But guys, I think we're all missing the big picture here.
There isn't any espionage, and as we all know strategy games are literally worthless unless they have espionage. This has been shown to be objective fact by numerous scientific studies, but also by basic observational fact. As we all know, every single EU4 player picks espionage ideas every time. I mean, Paradox keep trying to nerf it but people still keep picking it because it's espionage, and espionage is just that important.
I think it's perfectly possible to express the sentiment that you wanted more. Heck, I have no issues saying that I hoped for more myself. There are countless things I don't like or think are currently undeveloped about Stellaris. I haven't made a post on them or expressed them, sure, but that's mostly because I don't want to get lost or confused within the weird tirade of nonsensical spam. In a way that's what's really annoying here.. the nonsensical spam silences any possibility of real, meaningful debate.
What gets incredibly tiresome, I think, are all these insanely hyperbolic threads, 90% of which don't actually make a coherent point but just express a general sense of outrage or personal emotional disengagement, or which hinge on some completely meaningless comparison either to another game (generally CK2 or EU4) or occasionally just to some imaginary point of reference we're all supposed to grasp but which is never actually explained. Often, these comparisons display a very poor or incomprehensible understanding of game mechanics, so you'll have people complaining that there is nothing to do in Stellaris but conquer things, but then making that a negative comparison to EU4 (what do you do in EU4 except conquer things?), or you'll have people complaining about the lack of developed trade or espionage systems but not being able to name another strategy game where these things actually contribute.
And there comes a point where it just feels like grasping, like someone is just having an emotional feeling of disappointment that they bought a game expecting it to descend from heaven and lead them to the promised land, and when it didn't instead of sitting down to examine their own expectations and form a balanced opinion they just seized on whatever reason or impulse first popped into the head. And that's fine, everyone has a right to their opinion, but I think when you're expressing an opinion in public there is a certain duty to make it intelligible to other people, and that's what the "detractors" keep failing at.
