2)...I think this might have been the point Panzer was trying to make when he said "min-maxers opinions don't matter", although it came across poorly....
Yyyy....esss?
To me there are at least two (wildly) different schools of thought on how to approach Stellaris. On reflection I'd probably call the first school the 'Powergamer' or 'Metagamer' school, which would include the 'Min-Maxers' but isn't exclusively about or of them. This school is all about the detail of the game, and has the people who do the hard number-crunching and theorycrafting.
The second school is what I'd call the 'Thematic' school, which includes the Roleplayers. This school is all about the big picture of the game, rather than the precise mathematical detail. How the stories fit together, how it feels to play, etc. (You might also call this the 'Casual' school, although calling someone a Casual would be staggeringly rude and unacceptable.)
Stellaris has both a strength and a weakness in that it leans into both schools of thought at the same time, because the game doesn't really seem to be clear about which of the two it wants to go with the most. It seems to want to go to both; that's fine, I guess, but does occasionally cause these kinds of... problems.
I'm mostly of the 'Thematic' school myself, but not exclusively. The balance is maybe 25%-33% of '1', 75-66% of '2'. My ideological disagreement with the first is that I consider the extrreme nuts-and-bolts approach to be corrosive to the fun in & of the game, and in the long term, toxic to expectations OF the game. But that's a different discussion, for another time and place.
Where I get particularly annoyed at the more dedicated adherents of the 'Meta' school, however, is when they start saying "X change BAD" and *really double down on it*. If a change they consider to be "BAD" is actually a change I consider "GOOD", then it really gets my goat. The fundamental nature of the 3.8 Leader changes are the textbook example of this (because I concurred with the design ethos the Devs had behind that, even if I agreed that the fine detail of cap numbers etc could really have done with finessing. Hell, I even made a somewhat popular mod which did exactly that finessing!). I feel a bit similar about the 3.9 Habitat changes: some people are (effectively) saying "Habitat changes BAD" and pulling a shocked pikachu face when I say "Nuh-uh, Habitat changes (broadly) GOOD". Neither they nor I are strictly wrong or right, it's a matter of tha tmost troublesome thing - personal taste. But, hey, to every action a reaction...
To be fair when I wrote that previous comment - and even I have to admit that the... inprecision or inadvisibility of my wording on that was a valid point on A's part (in a reply from him otherwise comprising mostly of aggression, disrespect, personal attack and wilful misrepresentation). I was coloured by anger and frustration at seeing the same old silly arguments against the 3.8 Leader changes again, and my admittedly less-than-optimal word choice in that bit specifically was coloured, to a degree, by emotional compromise as a result. I try to be careful with my words but evidently didn't succeed in that part on this occasion. 'Powergamer' would probably be a more appropriate term but, eh, I've edited the post for clarity once, I don't really see the need to dredge it up again by going back to do it again now - this comment can serve as clarification.
I DID originally say "min-maxer opinions don't matter", yes... however, even with the correction I've made (both via the original edit to it, and from this comment), I'd like to point out for the record that that never said nor meant to imply that "everyone else's opinion which I disagree with does not matter", as was falsely attributed to me. Similarly I never said that those min-maxer opinions don't *count* - where 'counting' is "Being heard, being listened to, and having an effect on the evolution of the game", which is self-evident. The edit I made - "min-maxer opinions aren't important to me" - is probably *better* wording in terms of overall accuracy, although even then they are to an extent (in so far as I think they warrant a counterweight).
Anyway, I didn't even want to get drawn into this a second time, and really don't want to again. I don't want to clutter up the thread with heated discussion again, nor get flame again (flame just makes me cross and irrational, and nobody deserves the effects of that), nor make this thread about me nor the fight with A. I have no doubt I'll massively regret this entire comment when it inevitably gets dogpiled with Disrespectfully Disagree's and angry replies when I check on it later, but I sure hope not. I'd much rather talk about nice things, in nice ways.
PEACE!
