Stellaris: A Shift In Consumer Taste

[Army Pea]

I have been playing and promoting Stellaris since launch and I can honestly say that since 2018 there has been a fundamental shift in consumer attitude towards the game as a whole.

In my opinion consumers tastes have been changing from purchasing a game that will "work as intended, eventually" to an expectation of "works as intended, at launch"

There is no point of pointing fingers at the developers OR the poor Q&A department about the state of 2.2 because this attitude is at the corporate level and dictated down to its employees.

I say again. The developers and Q&A probably agree with MANY of the frustrations coming from the community at the moment.

This thread is one where we can let paradox know that our expectations as consumers are changing and that should be reflected in the product that they offer.

 

[Fourthspartan56]

I'm not really seeing any evidence to back up this "shift in consumer taste", that sounds like the kind of the thing that requires some actual evidence beyond anecdotes.

Because anecdotally as someone who has played Stellaris since launch the reactions don't seem very different, both 1.6 and 2.0 (and probably other large patches) all involved fairly major changes and fairly high number of bugs and broken things. Which led to an understandably high amount of grumbling, to treat the reaction to 2.2 as somehow special or different just seems unfounded and myopic from my POV.

People are angry, they're mostly justified. Once Paradox gets to fixing the game (something they started at the end of 2018) the grumbling will most likely subside as it has all the other times.

 

[Army Pea]

I'm not really seeing any evidence to back up this "shift in consumer taste", that sounds like the kind of the thing that requires some actual evidence beyond anecdotes.

Because anecdotally as someone who has played Stellaris since launch the reactions don't seem very different, both 1.6 and 2.0 (and probably other large patches) all involved fairly major changes and fairly high number of bugs and broken things. Which led to an understandably high amount of grumbling, to treat the reaction to 2.2 as somehow special or different just seems unfounded and myopic from my POV.

People are angry, they're mostly justified. Once Paradox gets to fixing the game (something they started at the end of 2018) the grumbling will most likely subside as it has all the other times.

I would argue that over the last 2 years there has been a shift away from Early Access games in the industry as a whole.
Probably due to so many games failing to meet goals or lofty expectations and the videogame consumer feeling cheated or mislead.

Add to this how other companies who are notorious for releasing buggy games but issued a pass due to on-going support , aka Bethesda, have been getting backlash by burning up the good will they built up over many, many years.

2018 was a rough year for Stellaris and a change in attitude on the higher level could make 2019 far better.

 

[Dustman]

PDS got that attitude several years ago after they got big. Dumb and annoying DLCs instead of fixing fundamentals, changing a game several times completely during its lifetime, etc.

Stellaris 2.2 is a new game by any standards. While I understand and agree with most complains, this new direction is quite interesting. We can complain as much as we want here on forums, but it won't change a bit 'fore we stop paying for crap.

 

[Kanaric]

I've been playing these games since EU2 and HOI2.

Paradox games were always incredibly buggy at new releases and always had bugs and needed hotfix patches after major updates.

Nothing new. It's just this time the thing that's broken is some glaring obvious issue.

 

[Duuk]

Once Paradox gets to fixing the game (something they started at the end of 2018) the grumbling will most likely subside as it has all the other times.

This. Consumer memory is less than flea memory. Not to be insulting, but consumers forgive and forget faster than you can possibly imagine. Companies only suffer and die if they can't financially weather the INITIAL reaction of consumers. If the consumer reaction is immediate and financially disastrous to the company, they die. If it isn't IMMEDIATELY financially disastrous to the company then the company will be fine.

So long as Paradox patches and cleans up Stellaris to an acceptable state in the near future, gets it into working order, and puts out a cool trailer for the diplomacy expansion for 2.3, we'll all jump right back on the carousel. Anyone that disbelieves that is fundamentally delusional.

 

[Dustman]

Add to this how other companies who are notorious for releasing buggy games but issued a pass due to on-going support , aka Bethesda, have been getting backlash by burning up the good will they built up over many, many years.

2018 was a rough year for Stellaris and a change in attitude on the higher level could make 2019 far better.

And how it should be. Lie to customers or promise too much couple of times and go down.

 

[Fourthspartan56]

I would argue that over the last 2 years there has been a shift away from Early Access games in the industry as a whole.
Probably due to so many games failing to meet goals or lofty expectations and the videogame consumer feeling cheated or mislead.

Add to this how other companies who are notorious for releasing buggy games but issued a pass due to on-going support , aka Bethesda, have been getting backlash by burning up the good will they built up over many, many years.

2018 was a rough year for Stellaris and a change in attitude on the higher level could make 2019 far better.

This is what I mean by saying that your argument is myopic, nothing about 2018 was specially or uniquely rough for them.

The reaction is exactly the same in 2.0 and 1.6, whenever there are major issues (regardless of the reason) people will get angry. There isn't any need for any real shift in consumer taste, just people reacting in normal ways to problems.

 

[permeakra]

I remember times when games were sold on CDs and they were meant to work without patches. Oh, the patches were made eventually, but if they had a lot of bugfixes, the programmers were screwed up.

However, with Steam games are patched without user input, and so companies became much less invested into testing as they can offload it to users. The process isn't new, significant changes to game already launched were made for, say, Diablo2, also a very old game. But what PDS is doing with Stellaris is a different level entirely. And it is a practice, adopted for more and in deeper depth. I guess, PDS crossed an unseen threshold recently and people became disconcerned. Probably somewhere between 1.9 and 2.3 =).

===

To put it simply, a regular update to gameplay is not something new. Such a model can be traced back into 1990s with Magic the Gathering. It could be interesting if done right. But the way PDS does it is quite flawed.

 

[Army Pea]

This is what I mean by saying that your argument is myopic, nothing about 2018 was specially or uniquely rough for them.

The reaction is exactly the same in 2.0 and 1.6, whenever there are major issues (regardless of the reason) people will get angry. There isn't any need for any real shift in consumer taste, just people reacting in normal ways to problems.

The reason I used 2018 as a benchmark was because Stellaris saw significant backlash that year.

1.The announcement of the FTL changes in late 2017 caused a fracture in the community which carried over to 2.0's launch in Feb 2018
2. Reviews tank considerably for both the FTL changes, the release state of 2.0 AND the "Chinese language review bomb" in which Stellaris has not recovered
3. Distant stars releases with decent reviews but grumbling of lack of content and huge performance issues with the L-gates
4. Mega Corp launches and although not as significant as 2.0, fractures the community on a design level AND on the state of the patch 2.2
5. Review on Steam , which were recovering since 2.0, again tank towards early 2018 levels.

I have no sale numbers to back a claim of changing of taste but I can say without questions any "back lash" Stellaris had since launch paled to compare to 2018 i believe that is in large part due to consumer's expectations.

 

[Kanaric]

I remember times when games were sold on CDs and they were meant to work without patches. Oh, the patches were made eventually, but if they had a lot of bugfixes, the programmers were screwed up.

People are looking back at that era with rose colored glasses.

I've played many broken af games from the 80s and 90s. The thing is you would NEVER get an update. Many games had permanently broken features and never addressed bugs, the quality of games for sure has gone up not down. On top of that you didn't have forums where you would "discover" that the game is broken in some way.

I was one of the lucky few kids who had a modem (14.4 then 56k) and so could connect to like the Sierra BBS to download a patch. Even then you would maybe get a couple of patches unless it was a really good company.

There were a lot of bugs with Master of Orion 2 Windows version vs the non-bugged DOS version and all kinds of crazy shit. Many games were totally unplayable but they are long forgotten.

 

[Dustman]

I've been playing these games since EU2 and HOI2.

Paradox games were always incredibly buggy at new releases and always had bugs and needed hotfix patches after major updates.

Nothing new. It's just this time the thing that's broken is some glaring obvious issue.

Either you're in love with PDx games or delusional. After they got idea of making DLC to cash on old titles, major fixes, not game changes, were extremely rare. Look at EU series: attrition was capped for AI since it couldn't handle it, completely removed for AI ships; weather and seasons are of minor consequence atm, while everyone feared Russian winter before; insane tweaks to national ideas all the time if somebody brag on forums about tactics X, Y and Z; constantly changing religious landscape; hardwired events (while the hell Netherlands are so special) and on and on and on.

 

[stumason]

People are looking back at that era with rose colored glasses.

I've played many broken af games from the 80s and 90s. The thing is you would NEVER get an update. Many games had permanently broken features and never addressed bugs, the quality of games for sure has gone up not down. On top of that you didn't have forums where you would "discover" that the game is broken in some way.

I was one of the lucky few kids who had a modem (14.4 then 56k) and so could connect to like the Sierra BBS to download a patch. Even then you would maybe get a couple of patches unless it was a really good company.

There were a lot of bugs with Master of Orion 2 Windows version vs the non-bugged DOS version and all kinds of crazy shit. Many games were totally unplayable but they are long forgotten.

Indeed. I remember quite a good few games that I had on the Amiga 500 that simply refused to work - SIM Earth being a good example that I remember - they were apparently compatible and worked on the A600, A500+ or 1200, but had major issues on the 500, even if you had the 512k memory expansion (that was huge at the time - 1MB of RAM!! WoW! The A500+ was simply a 500 with the expansion built in). Did they get fixed? Did they fudge... You either made do, if it worked at all, or simply put it down and moved on to the next best thing.

 

[Arutar]

This thread is one where we can let paradox know that our expectations as consumers are changing and that should be reflected in the product that they offer.

With all due respect to your point, do we need another thread on this issue besides the official "We are back" one?

 

[Army Pea]

With all due respect to your point, do we need another thread on this issue besides the official "We are back" one?

badgr made a statement that thread wasnt to be used for the purpose.

Which is why i figured I would open this to a discussion about the paradox ideals and short comings in particular aspect.

 

[permeakra]

The thing is you would NEVER get an update. Many games had permanently broken features and never addressed bugs, the quality of games for sure has gone up not down.

Sure. But initial realize ON AVERAGE was of better quality. Not always.

 

[fuinril]

I have been playing and promoting Stellaris since launch and I can honestly say that since 2018 there has been a fundamental shift in consumer attitude towards the game as a whole.

In my opinion consumers tastes have been changing from purchasing a game that will "work as intended, eventually" to an expectation of "works as intended, at launch"

I disagree entirely. What changed from before and now is the state of the game. We had a wonky but functionnal game with bugs that would eventually be fixed, now we have a mess that does not allow to finish a playthrough (and I do not write "in good conditions") 2 times out of 3 that would eventually be fixed.

That is two very different thing. One is acceptable and we like or not the game in his state - wether the bugs will be fixed or not - , the other is not acceptable past early beta phase, even less on a 2.5 years old game some of us had payed nearly 200$

 

[Fourthspartan56]

Sure. But initial realize ON AVERAGE was of better quality. Not always.

I don't really see any reason to believe this is true, it just sounds like nostalgia.

 

[permeakra]

I don't really see any reason to believe this is true, it just sounds like nostalgia.

It is not, it had objective reasons. Many people, may be even majority of people simply would NOT get an update because they had no internet access. Providing sloppy release in this case is a very poor idea and a recipe for disaster. The distribution model changed, so the approach to production changed.
This applies to non-game products as well.

 

[Duuk]

Sure. But initial realize ON AVERAGE was of better quality. Not always.

You know why Ghandi is so nuke-happy in the Civilization franchise? Because of a bug in the game that was NEVER FIXED that caused him to be such a pacifist that he had a carry-over out of bounds math error that meant he would go from being super-pacifist to being hyper-nuclear and blow the world up.

So Ghandi in the civ-series being nuke-happy is a running joke about a buggy release of early civ games. The best way to win in early DOOM matches (when you had to run patch-cables around the floor of your dorms in the early 90s because not even most people had modems) was to glitch yourself through walls using teleporters and frag people by appearing inside of them. Tele-frags were awesome. Early dogfighting air combat games and/or early FPS shooting games? Learn how to make the bullets bend in flight by jumping while shooting.

Go ask people why they didn't let their friends play as the short guy in 007 Goldeneye for the Nintendo. If they can't answer you then they're too young to understand if buggy gameplay was really a thing.