issues I was talking about. Which is fine, and entirely subjective. And while I agree that I too would like to see these things improve, I cannot deny that I am fully enjoying this game as is, which is also entirely subjective.

Enjoyment is subjective, I agree. One could enjoy Risk but no one could argue that its combat system has the depth of HOI games, for instance.

There are certain aspects strategy games are expected to have. 4X strategy games in particular. Not all have to be perfect, some focus on just one or two, with the rest build around that to make the game work properly and be fun. In Stellaris, only 1X works to an extent (eXplore), while the other 3X's are rudimentary or broken.

 

[Emraldis]

Enjoyment is subjective, I agree. One could enjoy Risk but no one could argue that its combat system has the depth of HOI games, for instance.

There are certain aspects strategy games are expected to have. 4X strategy games in particular. Not all have to be perfect, some focus on just one or two, with the rest build around that to make the game work properly and be fun. In Stellaris, only 1X works to an extent (eXplore), while the other 3X's are rudimentary or broken.

I entirely agree. But that doesn't mean the game cannot be enjoyable, and, while the above is true, it is, unfortunately, irrelevant to the argument I was making. :/

 

[Athmet]

I have seen people complaining they are focusing on improvement, but was there not a post from PDX explaining they actually have a team for bug correction and one for design/improvement ? Could be wrong....

I would agree that keep throwing new content without fixing the majority of issues is just building additional stories on a shaky building... This cannot end well

 

[Drowe]

Enjoyment is subjective, I agree. One could enjoy Risk but no one could argue that its combat system has the depth of HOI games, for instance.

You could also say that the combat system of EU4 and CK2 don't have the depth of HoI. HoI is a game that is entirely focused on combat and war, of course it has much greater depth in those mechanics than other games. EU4 and CK2 don't have the kind of depth in economy as Victoria 2 has. So what is your point?

There are certain aspects strategy games are expected to have.

Oh, are there? And what would those be? Strategy games is a real broad term, StarCraft is a strategy game, so is CK2, so is Heroes of Might and Magic. Yet those games hardly share any aspects with each other.

4X strategy games in particular.

You know that Paradox doesn't do standard games right? None of their games are standard, why should Stellaris be any different?

Not all have to be perfect, some focus on just one or two, with the rest build around that to make the game work properly and be fun.

To me Stellaris is fun. I always wanted to play a space strategy game with that kind of scale that isn't turn based. And so far StarDrive 1 and Stellaris are the only two games I know of, that have done this. And StarDrive is no where close in scale to what Stellaris is, but on the other hand it is closer to an RTS than Stellaris is, so there is a big difference in gameplay between those two.

In Stellaris, only 1X works to an extent (eXplore), while the other 3X's are rudimentary or broken.

I would say eXplore and eXpand are pretty much the core of the game if you think in 4X terms, eXploit depends on your definition, it's no less deep than MoO2 and eXtermintate does work, but is a bit boring. You may call doomstacks broken, but that completely missing the real problem. They are only a symptom of the lack of strategic targets. As soon as that changes, doomstacks will become much less prevalent.

Calling the game broken even though a lot of people play it and like it, is completely inaccurate. It's not living up to its potential, that's for sure. It may not meet your expectations, it doesn't meet mine, and I know some things don't work as intended. But the game itself does work and is playable and people do enjoy it, you don't invest hundreds of hours in a game you don't enjoy. And there are many people who have done that, myself included.

 

[Hype]

And how do you know that?

I don't know, maybe because Wiz said so in the thread about it. He is removing the internal buildup and rebellion aspect of the AI rebellion. It's now an external AI threat.

"This is a threatening thing, shoot guns at it" works well for an end-game crisis that is supposed to be about rallying the galaxy against something that threatens everyone. Trying to make a crisis based around events means you have nothing tangible to fight and mostly just experience frustration when the synths blow up spaceport #86, and I really don't see how internal strife would result in a galactic crisis in the first place. Such things would work much better as a mid-game event localized to one or a few empires.

 

[Red192]

The sinth rebellion I think was my greatest disappointment with stellaris in my first game, I was so excited when the chain of events had begun... And then,well you know it

 

[Red192]

If you enter with the console command in the sinth empire you discover how limited it is, it can not bomb, can not build other ships like the starting ones, can not even change the edits and purge the Bio

 

[Emraldis]

I don't know, maybe because Wiz said so in the thread about it. He is removing the internal buildup and rebellion aspect of the AI rebellion. It's now an external AI threat.

He was talking about disease-based crises, in response to a previous post in that thread. Also, he mentioned he wanted to remove the random spaceport bombing that was just plain not fun. This is literally all we know.