PDX overexertion

[ShaTiK]

I’ll start off by saying that I honestly don’t know whether this topic is appropriate of not, so if this post gets deleted in 5 minutes – I understand.

I will not go into great detail about the most recent games (Stellaris and HoI IV), their launches and their update story. I’m pretty sure people on this forum are pretty aware of that. What I want to ask – do you think that PDX guys got a bit overextended with maintaining 4 games at the moment?

Because, after I played 10 hours into the latest Stellaris update (and don’t get me wrong, the update itself is amazing) , I, once again, thought to myself – are these guys alright? This update, as much as I’m excited about it, should’ve been in production for at least a few months more – AI is utterly broken, performance is bad for a lot of people and game have quite a lot of outdated tooltips and info. Not to mention first-day bug for some people that prevented them to even start the game – it was fixed with day-1 patch, but still.

I have zero idea about inner working of Paradox Game Development studio, their staff, financial position etc. But I have a feeling that having 4 grand strategy games that you actively and continuously support, might be too much. I’m not too arrogant to say I know what’s up and maybe I have a hindsight bias, but I think, from game-quality standpoint, PDX games where better when we had only EU4 and CK2.

 

[jumbi]

It's important to note that the there hasn't really been a significant time where Paradox only had two teams, one for CK2 and one for EU4. While HoI4 and Stellaris were released 3 years after EU4, they didn't appear out of the aether. Hearts of Iron was announced very early in 2014, and so development in it would have started at the latest in 2013.

Similarly, Stellaris was officially announced in mid 2015, and its codename Augustus had been teased for some time before then, with development, of course, starting before then. Paradox has had these four teams working independently of one another for considerable time, as well as the Imperator team and Chris King's definitely-not-Victoria project. While resources have almost certainly be redistributed between them at times, we're not seeing any new, extraordinary circumstances.

Stellaris' bugs on release are far more likely a consequence of the scope of the update rather than a sign that Paradox's internal structure is ready to burst under the pressure. QA is wonderful, but the full userbase of Stellaris can find far more than them by virtue of sheer numbers.

 

[Bouchart]

I've noticed a decline in the quality of DLC and patches as of late.

 

[ShaTiK]

Stellaris' bugs on release are far more likely a consequence of the scope of the update rather than a sign that Paradox's internal structure is ready to burst under the pressure. QA is wonderful, but the full userbase of Stellaris can find far more than them by virtue of sheer numbers.

But that's not limited to Stellaris release thought. AI got broken in both HoI IV and Stellaris release (the latter was sector-AI but still), while the latest changes to economy broke AI totally to the point of it being as inept as strategic AI of HoI IV was on release. And as much as I would like to believe that PDX QA is on point, my own experience with all of their major DLC for both games lead me to believe otherwise. I might be wrong, thought, but I have a feeling that things were better 4 years ago in terms of QA.

 

[jumbi]

Going back to CK2's release, there were still 4 in-house grand strategy games being developed. Vicky 2 and HoI3 saw their last expansions released in 2013 and 2012, respectively, and EU4's development was well underway by then. The main point to be made is that Paradox keeping multiple plates spinning isn't a new occurrence. However, the level of improvement and reimagining of fundamental game mechanics present in Stellaris' latest update is, and so it seems more reasonable that this would be the cause of any additional issues. The current economic AI, as with the original sector AI, while perfectly functional, are nonetheless working at a level that is quite lacking. Likewise, there are a number of properly broken and less-than-ideal components to be addressed, perhaps more than in other updates, but it seems far more reasonable that this is due to the immense scope of the update.

As you said, Paradox has already started pushing fixes to issues that have been found. The necessary apparatus are working to reproduce reported bugs and fix the issues causing them. As it was with the previous updates, the issues will be hammered out in the patches to soon come. While there are certainly many issues to be addressed in Le Guin, it's still a far way from Paradox's earlier days of issues on release.

 

[Xdevo]

Lets not forget that Paradox is also developing non-released games now. Imperator: Rome, King's unreleased project and Henrik's unreleased project are all taking development time along with EU4, CK2, HOI4, and Stellaris. EU4's devs have been cannibalized by Rome, and I imagine CK2 has a similar situation.

I wouldn't put any stock in Stellaris or HOI4's AI woes, they've been there from the start of the game and Paradox has never been great at making AI match the depth of games they make (see: Vic2's minors). Nor would I put any stock in the QA for these games being particularly worse than the previous titles. Hoi3 was barely playable for a lot of its lifespan, and EU4 had the adage of "don't touch for 3 days after any patch" until around Rights of Man.

This just seems like pds slipping back into an unfortunate old habit after a pretty brief period of decent QA on releases.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Misaligned priorities and overexertion are not the same thing, though one can lead to the other.

 

[Avil]

I wouldn't call it overextension, but on some points I have to agree.
I was hyped for Dharma DLC and update in eu4. But pretty quickly I cooled down, because while new patch added new bugs, old ones also was never fixed. Lack of aging polish keeps pushing me away from a game (game doesn't become better with time, it gets bigger!)
CK2 patch and DLC was amazing. Glitches here and there (man, enatic clans throw your realm into chaos), but it was amazing to see, how EXISTING mechanics and regions are getting improved, not just "new stuff".
But then Stellaris patch came out. Change of tile system was accepted with skepticism, but it was sold pretty well as "it'll let AI to understand the game better"! With each diary patch also showed some major RP value, too. But on release exactly the initial selling point of a patch was in the worst state (and still is). This actually made me quite angry. How should I evaluate new things, when old things not only wasn't fixed, but also got worse? It took me a bit of willpower to keep myself from angry posting. Patch shows great promise, but quality of released product was subpar "at best".

 

[Person012345]

I’ll start off by saying that I honestly don’t know whether this topic is appropriate of not, so if this post gets deleted in 5 minutes – I understand.

I will not go into great detail about the most recent games (Stellaris and HoI IV), their launches and their update story. I’m pretty sure people on this forum are pretty aware of that. What I want to ask – do you think that PDX guys got a bit overextended with maintaining 4 games at the moment?

Because, after I played 10 hours into the latest Stellaris update (and don’t get me wrong, the update itself is amazing) , I, once again, thought to myself – are these guys alright? This update, as much as I’m excited about it, should’ve been in production for at least a few months more – AI is utterly broken, performance is bad for a lot of people and game have quite a lot of outdated tooltips and info. Not to mention first-day bug for some people that prevented them to even start the game – it was fixed with day-1 patch, but still.

I have zero idea about inner working of Paradox Game Development studio, their staff, financial position etc. But I have a feeling that having 4 grand strategy games that you actively and continuously support, might be too much. I’m not too arrogant to say I know what’s up and maybe I have a hindsight bias, but I think, from game-quality standpoint, PDX games where better when we had only EU4 and CK2.

I think it was a decision, not "too much work". Based on following what they were saying and my own general observances of following game development and patches, I had been expecting Stellaris 2.2 in February. Possibility of january or march also. I'm on record saying this. Then they announced it for the beginning of december which to some degree makes sense as a date, it's before christmas but not too close to christmas. But from my estimates of where they were, based on what they were saying and what they were showing, it seemed really early. But I accepted it, decided I was just wrong about my estimates.

Then it came out and I realised I was not wrong about my estimates. This thing sorely needed a couple of more months of AI development and general looking over. It seems very much like it was rushed out to conform to christmas. I don't think it's a case of trying to do too much stuff, I just don't think they gave it enough time.

 

[TinWiz]

It was almost exactly a full year between Jade Dragon and Holy Fury, and I think the CK2 update is impressive. Dharma was OK but actually seems more like an "immersion pack," than a full expansion and Golden Century looks like a scaled down immersion pack. I think if the business people are pressuring the developers to "sell, sell sell" and push out DLC it shows in the less-than-Stellaris product. i actually don't play Stellaris but I noticed they've released three DLC for it this year. Maybe they are stretching a bit to get that extra revenue.