The Real Problems With Stellaris

[Rosthun]

You mean this? I think it was there right from the start.

Oh. Then the decision was even more stupid than I thought.

The worst of all ? Every single reason that drove this change (better performance, space terrain, more strategic depth, etc.) was either not requiring this change, has been completely inconsequential, or simply went unaffected.

The other reason I've heard was that it would make balancing things easier, but I didn't think "easier" meant "no balancing whatsoever" considering regular and crisis AI are *still* struggling to move through hyperlanes.

 

[Subtle Apparition]

I think a lot of us are clearly miffed that no one can come to an agreement on how the FTL rework should've went. A lot of arguments I'm seeing here just get off of "We're clearly right and they're clearly wrong, so why didn't Paradox follow our idea?" and honestly OP shouldn't have expected anything to go anywhere beyond this cesspool of a discussion by even bringing it up.

2.0 brought in a trough of issues, like the flawed system claims and war exhaustion system, but stop saying "all it did was remove things", and no, saying "b-but all it did WAS remove things" won't counter the point. What about higher hyperlanes, wormholes, and gateways? Faster sublight speeds? The L-Cluster and its gateways? No more no-retreat battles at the edge of a solar system and leap-frogging the enemy homeworld? Those added features haven't been useless for me in the games I played.

Again, have at it, but I think I'm done trying to talk about the FTL rework. The micromanagement of 2.2 and the negligible improvements of 2.6 are much more worth discussing.

 

[LaDoncella]

Just a reminder: "administrative capacity" has been in the game since 1.0

 

[Saori]

I agree with you about the FTL rework; I too was one of the people who disabled anything but hyperlanes in the old system simply because it added a lot of depth to the game.

However, what I find puzzlig is that I can't recall the AI being as dumb about their fleetmovement as they are now. Did they mindlessly send fleets all over the place back then too? I swear even on Hyperlanes-only the Crisis AI was working well enough...

I think it are those other issues that make people often kneejerk into: "the ftl rework is the source of all evil"; and I kinda understand that sentiment.



Anyhow:

The biggest gripe for me is something you touched upon as well - And that is planetmanagement/job system.

Right now it is a thankless, never ending task that ultimately just frustrates for the exact reasons you mentioned. You can't employ the optimal pops you want on the jobs you want, and even worse: You never can make it work simply due to how it is designed!(!!)

Small example rant:
(You upgrade a building; okay, now you got more specialist job openings! But who fills them? Right! The lower class of servants and slaves that you have in those worker jobs. Which are super suboptimal for specialised jobs. Sure; you can restrict them from taking specialised jobs by enslaving the entire species - but maybe you don't want that? Mabye you are not a slaver and just a xenophile that wants to actually play the fucking game and optimize things? Well guess what welcome to micro hell, where you open/restrict jobs and resettle pops to make things work. >.<
Nvm when a pop now grows that is suited for the specialised job but the jobs are taken up by a species not suited for it... Well fuck you dear player! Now you can manually resettle your pops back and forth till hopefully you have the right balance of pops over all your worlds where new buildslots open up every now and then which chaage the econonmical requirements which means the whole jobbalance will be upset again and again... Nvm when you settle a new planet which now starts growing its own jobs and has changing job demands while it grows etc pp. (and i am not even going to touch migration because dear lord things get fucked then)...)

I mean WTF? Yeah sure; we can do what everyone is doing anyhow and just play Synths and slap efficient processors on and some stuff like mass produced or other generally beneficial traits and take a big dump on the whole jobsystem (and by extension traitsystem) by playing in a way that makes the entire gameplay element as unobtrusive as possible... but wtf. If that doesn't scream this stuff is broken as fuck I don't know what does. (and i am not talking about synths in particular here or stuff; just the job system)

But hey - when 1 playstyle out of (insert number) feels like the best by far(!) and mostly due to sheer fucking convinience of not having to interact with the shitshow of a gameplay element planet management is (doesnt hurt that synths are also on pure numbers the strongest ascension as well!) then you know you fucked it up.

You fucked it up!!

Take Biologial Ascension; it might be good on paper and if you play a superspecialised homogenous empire it might even work - But actually engaging in the "ascension fantasy" of being the empire that remolds the biological form of their citizen to whatever is needed and most beneficial is just straight out the fucking window because it is an unending micro nightmare. Biological Ascension players does the same as synth ascension players - slap on traits that are as unobtrusive and generally helpful as possible across as many factors as possible and never look back.

And yeah; better (scetor) AI could maybe help with that a bit or manage it - but honestly the underlying pop and growth system and the jobsystem it is tied into has just so many flaws it makes it plain unfun to engage with.

So - warfare is a bit one dimensional. The Jobmanagement you don't want to engage with in depth as just laid out; diplomancy is just assigning a resource (envoys) to something and waiting. GC is just poorly thought out as other have mentioned here already...

The game at midgame or a bit past it forces you to play in a way were you engage less and less and wait around more and more.
The starting system(s) you can manage early on, even the aforementioned jobsystem. But on a large scale it becomes to vast to be playable. Automation for them doesn'T really work; and even if it did what do you then have left to do?!?

What is the core gameplay loop at this point? Waiting for stuff to happen while the game slows down more and more as its performance dies?

Paradox - is it really that hard to understand? The game lacks a functioning, engaging gameplayloop once you are past the midgame at latest. Your new DLC bring just more frontloaded decisisonmaking like origin or traits or armies/jobs that are not relevant anymore past a certain point. You just add meaningless sh** that is cool flavour; but doesn't have any meat to it since the skeleton of the underlying game is missing past midgame. Add broken crisis AI and other stuff thats either so poorly thought out or straight up doesnt work as intended and you got the shitshow the forums rightfully are now.

 

[HFY]

What is the core gameplay loop at this point? Waiting for stuff to happen while the game slows down more and more as its performance dies?

Grinding entropic gameplay culminating in the heat death of your GPU is merely a metaphor for the grinding entropic heat death of the universe.

Truly deep gameplay mechanics.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I agree with basically everything you've said, but the your last line requested a fight, so here we go:



Bullshnaps. Dig sites must be within your own borders, unlike Anomalies, and furthermore there's one dig site which creates a goddamn Titan, and even more further furthermore you get to see which dig sites your opponent empires have available.

In exactly one game this had an awesome result for me:

An obnoxious little one-star Xenophile hatemonkey next door got the Grand Herald dig site, and I immediately started a war to get his science vessel off that thing. I conquered that system with ONE GREEN DOT left on the dig site, so barely in time. It was awesome.

(Of course, that was just one game out of almost a hundred.)

I still think it is basically anomalies wrapped up in a different skin and in 99% of the cases have no real effect...

Dig sites simply is as interesting to interact with as anomalies are which in most occasion is not very interesting at all.

Even if I role-play, which I like to do, will anomalies and dig sites add very little to the game for me. The problem is how detached from the game these loot boxes are. The stories does not really shape anything and rarely does the reward except for a few rare ones.

I also think that the reason you went to war was because you as a player knew what was in the the dig site, for me that goes against all role-play to begin with and is a bit backward. You can't know what is in a dig site before you uncovered it.

 

[WarriorofMODS]

I agree with you about the FTL rework; I too was one of the people who disabled anything but hyperlanes in the old system simply because it added a lot of depth to the game.

However, what I find puzzlig is that I can't recall the AI being as dumb about their fleetmovement as they are now. Did they mindlessly send fleets all over the place back then too? I swear even on Hyperlanes-only the Crisis AI was working well enough...

I think it are those other issues that make people often kneejerk into: "the ftl rework is the source of all evil"; and I kinda understand that sentiment.



Anyhow:

The biggest gripe for me is something you touched upon as well - And that is planetmanagement/job system.

Right now it is a thankless, never ending task that ultimately just frustrates for the exact reasons you mentioned. You can't employ the optimal pops you want on the jobs you want, and even worse: You never can make it work simply due to how it is designed!(!!)

Small example rant:
(You upgrade a building; okay, now you got more specialist job openings! But who fills them? Right! The lower class of servants and slaves that you have in those worker jobs. Which are super suboptimal for specialised jobs. Sure; you can restrict them from taking specialised jobs by enslaving the entire species - but maybe you don't want that? Mabye you are not a slaver and just a xenophile that wants to actually play the fucking game and optimize things? Well guess what welcome to micro hell, where you open/restrict jobs and resettle pops to make things work. >.<
Nvm when a pop now grows that is suited for the specialised job but the jobs are taken up by a species not suited for it... Well fuck you dear player! Now you can manually resettle your pops back and forth till hopefully you have the right balance of pops over all your worlds where new buildslots open up every now and then which chaage the econonmical requirements which means the whole jobbalance will be upset again and again... Nvm when you settle a new planet which now starts growing its own jobs and has changing job demands while it grows etc pp. (and i am not even going to touch migration because dear lord things get fucked then)...)

I mean WTF? Yeah sure; we can do what everyone is doing anyhow and just play Synths and slap efficient processors on and some stuff like mass produced or other generally beneficial traits and take a big dump on the whole jobsystem (and by extension traitsystem) by playing in a way that makes the entire gameplay element as unobtrusive as possible... but wtf. If that doesn't scream this stuff is broken as fuck I don't know what does. (and i am not talking about synths in particular here or stuff; just the job system)

But hey - when 1 playstyle out of (insert number) feels like the best by far(!) and mostly due to sheer fucking convinience of not having to interact with the shitshow of a gameplay element planet management is (doesnt hurt that synths are also on pure numbers the strongest ascension as well!) then you know you fucked it up.

You fucked it up!!

Take Biologial Ascension; it might be good on paper and if you play a superspecialised homogenous empire it might even work - But actually engaging in the "ascension fantasy" of being the empire that remolds the biological form of their citizen to whatever is needed and most beneficial is just straight out the fucking window because it is an unending micro nightmare. Biological Ascension players does the same as synth ascension players - slap on traits that are as unobtrusive and generally helpful as possible across as many factors as possible and never look back.

And yeah; better (scetor) AI could maybe help with that a bit or manage it - but honestly the underlying pop and growth system and the jobsystem it is tied into has just so many flaws it makes it plain unfun to engage with.

So - warfare is a bit one dimensional. The Jobmanagement you don't want to engage with in depth as just laid out; diplomancy is just assigning a resource (envoys) to something and waiting. GC is just poorly thought out as other have mentioned here already...

The game at midgame or a bit past it forces you to play in a way were you engage less and less and wait around more and more.
The starting system(s) you can manage early on, even the aforementioned jobsystem. But on a large scale it becomes to vast to be playable. Automation for them doesn'T really work; and even if it did what do you then have left to do?!?

What is the core gameplay loop at this point? Waiting for stuff to happen while the game slows down more and more as its performance dies?

Paradox - is it really that hard to understand? The game lacks a functioning, engaging gameplayloop once you are past the midgame at latest. Your new DLC bring just more frontloaded decisisonmaking like origin or traits or armies/jobs that are not relevant anymore past a certain point. You just add meaningless sh** that is cool flavour; but doesn't have any meat to it since the skeleton of the underlying game is missing past midgame. Add broken crisis AI and other stuff thats either so poorly thought out or straight up doesnt work as intended and you got the shitshow the forums rightfully are now.

PDX will never fix the core gameplay issues because they've reached a point where corporate just doesn't want to spend the money to make a functioning game. They'd rather keep the game in life support and dumping meaningless fluff onto the game.

The game has been broken since 2.2. and when I mean broken, I mean broken. The jobs system seemed like a good idea at first but it only compounded every problem the game had while not actually fixing anything.

It all circles back to how populations rather than empires are the focus. Populations being the focus takes away from the ability to make empires truly unique and deep. Certain mods put some makeup on this issue and fix some issues, like Expanded Civics+Ethics mod, where the fact that In the base game collectivist are trash and poorly implemented. In the mod, Collectivist and Capitalist are a Ethic duo, opening up all sorts of options for trade and management.

PDX utterly failed at the experiment that is Stellaris. With all it's good concepts, it falls flat miles before the finish line.

And it really shows when the devs need toxicity measures to not get triggered.

 

[itsuart]

Oh. Then the decision was even more stupid than I thought.

Yeah. It told me that nothing good would come out after 2.0 and stopped buying DLCs.

 

[HFY]

I also think that the reason you went to war was because you as a player knew what was in the the dig site, for me that goes against all role-play to begin with and is a bit backward. You can't know what is in a dig site before you uncovered it.

Can you quote the part of my post which was talking about role-play?

I don't think role-play was relevant to the discussion.

 

[Yourss]

Can you quote the part of my post which was talking about role-play?

I don't think role-play was relevant to the discussion.

Player knowledge vs character/empire knowledge is an important mechanic when a game is being played by an opponent with the same toolset. If the players know what is coming, and their empire is allowed to react as such without any penalty, then the computer opponent needs to do the same thing. It's similar to how in the civ games, the computer players are coded to really like the good wonders, and deprioritize the less good ones.

Making mechanics have random outcomes, and in the older versions, sometimes really bad ones, reduces the value of the foreknowledge.

Stellaris would be a completely different game if the computer players realized that the endgame crisis is going to happen.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Can you quote the part of my post which was talking about role-play?

I don't think role-play was relevant to the discussion.

You didn't... just one reason that might not be an interesting reason for a mechanic for allot of people.

 

[HFY]

You didn't... just one reason that might not be an interesting reason for a mechanic for allot of people.

Well, that's fair. It's nothing to do with my post, but it's a fair point.

It was my experience that EXACTLY ONE TIME something about an Archeology Dig was awesome, and it was awesome in a way that an anomaly could not have been awesome. This had nothing to do with role-playing, and that's fine.

 

[Nocty1501]

I was originally going to be a lot more active in this thread but it's very difficult for me to try and start a conversation since almost every disagreeing opinion so far has been "I liked the old FTL types so you're wrong". If you don't care about strategy, I really think you shouldn't be playing Stellaris. Stellaris may be a game with a heavy focus on RP, but it's a strategy game first and foremost, and game balance should not be decided by how much customization players have access to, but by how well the game plays.

Fuck the old FTL types.

Quick edit: I never said the FTL rework as it happened in 2.0 was the perfect way to rework FTL and the only way it could have been done, but rather that Paradox did a very good job with reworking it at the cost of some cosmetic options which barely affected actual gameplay. Warp and wormholes were basically identical, and hyperlanes were the only FTL type that had actual depth and strategy to it.

 

[WarriorofMODS]

I still think it is basically anomalies wrapped up in a different skin and in 99% of the cases have no real effect...

Dig sites simply is as interesting to interact with as anomalies are which in most occasion is not very interesting at all.

Even if I role-play, which I like to do, will anomalies and dig sites add very little to the game for me. The problem is how detached from the game these loot boxes are. The stories does not really shape anything and rarely does the reward except for a few rare ones.

I also think that the reason you went to war was because you as a player knew what was in the the dig site, for me that goes against all role-play to begin with and is a bit backward. You can't know what is in a dig site before you uncovered it.

There's a mod on steam called Real Space Planetary Exploration. It adds a ton of new Archeology events, including the ascenders and abunch of other cool things that aren't just an award. Your scientist can be traumatized from specific events. you could release a mid game crisis, find the origins of your species, and even unlock caches of precursor technology. You can also fail archeology missions, having them partially locked and leaving you with only some of the answers for you to find elsewhere.

It's what Distant Stars should've been on release and that's only about 60% of the content it adds. It also adds a bunch of new starts and techs.

 

[Nocty1501]

There's a mod on steam called Real Space Planetary Exploration. It adds a ton of new Archeology events, including the ascenders and abunch of other cool things that aren't just an award. Your scientist can be traumatized from specific events. you could release a mid game crisis, find the origins of your species, and even unlock caches of precursor technology. You can also fail archeology missions, having them partially locked and leaving you with only some of the answers for you to find elsewhere.

It's what Distant Stars should've been on release and that's only about 60% of the content it adds. It also adds a bunch of new starts and techs.

To be fair, Paradox at the time did make the point that Distant Stars would essentially be a project for their writers while the programmers worked on the next big thing (that being MegaCorp and 2.2), but I still think it was completely unacceptable to charge money for a DLC that just adds a bunch of re-skinned anomalies.

 

[Nocty1501]

Again, not my experience. I've destroyed fallen empires post-2.0 at a power disadvantage by min/maxing my fleets to counter theirs, doom stacking them up, and charging their biggest fleet. Despite their overwhelming force, if I can win the first big battle with my doom stack, their little independent fleets could do nothing else as I raided the ringworld. Once the ringworld is raided, their production is crippled and they no longer stand a chance, and the AI isn't smart enough to divide fleets and start raiding all over my territory. And in the rare cases that they do raid, they do so with tiny fleets that take so long to sack a planet that I can sack five of theirs in the meantime with one doomstack. No matter what damage they can cause in my border, it means nothing if I can cause more in theirs. Once the war is over, you can just spend a few years repairing and that's that.

I've been at/around/below the same power level of countless enemy empires throughout my post-2.0 playtime and the result is always the same. One doomstack, one definitive battle, mop up easiest possible victory. This is completely consistent for me and has never changed.

Not to mention that since the AI will occasionally fortify stars with starbases, the only reasonable way to break through them is to doomstack. The game itself conditions you to pile all your ships in one spot to bust defenses (and that is assuming the AI even puts them in a spot that you need to go through to begin with -- which is rare, since they just place them in random systems).

What you're saying makes sense on paper, but in practice, that is not how the game actually works. It might work that way if the AI had even the most basic ability to strategize, but it doesn't. At the end of the day, you're sitting here telling me what "doesn't work" despite the fact that I have played this way ever since 2.0 and have had absolutely no issues. So... it's hard to take seriously when my own experience is completely counter to what you're saying.

Fair enough. I think this might just be a difference in experience for the two of us, and I do see your points, but I still think that even despite that the 2.0 FTL system is way better than pre-2.0.

 

[Nocty1501]

FTL rework? Necessary? Great?

Sorry, OP, but you are dead wrong on this in my humble opinion.

FTL types were never a problem, their implementation was. There was no way to predict where AI would go, the defense stations were pathetic, the ships had no tactics (mods fixed that) and you claim the FTL were bad?

Oh please, the types needed balancing, tweaking, maybe a space snare or something like that. Instead, the game decided to scrap the feature that was there since day one and NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

In fact, I would argue the game became much worse. Now, all you have to do to stop the AI is to build a massive starbase, put your fleet there and wait. And if you want to break through? Oh look, now you have to go through ALL OF THE STARBASES AND DESTROY THEM ALL.

This is an excellent example of what I'm talking about.

"...decided to scrap the feature that was there since day one..."

Why does it matter that it was there from day one?

"...now you have to go through all of the starbases and destroy them all."

So war is now more complicated than literally one space battle leading to a peace settlement, and that's a bad thing?

This comment is all I really have to say to the "FTL rework bad" crowd. I haven't seen any decent arguments against the FTL rework that weren't based on "but muh customization", which doesn't make for a good argument in a strategy game.

 

[Nocty1501]

I humbly request you to please change the name of this thread to 'Stellaris is a great concept, and a nearly great game.'

There are just too many posts at the moment seeming to infer that stellaris is terrible. And it's not. And we don't want to scare away new players. There are definitely things we would like to see improved or fixed. Stellaris offers great roleplay and immersion, but many of us with 2k+ hours in it may be too jaded to still see it that way.

Having said that, my contribution to this thread ....

1. I would love to see a UI/UX rework to make the game more accessible and less micro. It's almost as if the original design intent was to achieve fake depth through convoluted UI. I put this first, because it is the area most likely to scare away new players. This includes popups, notifications, message histories, outliner, map overlays, THE PLANET SCREEN, and fleet and army managers.
2. The species design can be a little clearer about roles of ethics, government, civics, traits to distinguish between elements that describe your species and things that describe how you address those challenges. E.g. ethics and traits are about what my species expect or need, and government and civics is about how I address those needs. Same with policies (player intent) and edicts (empire control).
3. We are for now stuck with hyperlane. I would have preferred warp. But it is what it is.
4. Finally, the big elephant. AI and automation. The AI needs a significant overhaul in the area of economics and military behavior. Too many disjointed systems that don't contribute to an overall plan. I put this last, because it is the area that only really hits you when you are an experienced player. This extends to having a collection of 'governors' for sector/planet automation to take micro away from the player. This almost worked with the last big update in this area, but there are some fixes needed (building upgrades and rare resources).

For the rest, it is small in the scale of things ... ship balancing, technologies, job assignments, resettlement, logistics and various mechanical tweaks to encourage advanced strategic play.

I like your suggestion for the thread title, but I'm afraid that's not really the point of the thread.

I'm not concerned with scaring away new players.

Firstly, Stellaris is a complicated game, and only gamers who play a lot of strategy have even a shot at enjoying it.

Secondly, Stellaris's gameplay problems went from being really high-level, where only the most experienced players with an in-depth understanding of game mechanics can start breaking down its design flaws, to really low-level, where even the jobs system is so terribly implemented that a first-time player will likely notice that something's wrong. (Why are my intelligent pops in the worker strata while my strong dumb idiots are working as scientists, and why do I have no control over where they go?)

Thirdly, this post is aimed primarily at the community of players who are already complaining about the game's problems, but miss the more overarching issues with the game (just look at that "things cut from Stellaris" thread, it's full of people with not even a basic understanding of game design). This thread is here to hopefully give the community a better idea of what the actual core gameplay problems with Stellaris are and what Paradox should be focusing on fixing first.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

So war is now more complicated than literally one space battle leading to a peace settlement, and that's a bad thing?

War isn't more complicated however - it's more tedious and drawn out. The war is still more or less a foregone conclusion from the beginning with one definitive space battle deciding the outcome.

The warfare rework missed the mark for me because it didn't address any of the problems that Stellaris's warfare system had.

 

[Nocty1501]

War isn't more complicated however - it's more tedious and drawn out. The war is still more or less a foregone conclusion from the beginning with one definitive space battle deciding the outcome.

The warfare rework missed the mark for me because it didn't address any of the problems that Stellaris's warfare system had.

This is more of an issue with the AI than it is with the design of the warfare, which is a point I would entirely agree with. If you were playing against a player there would be no decisive battle because the obvious response to an opponent doomstacking their fleets is to split yours up and swarm their empire while they slowly move through yours.