• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Stellaris Dev Diary #161 - Development Update

Hello everyone!

For this week’s dev diary we chose to switch the order of a couple of dev diaries to be able to give you some updates earlier rather than later.

The Stellaris brand has understandably been under more scrutiny than usual for the last few months, and we want to address situations related to work-in-progress art in Federations. As an example, we had some UI design mockups (shown during PDXCon) that contained placeholder art. We want to make clear this is not how the game will appear in its final version.

Moving on to Federations: During PDXCON 2019 we said that we would give more information on the expansion later during the year – and today we want to share some news that Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing.

In addition, to give us the best chance of improving some of the pain points you’ve shared with us, we have assigned some of our team members to focus solely on trying to improve performance and AI. It is very important to us that 2.6 does not compound any of the current issues with the game, and that we can take the time we need to address some of the issues remaining from 2.2. It’s important to remember, however, that working on these kinds of issues is not a sprint, but a marathon – it's something that is constantly being worked on over longer periods of time.

If you want to read more about performance, and how we work to maintain it over time, we shared some more information on this topic in Dev Diary #149.

While we have been unable to give concrete information or specifics related to these issues, we can say that it is very important to us. With that said, it's important for us that you know that your feedback is not being ignored, even if we have no news to share.

We want to thank you for being such a dedicated community and helping us by providing feedback and reporting issues with the game. We appreciate this to no end and encourage you to continue voicing your thoughts to us.

From the beginning of next year, we’ll be doing a series of dev diaries dedicated entirely to answering questions related to specific topics each week. The schedule for those dev diaries will be released later in December when we’ll summarize and round up the year.

---

That is it for this week! Dev diaries will resume their regular schedule, and as promised last week, next week we will be talking about some of the new things affecting diplomacy, such as Envoys.

P.S:
Since this dev diary had no pictures I felt it was necessary to add something, so here's a picture of the premade Lithoid-empire that some of you have been asking us to add to the Lithoids Species Pack! (Will also be updated with 2.6)

upload_2019-11-21_15-28-57.png
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
To this day, since following the game from the release of 1.0, I've not ever commented on any Stellaris forums. Ever.

Today breaks that.

Ignore those who're complaining they didn't get their weekly "Federations Fix." They're quite literally the child without any candy—completely oblivious to any serious matter at hand.

It's the equivalent of a spoiled girl who whines that she wasn't given the new iPhone, because the family's grandmother has been dying in the hospital, and word just got back that she might just make it through her illness alive.

They whine about not getting any previews of that sweet, juicy Federations content, even though Stellaris has been dying and ill since 2.2, and finally we've all received word that this game might just make it through.

Point being, I'm happy the Stellaris dev team took note of the community's complaints, assessed the situation, and put morals before money. Seriously, thank you for this Dev Diary. It was needed.

To another Stellaris DLC!

It is perfectly reasonable to want updates on the core gameplay coming with the DLC. What they’ve mentioned here is awesome news that everyone is excited about, but could have been an addition to the normal dev diary.

A shame you decided to use your first post on the forums to attack other members of the community, who care about the game as much as you do!
 
I have nearly a thousand hours in Stellaris. It's likely my most played game, and one of my absolute favourites. You guys have done a fantastic job, and it's been more than worth every penny I've spent.

Whether I buy Federations (and Lithoids) will depend entirely on how much progress is made towards fixing the things that have made the game unplayable for me.

These are:
Performance
Micromanagement
Crisis bugs
AI

I'm happy to leave Stellaris on the shelf of games I loved but am finished with. I just want the powers that be to know that more money doesn't entirely hinge on shiny new features.

Exactly my thoughts, I'd love to put even more hours into Stellaris but not until things are patched up, and while it's collecting dust now if they had released another rushed dlc and gone on a 6 week christmas break i'd have given up on the game lol
 
I'm happy to hear about this development, thank you Paradox.
 
There has been comment on this subject before. And the answer has always and will always be the same: bug fixing is hard, be patient, we understand you want better.

I guarantee the mewling doesn't stop because of this.

Baffling level of gullibility and brown-nosery.

if by "mewling" you mean "justifiable complaints"

Some people prefer actions to words. we've had years of words.
 
I am very, very happy to see a dev diary dedicated to these issues, and even happier that you guys have decided to take the time to release a quality patch/DLC rather than rushing for a December release. It doesn't entirely heal my trust in Paradox, but it sure is a good step in the right direction.

Take all the time you need. Cool gameplay doesn't mean anything if it's packed in an unplayable state.
 
:) what you just got was words......
I mean aside from the very tangible 'action' of the release not being pre-Christmas?
nd by mewling I mean the same complaints copy pasted all over this forum over and over again like a screeching herd of cats.
Maybe, if the same complaints are being posted over and over, that's an indication that there's a consistent problem with the game?
 
Hello everyone!

For this week’s dev diary we chose to switch the order of a couple of dev diaries to be able to give you some updates earlier rather than later.

The Stellaris brand has understandably been under more scrutiny than usual for the last few months, and we want to address situations related to work-in-progress art in Federations. As an example, we had some UI design mockups (shown during PDXCon) that contained placeholder art. We want to make clear this is not how the game will appear in its final version.

Moving on to Federations: During PDXCON 2019 we said that we would give more information on the expansion later during the year – and today we want to share some news that Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing.

In addition, to give us the best chance of improving some of the pain points you’ve shared with us, we have assigned some of our team members to focus solely on trying to improve performance and AI. It is very important to us that 2.6 does not compound any of the current issues with the game, and that we can take the time we need to address some of the issues remaining from 2.2. It’s important to remember, however, that working on these kinds of issues is not a sprint, but a marathon – it's something that is constantly being worked on over longer periods of time.

If you want to read more about performance, and how we work to maintain it over time, we shared some more information on this topic in Dev Diary #149.

While we have been unable to give concrete information or specifics related to these issues, we can say that it is very important to us. With that said, it's important for us that you know that your feedback is not being ignored, even if we have no news to share.

We want to thank you for being such a dedicated community and helping us by providing feedback and reporting issues with the game. We appreciate this to no end and encourage you to continue voicing your thoughts to us.
Your guys' placeholder art is just fine. In fact, if the final version looked like what was shown, I wouldn't complain about it. But Gamebear's placeholder art breeds several kinds of wrongness.
Thank you for this dev dairy, showing us that you care about your game and our opinion about it.
Looking forward to results.
 
Exactly my thoughts, I'd love to put even more hours into Stellaris but not until things are patched up, and while it's collecting dust now if they had released another rushed dlc and gone on a 6 week christmas break i'd have given up on the game lol
My thoughts as well.
I have played 4-digit hours of this game, and had to stop playing a new game after 50 years passed recently because:

-Performance dropped rapidly. It approached a snails pace.

-AI empires had serioud difficulties using game economy well. They could also not form battle plans well. Breaks immersion.

-Micromanagement. This is the worst offender. My sanity regarding planet management is in danger.

The real-life day is long with work and obligations. Playing a computer game in your spare time should be relaxing, fun, stress-free, recharging your batteries. The planet management in Stellaris as the game goes on is the opposite, you chug through it like a chore, to be able to play a bit more without all the warning bells beeping. Real work is more fun, and you also get payed.


The good news is I also tried playing in a small galaxy instead of medium, and performance was noticeably better.
Also, smaller galaxy means less micromanagement.
 
Sure, the proof will be in the pudding, but we got a statement that Paradox has people specifically working on AI and performance, and that they are investigating the vacant jobs issue. This indeed shows consideration for fans.
 
Thank you for acknowledging our complaints and promising dedicated action. This is almost exactly what I wanted to hear. Hopefully this will finally result in needed improvements to gameplay and performance.
 
In todays consumer/producer climate, I am always glad to see releases pushed back to enable further work on quality. As they say at my company: better a good product show up a little late than a poor one ship on time and get sent back.
 
Moving on to Federations: During PDXCON 2019 we said that we would give more information on the expansion later during the year – and today we want to share some news that Federations is targeted for release in early 2020. Although we understand that some of you might be disappointed that Federations will not be released in December, we want you to know that we are taking more time to make sure that the next update is going to be amazing

Fantastic decision!
 
To this day, since following the game from the release of 1.0, I've not ever commented on any Stellaris forums. Ever.

Today breaks that.

Ignore those who're complaining they didn't get their weekly "Federations Fix." They're quite literally the child without any candy—completely oblivious to any serious matter at hand.

It's the equivalent of a spoiled girl who whines that she wasn't given the new iPhone, because the family's grandmother has been dying in the hospital, and word just got back that she might just make it through her illness alive.

They whine about not getting any previews of that sweet, juicy Federations content, even though Stellaris has been dying and ill since 2.2, and finally we've all received word that this game might just make it through.

Point being, I'm happy the Stellaris dev team took note of the community's complaints, assessed the situation, and put morals before money. Seriously, thank you for this Dev Diary. It was needed.

To another Stellaris DLC!

Comparing people having different priorities for a video game to a dying grandmother is pretty tone deaf.
 
Heh, I figured it wouldn't be out until early next year anyways. At least this way we get stuff that actually works. ;)
 
I mean aside from the very tangible 'action' of the release not being pre-Christmas?

Maybe, if the same complaints are being posted over and over, that's an indication that there's a consistent problem with the game?
Confirmation of a non December launch was news I suppose.

I'm not sure why people assume I don't think there's a problem with performance though? To be clear, I agree there is a problem with performance. I just think it's obvious that this is being worked on (because it always is) and even if it wasn't, there was a dev diary released a while back that spoke about this process in detail.
 
The Stellaris brand has understandably been under more scrutiny than usual for the last few months

This isn't just about Stellaris.

The reputation of the very brand that is "Paradox Grand Strategy" is at serious risk.

And you know how it is with reputations. Building them up requires years and years of consistently honourable conduct; whereas incorrect beviour can ruin them *real* *fast*.

release in early 2020.

And there was great rejoicing!

I and many others have worried a lot that you'd repeat the error from last year and do a December release, then go off on a long-ass Christmas holiday, leaving us with an inordinately buggy game version.

The release of 2.2.0, on 6/dec 2018, was when the so-called "toxicity" began.

we have assigned some of our team members to focus solely on trying to improve performance and AI

This has been my great concern, as I've talked about on another forum, one that is outside the reach of the Paradox censors:

That you assign all manpower to producing DLC and adding new features to the game (that which brings income, and thus pleases the bean counters), allocating no genuine resources to improving the performance, the AI and to a slightly lesser extent the UI (that which pleases people who have already purchased the game, but which is a phenomenon invisible to the bean counters).

So I'm *extremely* glad to hear this.

.

As for the Job performance issues, lots of players claim that the core of the problem is that *all* Jobs on *all* Planets (and Habitats and RW Segments), throughout the entire freakin' Galaxy, are re-checked *every* *single* day.

I'm in favour of a brute-force solution, to assign each planet to be checked every 10 days, with each planet being assigned a number from 1 to 10 to determine whether it's checked on the 1st, 11th and 21th, 2nd, 12th and 22nd, and so forth.

Others, likely more programming-savvy than I am, prefer a more elegant solution where Jobs are only re-checked after something actually changes on that particular planet.

If you're reluctant to make great changes in the coming 3-4 months yourself, then perhaps you could open up that aspect of the game more widely to modders, so that they can experiment with tweaking Job Checks. A mod that markedly improves things will quickly rise to the top, and thus to your attention.
 
I don’t want to sound like one of those stuck-up jerks, but the game uses a mixture between a tech tree and a deck of cards. You just don’t get to see it in action.
Honestly, I don't think it would break the system to know in-game what techs are required for others, or what techs are unlocked by picking this one over that one. They already have the little "unlock" symbol on certain techs (like railguns, for example), indicating that taking it unlocks more tech. That way you aren't pulling your hair out over not getting the tech card from the draw when you're actually missing a prerequisite.

As for the dev diary itself, I will say that I'm glad to hear that AI and performance issues are being worked on. Even if the endgame doesn't come to a screeching halt, the AI is such a pushover (including AEs and crises) that it's not fun anyway. That said, sometimes people are a bit too vocal about these issues, bringing them up all over the place. Hopefully this restores a bit more civil discourse on the forums.