The State of Stellaris Cherryh and it's post launch support.

[Acidpunk]

I'm not here to bash Stellaris 2.0, I love the direction of Stellaris 2.0 I think it's far more tactical, Strategic and a much healthier way for the game to progress Kudos.

However the actual dev support of late has been somewhat of a slap in the face, today's example of Patch 2.0.3 really sums up the frustration we as a community have had with them.

Shipping a Patch that is completely broken and then peacing out for the night instead of making sure it was launched as a beta which would be totally fine and not completely break the game on 2.0.2 + for every single user is really unacceptable, I expect a higher level of standards from a games company to be honest.

Before anyone says i'm entitled, I feel like I'm allowed to have an opinion on something I've spent money on am I not?

Going forward better transparency on what bug fixes are progressing and actually launching patches as Beta's so this can never occur would be a great start.

 

[eternityrequiem]

The apparent lack of any sort of quality assurance on this patch is breathtaking. In the worst possible way.

 

[Zyrusticae]

Honestly, with bugs this bad and far-reaching there's really no excuse for not pushing it as even a 1-week beta first. This whole thing could have been avoided with a bit of crowd-sourced testing. (Hell, the AI bugs were discovered within a few hours of the patch being released...)

 

[Acidpunk]

It's frankly unbelievable that this got pushed like this, it really feels as if literally 0 testing was done.

 

[Brep]

I generally hold a favorable opinion towards the devs. However, with this latest patch I've started to reconsider... what was going through the minds of the devs when they pushed an obviously broken patch without beta testing or at least QA testing?

I'm starting to think their QA team needs to be run through QA...

 

[sillyrobot]

I would give them more of a pass if they had verified the 2.0.2 rollback was in place when the push occurred. That is an operational failure unrelated to the testing failures that simply compounds any problems discovered with the patch.

If you can't/won't perform extensive testing prior to a public patch, at least allow the users to keep going with their current release until they are comfortable with the new quality.

 

[Takfloyd]

I appreciate the liberal communication between devs and players for this game, but yeah, the complete lack of quality control is taking its toll on my patience. This game has been a dumpster fire since 2.0 and it makes it frankly a bit insulting when the devs tease new upcoming features while the game is still barely even functional in its current state.

 

[Gren373]

I think you are all being far too kind. We're past beta testing at this point. Does anyone on the dev team bother to play a game before they release an expansion or a patch? Since 2.0, we are not talking about obscure bugs that only occur under very specific circumstances in a small percentage of playthroughs. These are game breaking bugs that happen to everybody in every game.

One can only conclude that either the devs never actually play through a game before release or they just don't care...

 

[Robotkiller]

Summary of issues with the patch? I just got home and was about to start a new game

 

[sillyrobot]

Summary of issues with the patch? I just got home and was about to start a new game

Projectile graphics (beam and missile) are missing in combats; the AI is even more borked than before in that it can't build star bases, but still reserves minerals for them; there are reports war score is borked. I think those are the most noticeable problems.

 

[Robotkiller]

Projectile graphics (beam and missile) are missing in combats; the AI is even more borked than before in that it can't build star bases, but still reserves minerals for them; there are reports war score is borked. I think those are the most noticeable problems.

Thanks. I can confirm spinal mounts have missing textures box.

 

[Platoondas]

We've got the 2.0.2 rollback now so I'm much less disgruntled.

 

[eternityrequiem]

We've got the 2.0.2 rollback now so I'm much less disgruntled.

The fact that you literally have to roll back to a previous version of the game to make it playable is obscene. If this had been launched as a beta patch none of this would have happened, but they decided to push an apparently completely untested build public. This isn't professional behavior.

 

[The-False-Being26]

We've got the 2.0.2 rollback now so I'm much less disgruntled.

Thank god,something in the patch broke Glavius AI mod and with out the mod the AI is dead in the water.

 

[Bouchart]

I've always had very mixed feelings about Stellaris and this patch isn't helping.

 

[eternityrequiem]

Thank god,something in the patch broke Glavius AI mod and with out the mod the AI is dead in the water.

Glavius AI mod works with the AI that's built into the base game. The AI built into the base game would no longer build starbase modules. No, they broke their AI again, the mod has nothing to do with it.

 

[~Robbie]

I can only speculate that the 2.x series of patches got significantly less QA than normal. It is frankly the only explanation for the state of how they're being pushed out the door.

 

[pcavalcanti]

It`s definitely unprofessional behaviour. I`ve been following along hoping things would get better but no, they just seem to get worse. I think I`m done with this bs. Not giving this game another cent.

 

[FleetingRain]

Tbh I have no idea why release a patch when you're about to leave office for the day

 

[Juboboman]

It's getting tiring to be honest. The devs have gone out of their way to insist that holding open betas for everything (yes including precious DLC releases) wouldn't accomplish anything or would even make the problems worse, but that excuse continues to ring more and more hollow after debacles like this. Within one day of hitting the wild several major bugs ranging from merely immersion breaking to actually game breaking have been discovered. If we had a beta for 2.0 itself much of the balance/AI issues that have plagued us over the past two months could have been discovered and work began on them beforehand, rather than scrambling for the next two months after release to catchup, only to have the very efforts (like this patch) break the game even worse.

Most frighteningly of all it appears they are winding down 2.0 support and moving onto 2.1, despite all the issues that remain.

I've bought every DLC for this game and I will probably buy every future one, because in spite of it all I really do love Stellaris. It's just... sad that 2 months after shelling out 20 bucks I've yet to sit down to a polished, balanced, fully functional product. I do appreciate Jamor working from home to get a rollback out to us. And I understand that overall the QA team are working hard and probably finding and quashing 99% of bugs before we ever see them. But it's becoming clear it's not enough, and we really do need some kind of PTR so that large numbers of players can attack bugs/balance issues that inevitably spring up for each new DLC/Patch in the weeks/months before they release, rather than suffering dodgy gameplay in the weeks/months after and hoping the devs get the game into a respectable state before they move onto the next big thing in the DLC schedule.