Understanding strange attitude of Paradox loyalists

[LiberiusX]

Stellaris has much more developed exploration and a far more robust events system. And DW doesnt really even take a stab at politics other than general happiness and certain racial preferences.
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I actually found DW's exploration more intriguing, but that's because strategic resources actually have value in DW. Stellaris exploration isn't bad, but it feels like it goes by too quickly, and is kind of meaningless after a certain point.

Regarding politics, at least planets actually revolt and pirates are an actual threat in DW. Despite what we were told in the Stellaris dev diaries, these things are inconsequential at this stage of development, one year after release.

 

[Adantigus]

Stellaris has much more developed exploration and a far more robust events system. And DW doesnt really even take a stab at politics other than general happiness and certain racial preferences.

So when I said Stellaris felt "alive," what I was really thinking of was the way that its empires feel like nations - collections of people with (sometimes conflicting) ideas. The way you can wage war across the galaxy to end slavery and spread democracy, for example. Or the opposite. Compared to that, so many other games (including the aforementioned Civilization series) feel "dead" to me because all your country amounts to is just a pile of production towards some victory condition. It might be military production, or science production, or culture production (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean), but it's so bloody single-minded that it feels really strange. When has a nation ever worked towards a victory condition?

People sometimes complain about the lame victory condition in Stellaris, but I don't care, because "victory" is entirely beside the point. This is a game about the story of a space-faring nation. You can't get a story without motivations, and the motivations come from the ethics and their like.

 

[LiberiusX]

My definition of whether a game is alive or not is based mostly on experience with Distant Worlds, X3 and Victoria 2.

These games all have vibrant and visualized economies that make player decisions(and AI reactions to these decisions) far more meaningful than the typical 4X/GSG/RPG.

I expect Stellaris will one day surpass these games in this respect, but it's going to take a lot of work.

 

[Alzara]

So when I said Stellaris felt "alive," what I was really thinking of was the way that its empires feel like nations - collections of people with (sometimes conflicting) ideas. The way you can wage war across the galaxy to end slavery and spread democracy, for example. Or the opposite. Compared to that, so many other games (including the aforementioned Civilization series) feel "dead" to me because all your country amounts to is just a pile of production towards some victory condition. It might be military production, or science production, or culture production (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean), but it's so bloody single-minded that it feels really strange. When has a nation ever worked towards a victory condition?

People sometimes complain about the lame victory condition in Stellaris, but I don't care, because "victory" is entirely beside the point. This is a game about the story of a space-faring nation. You can't get a story without motivations, and the motivations come from the ethics and their like.

Here here

 

[Adantigus]

My definition of whether a game is alive or not is based mostly on experience with Distant Worlds, X3 and Victoria 2.

These games all have vibrant and visualized economies that make player decisions(and AI reactions to these decisions) far more meaningful than the typical 4X/GSG/RPG.

I expect Stellaris will one day surpass these games in this respect, but it's going to take a lot of work.

If Stellaris becomes Victoria 2 in space, I will be a happy fellow.

 

[Egodeus]

Why I support Paradox? Because I know that they support their games for the long term. The game might not be the best 4X at the moment (although in my opinion it does come close), but I know that a few years down the road Paradox will still be updating the game and creating new content. That in my opinion is something that more studios should take as a model, instead of launching a title and forgetting it in a year.

Yeah, the warfare could be a lot better, and the AI, and I would love a lot more specialization in for example tech, but I know that these are things that will get fixed in some future patch or DLC. I haven't yet seen a single game that came out of development in a perfect and best possible state, and the likes of Civilization 5 became great in my opinion after a few iterations and DLC, to the point that I'm not sure whether civ 6 is better than the comlete civ 5, but that will also change as dlc come out.

As for crippling bugs, I haven't yet ran into any of those. The latest AI not declaring war could have been one, but then again I started a game when 1.6.0 came out, and next day at work noticed that the bug had been noted on these forums, that day I didn't have time to play, and the day after that that I did play, the beta was already out. Because I hadn't met with any other civilization before I upgraded to the beta, I can't say that the bug really stopped me from enjoying the game.

And all in all, I've greatly enjoyed the game as it has been from the beginning. It could be better, and I wouldn't go back to playing the release version for anything, I think the changes have been for the better.

And really, it's not like any other studio is really any better. I just bought the latest DLC for Galactic Civilizations 3 and tested that out, but decided to stop playing it when I noticed that they've basically broken some of the original races by not updating them to the new system (I'm looking at you Yor, not getting anything extra from that cybernetic trait) and have such obvious bugs as for example plus movement speed bonuses only ever affecting those ships you have in space when the bonus is gained, and not any you build afterwards. Or destroying survey ships still taking administrators even though the ship is permanently lost. Also GalCiv 2 had this nice "feature" that even though you could easily boost your traderoute number to double digits, the maximum amount of traderoutes was fixed at seven or eight, so you could create a custom race that on the first day exceeded that number, and thus all of their technology that would increase the number did absolutely nothing. And even though this was reported, the devs just said "Meh, it is known that the maximum amount of traderoutes is 7".

At least for Paradox I know that they react to bug reports and start fixing things. I not right now, then at least in the future.

 

[grommile]

I've never experienced a "crippling" bug in any iteration of Stellaris and your use of this word is misleading in my opinion.

Given the severity of some of the effectively unavoidable bugs in the first couple of versions of Stellaris, I'm left wondering if you're playing the same game as me...

 

[Mercury Seven]

Given the severity of some of the effectively unavoidable bugs in the first couple of versions of Stellaris, I'm left wondering if you're playing the same game as me...

I think it lies within the eye of the beholder, how severe a bug is. Basically: If you have fun playing the game, then its not 'crippled' for you, even when you encounter (and maybe overlook?) some of these bugs. The tendency of the AI to perform subpar on economy could be one of these. As long as the AI puts up a fight on a difficulty level that suits your needs, you can have fun.

If however you tend to rage quit when the sector AI puts your empire at less then 100% optimization, then thats what 'cripples' the game for you while not for others.

I tend to lean towards the glass half full side. Yes, things can be better, but I still enjoy playing the game.

 

[Imperator Yggdrasil]

My two bits: the reason you get these extreme reactions (both of unconditional support and of vituperative outrage) is because of increasing polarization in the way people feel about their investments in a game, often because they surround themselves with hugboxes (both irl and online) of people who feel the same way. In some places and for certain groups of people, there is a growing sense of entitlement that if you've paid for something, you deserve to be waited on hand and foot by the creators of that product. And that doesn't seem reasonable to me, I think you get what you pay for, and anything else (hotfix updates, free content, balance improvements) is a nice bonus, albeit one to which we've become overly accustomed.

While I do believe that major bugs should be fixed (and I hope the devs continues to make that a top priority for Stellaris 1.6), I'm happy to be patient because I understand that PDS is also working on balance, features, and content at the same time, which can always result in new bugs but is essential to maintaining the game community. Even if Utopia got to a bug-free state, I don't think it'd keep me entertained for too long without some reimagining of certain aspects of the game, since the military side is still far from what it could be. I don't think it's 'literally unplayable' but there's a lot of room for improvement.

 

[thestefan]

You are being overly sensitive, I do agree there are some that will defend idiotic actions at all cost. But mostly I think people have issue with the tone of some critics which has at times been over the top and rude. Constructive critiscism and well mannered posts dealing with bad aspects of the game usually gets alot of "agrees" and "helpful".

Paradox also patches things quite quickly, you are also ignoring the fact that paradox games are much more complicated then most other grand strategy/4x games. This does make it take longer for the game to be entirely finished, makes bug problems much worse and requires more development time and resources. Paradox usually gets the game right, even though it sometimes takes a few patches/DLCs.

If you compare Stellaris to Gal Civ 3, for example, I think stellaris holds a much high standard and I'll gladly pay for a few extra DLCs/wait a few patches for the higher standard of strategy games that paradox provides.

 

[Lheim]

First, of course I know that major issues happen with patches and dlc.

The thing is that Paradox is pretty fast with the response. And not silent about it.

And Stellaris is, warts and all, still my favorite 4X in absolute ages. I'm ranking it up there with Alpha Centauri, Moo2 and GalCiv 2.

Paradox has a long game with their titles. I'm looking forward to the future, because they seem headed in a great direction.

 

[PirateJack]

Personally, I defend paradox because they've proven time and again to make the games I enjoy most. They never start off well, but when I buy a paradox game it's because I know that it will end up being fantastic a year or so down the line. It's an investment that I'm willing to make.

That's not too say that I'm unwilling to call paradox out when they screw up, but I'm at least willing to give them time to fix a problem after it's brought to their attention.

 

[permanently_afk]

Two things before I start: One, if ones opinion is already formed few things will be able to change it. Two, for every "fanboy" you'll find someone who thinks P'dox is a bunch of hacks. That polarisation has gotten worse. Go look in the HOI4 forum to see what I mean.

Ok so I'm genuinely curious about this point.

Thats good. I like it. So I'll try to explain my reasoning for supporting (and occasionally defending) P'dox.

I have been playing and enjoying Stellaris since release. Despite this I have watched crippling bugs in various iterations appear, reappear and manifest in different ways.

The implementation of the approaches used in dealing with these would, with any other development company, caused either major/total loss of sales or at least a somewhat devastating community upheaval.

If I believe what my friends tell me about the software used at work and my personal experience, you are living on the island of the lucky. That, and game software is notoriously more faulty than "commerical" software. Mass Effect, Assassins Creed, Ghost Recon, and so on all have bugs.This is due to the less stringent quality criteria and the fact that its a game. And not the avionics software of an Airbus. Also "crippling bug" is something which blocks further progress and can't be worked around. This plays part in my reasons to "defend" P'dox.

Not so apparently with this game. I have seen time and time again people avidly defending poor QA and bad decisions for reasons I cannot fathom. Is there somebody who can explain to me why this is the case?

Form experience I can tell you that P'dox QA is - while undersized - far from as bad or lousy as many people make them out to be. As for the reasons for my "fanboying":

1. I don't like technical inaccuracies. I don't like it if people speculate about things that they know nothing about or know it much better than the professionals for gutfeel reasons.
   1. What I like is constructive criticism without too much assumtion. For an example see the "Add aluminium in asia guy"
   2. This also covers people not having a clue about how software development works - most prominently the faction which demands to retask all artists to AI development. NB: First sin is free. Second earns demerits.
2. I don't like entitlement. This covers things like people demanding that their pet peeve is fixed immediately before all others with no regard to long term plans. Also throwing around strong language like "broken", "unplayable". Most often, this is an unnecessary escalation.
   
3. I like P'dox games.
4. I like a good fight and this helps to keep my written english sharp.

I am just trying to understand WHY people are defending such brazenly unconventional development protocols.

I'd contest the brazenly. And - as they themselves admitted - their protocols are being worked on. No change without impetus.

 

[Okawoa]

I think the moment I became a fanboy was when they announced Victoria 2 reluctantly and admitted it wasn't going to make them a shed of money. The community implored them and they bit the bullet. I do think this DLC thing is out of hand tho.

 

[trajan]

Paradox makes good games. While I might have other one-off favorites from years past, the hours I've put into Paradox games over the last 15+ years surpass products from any other developer by a laughably huge margin. Their implementation might not always be top notch, but then again many of you weren't around for CK1. Even as bug-ridden as CK1 was, I played it for hundreds of hours. The recent releases are paragons of quality and stability compared to the early days. All these so-called "game-breaking" bugs haven't stopped me from putting several thousand hours into Stellaris, CK2, and EU4 and having a damn good time doing it.

If I did run into an actual "game-breaking" bug here's what I'd probably do: come check the forum to see if it's already reported. If not, report it. If it is, move on to something else: another game, reading a book, going to a ball game. Paradox will fix it soon enough. In the meantime, I enjoy the rest of my life.

In short, they've earned my loyalty and I'm willing to extend the same loyalty to them.

 

[Alzara]

Two things before I start: One, if ones opinion is already formed few things will be able to change it. Two, for every "fanboy" you'll find someone who thinks P'dox is a bunch of hacks. That polarisation has gotten worse. Go look in the HOI4 forum to see what I mean.

Thats good. I like it. So I'll try to explain my reasoning for supporting (and occasionally defending) P'dox.

If I believe what my friends tell me about the software used at work and my personal experience, you are living on the island of the lucky. That, and game software is notoriously more faulty than "commerical" software. Mass Effect, Assassins Creed, Ghost Recon, and so on all have bugs.This is due to the less stringent quality criteria and the fact that its a game. And not the avionics software of an Airbus. Also "crippling bug" is something which blocks further progress and can't be worked around. This plays part in my reasons to "defend" P'dox.

Form experience I can tell you that P'dox QA is - while undersized - far from as bad or lousy as many people make them out to be. As for the reasons for my "fanboying":

1. I don't like technical inaccuracies. I don't like it if people speculate about things that they know nothing about or know it much better than the professionals for gutfeel reasons.
   1. What I like is constructive criticism without too much assumtion. For an example see the "Add aluminium in asia guy"
   2. This also covers people not having a clue about how software development works - most prominently the faction which demands to retask all artists to AI development. NB: First sin is free. Second earns demerits.
2. I don't like entitlement. This covers things like people demanding that their pet peeve is fixed immediately before all others with no regard to long term plans. Also throwing around strong language like "broken", "unplayable". Most often, this is an unnecessary escalation.
   
3. I like P'dox games.
4. I like a good fight and this helps to keep my written english sharp.

I'd contest the brazenly. And - as they themselves admitted - their protocols are being worked on. No change without impetus.

Having a software background is what kicked up the questions in my mind. I still stand by brazenly because I keep hearing the community talk about "this is how Paradox does things". So it is obvious and brazen to the point where it is widely discussed.

Other than that your response is interesting and I certainly can't say I disagree about the entitlement portion lol

 

[Brent15]

I'm not going to read the whole thread. Nor do I agree with those who blindly defend everything a developer does.

But to the OP, I've been here since Europa Universalis II. Seeing Johan release constant improvements to that game built in the benefit of the doubt for me. Back then they didn't have DLC, so all this was free and it seemed to me, based on the thoughtfulness and type of improvements, that he enjoyed and cared for the game. Things aren't quite the way they were back then but I really think Paradox has demonstrated a desire to make their games fun and constantly improve them. I'm glad they offer regular DLC so I can continue to have my game improved and support them.

Will there be glitches? Sure, but from experience I'm not worried about them long term.

 

[Thomas Gideon]

What if I enjoy the game?

I recognize it has flaws, but I am reasonably confident that they will be addressed in time. In the meantime, I just try enjoy the game.

Is this a bad attitude to have?

 

[GN_Fighter]

Iam not really someone who is defending pdx on every turn however iam not yet grabbing a pitchfork on every occasion either.

there are two reasons for that,

first: iam a reasonable person.. i understand that the work pdx does on its games will create bugs, its not like for example with civ where they just ADD features pdx sometimes rework them completly so i think they have it actually harder as some other game companys in this regard.

second more important: i still trust and belive paradox that they care about their games and try to improve/perfect them and work hard to fix any bugs. other companys have lost this trust.

 

[eon47]

I second a lot of what permanently_afk said. What is and isn't "crippling" is subjective, and people who act like their opinion is the objective truth are the absolute worst. I'm looking at you, forumites who begin their replies with "False." I think such people do it because they think it makes them look cool or edgy, like Sherlock proving naysayers wrong with sharp observations or whatever, but I assume they're just particularly unruly thirteen-year-olds.