Remove 'Galactic Wonders' as perk.

[Slynx]

this is a completely nonsense argument since with paradox games the host of any multiplayer game sets what dlc the game is played with and everyone in that game gets access to all the dlc the host has regardless of whether or not they own them themselves.

answered right above your coment.
also yes I know that some features are shared. like distant stars or leviathans. but some are exclusive to the owner of dlc - like humanoid shipset. or megastructure perks.

its even more nonsense since i cant think of any strategy game where you could play a multiplayer game where different people have access to different features depending on what dlc they have, most games you wouldnt be able to join an mp game if you didnt have the same dlc as the host.

apparently stellaris and other paradox's games are not the case. you can join a game if you don't share all of the dlcs.​

 

[MightyFox]

There's like, limited time sales for cheaper prices I think during winter sales and steam sales and so on but atm it doesn't look discounted. Or maybe you mean the starter pack? That's a -10% discount only for base game, utopia and apocalypse together...its 72 euros instead of 80...not really that big of a discount if you ask me but its something I guess.

Nah, I got everything for around $40. I don't disagree, the entry into this game to play at it's most enjoyable level is fairly high, but one does need to understand that those who paid for the expansions would be equally upset if Paradox rolled them into the base game while still charging the same base price. You can argue the new car fallacy, but even then, people don't like losing value on their investments.

 

[Flyinghotpocket]

Anyone who owns and uses the Utopia DLC is able to agree with me on this one; You ALWAYS pick Galactic Wonders. Galactic Wonders is THE endgame decision to pick. (Or at least, I've never seen anyone that prefers any other ascension perk above Galactic Wonders in ALL 8 slots.)

Really, i never pick this perk anymore. it requires to much investment and to much time to actually get going. and i find that the rewards for this are largely not worth the go-gillion minerals i sunk into it.

 

[Secret Master]

Anyone who owns and uses the Utopia DLC is able to agree with me on this one; You ALWAYS pick Galactic Wonders.

I own it, and I don't always pick it. There are plenty of times I win the game before it is even available or relevant.

I also don't waste my time picking it if a megastructure I want is already available for repair via mega-engineering. Why build a new ringworld ever when the fallen ME spawns? Why build a matter decompressor when I can just repair one?

I'm also not convinced many megastructures are worth the effort in a lot of situations. The alloys required to build most of them would build entire navies that could be used to defeat Awakened Empires, the Crisis, the Great Khan, or even just regular FEs so you can steal their techs and buildings.

EDIT: And if I can defeat FEs, I can steal some megastructures and ecumenpolis.

 

[Zalmin]

Megastructures do indeed create many problems in terms of late game balance, but I strongly disagree with many of the ideas proposed in this thread.

The unity trees should be made MUCH larger, BUT you can only pick a main, and a secondary based upon your ethics. Spread ALL the perks throughout the trees, add more, and allow for overlap so players can pick and choose their empire's social workings. Put some really nice choices at the bottom of each tree, such as Colosuss for supremecay, ring world for expansion, nexus and sentry array for discovery, but make it so the path chosen to get there is narrow. This means you can either build an empire with a lot of general perks and abilities, or one focused upon one of those late game tech strategies. Unity matters again, because the more of it you have, the more choices you can make throughout the course of the game (at a cost to other production of course), but having a smaller unity base, with a specific path in mind, can result in equally spectacular results, just with far less adaptability. Choice is added back into the game, and more importantly, it matters.

I agree. Imagine something like Path of Exile's passive skill tree where unity buys passive skill points. It would be tough to design but awesome if it was well done.

 

[FleetingRain]

As a second point, putting them into the existing ascension perks would either: A) require delaying those ascension perks to the late game B) allowing megastructures to potentially become available in the early to mid game C) gating late game technologies behind mid game ascension perks.

Why? You'd still need the Mega-Engineering tech.

 

[AGenericAccount]

I've always felt that there was no need to lock megastructures behind ascension perks. Maybe make the techs to research your specific wonder more expensive, but definitely not lock it behind traditions. Same goes for planet killers and psionics.

 

[Flame13223]

Really, i never pick this perk anymore. it requires to much investment and to much time to actually get going. and i find that the rewards for this are largely not worth the go-gillion minerals i sunk into it.

Do you have anything else to spend all that gazillion minerals and alloys and energy on? Because I generally have so much resources by that time that I literally cannot spend it, I spam gateways across my empire like crazy and make storage silos on literally every starbase and I still get to max resources.

 

[AGenericAccount]

-snip-

Damn, this dude in a debate with like 4 people.

The major point is that as a consumer, I don't feel threatened by DLC locked behind paywall. I've played the base game enough to know that I REALLY like it, and as a rational consumer I try not to spend money that I don't have.

Now money that I do have... PARADOX TAKE IT ALL.

As someone new to the game and only played Le Guin, I thought I was gonna get ripped off by the DLC, but I bought Utopia and I loved it, then I bought Megacorp and Apocalyse, and some story packs and I am not upset to have spent money on it.

I get that it seems trivial to "lock" some aspects of gameplay and lore behind expansion packs, but I still support the devs. Lootcrates and gambling are a different story.

 

[Urza1234]

Damn, this dude in a debate with like 4 people.

Yeah but he seems able to handle it.

He also has a point that the high prices of "complete" strategy games, ie including all the DLCs, could potentially be a barrier to entry for new customers.

I would hope however that most customers of these strategy games have been trained by now to wait the 4-8 months between development cycles, and just get all the old DLC at the steep and time-dependent steam sales.
It basically already mostly works how he wants it to work, if the customer is savvy. Whether or not that customer is savvy is another question, so he might be mostly right.

 

[Slynx]

Very likely a winter sale or something then because again, you can go onto steam right now and getting every expansion (no species packs or cosmetic stuff) costs 130 euros

every time a new dlc is coming out stellaris (and usually other PDX games too) gets a 50-75% discount in steam.
also there is a pack which contain all major dlcs.

That's such a defeatist attitude...oh you don't like something? Then shut up and dont do anything about it.

you got me wrong. I specifically said to act. and described how. pointless discussion on forums will not change anything. voting with your wallet - may change if enough people will think like you.

also I think you don't need anything but a base game to enjoy stellaris. and most of the dlcs are useless\not "must have". but I, for example, buy them anyway. cuz it's my way of saying "thank you for making such an awesome game. please continue working on it". and it's not like PDX are staying behing you with a gun and forcing you to buy anything. also some other companies are worse. like predatory microtransactions in battlefront2 you've mentioned or subscription fee of WoW (mentioned above)

 

[Flame13223]

voting with your wallet

Nope that doesn't change as much as you think it does. That's now why the Battlefront 2 lootboxes got changed, thats not why anything ever changes, gaming companies and I am talking about the more objectively bad ones, don't make their product more pro consumer when people stop buying, they make it more anti-consumer. More microtransactiosn, more lootboxes, more pay to win bs. Voting with your wallet was fine back 10 years ago but now its not as effective as it once was. Anyways I merely responded to someone's post I didn't want to get into a pricing debate here.

 

[Flame13223]

Damn, this dude in a debate with like 4 people.

The major point is that as a consumer, I don't feel threatened by DLC locked behind paywall. I've played the base game enough to know that I REALLY like it, and as a rational consumer I try not to spend money that I don't have.

Now money that I do have... PARADOX TAKE IT ALL.

As someone new to the game and only played Le Guin, I thought I was gonna get ripped off by the DLC, but I bought Utopia and I loved it, then I bought Megacorp and Apocalyse, and some story packs and I am not upset to have spent money on it.

I get that it seems trivial to "lock" some aspects of gameplay and lore behind expansion packs, but I still support the devs. Lootcrates and gambling are a different story.

I wasn't trying to get into a debate with anyone. Anyways my point was about new players not older players so its irrelevant.

 

[Slynx]

More microtransactiosn, more lootboxes, more pay to win bs.

don't see anything like this in stellaris.
and I think it's fair that if you don't like the product - you don't buy it. but you suggest to whine that you're not getting it for free cuz it's already N years old. which is a strange argument if you'll remember that the game and older dlcs are almost constantly on sale already.

 

[Flame13223]

don't see anything like this in stellaris.

Because I said that's not about Stellaris, that's about the whole vote with your wallet thing. There's other reasons why that wouldn't work here, besides its a bit of a drastic measure for something that isn't as big of an issue. I only boycotted Stellaris once when it was still new, because of a bug that made it impossible for me to play, but they fixed that quickly so here I am.

Anyways I have all the DLC you guys have all the DLC, this isn't an issue that would affect us in any direct way, neither positive nor negative. However indirectly, having more players means the company is more incentivized to support and update the game which is a good thing because I fucking love Stellaris, I have over 1000 hours hell, almost 2000 hours at this point in the game. This isn't for me, its for newer players, I want more new players in the game, i want the game to be better, that's not to say it isn't good, but you can always be better. Stellaris' DLC system is a hell of a lot better than say, Civilization or Total war games' systems. They nickel and dime players like crazy and sadly there's no "this is too pricy" button on steam so all we can go by is the reviews but you have to buy a DLC or game to put up a review so even though these practices get downvoted like crazy on steam, its still not accurate enough as to how many people just see it and pass on it. It would be a valuable thing for companies to know how many people pass on a game because the initial pricepoint is too high.


But, this has gone way too long, we derailed the whole conversation so I am sorry about that, I'll stop with this whole thing on this thread, if you guys wanna discuss this in private that's fine with me (altough I am at work and should not be on the forums atm so I might not reply until probably tomorrow morning).

To close it out, I think more people should try to see things from other people's perspective.

 

[Slynx]

To close it out, I think more people should try to see things from other people's perspective.

in my defense i'll say that I do look on things from other perspectives in a dialogues. but seeing doesn't mean i'll change my mind that easily.
as for new players... I usually lure them into the game only on sale. and even then I suggest to buy only the base game to try.... or core pack (base+utopia+apocalypse)(and if they like it - they almost guaranteed to buy every other dlc too later )

 

[Flyinghotpocket]

Do you have anything else to spend all that gazillion minerals and alloys and energy on? Because I generally have so much resources by that time that I literally cannot spend it, I spam gateways across my empire like crazy and make storage silos on literally every starbase and I still get to max resources.

honestly i dont play beyond the end game crisis. once thats over to me the game is over. i love the crisis and everything else after that is meh to me. Usually you have time to build only 1 mega struc for a crisis so thats why i never pick it.

 

[BarbeQ]

honestly i dont play beyond the end game crisis. once thats over to me the game is over. i love the crisis and everything else after that is meh to me. Usually you have time to build only 1 mega struc for a crisis so thats why i never pick it.

One more argument for Megastructures beeing available too late in the game at the moment. No?

 

[Slynx]

One more argument for Megastructures beeing available too late in the game at the moment. No?

but first megastructures are available in 2250-2300. and crisis usually starts at 2400 on default settings.
making them available earlier will be mostly pointless. cuz you will not have resources to build them

 

[BarbeQ]

but first megastructures are available in 2250-2300. and crisis usually starts at 2400 on default settings.
making them available earlier will be mostly pointless. cuz you will not have resources to build them

With "beeing available earlier" I also ment some cost rebalancing. Having the tech but not beeing able to actually construct them is more of a bad teaser otherwise