I talked to my friends about the game and they refuse to play the new version by and large. They do not want to play a game with:
- poor ai
- seems to be owned by roleplay rather then the war / expansion ethics that it could totally have.
- seems to be to complicated now for most of them.
- a serious lag / slowdown on anything larger then 600 stars after 200 years, or 400 stars after 300 years. The fact is, the architecture of this game was getting changed on this patch to make it run better at higher usage, that is a complete failure; the old version ran better.
Vast majority of them would play if these things were fixed. To be clear here; they will play a game if i bring the expansions, but they wont buy the expansions or do anything with this.
After discussion with me they came up with there own conclusion and that is that while the mega corp expansion is 'cool', its not enough to drive purchasing it and ultimately it was 3 steps forward and about 12 back.
Me personally, i am extremely disapointed. I continue to shove money at the paradox crew and further and further i continue to dislike the EU4 and Stellaris project directions.
The paradox team needs to really get there head around what matters. Please a few people who want the nostalgia but have no care in the world to go past 200 years into the game. Or please people who want to play the game between a group of friends and give each other a bad time. Currently this is impossible, the game requires a top end computer and has no reason for the need in that computer other then its poorly coded, badly executed, and the AI cannot do anything intelligent to save its life.
One friend mentioned very directly to me that he wont play because of how the pop placement works currently. I cant say i disagree with him. Its not a 'priority' system, its a max system that pretends to be a priority system.
Its a stunning rebuke but wake up stellaris team. All in all this new version is a wonderful piece of eye candy but a total disaster.
