Stellaris Dev Diary #140 - 2.2.x post-launch patch v2

[Duuk]

Daniel made it clear that it's a bigger system that needs more attention and said it's a high priority for him. That said, the team won't hold work on everything else, while the sectors are being tackled, just to deliver a PR point. We have employees that want to continue work on other elements of the game in the meantime and they won't be benched to keep up appearances. It's important to everyone here to remain efficient, as, in the end, it's your money that funds this game's development, and we'd rather use it as well as we can.

I get that your job is to now put out the dumpster fire that was caused by admitting that the "extended patch time" we were promised on 2.2 is already over while the AI still can't play the game, exterminators don't exterminate, planetary bombardment is still based on tiles, the economic balance is nonsensical and not well thought through, and the entire pop system, from growth, to migration, to factions, to employment, just flat out doesn't work on anything more than a surface level...

But sure, tell us what the next DLC is. I literally do messaging for a living, and my god do you guys need a professional PR and spin department.

You're like 1 level above, "Don't you people have phones?" this week.

Now, if *I* was running your PR:

We've got some exciting news coming up over the next few weeks. The next patch in the 2.2.x cycle is coming, which features some upgrades to some of the Ascension Perks to make them all have some more "flavor" and "uniqueness" beyound just "here is a 10 percent buff".

<img, img>

Look how shiny!
Our lead tech, Moah has been hard at work changing how ships upgrade. This is a big deal, because we've ALL been attacked while our fleets are mid-upgrade and we've had to make that decision of "Do I wait out the upgrade, or do I cancel it?" Well fear not, because now the ships that are done upgrading will be complete already!

<img>

And of course, a clean up of the planetary interface was promised and delivered!

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Of course, now that the dev team is working hard on this stuff, the rest of the team is starting to free up, which means it's time to get them working on some things, too! Which means we might have some announcements coming in March or so about what a post-Megacorp content pack might look like... But rest assured that the team is fine form and working hard to ROCK, POUNCE, and BOUNCE into Spring!

Duuk's Marketing Class: 101

 

[Jotoco]

I can only recommend you read my last comment (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-140-2-2-x-post-launch-patch-v2.1152783/page-7#post-25166166) before jumping to that conclusion, as well as Daniel's post: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-140-2-2-x-post-launch-patch-v2.1152783/page-6#post-25165777

It should give you an idea of our priorities and how the dev team's resources are managed.

I went back and re-read it, and now I am even more sure of it.
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Daniel made it clear that it's a bigger system that needs more attention and said it's a high priority for him. That said, the team won't hold work on everything else, while the sectors are being tackled, just to deliver a PR point. We have employees that want to continue work on other elements of the game in the meantime and they won't be benched to keep up appearances. It's important to everyone here to remain efficient, as, in the end, it's your money that funds this game's development, and we'd rather use it as well as we can.

I understand that decision, and it is a valid decision. Just not one I will choose to support with further purchases.

You had a working sector feature, though it wasn't perfect, it was usable. Then you chose to change it.

The problem I have is that features are broken or unfished that were chosen to be implemented with 2.2. It was not ready and it won't be ready for another year. I understand you need to fund further development, but the blunder by releasing 2.2 in this state shouldn't be shouldered by the players. Not even mentioning the AI, the biggest problem now that performance was partially addressed, AI is not a feature, it is the base of the game. It should be at least be as good as Glavius' since he is one man with a lot more limited resources.

Is this a complaint? Sure it is. I just hope this doesn't come across as whining, because I am just a disappointed consumer trying to understand the situation and explain why I am disappointed and won't probably support Paradox with more purchases.

 

[Radu]

I think the applicable expression is "Do YoU pEoPLE NoT hAvE mOdS?" Because it seems that the policy on AI is a Bethesda-style "let community mods fix it for free for us". Literally I saw screenies of a better UI from a mod in this very thread.

It was mentioned "out of respect for your money we are working on the next DLC in parallel".

I would consider it actual respect if priority was given to address the current issues before piling more mechanics on top that inevitably break everything because literally this was the story so far.

At least EU4's DDRJake outright said their aim was to eliminate the technical debt. And EU4 is actually in a decent state, by comparison.

I have zero interest in buying future content that rests on such neglected AI and performance foundations.

 

[maxp779]

Daniel made it clear that it's a bigger system that needs more attention and said it's a high priority for him. That said, the team won't hold work on everything else, while the sectors are being tackled, just to deliver a PR point. We have employees that want to continue work on other elements of the game in the meantime and they won't be benched to keep up appearances. It's important to everyone here to remain efficient, as, in the end, it's your money that funds this game's development, and we'd rather use it as well as we can.

And personally for me I have given enough to Paradox and unless sectors are fixed I won't be getting the next DLC because there will be no point. I play wide, thats how I enjoy the game. I can't reasonably do that anymore with the state that sectors are in.

 

[Mrakvampire]

Final post-launch patch in current state of game is really bad management decision.
As for myself, I will not purchase any DLC until MAJOR work on AI has been done.

 

[HighKings_Ruin]

Agreed. The fact that they're working on DLC in the games current state shows their priorities are not on fixing the game. I'm not buying any more DLC for this game until they fix these crippling issues.

But I swear if actual fixes turn up in the next DLC I'm throwing my hat down.

 

[maxp779]

When the number of a district exceeds 15, you show a number inside a larger box, like shown in the image.



Sectors are a larger task that is a big too big to tackle right now, with a lot of other fixes being done, but I do want you to know I have sectors as one of my highest priorities going forwards. We will probably not be going back to manual sector management, but we will definitely be looking into how to make the automatic assignment better, while also making sure that resource management and AI development works better. We will probably make a dev diary about our plans for the Sectors in the future, so that we can share our thoughts before committing to anything.



I want to make it clear that this does not mean we will stop making improvements to the game. We will always continue to support our games, but now we need to focus our efforts into a larger patch instead of continuing to deploy smaller patches. The reason why we need to focus on a next, large patch is because trying to maintain multiple branches of development and deploying small patches takes a significant amount of resources away from us working on fixing bugs, improvements and feature development.

Okay fair enough but this game was pretty well designed from inception. At a very high level there was a lot of stuff to do and it would become untenable within time and we had sectors to solve that. They used to be mandatory due to the core planet limit or whatever it was called. Regardless even if that wasent there they were mandatory to enjoy the game on later stages for those of us who play wide and don't want to babysit 25% of the galaxys planets that we own/have conquered. Whoever decided Stellaris should have sectors was a champion! They were a fantastic idea and I remember waaaay back in 1.0 or 1.1 I thought to myself "these sectors are a good idea, I like this!".

There were complaints about them and micro-managing the core worlds (clicking every building to upgrade etc) was boring but for 2.2 you guys promised less micro.

Instead you delivered more micro. And butchered the one tool we had that kept micro under control pre 2.2.

So for wide players like myself I hope you can understand I am suitably ticked off by this.

 

[AlphaAsh]

It's really hard for me to believe that even a guy like you will find anything remotely fun in managing 50 planets in 2.2.5.

And yet here I am, in my current game managing 57 planets without using sector automation, and enjoying it.

Yes, more tools for macro-management would be welcome, but not at the expense of removing the ability to micro-manage.

 

[sillyrobot]

I feel like the answer to your questions is contained more in the philosophy of project management in general, not this patch in particular. Let me give you a rough rundown.

The development process itself, never snaps end to end. It never goes straight from point A to B to C. You work with various resources, multiple people with varying skillsets, availability (this is a growing company and we help each other out sometimes) and efficiency. There are bottlenecks and multiple elements that have to come together to meet a single goal or create a product. Sometimes you're ahead with art, other times sound recording was done first or programmers have some work hours to spare. When that happens, you want them to work on something else, and not sit around and wait for someone else to be done with their part of the work. It's simply a matter of efficiency.

In addition, every project lead, has a rough idea of what's in the project's future. Most of you probably saw the development roadmap Wiz has been sharing on the forums. With that knowledge, we can determine what feature will require more work and we can start planning it ahead of others. So elements of certain updates sometimes start development way sooner than others. An example of that would be Martin working on the planetary management rework for 2.2, as soon as 2.0 and Apocalypse were done. And you all know that in that time we also managed to release Distant Stars. In fact, we were even showing prototype screenshots at PDX Con to the audience.

So, to sum, up, of course elements of the next DLC, or even two updates ahead, have had some groundwork laid out already. Those of our devs who could spare the time, wrote down design documents, or drafted basic art. Even sitting in a meeting room and scribbling on a whiteboard is still work, and it has been done even while 2.2 was in development. That is how managing a project with so many moving parts works, and that is how 2.2, its post release phase and any and all future updates for our games will work too, from the workflow management point of view.

That said, what was stated before, was of course accurate also. We are now in a dedicated post-release support phase for 2.2 and that was the team's main focus. Now, as we progress and feel that maintaining multiple branches of the game is costing us efficiency and resources, we try to start moving some of our devs to work on the next update, while designing it in a way, that will allow us to still give the issues you've been reporting deserved attention.

Not any project I ever led.

Longer-term strategy is designed to conform with an conceived and complete vision. Project goals are paramount, articulated, act as hard constraints and are designed to support and conform with longer term strategy. The project goes deliberately from A, through B and then to C; in fact those milestones specifically define the project timeline. Stages are discrete and designed to be self-contained especially if the system is expected to run continuously. Scope is controlled; creep is forbidden. Managing expectation of stakeholders at least as important as technical brilliance.

 

[sillyrobot]

So, you mean you're going to leave that feature broken for after the next DLC?

I was hoping for 2 ~3 months of support before any more DLC, because that's what is needed right now.

My initial guess was 6 months to dig out the technical debt and get the systems running sensibly again. I still feel that's necessary.

 

[sillyrobot]

And yet here I am, in my current game managing 57 planets without using sector automation, and enjoying it.

Yes, more tools for macro-management would be welcome, but not at the expense of removing the ability to micro-manage.

That's about the point where I start to reach my limit. My last game that went about 100 years, I was up to over 100 colonies when I gave up.

 

[AlphaAsh]

My initial guess was 6 months to dig out the technical debt and get the systems running sensibly again. I still feel that's necessary.

Considering the output of monetised content in the past, I don't think that's realistic.

I believe that the game does need to make money ongoing, otherwise it gets canned, and we wait years for a sequel.

I do think that more person-hours should be kept on QA and technical debt elimination than PDX has done so before, and I read that as the case in this thread. So I trust that when the next DLC lands, it won't have a broken update like the last one. Because if it does, then I too will not trust PDX again and my custom is lost.

 

[Defiler99]

He did make it clear that the next piece of content has development scheduled in a way that will allow them to put the required focus on lingering issues.

Yeah but we're not going to buy it, because we got burned the last 5 times.

 

[sillyrobot]

Considering the output of monetised content in the past, I don't think that's realistic.

I believe that the game does need to make money ongoing, otherwise it gets canned, and we wait years for a sequel.

I do think that more person-hours should be kept on QA and technical debt elimination than PDX has done so before, and I read that as the case in this thread. So I trust that when the next DLC lands, it won't have a broken update like the last one. Because if it does, then I too will not trust PDX again and my custom is lost.

Feasibility is different from necessity. If it isn't feasible, it won't get done even if it is necessary. That doesn't make it less necessary though.

Looking at the state of the scripts, the state of the major subcomponents (AI, UX, performance), and the state of the minor systems (sector assignment, pathfinding, trade collection, experience gain) in the game all point to the need for a long multi-stage project to work as intended and promote stability and maintainability.

I suspect the next DLC won't be as broken simply because, if the team is in any way sane, it will be focused on artwork and not on coding/scripting.

 

[Duuk]

My initial guess was 6 months to dig out the technical debt and get the systems running sensibly again. I still feel that's necessary.

I wasn't expecting 6 months, but a full 3 would have been nice. December obviously doesn't count because it was release, rushed panic, holiday. January was essentially 1/2 of a month due to the return from the break and planning phase. I was hoping to see until end-of-March minimum, mid-April ideal before even an announcement that we had reached end-of-cycle on Megacorp and the teasers started on the next content.

To admit we're 10 days out from end of cycle on 2.2 in mid-February is not great optics.

 

[Gaen]

Feel like most people only read the first paragraph of the DD and then went stright on to post angry comments...

With the amount of disagrees i think i hit a sore spot ^^

 

[HighKings_Ruin]

With the amount of disagrees i think i hit a sore spot ^^

I had hoped the community was more mature than that. Wishful thinking on my part I suppose.

 

[Andrzej I]

Feel like most people only read the first paragraph of the DD and then went stright on to post angry comments...

To be fair, is there that much beyond the gist of the first paragraph? The rest showed UI changes and a mention of "new stuff we will be starting soon", which reinforces feelings about the first paragraph, no?

 

[VerKer]

Sorry Grekulf. If you think that is going to quell the uproar that your original post caused, then you are mistaken.

No one posting here thought that you were going to ‘stop making improvements to the game’. We are all fully aware that there will be more DLCs and patches in the future. What all the anger is about is that, barely 50 days after promising ‘extensive’ post-patch support, we are getting the ‘final’ patch for 2.2. And I think you know that, so your disingenuousness in pretending otherwise just adds fuel to the fire.

Again, no one is, or has been, complaining because they thought that your ‘final’ support patch would be too small. They have been complaining that it is the ‘final’ patch for 2.2. So your reassurances that this will be a large patch are irrelevant (and, again, seem disingenuous). Big or small, patches cannot hope to solve large complex problems with thousands of moving parts, like AI or performance, in one go. That kind of improvement has to be iterative. Also, big or small, patches often break new things and create new problems, often unexpectedly. So limiting yourselves to one more patch, ignoring anything it might break, seems like the very opposite of good support.

When 2.2 came out, there was a huge clamour from players for the devs to acknowledge that they had messed up. That didn’t happen, and we could understand that; a dev would likely get fired for admitting that Paradox had knowingly shipped a broken product. But now, it seems to me like the devs never did, and still don’t, understand just how deep the problems with the game run. If you genuinely think that one final, big patch can complete the salvage operation of the indescribable disgrace that was 2.2.0, then how can we trust that the deep-running, fundamental problems with AI and performance will ever be solved?

You know, I would click "agree" on this very posting 10 times if the forum software would let me. If PDX does not lean towards a change in their general handling of this franchise any time soon, even the toughest fanboys will at some point start to throw stones. I dont think the new lead will have a positive relation with the fanbase, if he cant renege on his promise, that 2.2 would receive an extended bug fixing period. And boy is this overdue, this game needs something the like since more than 1.5 years back, at least.

I really hoped devs would prove me wrong not ordering a stellaris DLC (megacorp) for the first time. Until now, they havent. Bought motorsport manager for 1/3rd of the DLCs price, and you know what, its great fun.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

Well, let's hope AI and Sectors are fixed before the next Big Patch, because sure as hell it would come with many problems; so if the earlier content isn't fixed by that time...

Fingers crossed.