Really, the best you could come up with for Humanoid Species Pack Themes was Warhammer 40k?

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The cynic in me suggests that most people would just find the "best" portrait category for how they want to play, and never use anything else.
Then it would be no worse than before.

But I suspect that most people will try to leverage some aspect of several different portrait categories.
 
Honestly, I'd infinitely prefer a PDX release that allowed for easy importation of portraits into the game and relaxed the portrait-specific trait/ethic requirements. I generally like the portraits that exist, and have purchased every species pack, but a lot of them I find underwhelming. That's a personal taste thing, so I have no complaints on that score.

My bigger issue is that a species pack, especially when it's mostly portraits, doesn't feel like enough to be a release for the most part. I'm not saying stop making them, or that I would stop buying them, just that any indication that "release bandwidth" is mostly taken up by something cosmetic (such as new portraits, or a sexier view system for ships) makes me concerned. At this point I, personally, really don't want a species pack instead of something else which might have been released with something substantial inside.
 
Honestly, I'd infinitely prefer a PDX release that allowed for easy importation of portraits into the game and relaxed the portrait-specific trait/ethic requirements. I generally like the portraits that exist, and have purchased every species pack, but a lot of them I find underwhelming. That's a personal taste thing, so I have no complaints on that score.

My bigger issue is that a species pack, especially when it's mostly portraits, doesn't feel like enough to be a release for the most part. I'm not saying stop making them, or that I would stop buying them, just that any indication that "release bandwidth" is mostly taken up by something cosmetic (such as new portraits, or a sexier view system for ships) makes me concerned. At this point I, personally, really don't want a species pack instead of something else which might have been released with something substantial inside.
I think the chance of a new cosmetic-only release is practically zero at this point. PDX is actually going the other way, and turning cosmetic packs into proper expansion packs. They wouldn't all of a sudden release another lackluster species pack.
 
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I think the chance of a new cosmetic-only release is practically zero at this point. PDX is actually going the other way, and turning cosmetic packs into proper expansion packs. They wouldn't all of a sudden release another lackluster species pack.

We'll see.

I'm hopeful, but I need to see a release or two between the custodian and expansion teams before I'll be as confident as you seem to be.
 
The cynic in me suggests that most people would just find the "best" portrait category for how they want to play, and never use anything else.

I for one, am just like that.

Personally I see no problem with the new content, thin as if seems to be. More is always better. It just feels, as I said before, seasoning trope soup with more trope. The REAL beef I have is diverting more development man/hours/doolaahs, that could be channeled into other things more eagerly requested. I didn't see all that much of a clamor for new content that is mostly cosmetic, could I be wrong? Cause that's what this new stuff feels like, mostly. I like the new origins system but a new "elf lore"... that seems more like a purelly cosmetic thing. If I want to "feel" my humanoids are elfs in space, I just pick up a pointy ear portrait and imagine it however I feel like it, I don't need the game to supply me "lore" for that, or an origin, or more portraits, ship sets....

Now, better mechanics? That I need.
 
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I might be mistaken, but I’m not sure how “inspired by traditional fantasy” means Warhammer 40k.

I think the OP just used Warhammer 40K as a semi-accurate shorthand for "traditional fantasy in space".
 
*All* the packs should be "here are some nice portraits", and "here are some mechanics that fit well with the theme of the portraits, but don't have to be used with them".

One of my favourite portraits (especially for a psychic intended play through) is a necroid - but I don't play them with necroid civics or origins.

Another I'm fond of is a plantoid - but I've visualised them as a carnivorous plant rather than solely photosynthetic, so I'd be a bit upset if the plantoid extension makes all plants photosynthetic; I wouldn't mind though if that was a possible origin or civic (especially if I could then have a photosynthetic fungoid).

I've got a lithoid that I'd *prefer* to run as a machine empire, but that doesn't work.

Basically I don't like the idea of locking a portrait group to a playstyle unnecessarily, as it's restrictive and doesn't particularly boost (at least) single player game play.
 
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Speaking as some one who very much dislkes 40k specifically in vast majority*, but whose actual business of selling starship models has argueably the flagship/protagonist race/nation be a (technologically/scienfically advanced) power which is composed of actual magical space liches, I think that there is very much plenty of room for "fantasy" in "sci-fi," however you want to define those two. (And/or vice-versa.)

(I'd like to have some actual skeleton protraits in the Necroids, myself, come to that, so that if I wished, I could play said power in Stellaris all-proper-like.)




*The only thing will give it half-house room for is the Orks, if only because they genuinely manage to be alien beneath the surface layer and I have something of a predeliction for things which look striaght-forward but are actually not when closely examined.)
 
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Gnomes. Physically weak, love to develop new machines and blow stuff up.:p
There, fantasified!
tbqh, Tau are much like how humans are usually portrayed in fantasy: ambitious, adaptable, and willing to work with other races on even ground. The Imperium is more like your typical space dwarves - traditional, quarrelsome, distrusting of magic, and they love blowing things up.
 
Don’t know if anyone said, but I take offense at the OP’s supposition that WH40k is just classic tolkien-inspired fantasy in space. May the Emperor have mercy on the souls of the ignorant
 
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tbqh, Tau are much like how humans are usually portrayed in fantasy: ambitious, adaptable, and willing to work with other races on even ground. The Imperium is more like your typical space dwarves - traditional, quarrelsome, distrusting of magic, and they love blowing things up.

Of course, the basic Tau concept is "bright eyed newcomers that think and behave much like a classical sci-fy humanity". It is jsut easy to draw fantasy race parallels to almost any relatable concept.

Don’t know if anyone said, but I take offense at the OP’s supposition that WH40k is just classic tolkien-inspired fantasy in space. May the Emperor have mercy on the souls of the ignorant

He has because of the Following thoughts of the day:
- Ignorance is a virtue
- Ignorance is your best defense
- Be strong in your ignorance
 
Stellaris Humanoids are not a derivative of Warhammer nor D&D. Fantasy species as we know them were created by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1930s, four decades before D&D and five decades before Warhammer, and inspirations for them are from even earlier and date back to Roman antiquity time period. Before Tolkien elves, orcs, trolls, halflings etc were a lot different. You DID NOT want to meet folktale elfs. Warhammer and D&D did not inspire anything, they are reiteration of what contemporary image of fantasy races is.
 
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