State of Stellaris forums

[Spidee]

You play on small and slow galaxies? Who am I to tell you how to play it. You write your story and challenge.
I play on big and therefore have to play on fast, I don't have time to play on slow. The game should allow me to write my story and challenge.

With regards to the observation, that over the last say 6 weeks the unhappiness, anger and overall negativity increased on the forum. Yes.
The hardcore fans, who bought the game and played prior and over holidays are not happy with its state. I think overall as a community we were able to keep ourselves at bay and in check until 2 weeks ago, since we knew every one is out.
But in the last 2 weeks and since last week in particular, there is basically no communication and there was a lot of moderation/censorship (warranted in some cases). But once people's posts and threads start to get deleted, it opens another can of worms.
We feel we have to make a storm in a cup, so that Powers to be know, that they made a doo doo with their, "accelerated release schedule" will be the internal jargon.

 

[maxp779]

Where did I say I want to dictate what should be discussed? If people would discuss it, I'm perfectly fine with it. As I said the criticism is valid. The problem are users that just rage and write everything is utterly and totally broken. Maybe for you being toxic is a discussion. It isn't for me.



Behavior like this isn't helpful if you want devs that engage in the forum.

You said "saying it over and over and over again get's annoying".

Until the criticism is no longer valid i.e until it is fixed then it will continue to be posted here, on reddit, on steam forums etc.

 

[Wenla]

As I see it (Note: I'm Finnish…): If people are happy, they don't tell it, they just are happy, but if they are unahappy, they tell it for everybody...

 

[Greenslade]

You play on small and slow galaxies? Who am I to tell you how to play it. You write your story and challenge.
I play on big and therefore have to play on fast, I don't have time to play on slow. The game should allow me to write my story and challenge.

With regards to the observation, that over the last say 6 weeks the unhappiness, anger and overall negativity increased on the forum. Yes.
The hardcore fans, who bought the game and played prior and over holidays are not happy with its state. I think overall as a community we were able to keep ourselves at bay and in check until 2 weeks ago, since we knew every one is out.
But in the last 2 weeks and since last week in particular, there is basically no communication and there was a lot of moderation/censorship (warranted in some cases). But once people's posts and threads start to get deleted, it opens another can of worms.
We feel we have to make a storm in a cup, so that Powers to be know, that they made a doo doo with their, "accelerated release schedule" will be the internal jargon.

I bought the game before the holidays, and I'm OK.

Paradox didn't communicate over the holidays because they were spending time with their families because they're not robotic machines you put quarters into to get games out of.

 

[Spidee]

I bought the game before the holidays, and I'm OK.

Paradox didn't communicate over the holidays because they were spending time with their families because they're not robotic machines you put quarters into to get games out of.

We know that. We acknowledge it. We did the same. That was the reason we held our emotions at bay. However Some of the devs have been back for 2 weeks. We got 1 message last week, which did not address it. That is why the negativity prevails.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

We know that. We acknowledge it. We did the same. That was the reason we held our emotions at bay. However Some of the devs have been back for 2 weeks. We got 1 message last week, which did not address it. That is why the negativity prevails.

It... did address it, though. They told us all that they were going to refocus for the forseeable future on fixing bugs.

 

[Spidee]

It... did address it, though. They told us all that they were going to refocus for the forseeable future on fixing bugs.

My expectations were different. I consider this the biggest blunder in PDS experience. I was playing over holidays an empire declared war on me and what should have been a fight for my file (GA difficulty) became a joke, because 2/3 of their fleet were hugging one station, even when the last 1/3 was fighting my fleet IN THE SAME SYSTEM.
That is the moment a crisis management communication should have happened. Root cause, transparency, how it came to be. But it was in my eyes brushed away as just a bug. Bugs are the price for innovation was what we got.
That does not indicate to me, that the suits and people who made the decision to ship it on 6th December to paying customers, understand how they lost our trust and it is not telling me, that they are ensuring, that nothing like this happens with their game ever again. Mistakes are fine, as long as we learn.
If you want to continue this exchange, maybe let's go into conversations as we might flame.
Cheers

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

My expectations were different. I consider this the biggest blunder in PDS experience. I was playing over holidays an empire declared war on me and what should have been a fight for my file (GA difficulty) became a joke, because 2/3 of their fleet were hugging one station, even when the last 1/3 was fighting my fleet IN THE SAME SYSTEM.
That is the moment a crisis management communication should have happened. Root cause, transparency, how it came to be. But it was in my eyes brushed away as just a bug. Bugs are the price for innovation was what we got.
That does not indicate to me, that the suits and people who made the decision to ship it on 6th December to paying customers, understand how they lost our trust and it is not telling me, that they are ensuring, that nothing like this happens with their game ever again. Mistakes are fine, as long as we learn.
If you want to continue this exchange, maybe let's go into conversations as we might flame.
Cheers

The patch that made the AI completely incapable of declaring war was a much bigger issue. You're just impatient.

 

[DerGrößteRitter]

Chill Bro... We all have that lag issue even with my Alienware Aurora R7 (highest spec)

Ooh, I was thinking of getting one. How does it run?

 

[nuyu]

Ooh, I was thinking of getting one. How does it run?

I would say it's good and served me well with my 4k monitor. I'm too old for custom PC and Dell support made my life much easier. For busy person I recommend it.

 

[hangry]

You said "saying it over and over and over again get's annoying".

Until the criticism is no longer valid i.e until it is fixed then it will continue to be posted here, on reddit, on steam forums etc.

Hahahaha ... really? So the dev acknowledge the problem and they have a performance update that they will roll out soonish, don't you think maybe waiting for the patch and test their fixes is the more sane choice than to keep screaming "BROKEN" all day long? I'll let you in on a little secret the devs won't stop working on a patch if the forum stops its temper tantrum.

 

[maxp779]

Hahahaha ... really? So the dev acknowledge the problem and they have a performance update that they will roll out soonish, don't you think maybe waiting for the patch and test their fixes is the more sane choice than to keep screaming "BROKEN" all day long? I'll let you in on a little secret the devs won't stop working on a patch if the forum stops its temper tantrum.

Like I said. Until it is fixed it will continue to be posted. "The devs have a fix coming soonish" is not fixed.

You see temper tantrums I see legitimate complaints from paying customers.

And there are more issues than just performance. Insane micro, broken crisis, broken sectors that are unworkable. The list goes on.

 

[hangry]

Like I said. Until it is fixed it will continue to be posted. "The devs have a fix coming soonish" is not fixed.

You see temper tantrums I see legitimate complaints from paying customers.

And there are more issues than just performance. Insane micro, broken crisis, broken sectors that are unworkable. The list goes on.

I said they are valid complaints ... it's not about the complaint, it's about repeating it several times per day in several threads. That won't make the devs work faster, it just makes the forum toxic.

 

[maxp779]

I said they are valid complaints ... it's not about the complaint, it's about repeating it several times per day in several threads. That won't make the devs work faster, it just makes the forum toxic.

You see toxicity (overused word these days IMO). I see discussion. I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

 

[Inquizitor]

I've been loving Le Guin personally. Yes I've noticed issues I'd like fixed but I still love this release. I've also seen the devs talking about doing an extended post release bug fix pass. I have no reason to doubt they are going to do that. I'm also aware that they have been gone for 2 weeks so I'm not particularly troubled over how long the next patch is taking.

 

[L44Z]

I agree with op wholeheartedly. I rarely post myself (and will likely regret this one also), but I'm very sad to see Le Guin breaking the forum (arguably more than the game).

 

[ShaTiK]

I know it sounds childish, but I'm getting real tired of posts 'my performance is okay, don't see any problem' with no references to both hardware and timers. All you have to do is to tell us how much time it takes for your game to progress one month on fastest speed and your PC specs. Because everyone have different definition of what's acceptable performance. Hell, I had a friend, waaay back, once he played Need For Speed 3 when I came over. Game had around 20 FPS, I was shocked. I said - man, how can you even? And he said - nah, it's fine by me.
But that's the thing, there are reasonable slowdowns and there are unreasonable ones. The border is thin, sure. And quite personal and subjective. But then again - we have a starting line in regards to game performance, literally the start of the game. If game slows down 3 to 5 times - it'd call that unreasonable slowdown.
That's all there is to the issue of performance. I'm baffled how people make it to be something else. About various styles of play, or work ethics, or forum communication or some other stuff.
This, plus AI - again, it's not about how different people play the game, it's about AI inability to play the game. Since this game have an enemy AI and not a sandbox - we expect some form of competition on AI side. And that doesn't happen - you can see it for yourself very easily using observer mode.
These two things make a game borderline unplayable. Could someone enjoy the game in current state (vanilla)? Sure. People could derive enjoyment from such a vast array of activities, it's actually difficult to find one that's can't be found as enjoying to at least someone. But that doesn't make it okay.
And the last thing - I really can't say that the vast majority of players are exhibiting some extreme forms of anger towards devs. People are really understandably pissed - that's all there is to it. Posts like this make it look like only some angry unreasonable minority of really poor people with 'strange' ideas on how games should be played are the ones complaining. So, one could say that it's things like these posts that try to invalidate the claims others have.

 

[Spidee]

The patch that made the AI completely incapable of declaring war was a much bigger issue. You're just impatient.

Ok, just a quick follow up - how long did it take a) for players to find it b) Wiz come out and say "yeah, big bug, we missed it and c) Fix it?
Honestly I don't recall those timelines. If MC is a smaller bug, a+b should be easier and c well depends on the nature of the bug. Anyway, let's see what the dev dairy says today. And maybe they will drop some communication in the clash.

 

[MirEgal]

Certain aspects of the game are broken. A lot of those aspects are either part of the promised experience or contribute strongly to it.

Depending on your play style, those broken aspects bother you or they don't. It's kind of funny, the only reason I stopped playing until the next patch is the pop growth problem, making my xenophile tall empire a little bit too diverse for my taste. But I understand everyone for whom the experience worsened drastically (I assume most points are already well-known by now) and it is valid to express criticism.

That being said, after the release of Megacorp, I stopped my lurking of the stellaris forum (and the subreddit) for some time, because the style of the criticism (not the criticism itself) was too toxic for my taste.

People wrote about the game being broken as if it was the end of the world. While it is true that errors have happened, people implied the devs (and especially QA) to be braindead idiots, not being able to see the obvious errors. It was depressing reading some comments which were way out of bounds with respect to healthy communication. As I can understand people expressing their criticisms, I can also understand "fanboys" "white-knighting".

Luckily, it feels that discussion is slowly returning to sane levels, also in the subreddit.

Still, the thing I don't understand is that for some people, having some features and aspects of the game broken in the newest patch, they feel the need to express their disappointment in a hurtful way. As if they assume the more insults they throw and the more colorful they argue their disappointment, the faster the problems are solved (now some memories about my time in customer support resurface... seems to be a very human problem).

 

[Spacemadnesss]

Still, the thing I don't understand is that for some people, having some features and aspects of the game broken in the newest patch, they feel the need to express their disappointment in a hurtful way. As if they assume the more insults they throw and the more colorful they argue their disappointment, the faster the problems are solved (now some memories about my time in customer support resurface... seems to be a very human problem).

I'm not going to cover for abuse but a lot of the colorful commentary wasn't meant for the devs consumption in the first place. It was meant as a way to vent feelings among people who feel the same way they do as human beings. People aren't ever going to be emotionless robots typing out bug reports or logic engines describing in neutral tones how the game is malfunctioning. The forums over the past month have functioned as a pressure relief valve, for better or worse.

We're talking of an event where party A took money from a large group of people under the pretense that those people could enjoy the product (during a period with a lot of time off for many folks) when in fact party A understood full well the product was not functional. That sort of blatant misuse of trust is going to stir up a lot of negative emotions. Now rage isn't productive and lashing out isn't either, people should behave better. Ultimately though it is perfectly understandable and the party under discussion hasn't (and won't) face half the vitriol a more mainstream developer (never mind a more traditional company) would for doing something similar.

Edit: That said I would like to apologize to each and every developer who came back from vacation to this mess, including snarky comments on my part. The whole thing sucks and I hope we can move forward positively into the future.