edit: Note that, after a mod changed the title, there probably should be a PLEASE in there.
A simple open letter:
In the assumption that Paradox doesn't have the intention/budget to fund a sufficiently large QA for Stellaris, and in light of the rather obvious issues/bugs in 1.5, which a proper QA would have supposedly been able to identify easily, I politely request Wiz/whoever_else_is_in_charge to consider setting up a Closed Beta system of some form or nomination (or to extend it if already present), to provide the Dev Team a voluntary and micro-budget QA-replacement by fan-base.
Some elaboration and clarification on above:
This could be (supposedly easy, albeit I'll not claim I'm an expert at this) by Steam's closed beta functionalities. The amount of work/budget required to implement these Closed Betas would be a thing, but I would dare to claim it would still be less budget then what is currently spent on QA anyways, and would clearly lead to much higher (at the very least on a quantitive level) results.
One obvious issue is the fact Stellaris' ressources can be easily extracted, which implies that allowing players, even if limited to a hand-selected amount, access to pre-release code could lead to unintended leaks and reveals. But I would argue that, given the amount of teasers and dev diaries, plus a default NDA, would ensure that there is only a minimal flow of unintended information from the beta testers to the public community.
The stability of the closed beta is entirely a non-issue, since the beta testers would likely be willing to deal with the instability in order to improve the end product.
Therefore, I arrive at the conclusion that implementing some form of Closed Beta system would greatly improve the QA-quality (it bothers me that this term is even a thing appropriate to describe this), with an investment from sides of Paradox smaller then any other option which were to include hiring more actual QA staff.
And, hopefully, if this practice would be adopted for one title, and proved it's worth, it could then potentially be migrated to other PDX titles, from which I would personally claim many have similar issues. But that's a topic for another day, in another thread.
PS: Note that I do not claim to be fully aware of Paradox's internal structure, only that, what I can perceive of that structure on the customer-side, appears inadequate, and therefore make a suggestion, based upon my perceived knowledge of the situation. If any PDX members perceive this as a gross missinterpretation of facts, please do respond and correct my missconceptions.
A simple open letter:
In the assumption that Paradox doesn't have the intention/budget to fund a sufficiently large QA for Stellaris, and in light of the rather obvious issues/bugs in 1.5, which a proper QA would have supposedly been able to identify easily, I politely request Wiz/whoever_else_is_in_charge to consider setting up a Closed Beta system of some form or nomination (or to extend it if already present), to provide the Dev Team a voluntary and micro-budget QA-replacement by fan-base.
Some elaboration and clarification on above:
- I'm not saying 'PDX SUCKS MONEY BACK' or anything suchlike.
- I fully respect design decisions made by the devs, regardless whether I personally disagree on certain nuances.
- I do not expect a patch to instantly have perfect balance, as that is something that can take months to achieve.
- I do not expect patches to be flawless and free of bugs, as that is something practically impossible, even for a AAA budget, which Paradox obviously doesn't have.
- I DO expect any new features, especially those marketed as key aspects of an expansion or otherwise explicitely pointed out in dev diaries, to be working (as advertised).
- I DO expect to be able to play and enjoy the game without encountering any kind of game-breaking bugs which are created by default gameplay situations (excluding 'breaking the game' moments from edge gameplay cases)
- Nerve-stapled pops are excluded from slavery
The only relevant application for nerve-stapling pops (for the unaware: it's a special genetic trait unlocked by the Genetic Ascension path, which removes a species happyness similar to how Hiveminds work) is to make slaves content, ideally creatting docile lifestock. However, in 1.5, nerve-stapling pops PREVENTS them from being slaves, making the whole thing useless and even detrimental.
This issue does ALWAYS occur, is EASILY replicated and would have occured on every occasion of testing Nerve-Stapling in it's supposed use case. The fact it was not noticed before 1.5 release implies Nerve-Stapling was never properly tested by Paradox' devs or QA.
(Note that a fix for this is avaible in the current 1.5.1 hotfix though, hinting that maybe it was found by QA, but only after the release/codefreeze/budget_ran_out.) - Embracing a faction applies a PERMANENT happyness modifier
Embracing a faction is supposed and advertised to allow players to adapt their government ethics to the current playstyle of the nation. It comes with requirements, an Influence cost and a reasonable happyness penality to all other factions (and a happyness bous to the embraced faction).
However, opposed to the happyness modifier being temporary, as it's implied by both tooltip and the '120 months remaining' modifier label, the 120 months never tick down, making it a permanent malus to the player's empire (and effectively preventing any player from reasonably embracing more then once per game, or lose all faction support).
Since this occurs EVERY time a faction is embraced, but was not noticed by QA, it's evident that noone ever playtested a game with this feature (but, at best, clicked the button in a paused state and marked it as 'working').
- Stellaris QA is not properly playtesting the full width of features added in a new patch.
(Note: this is a generalizred statement which exclusively refers to the 1.5 patch as of now.) - This implies the QA team is either incompetent, or understaffed. (This includes the possibility of not having enough time, since that could be 'fixed' by hiring more staff = understaff issue.)
- In the benevolent/realistic assumption that the QA team is actually giving it's best effort and is competent, this implicates Paradox is not able/willing to hire enough QA staff members to properly provide test coverage for a game of this feature width and depth.
This could be (supposedly easy, albeit I'll not claim I'm an expert at this) by Steam's closed beta functionalities. The amount of work/budget required to implement these Closed Betas would be a thing, but I would dare to claim it would still be less budget then what is currently spent on QA anyways, and would clearly lead to much higher (at the very least on a quantitive level) results.
One obvious issue is the fact Stellaris' ressources can be easily extracted, which implies that allowing players, even if limited to a hand-selected amount, access to pre-release code could lead to unintended leaks and reveals. But I would argue that, given the amount of teasers and dev diaries, plus a default NDA, would ensure that there is only a minimal flow of unintended information from the beta testers to the public community.
The stability of the closed beta is entirely a non-issue, since the beta testers would likely be willing to deal with the instability in order to improve the end product.
Therefore, I arrive at the conclusion that implementing some form of Closed Beta system would greatly improve the QA-quality (it bothers me that this term is even a thing appropriate to describe this), with an investment from sides of Paradox smaller then any other option which were to include hiring more actual QA staff.
And, hopefully, if this practice would be adopted for one title, and proved it's worth, it could then potentially be migrated to other PDX titles, from which I would personally claim many have similar issues. But that's a topic for another day, in another thread.
PS: Note that I do not claim to be fully aware of Paradox's internal structure, only that, what I can perceive of that structure on the customer-side, appears inadequate, and therefore make a suggestion, based upon my perceived knowledge of the situation. If any PDX members perceive this as a gross missinterpretation of facts, please do respond and correct my missconceptions.
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