Stellaris devs need to watch this video

[Vampiresoap]

It talks about why people got so tired of the 4X genre. Having only one victory condition or even the same priorities for all the different races/empires in your game is a sure way to make your game boring as hell. Why would a devouring Swarm want the same thing as a machine empire? Recent games like Endless Legend provide a partial answer to this problem. Just make it so that different empires have different victory conditions! Elves would want to protect the forest and dwarves wanna hoard more gold...that kind of thing. This game needs to innovate or it will die.

 

[Skydrake]

This game needs a performance fix, a major bugfix and an AI update far, far more urgently than it needs expanded RP fluff for different empire types. If anything the devs shouldn't be allowed to touch anything of the later before they fix the former.

 

[~Robbie]

Excellent video, but the larger problem with Stellaris right now is basic functionality more than innovation. Performance is a nightmare. The game is perhaps more buggy than it's ever been. AI literally isn't capable of playing the game.

Stellaris is a pretty unique game, and one of the few strategy games I've played where the addage "the journey is more important than the destination" is actually true. I don't know a single person who plays for the victory conditions in fact, but perhaps that would be different if there was some good options.

Right now, ironically, the LAST thing I want from Stellaris is more "innovation". It seems like every time the developers go back to the drawing board and radically redesign something, the overall quality of the game suffers immensely as changing any given system has a butterfly effect on the rest of the game.

I think PDX needs to think long and hard about the exact game that they want Stellaris to be. I think they need to find one vision and stick to it, because these constant overhauls are leaving the game in a really unfortunate state, and the AI grows worse and worse with each update. They spend years tweaking a system, getting it almost right, and then re-do that system in the hopes that they'll get the new version right on the first go... but of course they won't! If it took two years to get sectors working properly the first time, how could they possibly think that reinventing them completely would leave them functional on the first try?

As it stands right now, Stellaris is in an endless slog of: Add system -> system does not work properly -> slowly iterate on system for several years until it works -> completely overhaul system -> system does not work properly. All the while, technical aspects of the game (bugs, AI, game performance) grow worse and worse. I'm terrified of how badly the diplomacy overhaul will damage the game, even though I've always wanted diplomacy to be overhauled. If an overhaul means I need to wait a year for the new system to actually be usable... I'd rather just not have the overhaul.

They need to take a breath, stop overhauling, and start refining. They DESPERATELY need to refine the existing content before they keep adding new or completely reinventing what's there.

 

[Brian Bóroimhe]

Just make it so that different empires have different victory conditions!

Yeah... No.

They finally got rid of the stupid victory conditions that never should have been there in the first place.

So now you play your own game, deciding for yourself when you are finished with it.

the same priorities for all the different races/empires in your game is a sure way to make your game boring as hell.

They don't. A fanatical purifier, a federation builder, and a xenophobic isolationist all play very differently.

Really, not to shit on the video, it was good, but it's so damn arrogant to declare that the "Devs need to watch this video" and to actually think that there will be any revelatory enlightenment in there for them is just naïve..

They are highly talented professionals who work in this industry. Please, let's not insult them.

This game needs a performance fix, a major bugfix and an AI update far, far more urgently than it needs expanded RP fluff for different empire types. If anything the devs shouldn't be allowed to touch anything of the later before they fix the former.

This is what the game needs now, a few months of thorough polishing on the extensive set of highly innovative features that it already has. Get all those delicious mechanics working smooth as silk with an AI that can use them well and then break everything again with a massive game changing diplomacy overhaul.

 

[xwingm84]

Excellent video, but the larger problem with Stellaris right now is basic functionality more than innovation. Performance is a nightmare. The game is perhaps more buggy than it's ever been. AI literally isn't capable of playing the game.

Stellaris is a pretty unique game, and one of the few strategy games I've played where the addage "the journey is more important than the destination" is actually true. I don't know a single person who plays for thew victory conditions, in fact, but perhaps that would be different if there was some good options.

Right now, ironically, the LAST thing I want from Stellaris is more "innovation". It seems like every time the developers go back to the drawing board and radically redesign something, the overall quality of the game suffers immensely as changing any given system has a butterfly effect on the rest of the game.

I think PDX needs to think long and hard about the exact game that they want Stellaris to be. I think they need to find one vision and stick to it, because these constant overhauls are leaving the game in a really unfortunate state, and the AI grows worse and worse with each update. They spend years tweaking a system, getting it almost right, and then re-do that system in the hopes that they'll get the new version right on the first go... but of course they won't! If it took two years to get sectors working properly the first time, how could they possibly think that reinventing them completely would leave them functional on the first try?

As it stands right now, Stellaris is in an endless slog of: Add system -> system does not work properly -> slowly iterate on system for several years until it works -> completely overhaul system -> system does not work properly. All the while, technical aspects of the game (bugs, AI, game performance) grow worse and worse. I'm terrified of how badly the diplomacy overhaul will damage the game, even though I've always wanted diplomacy to be overhauled. If an overhaul means I need to wait a year for the new system to actually be usable... I'd rather just not have the overhaul.

They need to take a breath, stop overhauling, and start refining. They DESPERATELY need to refine the existing content before they keep adding new or completely reinventing what's there.

I'm with you on the cycle you identified. I'm a player that wants to love Stellaris, and as such, I'm willing to wait for Paradox to fix the problems that are immersion breaking / significantly obtuse.

The problem that I'm afraid of is when the game is in a never ending or perpetual state of needing fixing, then I will be in a perpetual state of waiting for Paradox in the form of playing something else. That lasts long enough, and eventually I'll stop buying DLCs or following development efforts. In my lone opinion, Stellaris and all its complexity carries that risk to a greater degree than most games.

 

[Metztli]

There are other critical problems that needs to be fixed soon.

 

[maxp779]

This game needs a performance fix, a major bugfix and an AI update far, far more urgently than it needs expanded RP fluff for different empire types. If anything the devs shouldn't be allowed to touch anything of the later before they fix the former.

This x1000

Fix what we have before even thinking about adding more fluff.

 

[~Robbie]

I'm with you on the cycle you identified. I'm a player that wants to love Stellaris, and as such, I'm willing to wait for Paradox to fix the problems that are immersion breaking / significantly obtuse.

The problem that I'm afraid of is when the game is in a never ending or perpetual state of needing fixing, then I will be in a perpetual state of waiting for Paradox in the form of playing something else. That lasts long enough, and eventually I'll stop buying DLCs or following development efforts. In my lone opinion, Stellaris and all its complexity carries that risk to a greater degree than most games.

It absolutely does. Part of what was so frustrating to me about the jump from 1.9 to 2.0 is that the game had just started to enter a phase of what felt like real polish with 1.9. There were definitely quirks, but almost everything was working mostly as intended, because there had been years of iteration to refine everything. 1.9, to me, is the definitive Stellaris not because of its design decisions, but because it's the last version of Stellaris where virtually every system functioned as intended, together.

2.0 came along and took a sledgehammer to that. It's now been a year, and we're still not even close to the level of cohesive design that pre-2.0 had, and what's worse, it's actually growing more problematic as time goes on instead of improving.

Reinventing problem areas is well and good if you have the ideas to back it up, and can execute them properly. The problem with Stellaris is that these overhauls, not one, have been properly executed. And the bigger problem is that replacing one system is fine in a vacuum (say, the new sector system), but has huge far-reaching consequences that Paradox is somehow not catching in testing. 2.2 has broken so many playstyles it's unbelievable that it got out of QA, and the AI still has never recovered from the jump from 1.9 to 2.0+.

And I'm not even saying the new ideas are the problem -- I support overhauls that are well-made (hence why I mentioned I've always wanted a diplomacy overhaul). But PDX has proven, consistently, that they cannot execute overhauls in a way that leaves the game better than it was with the old system + the years of work that went into slowly improving the old system.

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

They already do this to some degree. Hell, the video talks about it.
You get scored on your economic strength, tech level, systems, colonies, pops, vassals, federation, and contribution during the crisis.
Some of these are easily lumped together, and colonies/pops are practically mandatory, but they're already halfway there.

 

[PK_AZ]

Recent games like Endless Legend provide a partial answer to this problem. Just make it so that different empires have different victory conditions! Elves would want to protect the forest and dwarves wanna hoard more gold...that kind of thing. This game needs to innovate or it will die.

Just checked steamDB.
Stellaris: 10k+ active players every day and rising.
Endless legend: about 1.2-1.8k active players every day, looks stable or even slighty falling.
Stellaris is dead indeed.

 

[Vampiresoap]

Just checked steamDB.
Stellaris: 10k+ active players every day and rising.
Endless legend: about 1.2-1.8k active players every day, looks stable or even slighty falling.
Stellaris is dead indeed.

Your logic is broken. The same people playing the same game every day doesn't mean the game is good. Also, Endless Legend is a lot more acclaimed than Stellaris. A simple google search can tell you that. Furthermore, your English skill needs work because I didn't say Stellaris is dead. I said it will die if it continues on this path. It's fine if you disagree with me, but you shouldn't twist my words.

 

[Twogs]

Your logic is broken. The same people playing the same game every day doesn't mean the game is good. Also, Endless Legend is a lot more acclaimed than Stellaris. A simple google search can tell you that. Furthermore, your English skill needs work because I didn't say Stellaris is dead. I said it will die if it continues on this path. It's fine if you disagree with me, but you shouldn't twist my words.

And you missed the point that we already have different goals for different empires in stellaris.

Whats the goal of a fanatic purifier?
Whats the goal of a xenophile megacorp?
Whats the goal of a inward perfection empire?
Whats the goal of a pacifist xenophile federation builder?

Do you really want to tell me all want the same? If yes, I would say you are playing the game wrong, not the other way around

 

[MK1980]

kinda disagree with the video and the general idea that a 4X needs distinct factions/races to be enjoyable. civ1 and civ2 for example were awesome games and the *only* difference between civs were the city namelist and the leader name/images. they only started adding some distinction like unique units, leader traits etc. from civ3 onwards.

4X has never been a hugely popular genre anyway. civ5 became a great success because they managed to get a lot of casual players by various means. they also had to kinda dumb the game down for them, though (it's a joke compared to civ4, really). and that civ5 success story is the main reason why the genre had a bit of a resurgence recently. it probably would have died out otherwise not for lack of innovation but because nerds are only a small percentage of todays "gamer" population and no big investor is going to fund a high production value game that only appeals to a tiny percentage.

it was different 20 or 30 years ago. back then, pretty much everyone who owned a computer and played video games was a nerd. and games were simpler and much cheaper to make. a tiny niche. not comparable to the industry it is now.

 

[Etrutian]

It talks about why people got so tired of the 4X genre. Having only one victory condition or even the same priorities for all the different races/empires in your game is a sure way to make your game boring as hell. Why would a devouring Swarm want the same thing as a machine empire? Recent games like Endless Legend provide a partial answer to this problem. Just make it so that different empires have different victory conditions! Elves would want to protect the forest and dwarves wanna hoard more gold...that kind of thing. This game needs to innovate or it will die.

I will never fight having more flavor between ethics. Having a general goal based on the government type or faction specific events would be great!

With that, the question is win-conditions. Win conditions suck. Depending on the game, you either EEK out some sort of highly arbitrary science victory (even though you are marginally more advanced than a neighbor.) or you save 50,000 currency against second place having 49,900. This is not Victory or Dominance. This is just winning a race to optimize some part of an economy.

In the way of win conditions, I don't know if people do play 4x (or grand strat) for them. In SINS it was a game of trying to one-up regional rivals until you defeated them. In Civ4 it was very similar, with the occasional alliance war cross-continents. Has anyone ever been excited to beat the AI with a passive science victory unless its tied to some achievment?



Maybe I'm just some snowflake, but the fun of a PDX game to me has always been in doing crazy things for (tens to hundreds) of hours until I succeed and then getting bored, and trying something new. Most Stellaris games break down to 'can I take this ethics group and randomly generated area of space and dominate my region as well as survive the Crisis'. Once the Crisis is done, then its just mopping up or starting over. Could the Crisis be more interesting? yes. do I think that amassing 1mil in energy because I'm a megacorp to win the game is interesting? no.

 

[PK_AZ]

civ5 became a great success because they managed to get a lot of casual players by various means. they also had to kinda dumb the game down for them, though (it's a joke compared to civ4, really). and that civ5 success story is the main reason why the genre had a bit of a resurgence recently.

I'm not sure about dates, so I can fail miserably, but I believe Civ 5 was part of post-indie wave, when indie games (small, cheap, aimed for niches and easily-distributable through Steam) had shown that not only AAA shooters can get their monies back. Many good mid-tier games (cheaper than AAA, more expensive than indie) were born that days.

Furthermore, your English skill needs work because I didn't say Stellaris is dead. I said it will die if it continues on this path.

Which was so dramatic, that I still feel fully justified to move it one step further.
On serious note: harsg reality is that all Big Four games are getting more and more players, not less, and there is nothing to indicate any of them will die soon.

Your logic is broken. The same people playing the same game every day doesn't mean the game is good. Also, Endless Legend is a lot more acclaimed than Stellaris. A simple google search can tell you that.

Of course, there is a problem of games, that everybody play, but nobody respect. Similary, there are truly genius games, holy grails of their genre, with very small player base. What it means to 'acclaim', therefore? From my perspective, Stellaris is acclaimed by 10k+ players daily, and that value will probably slowly rise with time.

 

[Twimak]

I would love to see a endless space inspired (not straight up stolen) naturally evolving victory condition quest sort of thing in stellaris. it could kinda evolve out of or be combined the tutorial.

imagine that after a while of playing VIR pops up and says something like "hey our ethics are spiritualist and i see you building a lot of ships! should we go on a merry crusade?" and then you have some options to choose from like "yes kil lthe infidels", "no they are just so people leave me alone", "we should focus on our economy now", "not now VIR", etc.

basically VIR popping up every couple of decades and guessing what you are trying to do, and give you some objectives or w/e related to that, perhaps with a few flavor RP quests/events thrown in here and there. eventually ending with VIR congratulating you on achieving some form of dominance or end goal that suits your playstyle.

 

[PK_AZ]

imagine that after a while of playing VIR pops up and says something like "hey our ethics are spiritualist and i see you building a lot of ships! should we go on a merry crusade?" and then you have some options to choose from like "yes kil lthe infidels", "no they are just so people leave me alone", "we should focus on our economy now", "not now VIR", etc.

Honestly, it sounds more like something factions should do.

 

[Spaceception]

I would love to see a endless space inspired (not straight up stolen) naturally evolving victory condition quest sort of thing in stellaris. it could kinda evolve out of or be combined the tutorial.

imagine that after a while of playing VIR pops up and says something like "hey our ethics are spiritualist and i see you building a lot of ships! should we go on a merry crusade?" and then you have some options to choose from like "yes kil lthe infidels", "no they are just so people leave me alone", "we should focus on our economy now", "not now VIR", etc.

basically VIR popping up every couple of decades and guessing what you are trying to do, and give you some objectives or w/e related to that, perhaps with a few flavor RP quests/events thrown in here and there. eventually ending with VIR congratulating you on achieving some form of dominance or end goal that suits your playstyle.

Honestly, it sounds more like something factions should do.

Not a bad idea actually... Just as long as the phrase "Merry crusade" is thrown in somewhere And after the bug/performance/AI fixes that is. Maybe a part of diplomacy? It's not really diplomacy, but it could be one of the bonus features.

 

[monkeypunch87]

Has anyone ever been excited to beat the AI with a passive science victory unless its tied to some achievment?

Science and culture victories are what I do in Civ 5, so yeah, I enjoy them quite a lot.