Zones; what is good, what needs to be fixed before 4.0

[ShaTiK]

I just had a thought - current zone system made housing redundant. Since you can't control housing number - the game have to provide enough with districts. But there is a lot of variety in your actual need, so they ended up just giving you the maximum possibly needed number. And in making so made entire housing system a non-system. Yay, another game mechanic thrown away.

At this point I'm starting to suspect there is some emotional stuff going on here. Like the goal is to go apeshit on existing game mechanics, throw away half of them and replace the rest with different ones. Not better, just different. In order to fulfil some KPI or personal goal. But sure as shit the goal isn't to make a better game, and if it actually is, then it doesn't look like it. Maybe if you consider primitive game to be a better game, but among the words I used to associate 4X games with 'primitive' wasn't one. Maybe I'm just out of touch old grumpy gamer not fitting into modern gaming world...

 

[-Marauder-]

I just had a thought - current zone system made housing redundant. Since you can't control housing number - the game have to provide enough with districts. But there is a lot of variety in your actual need, so they ended up just giving you the maximum possibly needed number. And in making so made entire housing system a non-system. Yay, another game mechanic thrown away.

At this point I'm starting to suspect there is some emotional stuff going on here. Like the goal is to go apeshit on existing game mechanics, throw away half of them and replace the rest with different ones. Not better, just different. In order to fulfil some KPI or personal goal. But sure as shit the goal isn't to make a better game, and if it actually is, then it doesn't look like it. Maybe if you consider primitive game to be a better game, but among the words I used to associate 4X games with 'primitive' wasn't one. Maybe I'm just out of touch old grumpy gamer not fitting into modern gaming world...

Yeah, it feels like the new devs/lead dev want to put "their stamp" onto the game. Which means doing away with stuff prior teams did.

 

[T5_k]

Man the amount of people projecting their own hubris on dev's actions in g*****n insane.
And the lack of understanding and consequences of the new changes is also remarkably high.

Devs, how do you manage to filter out all the garbage and listen to the actual feedback?

 

[eu4 Bart]

Hi, I played the beta for a few hours and have some early thoughts. The idea of zones seems perfectly logical, but logical ideas don’t always work well in practice. Stellaris devs probably need some pre-production environment to test their ideas.

For me, managing zones is just boring busywork. Ok, I can click, and it’s built - what’s the difference from constructing buildings or districts? It’s just more of the same clicks without any real meaning.

Second, it’s now harder to plan and develop a planet, but this difficulty isn’t fun and isn’t part of the gameplay loop - it’s just more complications.

Gameplay-wise, it will now be much harder to create alloy or consumer goods focused planets. If that was the goal, then it works well.

 

[Imp0815]

And the lack of understanding and consequences of the new changes is also remarkably high.

Well, I think you summed up the reasons why this is deteriorating pretty well.

I also would like to understand. The last time I had a eureka moment, I was met with confusion about how I came to my “understanding.”

All questions about the “why’s” and “how’s” are either ignored (too harsh: they choose not to awnser) or rebutted with vague promises of more to come in the far future. Follow-up questions asking for explicit plans to make sense of this whole change are, again, ignored (too harsh: they choose not to awnser).

At least we have Berathian Zones now.

I’m just trying to voice two major things here: Yes, the discussion is going downhill — and I see the main reason as the lack of clear communication, clear end goals, and clear problems we’re trying to solve with the new zone system. - If it’s not currently truly clear to me, which it isn't, it won’t be clear to many others either.
And confusion is often met with hostility. And I find myself feeling rather hostile the longer I stay confused about this situation.


P.S.
I think this is adding more oil to the fire, and maybe I shouldn’t have written this — but I recently had a similar observation in the Fatshark forums about Darktide. I’ve been along for the ride from beta to today, and I saw figureheads of the community talk about how toxic and bad the community around the game has become.
Through my own observations and self-reflection, I came to the conclusion that the lack of clear and transparent communication about plans, features, and the reasoning behind them — things that are painfully obvious from an outside perspective — was not met with official explanations. This has led to an overall negative and hostile undertone in the community that persists and now affects other aspects of the game.
Some people blame the community itself, but I see the company — and mostly their decision-makers — as responsible here. If they had chosen to communicate clearly and frequently with the general public about the game's state and plans, we would likely have a much healthier community in the long run.
Not that PDX isn’t doing this — they’re doing the exact opposite, and it’s great so far. But this whole zone discussion is leaving plot holes that remind me of this somehow. Maybe I’m just imagining things here.

 

[ShaTiK]

Man the amount of people projecting their own hubris on dev's actions in g*****n insane.
And the lack of understanding and consequences of the new changes is also remarkably high.

Devs, how do you manage to filter out all the garbage and listen to the actual feedback?

All 20 pages of current tread - this is all speculation. For we don't have clearly defined answers on the most fundamental questions - what zones give that previous system didn't, why such a drastic change need to be done in tandem with already huge changes to POP (and civilians as a new strata), what is the end-goal for planetary management that devs want to see (via zones or any other system).

At some point we inevitably start walking our own man-made halls of mirrors, debating and suggesting stuff. Some projecting is gonna happen. But it would be silly to say 'hur dur stupid players talking trash for no reason' - we would have to need for speculations if we knew basic things I mentioned above. But we don't.

 

[Oimes]

I just had a thought - current zone system made housing redundant. Since you can't control housing number - the game have to provide enough with districts. But there is a lot of variety in your actual need, so they ended up just giving you the maximum possibly needed number. And in making so made entire housing system a non-system. Yay, another game mechanic thrown away.

At this point I'm starting to suspect there is some emotional stuff going on here. Like the goal is to go apeshit on existing game mechanics, throw away half of them and replace the rest with different ones. Not better, just different. In order to fulfil some KPI or personal goal. But sure as shit the goal isn't to make a better game, and if it actually is, then it doesn't look like it. Maybe if you consider primitive game to be a better game, but among the words I used to associate 4X games with 'primitive' wasn't one. Maybe I'm just out of touch old grumpy gamer not fitting into modern gaming world...

As I mentioned in another topic houses must be built completely separately to zones or districts.
Nothing that provides work should also provide housing. Housing demand should be strongly dependent on the standard of living.
Such a system would create the possibility to create hellhole where entire planets are covered with mines and factories and PoPs fit like rats in small cages.
Of course, the second option would be to provide plenty of space for living if someone is interested in PoP happiness.

 

[Miridan]

I just had a thought - current zone system made housing redundant. Since you can't control housing number - the game have to provide enough with districts. But there is a lot of variety in your actual need, so they ended up just giving you the maximum possibly needed number. And in making so made entire housing system a non-system. Yay, another game mechanic thrown away.

At this point I'm starting to suspect there is some emotional stuff going on here. Like the goal is to go apeshit on existing game mechanics, throw away half of them and replace the rest with different ones. Not better, just different. In order to fulfil some KPI or personal goal. But sure as shit the goal isn't to make a better game, and if it actually is, then it doesn't look like it. Maybe if you consider primitive game to be a better game, but among the words I used to associate 4X games with 'primitive' wasn't one. Maybe I'm just out of touch old grumpy gamer not fitting into modern gaming world...

To be fair, housing not being a problem is the same in the live version. Rural districts give 2 jobs AND 2 housing. City districts give 7 (5+2 from techs) housing and 1 building slot, which gives 6 (sometimes even less) jobs. This means that in a standard game you think about housing only when you have species traits with housing penalty or planet modifiers.

As @Oimes said: for housing to be relevant, we need to separate it from job sources.

 

[ShaTiK]

As I mentioned in another topic houses must be built completely separately to zones or districts.
Nothing that provides work should also provide housing. Housing demand should be strongly dependent on the standard of living.
Such a system would create the possibility to create hellhole where entire planets are covered with mines and factories and PoPs fit like rats in small cages.
Of course, the second option would be to provide plenty of space for living if someone is interested in PoP happiness.

Precisely. But at this point we already have 5 different districts, might as well add few more - be it blank ones with zones being the mandatory modifier or set of predefined ones that covers the spectrum of production, again with zones providing finetuning. And viola, we went back to old district system with zones on top. Which a lot of people, me included, were saying should be implemented almost as soon as beta started.

 

[NorseGod]

To be fair, housing not being a problem is the same in the live version. Rural districts give 2 jobs AND 2 housing. City districts give 7 (5+2 from techs) housing and 1 building slot, which gives 6 (sometimes even less) jobs. This means that in a standard game you think about housing only when you have species traits with housing penalty or planet modifiers.

As @Oimes said: for housing to be relevant, we need to separate it from job sources.

Except in 3.14, Building's are also a big source of Jobs. Housing in effect becomes a sort of tax on having Jobs come from Buildings, like for Researchers, Traders, Medical Workers, etc. So any builds that get building slots from ways other than City Districts needed to get Housing somehow].

 

[r3xm0rt1s]

Zones make scaling jobs that need to scale work nicely. I did roll back to 3.14 to compare and I definitely do not want to back. What we need is just more zone and building slots. I think 4 zones to customize my city district with 3 or 4 building slots each, and 12 or 16 building slots for the government zone would do. But hopefully this is something modders can implement.

I do not have orbital ring dlc, maybe that would alleviate the problem somewhat, but 12 building slots could not even get me the vanilla buildings that I feel every planet should have. And worse, in 3.14 they compete for slots with research and unity.

 

[Archael90]

IMO districts should provide mostly civilian jobs (and without that, unemployed pops should be unemployed), with some basic specific ones like clerks in city district's.
Zones should shift jobs around, especially civilian ones. Like temple zone on city district should shift some civilian jobs into priest, or specific lab could shift lot of civilians into researchers, and turn one researcher into another, lik 100 biologists into 50 technicians.
Then buildings should add modifiers, some add percentage modifiers, and some strict numbers like +10% unity or +1 unity for priests, or +2 society research for priests.

 

[-Marauder-]

Something I've noticed. Planet carrying capacity/job numbers has gone down. And quite a bit. While production hasn't really increased to compensate for this. With the new system you further have less impact on what is produced.

So, you now need more planets for roughly the same production. Which favors expansion and going wide.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Something I've noticed. Planet carrying capacity/job numbers has gone down. And quite a bit. While production hasn't really increased to compensate for this. With the new system you further have less impact on what is produced.

Early stage unity deficit spiral can be a problem. Had a game crash with such a spiral earlier.

 

[Tisifoni12]

City District
Research and Development
Administrative Quagmire (ROFL . . .)

 

[-Marauder-]

Early stage unity deficit spiral can be a problem. Had a game crash with such a spiral earlier.

The system is far from ready to be released, I honestly wish they would give this more time to cook rather than push it out with 4.0