Stellaris Dev Diary #362 - Overwhelming Forum Power

[Metallichydra]

Major changes is an understatement

 

[Imp0815]

Really excited to see what your interpretations of the feedback will look like. I'm definitely here to see the results! (and comment on them )

 

[Obeliskkai]

Many of you appear to strongly dislike the current trade system or are at best ambivalent towards it.

The discussion last week led to a moment in a fairly random dream I was having (covering multiple aspects of my life) wherein I was playing Stellaris, saw a pop up for 'Nautical Bananas' complete with icon, thought (within the dream) that 'what the hell is a nautical banana?' and then decided it must have been part of a trade update where physical goods were added. The dream moved on but that is a fragment I remember.

So I have to ask, why am I dreaming of nautical bananas now?!

 

[A2ch0n]

Can we get an short overview on what the custodians actually working beside warfare changes? Well especially if the long ago promised espionage changes are at least still in the pipeline. I know i repeat myself here, that for sure. But given we haven't heard anything since years, i guess it can't do any harm to ask for a small update at least

 

[Tr33]

As of writing this dev diary, we’re up to around a thousand detailed responses split across various platforms, and we’re reading all of them. I’ve been reading and taking notes since the dev diary was posted, and it’ll take us a little while to get through all of it.

What do you think about community votes? I'm sure the community would love to discuss and vote on alternatives/concepts.

edit: lmao, maybe not

 

[Gilbert95]

I've only seen the posts here, but if other platforms are similar, the responses are 500 to a 1000 words each. This makes the total word count around 3/4 of a million. This is equivalent to about 3 novels. Amazing response by the community and incredible dedication of the devs

 

[Marmelado]

Although there are a lot of responses and it may be difficult to get through them all, yet alone analyze them, it is a sign that people care. Which is great news!

So I have to ask, why am I dreaming of nautical bananas now?!

Psionic trait unlocked?

 

[NotoriousTea]

Just in case there was any doubt- this isn't criticism, we love the game- we're just invested in its potential as much as the devs are. The Stellaris team is incredible.

 

[Deterock]

Glad to see that some of my ideas are not just "mine", but the general opinion. War and trade do deserve a rework, maybe even trade deals between empires as currently they serve as opinion/trust bonus. In singleplayer games I usually don't even bother trading resources with AI and I buy or sell them on the market instead. I'm a super fan of Fallen empires so I hope they'll have a rework as well. Cheers to the Stellaris team, Fortune favors the bold!

 

[Panzerslothen]

Huh, I thought/expected/had hoped for some info on 3.15 or whatever the patch number of the next major patch is going to be. Kind of disappointed here. Hmm. Oh well.

 

[HFY]

The Stellaris community also appears to be much more willing to embrace change than many others - not too surprising considering the number of major changes we’ve made since launch.

Especially if the new change is something like "restoring functionality destroyed by 2.2 which you previously were enjoying" then heck yeah, I'm in favor of change.

Next Week​

Next week we’ll review the changes that Stellaris has undergone over the years, go into more detail about more of the conclusions I’ve reached based on the feedback you’ve given, and might have some preliminary release notes for 3.14.1592.

I'm very interested in the tech debt and UX pain introduced (perhaps by accident) from the various regimes of change that have accrued in the past. Things like Portrait + Name = same species was broken on purpose for Necroids, but that had a knock-on effect of making Bio Ascension less powerful and a worse user experience; or things like locked traits being expanded to force Self-Modified to be impossible to manage; or like the change in pop growth from a bar on a tile to a single box (so only one species can grow) + the growth selection bias being for new species = your founders never grow again if you open borders.

How much of that kind of thing was intentional pain to force player behavior into specific patterns, and how much was just accidental from devs trying to do something good?

Could be very informative to hear the reasoning behind some of the unpopular / painful current mechanics.

Anyway, looking forward to it!

 

[Eladrin]

I've only seen the posts here, but if other platforms are similar, the responses are 500 to a 1000 words each. This makes the total word count around 3/4 of a million. This is equivalent to about 3 novels. Amazing response by the community and incredible dedication of the devs

The longest and most detailed posts tend to be here on this forum, some of the others had more back and forth commentary, but there was still a lot to go through.

Huh, I thought/expected/had hoped for some info on 3.15 or whatever the patch number of the next major patch is going to be. Kind of disappointed here. Hmm. Oh well.

The next major release will be in Q2 2025, but we'll have an Open Beta before that during Q1.

 

[Deterock]

Huh, I thought/expected/had hoped for some info on 3.15 or whatever the patch number of the next major patch is going to be. Kind of disappointed here. Hmm. Oh well.

Last time they said that the next anniversary update is gonna be bigger than usual, so might be 4.0. Still I'm not sure.

 

[Critical Ethics]

I'm still mad this release cycle wasn't called Archimedes.

 

[Oimes]

Whatever changes are made to , I want to mention one thing that is often forgotten.
Systems must be interconnected. It increasingly feels like individual game systems are complete or only minimally impactful on each other.
I understand that this is difficult, especially since some of them are sold as DLC, but the problem will only get worse if it is not thought through enough.

 

[Miguelinileugim]

I just want a happiness system like vic3 living standards that just goes up and up forever and that I can throw infinite consumer goods at to raise it to absurdly impractical levels.

 

[Nudeldifudel]

I mean as long as things get better, I guess its no harm to changing things. Depends on how big of a changes were talking. Like I like the way trade flows etc, I would just like to see it expanded and connected more to other systems, and other empires etc. And fleets, like as long as we still have fleets we can move around and fight with, its fine but I also like what we have. But if we're talking about like generally scaling the fleet system down to less ships etc, I would be all for that, of that's what you mean by a big change I don't know.

I would personally not want to see any big changes to the pop or job system, to me that's quintessential Stellaris. A spreadsheet of pops is just not Stellaris to me. That would turn me of the game a bit actually. If you wanna mimic Victoria 3 in any area, don't do that, mimick the way they do diplomacy or something instead.

 

[Dr. B]

The openness and willingness to have a dialogue with the players, and listen to feedback, is the essence of why Stellaris is a success.
Other game developers have much to learn from you in the Stellaris team.

 

[Gorehuchi]

I actually like the trade system, my only issue is that linking stations is pointless busy work that feels like it should happen automatically, and that the map mode doesn’t adequately communicate volume or collection ranges at a glance.
But I am happy to see some alternatives!