Stellaris is a top seller

[supreme]

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/winter2018bestof/

So Stellaris has easily become Paradox's most popular/played game on Steam, although Hearts of Iron is not too far behind currently on numbers playing if you look at stats. This is probably because both these games are by far the most accessible games that Paradox have ever released which might be attracting a less hardcore audience than say a game like EU4 would have.

This is great for strategy gaming as Paradox come out with some of the best grand strategy titles you can buy and the more money they make the more they can invest in new titles. However, Stellaris in its current state is very difficult to play mid to late game because of the performance issues, even though the changes to the pop system was supposed to bring better performance it has actually brought worse. There is also a problem around the mid game where the regular AI empires just seem to stop growing their economy and fleets but their population continues to grow so something is very broken there too, even on Grand Admiral it happens.

Paradox are clearly making money off Stellaris so surely now is the time for a prolonged period of optimization and work on the AI and getting the game into a more playable state late game before moving on to making the next dlc. It was a pretty brave move to rip apart the old planet system like they did and completely replace it but I am not sure the AI is able to use the new system correctly and I am also not sure 2.2 was really tested enough before release.

Stellaris is a very enjoyable game and has potential for greatness but not until the devs put some effort into fixing core issues before making dlc.

 

[mag_zbc]

EU4 is over 5 years old, just about everyone that wanted to buy it already did, while both HOI4 and Stellaris are much never so they can still attract new players

 

[ashbery76]

EU4 is over 5 years old, just about everyone that wanted to buy it already did, while both HOI4 and Stellaris are much never so they can still attract new players

Is it bigger than EU4 in sales even with their headstart.

 

[Askorti]

EU4 is over 5 years old, just about everyone that wanted to buy it already did, while both HOI4 and Stellaris are much never so they can still attract new players

Stellaris is also higher on most simultaneous players (over 50k) than EU4, Cities Skylines and HOI4 (over 25k) while CK2 is in an even lower category of over 15k. I mean, it would seem that on steam more people played Stellaris than AC Odyssey...

 

[Nussor]

I do wonder about this, though. Steam ratings are often tanking and the QA is abysmal for Stellaris. CK 2 is PDS' best product by far and even though EU IV catches a lot of flack, at least it is well polished and functional. My guess is that the demand for space strategy / 4x games is higher than the supply. I mean, is there any alternative? Beyond Earth is pretty much a forgotten failure at this point. Distant Worlds is old and looks terrible. Endless Space 2 seems to be flying under the radar, despite being legitimately good. I'm really interested in how Planetfall will do in this environment.

 

[Badesumofu]

CK 2 is PDS' best product by far and even though EU IV catches a lot of flack, at least it is well polished and functional.

Very subjective to say CK2 is the best game. As for EU4 - it has bugs in it that have been around longer than Stellaris has been a released game. It has numerous tooltips that outright lie to players that just haven't been fixed in forever despite being often reported. They also recently introduced some 'balance changes' that buffed the already dominant strategy and nerfed every other strategy.

Stellaris 2.2 needs a lot of work, but the fundamentals are very strong.

 

[azunone]

I do wonder about this, though. Steam ratings are often tanking and the QA is abysmal for Stellaris. CK 2 is PDS' best product by far and even though EU IV catches a lot of flack, at least it is well polished and functional. My guess is that the demand for space strategy / 4x games is higher than the supply. I mean, is there any alternative? Beyond Earth is pretty much a forgotten failure at this point. Distant Worlds is old and looks terrible. Endless Space 2 seems to be flying under the radar, despite being legitimately good. I'm really interested in how Planetfall will do in this environment.

AFAIK No competitor exists to Stellaris in market segment of "Real-time Multiplayer 4X Space Strategy"
Distant worlds is great mechanically, but has no Multiplayer, ugly graphics and bad UI
I hope Distant Worlds 2 (it's in development) will have multiplayer so we can get some competition and Paradox will not be able to get away with this QA without losing customers.

 

[Novacat]

Endless Space 2 seems to be flying under the radar, despite being legitimately good.

The Endless series runs into the issue in that because all the factions are well defined and fluffed out, either you click with one (or more) of the factions and like it, or you just end up walking away if you cannot click with any of them. The main advantage of Stellaris is that, because of how robust the empire creation system is, pretty much anyone can create an empire that they like and identify with.

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

AFAIK No competitor exists to Stellaris in market segment of "Real-time Multiplayer 4X Space Strategy"
Distant worlds is great mechanically, but has no Multiplayer, ugly graphics and bad UI
I hope Distant Worlds 2 (it's in development) will have multiplayer so we can get some competition and Paradox will not be able to get away with this QA without losing customers.

I think this is a huge part of it. Stellaris is my goto fix for space games and I had been searching for literal years for space-themed games. Stellaris certainly fulfills my high-level grand strategy needs for space-themed games right now I'm still struggling for a good space survivor-ish game more similar to FTL (the indie game) and No Man's Sky but you know, with more sophisticated design than 8bit era gameplay and visuals Re: FTL and.. more completion and things to do than No Man's Sky. The biggest draw for me when envisioning "ground-level" space game is personalized gear/ship customization which No Man's Sky did VERY well but it feels so.. empty and incomplete with a nonexistent multiplayer to show off my world to and no means of building a metropolis.

(Crosses fingers and pray for Paradox to buy out Hello Games and implement an actual collaborative multiplayer and city/planet building)

 

[Etrutian]

I'm interested to see how the new planet management interacts drives the long term player-count trends. I think CK2 is an excellent example of a game with very low accessibility. The player base is dedicated, but I'm sure someone up in corporate wishes it could pull at least the same counts at EUIV.


With that, there is one more re-write I think the devs need to make before they full balance/AI patch. Diplomacy update/DLC.

 

[Sinister2202]

I guess the sci-fi genre really appeals to more people than historical simulations. Paradox's best seller yet within its own community though should be... Victoria 3.

Please make it happen. Thanks.

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

I guess the sci-fi genre really appeals to more people than historical simulations.

I think that's the current cultural trend in general with packed super hero films featuring hi-tech and Star Trek / Star Wars movies hitting mainstream instead of being exclusive to geeks. I'm sure CK2 directly enjoyed its boost with Game of Thrones, though, its a constant pendulum swing.

 

[Sinister2202]

I think that's the current cultural trend in general with packed super hero films featuring hi-tech and Star Trek / Star Wars movies hitting mainstream instead of being exclusive to geeks. I'm sure CK2 directly enjoyed its boost with Game of Thrones, though, its a constant pendulum swing.

And I thought it was a mere coincidence when Stellaris was first announced, space games were a fad, with games like endless sky or star citizen, alongside survival and zombie genres. I for some reason craved a space strategy game (purely due to lack of good ones in the market, except for sins) right before when Stellaris was announced. I'm starting to think our brains are being manipulated by invisible waves in the sky. Are we hive minds?

 

[Wenla]

I guess the sci-fi genre really appeals to more people than historical simulations. Paradox's best seller yet within its own community though should be... Victoria 3.

Please make it happen. Thanks.

I'm afraid that when/if Vic 3 is published, it doesn't appeal wide so called 'great masses' (= other than part of Pdx historical simulation gamers).

 

[Tim_Ward]

Remember when 2.0 was going to kill the game, because some guys brigaded Steam reviews.

 

[SirAlexius]

Remember when 2.0 was going to kill the game, because some guys brigaded Steam reviews.

According to steam charts Stellaris this month has the heighest average daily active players since release.
https://steamcharts.com/app/281990

Always good to remember that even if you see hundreds of people complaining online, it has very little correlation to what most players' experience is with the game.

Issues with the game deserve to be brought up and addressed but it is not healthy to look at some negative feedback and assume that the game is doing poorly with most players.

 

[Thinkamancer]

This is great for strategy gaming as Paradox come out with some of the best grand strategy titles you can buy and the more money they make the more they can invest in new titles. /QUOTE]

Fun fact: Paradox invented the "Grand Strategy" genre (real time with pause, grand scale, centuries spanning strategy). Europa Universalis was "The Grand Strategy Game"