Addressing the mobile version of Stellaris, "Stellaris Galaxy Command"?

[Syn@ptic]

To begin with, "Stellaris Galaxy Command" is listed on Google Play as a Paradox Interactive game but I haven’t seen any support from Paradox just the “Game Bear” thing which is bad in the worse possible way.

What is happening with the game "Stellaris Galaxy Command" is a disgrace towards everything that should be associated with game developing in general.

As a Player that started playing this so called game "Stellaris Galaxy Command" just because of the Paradox brand and the original Stellaris I am addressing this here as well.

Since there is nowhere else to send this message and in the hope Paradox Interactive cares about their image I have the following to comment:

1. There is no support for this game, if you send a message using the “Help” option it takes days (4-5 days to be more precise) for anyone to answer and even when they do, nothing happens 0 compensation or active involvement just some scripted replies half done. Also the “Help” is plagued by bugs like if I click on an image I uploaded the game crushes and reloads.
2. The game is FULL of high impact bugs, the kind of bugs that would render this an unfinished product at best. Here I can’t go into details because it’s a HUGE list of bugs starting with people unable to login for days to weird glitches/dcs/crushes and weird (high impact) pvp bugs. This is more a game of “How knows more bugs than skill or involvement” for more details go on the Official discord under #bug-reports.
3. This looks like a scam game with in game shop meant to rip off people before they realize it’s not a finished product, this includes me.You should not charge people for something that is not working, it is illegal.
4. Community is dead, the discord channel has 3 "Official" members from the dev team (2 being Game Bear) but they are as inactive as it gets. Most people reach mid game and quit so the servers are almost empty (in my case I rekon 100 players left which is less then the number of stars on the map)

If anyone from Paradox could clarify the following that would be nice:

1. Is “Stellaris Galaxy Command” a Paradox Interactive game?
2. Is Paradox Interactive aware of what is happening within this game and are there any plans to fix it?

To sum it up, me and my friends who got scammed by this product listed as a Paradox Interactive game will no longer play the original Stellaris too or buy any more DLC’s or content from Paradox Interactive. Steeping this low is a disgrace and this kind of developing is just scamming people.

Posting this with the hope this doesn't gets deleted instantly

 

[LordChristof]

Hey Syn@ptic o/

Let me try and address some of these points.

1. Our customer support for Galaxy Command has been a bit overwhelmed recently. The game was featured on AppStore, there was a significant influx of new players around the global release that caught the team a little unaware. But we are in the process of getting more people to work with the game's support.

2. Every bug that gets reported in-game or on our official channels is taken note of. It's either the community team that gathers the bug reports and passes them on to the dev team, or, if they're reported in-game, they reach the developers directly. The "downtime" you mention here, has been addressed on our official channels during this weekend and, I believe, the issues has been fixed.

3. Stellaris: Galaxy Command was recently released globally, after an extended period of a "soft launch" so we do consider it "ready" in that sense. As every Paradox game however, we hope to iterate on it, and keep developing it further.

4. The discord channel you brought up in this point, and previously, is not an "official" channel at all. It's a community channel that our developers sometimes visit to respond to questions or gather feedback. As much as we like to see any community flourish, we can't take responsibility for any fan channel's activity. The game's main community hub is an integrated in-game forum, the live chat and our social media channels on Twitter and Facebook that you can use to send us feedback at any time.

For the other 2 questions.
- Yes, Stellaris: Galaxy Command is a game published by Paradox, based on an IP owned by us and is therefore a Paradox game.
- We are always monitoring for feedback and the developers are working to address reported issues. Players who inquire with us on official channels (Just to reiterate, the mentioned Discord channel is not an official channel) will receive their answers, as soon as the community team is able to provide them.

To wrap up, it's of course never cool to see that some of our players don't enjoy their experience with either of our games. As with any Paradox game, the feedback for Stellaris: Galaxy Command gets gathered into reports, shared with all of our colleagues who have a "stake" in it and we use that as one of the factors that guide our priorities with the ongoing development.

Now. I wouldn't be a good corporate drone if I didn't point out that after an, admittedly, bumpy October soft-launch, SGC has received a lot of work, and I like to think that steadily growing review scores on both AppStore and GooglePlay are some reflection of how we're working with the feedback we receive from our players. That, of course, doesn't invalidate your experience, as that is always subjective, but I hope that this answers your questions.

 

[Syn@ptic]

Thank you so much for the detailed reply.

With respect,
George

 

[DeBene]

So hi then
(1) - clearly and foreseeable
(2) - better communication please (see P.S.)
(3) - whomever was involved in this decision was not well informed. All channels were burning hot.
(4) - your discord response is by far better than in-game (and is by far better to use)
may only be "semi-official" but it's the best you got
(Feedback on Hubs) - if you filter out all "I played it 5 minutes and it looks nice" only a lot of 1-3 stars are left
if you want to hear real feedback, maybe you should start talking on discord.
The opinion of all "invested (time and/or money)" players is quite the same.
Some still have high hopes that this game will ever get near to the glory of Stellaris but just cause of the lack of any other project like this.
But these players are fading. Day by day we are getting fewer and the new ones start to see the same.


During beta we notified you on all channels about several fatal bugs.
This includes In-Game ticket system, In-Game community system and the semi official discord.
Till today you were not able to establish "a real communication" to the community and for months there was nothing to found on your web-site.
Nor did the support site have options for SGC.

I'm a PO and Developer myself (Gambling Business) and this game has lots of critical bugs and lacks hard in a real game design or mathematical modelling.
I see the last changes and you are adding well meant but badly done stuff which should have been (balanced) inside before scaling.

You say you are working to improve the situation by increasing the support staff.
Well it was clear to see during beta - as your staff was already overwhelmed at this point of time.
Still you decided to scale a product which was not Beta ready - best I can call this is Pre-Alpha (a so called "prototype").


Emails sent to you due your official contact are denied after 3 "we don't take emails - please use our ticket system".
A clear violation of Google Terms of use as you stall the process to more than 3 days.
Hope you get that fixed, saw just a few days ago people still run into this problem.

Lets take ticket #203759 as example.
You forwarded it multiple times within your company - Joshua was the only one that responded.
It got forwarded again and after 20 days just closed.
Anyone working on this?

This was sent weeks after reported losses due bugs. I got never compensated nor the problem repaired.
Although it is directly connected to paid money and the game showed massive defects which are far beyond anything that can be argued with "risk of Beta".

At the moment you still trample all over EU and national warranty laws.
EU parliament is finishing the "collective EU consumer action" just be aware of this as it will most likely hit you like a truck when you continue that way.

There is quite no communication "what you are doing" / "where the game goes". Changes just "hit us".
But I appreciate that you announced and added the visualization of the alliance XP limit which I asked you ... 4 months ago?
For us it looks like you want to kill the game.
First the game was extreme P2W.
Then you slapped the F2P base again in the face by "slowing all extremely down".
The P2W damage was already done - that may work for new servers.
Instead of finding a solution for beta players you offer us "all on S17".
If you say now "but we don't know about your problems"
... please start reading your community forum (One-Way ticket to suicide)
Missing to notify about the most important change - no flagship part combining" makes all just worse.

There are 100s of minor issues which could be fixed in a blink of an eye.
There are lots of major issues which make the game very hard to play - we learned to navigate these.
This are reported bugs which are not fixed for over 4 months.
There are several fatal issues which cause lots of support cases and make people angry or get them frustrated.
And you still got a lot of deception and scam inside.
Maybe you should have worked with us instead of scaling?
Lots of enthusiastic people are gone by now.
People which worked on Wikis, made Youtube videos, ...
And now we get to the point where the "new fished ones" see all that too.

Best Regards,
DeBene

P.S.:
It would be nice if you would provide a possibility to issue problems.
See which ones are "active handled" - which ones are fixed. (in short an official "bug tracking system")

P.P.S.:
Do you want to kill dusk servers (no events, broken economy, ...) or are you waiting till they die?

 

[Syn@ptic]

I'm newer to this game and haven't played dusk, only started to play this game due to the Paradox brand and love of the stellaris franchise.
I still think it can be saved but Paradox needs to take ownership on this game, all the contact I had till now was with Game Bear which I don't know nor want to. I was under the correct impression that this game is a Paradox one and therefor expect to see more Paradox support/involment in the future.

The in game help is inexistent if I didn't know about the discord channel I would have thought the game is abbandoned since no one replies in the help chat.

@Debane, thanks for the broader view of the issues at hand
@Paradox, please take ownership of this game in a proper sense. It impacts your image if you like it or not, if Paradox=Game Bear that is a very bad turnover for a company which (in my case at least) delivered on all levels.

 

[DeBene]

There are / were 3 major origins of players:
* Nova Empire Player
they knew what they had to expect.
but even these got supprised that something bad can get even worse. (not sure here - that's summarized opinions of others)

* Eve Online Players
most of them needed "just a place to wait". Lots said "Eve" will cost "SGC" a lot of players.
Well these games have not a lot in common. But yes the only content maker YouMeI switched.

* Stellaris Player
we (I'm one of these) still search it. Just saw it in the name and some broken things like pacifism.
lot's of these had/have high hopes cause of Paradox which caused most of us to join this game in the first place.
We want to see Stellaris here! Ethics, Diplomacy but balanced, not just terms thrown at us.
And a modern game that has PvP - not bullying - and PvE.
Solvable and rewarding feeling tasks for different kinds of F2P and a quite balanced F2P progression.
Things you work for, not random random random.
Fights that have tactics not bigger = better (stacking fleet speed ups kill every strategic positioning, defenses are worthless).
Alliance Fleets, Alert Systems, Formation movement ... so that playing together works
Safe "PvE" fleets, safe "parking slots" - WiH and Dawn Servers killed "neutral" safe zones.
Events (we got not a single one for weeks) where you got something to do (not spend 20.000 GCC!)
And someone here has absolutely no clue about effort to reward relations.


Well maybe some think I am "talking for myself" but I am not. I speak out what lots of S5 folks think.
And I am quite sure that some others think the same - and lots of the new ones will see soon that I am at least in most parts right.

For sure not everyone from the beta thinks the same as I am - but lots of people share a broad base.
Only in detail we have disagreements. We want PvP but the game gives us just "bullying".
Most old servers formed a "united community" to fight the games problem and make it bearable.
As the core of the game is undeniable fun, otherwise we wouldn't play it.

Most of this fun is based on the "connected community", the good (far not perfect) in game message system and discord.
In beta the chat was full of nice people helping each other.

Some things are quite complex and a Wiki would help a lot. But well all Wiki writers are gone or stopped producing content.
Their own content (written by devs) on their own system is from early beta stage ...
Collecting data and preparing these is a hell of a work.
And we got over and over hit with "lots of new not communicated hidden changes".

There are quite no reactions on any problems except
* an announcement to the alliance XP cap
* a statement to the disconnects

There are changes - Paradox started to respond better within the last weeks. But that's still a far way to "ok"

but yes it's hard as there is no platform to exchange problems.
The "community" feature is just a big sink of repeated problems.
Should we use this Forum?

 

[Old Scratch]

Now. I wouldn't be a good corporate drone if I didn't point out that after an, admittedly, bumpy October soft-launch, SGC has received a lot of work, and I like to think that steadily growing review scores on both AppStore and GooglePlay are some reflection of how we're working with the feedback we receive from our players.

The game nags players for a review early on. Reading some of them will illustrate that.('Its not p2w, my base is at 500k') It's akin to rating a movie based upon the trailer.

Most players will not revise their review on further exploration of the game's mechanics, they'll just quit.

 

[Xanrag]

I've been playing Galaxy Command since January and I can only chime in that the game feels very abandoned by Paradox.

The main discord that has grown up around the game is indeed unofficial, but you DO have an official Stellaris Discord but despite repeated requests there is no section for Galaxy Command there which as you've stated is a Paradox game. Is it perhaps not a Stellaris game then?

The game has many problems, bugs among them, but the biggest problem as I see it is lack of balancing - especially in the microtransactions. It feels like the rewards are not vetted by anyone who is actually playing the game with packs being priced similarly (and as high as hundreds of dollars) but due to the current game state one of them is worthless. I'm looking at you resource items, among other things. If you have to have microtransactions, at least have them make sense.

There is the kernel of a nice game in here, but the complete lack of or incorrect patch notes and lack of feedback on whether something is a bug or intended design we are just shooting in the dark. We still have things listed in patch notes from months ago as "coming soon" that we haven't seen hide nor hair of and we have had major changes just come out of the blue. We joke that the exploration part of the game is exploring the game after every patch to see what has changed.

The balance in other things is also lackluster. Bigger is better. Kinetic is the best weapon. There is no discussion except possibly as relates to replacing PvP losses vs repairing broken ships. Not to mention the top tier of people on your station which actively lose you money compared to auto-trading the resources they need to live.

If you're serious about this game we can give detailed lists of problems, but as it is it feels like shouting into the abyss and most don't even bother anymore if they haven't just stopped playing.

 

[LordChristof]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I just want you to know that I am making note of it and will forward it to the rest of the team as a part of our weekly report for the dev team.

As for giving you a general update on the development priorities going forward, the team is in the process of writing a Dev Diary now, summarizing what we've been doing since launch and what will be coming to the game next. I don't want to promise a specific day for when we'll publish it, as work is often unpredictable, but you'll get an update soon.

Just to address the discord questions again, there are 2 things I feel I need to clarify:
1. The unofficial Stellaris: Galaxy Command Discord is indeed frequented by some of our developers and it does serve as another source of gathering feedback from you. It's essentially what we do with fan communities for all our games, however the willingness of some of our employees to reach out to fan communities this way isn't an indicator that we take ownership of them.

2. The PC Stellaris Discord is a Discord for the PC game and its console port. What needs to be clarified here is that our individual game teams have a lot of freedom in how they run their projects and decisions regarding establishing some channels aren't made on a "franchise" level. The PC/Console team felt ready to commit to a Discord and that's working for them well, however that doesn't make it an official community channel for other Stellaris games, be it digital or our board game projects.

Galaxy Command has a number of community hubs outside and inside the game, for you to voice your feedback, and we are monitoring them regularly, even if we can't always provide immediate responses to all questions. The best places to report issues or ask questions are the integrated in-game forums or SGC's Social Media channels. If your feedback is posted there, we definitely see it.

 

[DeBene]

Thanks for the reply and like I said we see a little bit of progress in the last weeks.
Keep on going to improve that.

I totally understand what got you by surprise, as I have established products all over the world.
Worked with operatives and teams quite everywhere for now 20 years.
Cultural differences, language and time barrier, ... it's a lot to handle

Anyhow "classical Social Media" are no "real" communication channel.
Nice to inform people, bad for constructive discussion or feedback.

As developer I like my freedom too, and if you say you give your teams their freedom to choose their channels, that's good.
But as corporation you should have something like a corporate identity in terms of PM "non functional requirements".
So there should be some things which are musts.

If these NFR aren't yet on your must haves I would suggest you add them:

• our products have to be presented on our web site
  to clearly state ownership and responsibility
  
  
• our products need to be supported by our default communication systems
  i.e. ticket system, official forum

Typically you build the structures to communicate before you enter public.
From point of view of a developer it's even necessary to build up structures for DEV-usable feedback (logs, dumps, ...)
That's already necessary to build up a minimum QA, otherwise you just end up with an unorganized load of useless complains which are hard to filter.
You will even have problems to identify the same problem in 2 different contexts if there is no organization.
(bug, User-Error, miss guiding UI, bad/wrong description, ...)

And it's of upmost importance to have there enough staff and react there fast in case of problems.

The used structures (In-Game) are really bad to use.
It's like with the game ... I don't think that anyone at Paradox / Game Bear plays this product as a "PO" or a "Test Player" should do.
Try to play the game from different points of view (player types).
Try to work with the UI - there are so many hard to use dialogs and annoying things (all minor issues, but still devaluing the product)
And yes such things cost a lot of time and stuff.

And maybe get someone whom is familiar with the Stellaris PC game on board.
Stellaris is more than a few graphics and texts - they got good concepts which this game lacks.
(NOTE: concepts are something generic, you can apply these on quite any game type)

If you don't want to invest that, than it's even more important to connect to "invested players".
As this game has quite a complexity it's hard to test different variants (Pacifists, Militarists, ....)
The final decisions to be made (balancing monetization, game progress) are still made by your PO.

But if the PO is not able to see the product from the points of different views (players, corporation, devs) than the PO needs good advisors and communication.
Or the job can simply not be executed. And the quality of a product is related directly to the work of a PO.

I'm a PO but also a developer and I know how easy someone can get biased.

But there are so many of these issues - that's impossible to not see the existing problems.
Except your communication channels are really bad (which is the case) and the PO lacks time / interest in the product itself.

A PO should be able to shape the product.
I am not saying the PO is doing bad work, it can be management, it can be missing structures / resources, ...
And whatever happened in the background - communication is something which would have been possible and wasn't done.
At the end the responsible one is the PO and well this games PO got silent a few months ago.
Whatever happens - how bad it ever goes - NEVER EVER STOP TO COMMUNICATE

Comparing the actual mechanisms with other games you are in some design decisions already several years behind.
And in some others even over 10. Well - except you want to compare your product with the one-day-flies.

P.S.:
Josuha is doing a great job for that amount of mess he got to handle

 

[Xanrag]

2. The PC Stellaris Discord is a Discord for the PC game and its console port. What needs to be clarified here is that our individual game teams have a lot of freedom in how they run their projects and decisions regarding establishing some channels aren't made on a "franchise" level. The PC/Console team felt ready to commit to a Discord and that's working for them well, however that doesn't make it an official community channel for other Stellaris games, be it digital or our board game projects.

That is understandable but isn't communicated very well, in fact until you said so I didn't even consider it could be that way. To quote the launch blurb, "all platforms":
"We’re proud to announce the Stellaris Official Discord Server!
This server will form a new hub for Stellaris players on all platforms, allowing us to share news, events, and Discord exclusive activities with you all. "

Clicking through the discord itself it doesn't mention that some platforms are excluded, except by the virtue of not being included. It is understandable as I say since it is a vastly different game, but that's what happens when you name things the same (or as in the PC/Console game, don't have any subtitle thus making it impossible to distinguish between the game and the universe).

Very much looking forward to the board game as I'm a huge fan of both board games and Stellaris.

 

[SephirothWS]

"We’re proud to announce the Stellaris Official Discord Server!
This server will form a new hub for Stellaris players on all platforms, allowing us to share news, events, and Discord exclusive activities with you all. "

All platforms ... well, think of that.

If the Stellaris Official Discord Server doesn't cover the mobile Stellaris Galaxy Command game, .... Why blanket announce it covers all platforms?

 

[Xanrag]

If the Stellaris Official Discord Server doesn't cover the mobile Stellaris Galaxy Command game, .... Why blanket announce it covers all platforms?

Inconsistent naming. They mean "Stellaris" the original PC game that now also runs on some consoles, not "Stellaris" the shared universe. The mobile game has the tagline "Galaxy Command" and one upcoming boardgame has the tagline "Legacy" (but it isn't a Legacy game...?), the original game doesn't have one though that I know of.

Edit: However this isn't really clarified anywhere.

 

[Xanrag]

As for giving you a general update on the development priorities going forward, the team is in the process of writing a Dev Diary now, summarizing what we've been doing since launch and what will be coming to the game next. I don't want to promise a specific day for when we'll publish it, as work is often unpredictable, but you'll get an update soon.

Any update on the dev diary? Been a month and I can't find it, hmm I actually don't even know where to search for it. Where will it end up?

 

[DeBene]

I have reported them at PEGI for Loot Box obfuscation.
Using a non playable indirection layer is bending rules (yes I know not breaking)

Bending PEGI rules is shameless and ruthless behavior.

 

[R49364]

Are there any news regarding the Dev Diary?

1. The game has been loosing players since August
2. New features/events are a copycat from Nova Empire
3. The new leaders added 2 months ago, already had their art done 1 year ago (ardyhll is in a screenshot in a Kotaku article from 1 year ago)

Also, a couple of similar, but better games are being released. And their playerbase, even if in a closed beta, is a lot bigger than SGC.

Looks like we bet in the dead horse, and Paradox knows it.

 

[Zukku]

Hi. I am a new one in this game, so i have a little question. Can i reset my game at all? I mean, delete my station and start a new one. Logged with Paradox account.

 

[Xanrag]

Still waiting on that dev diary. Would be great to read the rationale behind the recent changes in the game.

 

[noxvis]

Hey Syn@ptic o/

Let me try and address some of these points.

1. Our customer support for Galaxy Command has been a bit overwhelmed recently. The game was featured on AppStore, there was a significant influx of new players around the global release that caught the team a little unaware. But we are in the process of getting more people to work with the game's support.

2. Every bug that gets reported in-game or on our official channels is taken note of. It's either the community team that gathers the bug reports and passes them on to the dev team, or, if they're reported in-game, they reach the developers directly. The "downtime" you mention here, has been addressed on our official channels during this weekend and, I believe, the issues has been fixed.

3. Stellaris: Galaxy Command was recently released globally, after an extended period of a "soft launch" so we do consider it "ready" in that sense. As every Paradox game however, we hope to iterate on it, and keep developing it further.

4. The discord channel you brought up in this point, and previously, is not an "official" channel at all. It's a community channel that our developers sometimes visit to respond to questions or gather feedback. As much as we like to see any community flourish, we can't take responsibility for any fan channel's activity. The game's main community hub is an integrated in-game forum, the live chat and our social media channels on Twitter and Facebook that you can use to send us feedback at any time.

For the other 2 questions.
- Yes, Stellaris: Galaxy Command is a game published by Paradox, based on an IP owned by us and is therefore a Paradox game.
- We are always monitoring for feedback and the developers are working to address reported issues. Players who inquire with us on official channels (Just to reiterate, the mentioned Discord channel is not an official channel) will receive their answers, as soon as the community team is able to provide them.

To wrap up, it's of course never cool to see that some of our players don't enjoy their experience with either of our games. As with any Paradox game, the feedback for Stellaris: Galaxy Command gets gathered into reports, shared with all of our colleagues who have a "stake" in it and we use that as one of the factors that guide our priorities with the ongoing development.

Now. I wouldn't be a good corporate drone if I didn't point out that after an, admittedly, bumpy October soft-launch, SGC has received a lot of work, and I like to think that steadily growing review scores on both AppStore and GooglePlay are some reflection of how we're working with the feedback we receive from our players. That, of course, doesn't invalidate your experience, as that is always subjective, but I hope that this answers your questions.

Recent experience shows support (and bugs) are still an issue.

The application doesn't allow you to setup a login and password if the account is linked to Google. There is no information at all explaining login methods. So, if you are switching devices to one not using Google, you are out of luck.

Contacting support is also painful. It has been days and it has gone nowhere.

And if you manage to create an account with a username and password without linking to Google, it won't let you login. It is as if the registration process fails to save the information or there is some other issue with the authentication process.

I am not going to go into the various bugs in gameplay. Basic account funcitonality is error prone and support is not helpful.

 

[TinyWiking]

Just so we're clear here, we have nothing to do with this game anymore. It is being run and operated by GameBear Tech and we here at Paradox are not in charge of the product, nor are we involved in the development/functionality of it. You will need to contact them for any questions about the game.