[OPINION] After 2.2, development should slow down

[Caligula Caesar]

Stellaris 1.0 was a empty shell of a game. Is that a fair criticism? Debatable. I've seen worse launches. Seen a hell of a lot better, too.

After 2.2, all being well, the 'lack of features' critique is going have been pretty much blown out of the water. Maybe you could make a case about diplomacy and a lack of espionage but that's it.

But the 'lack of polish' critique? Still very much in play.

Off the top of my head:

• The war in heaven (paid feature) never fires, and doesn't often work properly when it does
• The machine uprising (paid feature) dies instantly, and even if they didn't they'd never really work as intended because of the AI transport bug.
• The contingency almost always fires
• The AI doesn't work right with the new war system, it can't move transports around, can't capture planets and therefore drags wars out indefinitely because it also won't peace out until everyone is at 100% war exhaustion. This messes a lot of stuff up.
• AI's take the colossus ascension perk, then don't build colossi.
• I've never seen an AI empire synthetically ascend.
• Ground combat is just bollocks. The UI is atrocious. It doesn't tell you how many armies are on a planet. It doesn't tell you which armies are currently fighting. The counters all overlap in this really stupid way and you can't see what the health of everything is at a glance*.
• When you wipe out a marauders, they send you a cross message and say they're coming to attack you but it never happens.

It seems as though a lot of these issues have been neglected in favor of pushing forward, adding new features and generally filling out the gaps in Stellaris. Not a crazy decision, given where we can from (1.0) but after the economy is reworked, maybe it's time to stop with the mega-patches that add or change like 2 or 3 major features, but instead maybe add 1 feature, make sure it works right and focus on making sure what's already in the game also works as it should.

* And no, they shouldn't make it so you capture a planet just by showing up in orbit

I kinda agree with you. I faced multiple of those issues in some of my most recent campaigns (e.g. machine uprising with no fleets, Great Khanate died because a single planet rebelled, AI ally was incapable in wars despite being closer to the enemy and much stronger than me, awakened fallen empires did nothing), at the end of which I decided that I'd have faith in the dev team to make the game better in future but I'd rather do modding than playing for now (But I would add that I am very glad at the direction 2.2 has gone, I was never a great fan of the tiles system).

The good thing is that several of those downsides can probably be tackled in parallel with big updates anyway. I.e. there is probably someone always working on the AI (there is for EU:IV anyway), Awakened Empires just need some buffing or be set to awaken early, the crisis is just a matter of getting the numbers right (they change at every patch it is easier said than done to get it right, but trying is not hard ) and the machine uprising bug probably happens when the MU gets no starbases.