Stellaris Dev Diary #373 - 4.0 Development Progress Update

[Critical Ethics]

Vassalization used to be unlocked by the Domination tree, which is why it's called that. It's thematically muddled now after the vassal stuff got removed from it.

Making vassalization and federations available too early is bad because it locks AI empires into large rigid blocks too soon. We already see this with vassals, which is why vassalization also should go back to not being available at the start, at least not peaceful vassalization.

I think we need something that is to vassalisation as a defense pact is to federations. A version of guarantee independence and "request protection" where the guarantor gets something out of it instead of it just being an influence drain, with true vassalisation unlocking at about the same time as true federations.

 

[Zaacplot300]

Game mechanics are only optional to people who don't care about playing as well as possible.

To serious players, these focuses will become a mandatory, obnoxious checklist of tasks you have to go out of your way to do even though they don't align with any kind of logical plan for your empire or the way you want to play. It's like the Eurekas in Civ 6. They turn the game from a sandboxy historical simulator into an endless series of nonsensical sidequests.

It's obvious how this will turn out - instead of playing organically, every skilled player will be, for example, pushing out 10 useless naked minimum cost Destroyers asap in order to unlock the Cruisers tech much earlier than intended and then roll over everything. Don't get the build 10 destroyers focus card? Spend all your unity to reroll until you get it. Does this sound like the Stellaris we enjoy?

A lot of people just dismiss the complaints about this feature because they either don't play the game seriously or just don't consider the ramifications. It's always like this with bad new features in the game - every newly announced feature gets cheered by the majority here on the forums while a small minority sees the problems coming but is ignored. Then the new feature releases and NOW everyone starts complaining after seeing it in action, when it's too late.

If that’s how you feel pressured to play, I think that’s on you. I personally do not recognize the issue because even if I decided to waste resources on building 10 expensive probably useless ships to satisfy the goal quicker than usual, all I unlocked is the research option for cruisers, not the actual fully researched cruiser tech. That means that now you have the privilege of spending 5-10 years at minimum researching a ship too expensive to effectively use.

Don’t forget that we’re going to be trying this out in a beta instead of full release. If it’s actually harmful to the game, I’m certain it’ll get changed so it isn’t.

 

[Newbee53]

Game mechanics are only optional to people who don't care about playing as well as possible.

To serious players, these focuses will become a mandatory, obnoxious checklist of tasks you have to go out of your way to do even though they don't align with any kind of logical plan for your empire or the way you want to play. It's like the Eurekas in Civ 6. They turn the game from a sandboxy historical simulator into an endless series of nonsensical sidequests.

It's obvious how this will turn out - instead of playing organically, every skilled player will be, for example, pushing out 10 useless naked minimum cost Destroyers asap in order to unlock the Cruisers tech much earlier than intended and then roll over everything. Don't get the build 10 destroyers focus card? Spend all your unity to reroll until you get it. Does this sound like the Stellaris we enjoy?

A lot of people just dismiss the complaints about this feature because they either don't play the game seriously or just don't consider the ramifications. It's always like this with bad new features in the game - every newly announced feature gets cheered by the majority here on the forums while a small minority sees the problems coming but is ignored. Then the new feature releases and NOW everyone starts complaining after seeing it in action, when it's too late.

There are a lot of points to be covered here. many of them more general than your comment, though its still helpful to fram this.
1) Not everyone who plays the way you do will feel forced to complete those focus objective things in the least useful way imaginable. So, it sounds like you are over generalizing a personal preference or something.

2) Most people don't play to maximize a single attribute. Even 'tech rush' strategies are fairly rare in the general player base, and they help so many things you could be focused on otherwise.

3) I play Stellaris 'seriously' and don't give two shits about this thing and would never build naked corvettes or destroyers just to fill out a 'side quest.' One of the things I'm continues of is to always have at least a few examples of every ship type, because it makes the fleets look better. Role Play is my serious play.

4) The example you gave might be better dealt with by suggesting we build 'x total fleet power' or 'build a single fleet with x fleet size' focus cards. because, they've said multiple times that the individual cards don't provide a reward, they provide points which fill up to a reward. So, any given reward can be gotten without a specific action.

5) I like side quests. lots of my goals are very long term and often leave me waiting on something I know to be end game years away. This has great potential to help me bridge that time until I roll mega-engineering or whatever.

6) This is a tool to mitigate the negative parts of the game's RNG. Something that is a regular and ongoing complaint about the game. And with the bones of the feature complete, it could be used in the reworking of psionic ascension. which I think we all can say is very RNG heavy already.

7) People are suggesting improvements to the focus system. things to keep it from being bad. The 'hate' people are confused by are those who just demand it being removed enterally.

8) If you want to continue seeing improvements to stellaris, we need new players who stay around. This feature will help them deal with the honestly massive number of features. Most people aren't going to search online for guides how to play if they get confused. they will just stop playing the game.

As I see it, if the biggest problem with the system is that 'some people will fill compelled to complete focuses with minimal investment' then the good clearly outweighs the bad. So, I struggle to see why 'ax it entirely' is the go-to option for those who complain about that problem.

 

[Calvax]

Game mechanics are only optional to people who don't care about playing as well as possible.

To serious players, these focuses will become a mandatory, obnoxious checklist of tasks you have to go out of your way to do even though they don't align with any kind of logical plan for your empire or the way you want to play. It's like the Eurekas in Civ 6. They turn the game from a sandboxy historical simulator into an endless series of nonsensical sidequests.

It's obvious how this will turn out - instead of playing organically, every skilled player will be, for example, pushing out 10 useless naked minimum cost Destroyers asap in order to unlock the Cruisers tech much earlier than intended and then roll over everything. Don't get the build 10 destroyers focus card? Spend all your unity to reroll until you get it. Does this sound like the Stellaris we enjoy?

A lot of people just dismiss the complaints about this feature because they either don't play the game seriously or just don't consider the ramifications. It's always like this with bad new features in the game - every newly announced feature gets cheered by the majority here on the forums while a small minority sees the problems coming but is ignored. Then the new feature releases and NOW everyone starts complaining after seeing it in action, when it's too late.

I can't say I agree with your definition of a serious player, nor the implication that the number of players that are serious (by this definition) is enough to justify designing the game around them. To me a "serious" player is simply one invested enough to put a tonne of hours into the game, learn all the mechanics, and try out different playstyles. What you've described sounds far more like a meta player who is always trying to optimise against some goal of rapid domination. I don't think that's how most people play and given that Stellaris strives to be a science fiction sandbox where many stories can play out it shouldn't be designed around that.

I'm certainly sympathetic to some of the concerns from focuses. In fact I'd say the focus system is the only part of 4.0 I'm wary about. There is a line to be walked between a system that is immersive (i.e. it feels the progression of your empire is a reward linked to its actions and not mana) and one that feels gimmicky. That's what the beta will be for and while it's a shame we won't be testing focuses for nonstandard play styles we should be able to test it enough to give solid feedback on how to make it work well, rather than feel like a bunch of gimmicky tasks.

 

[Ajacoba]

if you feel the need to play "as well as possible" you either need to lower the difficulty or stop playing pvp with no rules

 

[Calvax]

One of the things I'm continues of is to always have at least a few examples of every ship type, because it makes the fleets look better. Role Play is my serious play.

On my wishlist for a future military rework is to find a way to reduce the monofleet meta. I also like to make mixed fleets, though it's irritating that occasionally if I find myself up against too strong an enemy (like a crisis I've over tuned the difficulty on) I know I'll win if I just spam a mix of artillery and carrier battleships. A fairly simple idea I like is from HOI4 where smaller ships provide a screen. In order to target the bigger ships you need to have destroyed enough of the smaller ones, and even then it's a gradual process from 100-0% screen. It would probably require a bit of rework to how the fleets move in stellaris by introducing some kind of formations, and I'd still like it to be possible to design certain larger ships to not need so much protection, but it would be worth it for the sci-fi flavour it would impart.

For the future in any case. I put something like this in my feedback form for military and fleets.

 

[Fulgrymm]

The fact that achievements have no mechanical impact means that there's no reason why they have to be obtainable to people who play with mods - since it doesn't impact them in any way.

This logic works the other way as well; there's no reason they can't be obtainable by people who use mods since it doesn't impact people who don't use mods.

 

[TrueWolves]

Jobs may be offered by the hundreds, but I imagine kilopops are still a valid overall term for measuring colony to colony capacity. "I've got 5 kilopops worth of energy out of that world and I still can't pay my triple over naval cap fleet." "Okay but what about 6 kilopops?"

 

[Troyen]

Yeah, my hypothesis is groups of 1000 would be easier to grok than groups of 100, and I've already seen a number of people confused about the pop numbers on the reddit version of this DD. You can still do percentages based off of kilopops, your percentages just have a decimal value, e.g. 12.5%.

all I unlocked is the research option for cruisers, not the actual fully researched cruiser tech. That means that now you have the privilege of spending 5-10 years at minimum researching a ship too expensive to effectively use.

Guaranteed tech unlocks are actually quite powerful. You may not research the tech right away, but having the option at any time means you don't have to go through the rng card draw to get it when you want it. Or alternatively, it removes the tech from the card draw pool, letting you fish for other techs. Especially for the tech trees that have lots of options but you want to prioritize a handful of, e.g. Society and Engineering. There's a reason people today fish for stuff that gives e.g. Mega Engineering as a guaranteed research option even if they are decades away from being able to research it.

I strongly suspect certain rewards will play out like the Civ 6 breakthrough system where it becomes gamey trying to collect bonuses that they would have otherwise obtained later, but you're right that we should wait for the beta to see how it plays out in practice. I think this will be the breakthrough technologies of this beta - good intentions, undesirable side-effects - but we really just don't have a lot of information about the actual goals, progression pace, and rewards.

 

[Idle America]

you sure you don't just have the no retreat stance on or something?
I mean, that seems to be a weirdly specific and vague issue
and emergency jumps do some damage to retreating ships anyways, so you might have just gotten unlucky and your ships were so battered that while they technically survived the battle they did not survive the retreat

I didn't have military doctrines at all, so no. And it happened multiple times across different games. No mods or anything.

 

[Taritu]

You know, I absolutely love the fact that You folks give us informations about the progress of the stuff that you have been working on.

It's a much better than the "we won't say anything but we are working, believe us" stance others have.

Stellaris community communication is definitely best in class and it's one of the reasons I still buy everything, and even pre-order. Better than any other Paradox game I follow, too.

 

[FPSCanarussia]

This logic works the other way as well; there's no reason they can't be obtainable by people who use mods since it doesn't impact people who don't use mods.

...The first part of my reply was explaining why that logic only works one way.

When achievements require playing vanilla and trying new things, they can be used by players as extrinsic goals outside the requirements of any particular game, or as marks of pride.

When achievements require nothing more than installing an "unlock all achievements" mod - or even just installing any of the myriad mods that make most of the game's achievements trivial to obtain as a side-effect - what exactly is even the point of having them? Showing "I can install a mod"?

Stellaris community communication is definitely best in class and it's one of the reasons I still buy everything, and even pre-order. Better than any other Paradox game I follow, too.

I agree.

 

[Taritu]

Yeah, my hypothesis is groups of 1000 would be easier to grok than groups of 100, and I've already seen a number of people confused about the pop numbers on the reddit version of this DD. You can still do percentages based off of kilopops, your percentages just have a decimal value, e.g. 12.5%.


Guaranteed tech unlocks are actually quite powerful. You may not research the tech right away, but having the option at any time means you don't have to go through the rng card draw to get it when you want it. Or alternatively, it removes the tech from the card draw pool, letting you fish for other techs. Especially for the tech trees that have lots of options but you want to prioritize a handful of, e.g. Society and Engineering. There's a reason people today fish for stuff that gives e.g. Mega Engineering as a guaranteed research option even if they are decades away from being able to research it.

I strongly suspect certain rewards will play out like the Civ 6 breakthrough system where it becomes gamey trying to collect bonuses that they would have otherwise obtained later, but you're right that we should wait for the beta to see how it plays out in practice. I think this will be the breakthrough technologies of this beta - good intentions, undesirable side-effects - but we really just don't have a lot of information about the actual goals, progression pace, and rewards.

This. What I really worry about is the ease of guaranteed ramp up in military power by pursuing the military path: getting to cruisers early and guaranteed is a huge power boost. I'm really leary of this system, and would hope it could be made opt in/out at game creation.

 

[Madwwwizard]

Are there plans for a spring DLC? Normally we get one april / may.

 

[cryptkeeper]

Are there plans for a spring DLC? Normally we get one april / may.

I imagine we will, but they need to announce all 3 so they can put the dlc pre-order pack. I heard there where changes to steam that make it hard for them to do it, until they have all the details nailed down.

 

[Fulgrymm]

...The first part of my reply was explaining why that logic only works one way.

When achievements require playing vanilla and trying new things, they can be used by players as extrinsic goals outside the requirements of any particular game, or as marks of pride.

When achievements require nothing more than installing an "unlock all achievements" mod - or even just installing any of the myriad mods that make most of the game's achievements trivial to obtain as a side-effect - what exactly is even the point of having them? Showing "I can install a mod"?

It's already possible, right this very moment, to download a program that gives you all achievements automagically. Which means, if people want to cheat achievements into existence via mods, it doesn't change anything for people who earned them without external assistance. The reasons I've seen given for excluding modded players seem completely arbitrary to me.

 

[The Founder]

Achievements have two purposes:
1. They give players extrinsic goals to work towards in their games.
2. They allow players to show off (i.e. "I got a rare achievement" or "I got all achievements").

If mods are allowed that make obtaining achievements significantly easier, then they lose those functions. In that case achievements would no longer serve any purpose whatsoever.

The fact that achievements have no mechanical impact means that there's no reason why they have to be obtainable to people who play with mods - since it doesn't impact them in any way.

Perfectly logical reasons. Unfortuantely it seems to fall on deaf ears.
It seems to be right up there with the "I hate the Focus system for no real reason".

Apparently "but you can already cheat with 3rd party programms" is the best argument they have?

 

[Fulgrymm]

Perfectly logical reasons. Unfortuantely it seems to fall on deaf ears.
It seems to be right up there with the "I hate the Focus system for no real reason".

Apparently "but you can already cheat with 3rd party programms" is the best argument they have?

And your only argument is that your game 'achievements' are important, to you. And apparently the way other people get their 'achievements' are important to you, and because of all this you want to preclude a subset of the playerbase from getting them merely because they do so in a manner that differs from yours. How other people get their 'achievements' has no bearing on how you get yours. You will know that you did it the 'hard' way, and you can take pride and accomplishment in that.

 

[The Founder]

And your only argument is that your game 'achievements' are important, to you. And apparently the way other people get their 'achievements' are important to you, and because of all this you want to preclude a subset of the playerbase from getting them merely because they do so in a manner that differs from yours. How other people get their 'achievements' has no bearing on how you get yours. You will know that you did it the 'hard' way, and you can take pride and accomplishment in that.

As he said:

Achievements have two purposes:
1. They give players extrinsic goals to work towards in their games.
2. They allow players to show off (i.e. "I got a rare achievement" or "I got all achievements").

Which of those are important to you?
Or which other purpose do you have for them?

 

[Fulgrymm]

Which of those are important to you?
Or which other purpose do you have for them?

Only the first is important to me. That's the point I'm trying and failing to convey. Important to ME. I don't care one whit about other players' achievements and how they get them, nor do I expect them to care about mine or how I get them.