Is it time to start thinking about Stellaris 2?

[Arcvalons]

Stellaris is almost 10 years old, I don't think there's any game that has been supported by PDS as long except maybe EU4. And now it has started to show its age with the latest pops rework. Basically, it's been on active development so long that feature creep has "started" to set in, and now old systems must be reworked to accommodate all those features and everything they bring. In the case of Stellaris I think it reached its most stable and balanced sometime between 2021 and 2023, with Federations, Nemesis, and Overlord. After those it's been content for content sake, we've even had a newer DLC that pretty much renders an older one obsolete (Machine Age to Synthethic Dawn) as an example of some twisted DLC ouroboros.

At this point, Stellaris 2 should be considered to keep what's worked best and get rid of what hasn't. Develop it with a system both intended to be perfomance friendly AND mantain the fantasy of a galaxy inhabited by thousands of pops, a clear distinction of what Origins and Civics are supposed to represent, balanced and defined (but branching) ascension paths that are not changing every update, remove the ambiguity and contradictions on whether you're playing a particular species or a galactic government, allow more assymetrical gameplay styles (space nomads, mercenaries, etc.), improve the scale of the galaxy (something like Distant Worlds 2 where planets and stars feel appropiately massive), dynamic and possibly 3D portraits, and so on, so on.

So what do you think? Is it time to start wrapping up Stellaris 1 and start thinking about Stellaris 2?

 

[tanny]

One thing that made Stellaris so good is the MASSIVE amount of features. For me, it aged like a fine wine.

 

[MadCow94]

No, I don't want to go back to Stellaris 2. I'm having fun with Stellaris 4. Admittedly it needs some polish.

 

[Adaman5280]

Ah yes, the weekly stellaris 2 post.

 

[Fnhatic]

The possibility of Stellaris 2 does shine a light on a glaring problem that exists by massively supporting a previous title with tons of DLC: content availability.

Let's say Stellaris 2 launches, but it has just as much content as Stellaris 1 did when it launched.

Who the hell would play it? Literally every comment would be "when are we going to get Paragons for S2? When are we going to get Nemesis? When are we going to get..."

There's no way in hell they're going to sell the game with a 'full' feature set that competes with Stellaris 1's *current* full-market offering. Why sell a $60-70 game with 100% of the content of the previous game that you're selling for $300?

So Stellaris 2 launches. Would you pay full price for a new game that would have literally no choice but to contain 10% or less of the content you're currently already playing?

No developer on the planet has ever 'reboot' a franchise from a full suite offering of a previous title. It'd be nice if they did, but they do not.

Nope. Financially it makes absolutely no sense. Stellaris 2 probably will never exist, or if it does, it will only be after Stellaris 1 stops being supported and then a 'cooling off' period elapses of multiple years.

Kerbal Space Program 2 had this exact problem (unrelated to the 2K abandonment). Why pay for KSP2 when it offered less content than KSP1, which also had a gazillion mods already available? KSP2 literally offered nothing besides a fresh coat of paint but still had the same core concept and setting.

....

The only thing that actually could get me to buy into Stellaris 2 is if it integrates AI technology to dynamically generate content and open up proper diplomacy and negotiations, but that will likely not happen, and has its own set of problems. We still haven't seen even an RPG game utilize that tech. AI tech runs too slow, is too expensive, and puts your entire game dependent on third-party access. Who pays for that access? Paradox? It'd be nice if ChatGPT could run off of your home computer, but it doesn't, it requires a datacenter that consumes enough power to rival the output of the sun. And ChatGPT right now is slower than an alcoholic's bowel movement.

PS: on the topic of AI, go tell ChatGPT to generate a new empire. It does a really good job but gets a few minor things wrong like point distribution of traits. It also feels a little unimaginative when it comes to fully utilizing civics and tends to stick with "safe" options.


But I fed it an Origin, and a rudimentary idea of how I want them to be, and it spit out everything including a backstory.

 

[Arcvalons]

The possibility of Stellaris 2 does shine a light on a glaring problem that exists by massively supporting a previous title with tons of DLC: content availability.

Let's say Stellaris 2 launches, but it has just as much content as Stellaris 1 did when it launched.

Who the hell would play it? Literally every comment would be "when are we going to get Paragons for S2? When are we going to get Nemesis? When are we going to get..."

There's no way in hell they're going to sell the game with a 'full' feature set that competes with Stellaris 1's *current* full-market offering. Why sell a $60-70 game with 100% of the content of the previous game that you're selling for $300?

So Stellaris 2 launches. Would you pay full price for a new game that would have literally no choice but to contain 10% or less of the content you're currently already playing?

No developer on the planet has ever 'reboot' a franchise from a full suite offering of a previous title. It'd be nice if they did, but they do not.

Nope. Financially it makes absolutely no sense. Stellaris 2 probably will never exist, or if it does, it will only be after Stellaris 1 stops being supported and then a 'cooling off' period elapses of multiple years.

Kerbal Space Program 2 had this exact problem (unrelated to the 2K abandonment). Why pay for KSP2 when it offered less content than KSP1, which also had a gazillion mods already available? KSP2 literally offered nothing besides a fresh coat of paint but still had the same core concept and setting.

....

The only thing that actually could get me to buy into Stellaris 2 is if it integrates AI technology to dynamically generate content and open up proper diplomacy and negotiations, but that will likely not happen, and has its own set of problems. We still haven't seen even an RPG game utilize that tech. AI tech runs too slow, is too expensive, and puts your entire game dependent on third-party access. Who pays for that access? Paradox? It'd be nice if ChatGPT could run off of your home computer, but it doesn't, it requires a datacenter that consumes enough power to rival the output of the sun. And ChatGPT right now is slower than an alcoholic's bowel movement.

PS: on the topic of AI, go tell ChatGPT to generate a new empire. It does a really good job but gets a few minor things wrong like point distribution of traits. It also feels a little unimaginative when it comes to fully utilizing civics and tends to stick with "safe" options.


But I fed it an Origin, and a rudimentary idea of how I want them to be, and it spit out everything including a backstory.

This isn't as much of an issue with Stellaris which is a fictional setting, as it is with something like CK2/CK3. In those games, it can realistically be expected that CK3 will eventually get things like Republics because those were things that existed in the time period. And people get desperate for those because CK2 had them and it's been five years.

Not the same case with Stellaris; Paragons are not necessarily a thing a sci-fi / space grand strategy absolutely needs. And early DLC which included obvious sci-fi staples like megastructures and robots could easily be in base Stellaris 2.

In fact, since it's a fictional setting, PDS could just decide to go a completely different direction.

 

[Fnhatic]

Not the same case with Stellaris; Paragons are not necessarily a thing a sci-fi / space grand strategy absolutely needs. And early DLC which included obvious sci-fi staples like megastructures and robots could easily be in base Stellaris 2.

Of course not. We didn't "need" Paragons before we had Paragons.

But now we have Paragons, and Stellaris 2 without Paragons will always be asked 'but when are paragons?'

And don't get caught up in the minutiae of picking Paragons, it was just the first thing that jumped into my head. Obviously Paragons is pretty low-threat on whether or not it makes it into the game or not.

But literally pick any and every DLC. Aquatics, Megacorp, Machine Age, etc.

 

[Fnhatic]

No developer on the planet has ever 'reboot' a franchise from a full suite offering of a previous title. It'd be nice if they did, but they do not.

I'm actually going to counter myself here, I think the one exception would be Sins of a Solar Empire II, which was basically starting from the basis of SOASE: Rebellion and built off from there. But SOASE was also a much, much smaller game.

 

[Armillus Dynat]

I think Stellaris was the first paradox game to really be effected by parqadox's transition to being public. It was released the same month so it must have been in production before that but you can clearly see the implementation of the new approach to DLC. Which I think is a great thing in a lot of ways. The game organizes more heavily around centralized features like origins, civics, species, traditions, etc. This allows paradox to continuous introduce new content without having to add new mechanics every single time, it limits feature bloat a great deal, compared to something like pre 2016 where every dlc brought new mechanics that were often used to represent different asapects of the same thing, were often shallow, and which couldn't be expanded upon because each dlc had to be wholely self contained. Which is another improvment of their new dlc policy. When they do implement a new major mechanic they make it universal and ship it in the free updates so that they can modify and add to it under the assumption every player has access to it. Then they populate it over time and the course of several dlcs. Content added this way can also be safely ignored, if you don't like a particular origin don't play it, you can still use the others, as opposed to mechanics which couldn't be ignored but were otherwise of marginal interest.

Unfortunately the new dlc policies also seems to have a much more demanding pace to them. Which I think contributes to issues that the paradox staff are currently struggling with.

Because of changes to policy like these I think this new generation of paradox games can theortically sustain much longer without collapsing under their own weight. Realistically I think Stellaris 2 will only really need to be thought about once hardware limitations becomes too great or to faciliate a radical change to the game. That being said, given that we have lived through 3 major changes to the games most fundamental system, I can't imagine what that change would be. At any rate baring technical limitations I certainly don't see why Stellaris would need wrap up in the near future. Frankly I'd perfer if it didn't, I still have high hopes for Stellaris' future and there are more things I'd like to see added to the game.

If they were to release Stellaris 2, my hope for existing content would be that all the major mechanics that have been added over the years be in place at launch. Everything from origins to mega structures. I would want a clear indication that those mechanics will be there and that what has been learned in the first game hasn't been lost in the transition. Knowing that I'd trust them to populate those mechanics over several dlcs and I'd be happy to pay to see them do it.

Also a thought about dlc covering previously covered content. I'm perfectly fine with that, I'm happy to see content continue to be expanded. The obvious example being synthetic dawn and machine age. I think it is worth noting that synthetic dawn released in 2017 and the machine age released in 2024. That is 7 years between covering and expanding upon relatively similar material. I got to enjoy synthetic dawn for 7 years and now I get to enjoy new ways to play that old content. If it were to become more frequent I may have a problem, but I doubt that will be an issue anytime in the near future.

 

[Fnhatic]

I think Stellaris was the first paradox game to really be effected by parqadox's transition to being public. It was released the same month so it must have been in production before that but you can clearly see the implementation of the new approach to DLC. Which I think is a great thing in a lot of ways. The game organizes more heavily around centralized features like origins, civics, species, traditions, etc. This allows paradox to continuous introduce new content without having to add new mechanics every single time, it limits feature bloat a great deal, compared to something like pre 2016 where every dlc brought new mechanics that were often used to represent different asapects of the same thing, were often shallow, and which couldn't be expanded upon because each dlc had to be wholely self contained. Which is another improvment of their new dlc policy. When they do implement a new major mechanic they make it universal and ship it in the free updates so that they can modify and add to it under the assumption every player has access to it. Then they populate it over time and the course of several dlcs. Content added this way can also be safely ignored, if you don't like a particular origin don't play it, you can still use the others, as opposed to mechanics which couldn't be ignored but were otherwise of marginal interest.

Unfortunately the new dlc policies also seems to have a much more demanding pace to them. Which I think contributes to issues that the paradox staff are currently struggling with.

Because of changes to policy like these I think this new generation of paradox games can theortically sustain much longer without collapsing under their own weight. Realistically I think Stellaris 2 will only really need to be thought about once hardware limitations becomes too great or to faciliate a radical change to the game. That being said, given that we have lived through 3 major changes to the games most fundamental system, I can't imagine what that change would be. At any rate baring technical limitations I certainly don't see why Stellaris would need wrap up in the near future. Frankly I'd perfer if it didn't, I still have high hopes for Stellaris' future and there are more things I'd like to see added to the game.

If they were to release Stellaris 2, my hope for existing content would be that all the major mechanics that have been added over the years be in place at launch. Everything from origins to mega structures. I would want a clear indication that those mechanics will be there and that what has been learned in the first game hasn't been lost in the transition. Knowing that I'd trust them to populate those mechanics over several dlcs and I'd be happy to pay to see them do it.

Also a thought about dlc covering previously covered content. I'm perfectly fine with that, I'm happy to see content continue to be expanded. The obvious example being synthetic dawn and machine age. I think it is worth noting that synthetic dawn released in 2017 and the machine age released in 2024. That is 7 years between covering and expanding upon relatively similar material. I got to enjoy synthetic dawn for 7 years and now I get to enjoy new ways to play that old content. If it were to become more frequent I may have a problem, but I doubt that will be an issue anytime in the near future.

In theory they could make the bold move of 'modularizing' pricing on Stellaris 2 based on how much you bought from Stellaris 1. There's technically ways you could do that with the Steam store but it'd be a clunky mess given the 832 DLCs Stellaris has. Focus released a Roadcraft and Snowrunner bundle, as a way of giving a discount to Snowrunner owners who bought Roadcraft, a way of keeping their customer base engaged.

But if Stellaris 2 launched as 'Literally everything Stellaris 1, EVERYTHING', with discounts based on owned DLC, well, what would the base game cost? $150? There are genres of games that can get away with that (literally everything wargaming and flight sim, but their customer base are weirdos), Stellaris probably isn't one.

At the end of the day Paradox is a business, and business decisions will trump gamer decisions. And before anyone complains about that, that's not a bad thing - gamers historically make horrible businessmen and run horrible companies (two examples - Star Citizen/CIG, which is not a failure, but is a horrible company... and the current nightmare mess that is the board game community, with companies basically stealing Kickstarter money and not shipping products, leaving them in warehouses in China, because they didn't understand the business) - at the end of the day, if Stellaris 2 is going to exist, it would only be because Stellaris 1 made money, not because they just want to make a product out of the graciousness of their heart.

And the smartest business decisions right now would basically be to run Stellaris 1 with DLC until it quits seeing an ROI. Once that happens there's no reason to believe Stellaris 2 would see an ROI either, and that's why I said Stellaris 2 would likely only happen after Stellaris 1 shuts down support and there's a "cooling off".

An example of not allowing a "cooling off" is the Marvel franchise post-End Game. Or the Civilization series, where pretty much the entire community has had enough of Firaxis's BS and decided to play Civ 4 until the end of times.

 

[eu4 Bart]

It won't happen anytime soon. Victoria 3 was released in 2022. This year, it's Europa Universalis 5. The next title will probably be Hearts of Iron 5, likely in 2028, assuming they stick to a three-year gap between major releases. That means the earliest possible release date for Stellaris 2 would be around 2031.

 

[Nyrael]

The current situation is not due to the current Stellaris showing its age, but because they are doing a full rework of a game feature. The very fact that they can do this rework shows that it isn't actually showing its age and still can keep going. For example, EU4 had been getting only mission DLCs for last few years of its life because just adding new features strained the game too much, yet alone reworking a core feature.

It will be time for Stellaris 2 when they decide it's time to rework the entire game from ground up, and the very way you play it.

 

[Armillus Dynat]

In theory they could make the bold move of 'modularizing' pricing on Stellaris 2 based on how much you bought from Stellaris 1. There's technically ways you could do that with the Steam store but it'd be a clunky mess given the 832 DLCs Stellaris has. Focus released a Roadcraft and Snowrunner bundle, as a way of giving a discount to Snowrunner owners who bought Roadcraft, a way of keeping their customer base engaged.

But if Stellaris 2 launched as 'Literally everything Stellaris 1, EVERYTHING', with discounts based on owned DLC, well, what would the base game cost? $150? There are genres of games that can get away with that (literally everything wargaming and flight sim, but their customer base are weirdos), Stellaris probably isn't one.

At the end of the day Paradox is a business, and business decisions will trump gamer decisions. And before anyone complains about that, that's not a bad thing - gamers historically make horrible businessmen and run horrible companies (go look up the nightmare mess that is the board game community, with people basically stealing Kickstarter money and shipping no products because they didn't understand business) - at the end of the day, if Stellaris 2 is going to exist, it would only be because Stellaris 1 made money, not because they just want to make a product out of the graciousness of their heart.

And the smartest business decisions right now would basically be to run Stellaris 1 with DLC until it quits seeing an ROI. Once that happens there's no reason to believe Stellaris 2 would see an ROI either, and that's why I said Stellaris 2 would likely only happen after Stellaris 1 shuts down support and there's a "cooling off".

An example of not allowing a "cooling off" is the Marvel franchise post-End Game. Or the Civilization series, where pretty much the entire community has had enough of Firaxis's BS and decided to play Civ 4 until the end of times.

Respectfully, I think the best way would be to include all the mechanics and then populate them over time. For example include origins as an option, but then only include 3 or 4 in the base game; or include the galatic senate, but then only have the more basic laws. Basically extend the present dlc model to its limit. Take every single major mechanic in the first game and include it in the base of the second game. They can the sell the content at a later date.

I don't think it would be realistic to expect retroactive discount. When you consider how long it would take them to release content the discount would have to continue for years or even a decade. I don't think they would be keen on cutting profits from future work for that long.

Otherwise ya I tend to agree.

 

[aadf97799c]

problem is the assumption paradox will fix existing problem in sequel

stellaris 2 will use the same engine with even worse performance

 

[Artas99]

I read on some gaming website that they don't plan to publish Stelaris 2 because the game has unlimited potential

 

[FieserMoep]

At this point, Stellaris 2 should be considered to keep what's worked best and get rid of what hasn't. Develop it with a system both intended to be perfomance friendly AND mantain the fantasy of a galaxy inhabited by thousands of pops,

That is what is happening (somewhat) right now. Do you think they originally developed Stellaris with the idea of NOT being performance friendly?
They quite literally learn as they go on and each and every Iteration of various systems might have been implemented with the best intends. Its just that some of those fell flat or they simply had no better idea at the point.

Stellaris (1) is partially a test bed for them to figure out their formula for how they want to tackle the idea of a game that not only tracks growing populations, such as their various other titles, but also deviates from the basic "human" template that allowed them to keep the workforce relatively or outright absolutely uniform. What makes Stellaris special in that regard is the fact that it tries to simulate Empires that can have a homogenous workforce of extremely different beings to one another or shroud beware a workforce that consists of a diverse mix of several species, all with their unique traits that have to be properly put to work.

They need to make these steps in Stellaris (1) in order to set a foundation for the series that would warrant a full sequel as there is literally no point in a Stellaris (2) without massive foundational improvements.

 

[JVMMs]

No developer on the planet has ever 'reboot' a franchise from a full suite offering of a previous title. It'd be nice if they did, but they do not.

The Sims. Jurassic World Evolution. Payday. Civilization. Pokémon.

Massive franchises do it all the time.

 

[Deshiba]

Unless there's something the devs want to do that can't be done within Stellaris due to technical reasons there's no reason to make Stellaris 2.

 

[Voidian]

Only if they do a better job than CK3 did, I don't want a game that's only offering superficial versions of all the systems developed for stellaris over the course of a decade.

If they can make an updated engine, with better graphics, animations, and improvements over old designs including ALL of the content from the current Stellaris, then sure, otherwise they should make a new game.

 

[Edorath]

Stellaris is almost 10 years old, I don't think there's any game that has been supported by PDS as long except maybe EU4. And now it has started to show its age with the latest pops rework. Basically, it's been on active development so long that feature creep has "started" to set in, and now old systems must be reworked to accommodate all those features and everything they bring. In the case of Stellaris I think it reached its most stable and balanced sometime between 2021 and 2023, with Federations, Nemesis, and Overlord. After those it's been content for content sake, we've even had a newer DLC that pretty much renders an older one obsolete (Machine Age to Synthethic Dawn) as an example of some twisted DLC ouroboros.

At this point, Stellaris 2 should be considered to keep what's worked best and get rid of what hasn't. Develop it with a system both intended to be perfomance friendly AND mantain the fantasy of a galaxy inhabited by thousands of pops, a clear distinction of what Origins and Civics are supposed to represent, balanced and defined (but branching) ascension paths that are not changing every update, remove the ambiguity and contradictions on whether you're playing a particular species or a galactic government, allow more assymetrical gameplay styles (space nomads, mercenaries, etc.), improve the scale of the galaxy (something like Distant Worlds 2 where planets and stars feel appropiately massive), dynamic and possibly 3D portraits, and so on, so on.

So what do you think? Is it time to start wrapping up Stellaris 1 and start thinking about Stellaris 2?

shut up montu you say this every single godsforsaken patch
clickbait was a mistake
seriously though we have this thread with every patch don't you people get tired of doing this on a loop?