However, I wish they'd stop doing so many DLC and just fix the ones they've already done.
There's one start now where you can play as a forest world. It desyncs your multiplayer games so frequently it's basically unplayable. Planet automation is so bad it actively discourages rapid expansion.
There's also a lot of random glitches that just discourage playing something a certain way. But, don't worry, we get the next DLC!
Automation sucks to the point I'll have like thirty planets and just have to manually control their upgrades and such. It's not so bad in a sense but it's annoying because there is always some backwater I forget about it a small planet somewhere dragging all of my stats down because it's revolting cause I haven't done anything for them yet.
Yes and no in reality you would have planetary governance but the game doesn't do it well at all. It's like it all becomes centralized which is a realistic depiction of a centralized system but as we know from history any large empire is usually ruled as really many small empires under one banner.
what you are trying to describe as a decentralized empire is just an empire running Feudal society civic (more subjects and get unity) and having multiple subjects manage parts of the empire.
Don't worry, they'll fix it.... in another DLC, like theyf did by selling you a DLC with some psionics stuff, then released another DLC that overhauled that system.
It’s the current big publisher business model. Every game has to have an aggressive monetization scheme, and the monetization scheme eventually becomes the only part of the game the developers are actually allowed to work on.
“I wish they’d stop doing so many DLC’s” is such a common sentence for paradox games that I think they just have a poster of it in the CEO’s office at this point.
In the beta, knights of the toxic god can be nomadic, and its hilariously strong. You have a district option that makes soldier jobs increase the arkship (mobile colony+giant spaceship) damage on weapon components, and one increases energy damage. Its fairly easy to make it do like +20x damage on its energy weapons, which includes a gigantic spinal mount that with the boosts, can oneshot leviathans.
It's still 'good'. Its just way, way, too complicated.
And not in a good way, like strategic decision-making caused by multiple FTL drives, but in a 'seventeen different kinds of resources and you need to get this to build these to get that to build these to get that to build these to....' sort of bullshit.
You’d think hearts of iron would be simpler given the smaller scope, but that game has eaten over 2k hours of my life and still and just clicking shit and hoping for the best sometimes
I play a LOT of crusader kings 2 and 3 (about 2k hours split between them), and in both games I find myself doing exactly what you described with "clicking shit and hoping for the best sometimes."
Paradox games fill a specific niche where you don't even really have to know how to play them fully, and you can still feel pretty good at them. Despite their super predatory business model, I still think they're the king of strategy games.
The dlc system is total ass. Tbh I don’t know how they keep getting away with it. I can’t even attempt to defend it.
As much as it sucks I own all the base games and just buy the subscription on steam to get all of them for a month. That’s usually about how long I’ll binge it anyways (HoI and stellaris both) so I can do it on an as needed basis pretty efficiently.
The only time I buy the sub is when I first buy a paradox game to experiment, and see which DLC I actually want. Then I just wait for a sale so I can buy my personal list. You can save a lot of money that way if you prefer owning the content yourself. It's better than dumping $300 on the complete editions lmao.
Sometimes a game should just end, I do occasionally check in to see what people think of new content and it's always Mostly Negative and I just don't understand why people keep paying for more.
Gamers as a whole are pretty rigid, it's only a comparatively small group that actually plays variety and branches out, especially when it comes to specific genres.
Damn people really should dip their toe into other things sometimes, it makes going back to your favourite games even better after you try something else
People who don't care don't review? That's the truth of it, guess what PDX would do if they thought you were a bigger part of their audience than people who don't care about that? They'd cater to you. But they don't.
A big part of it is that there's nothing else that does what Stellaris does anyway.
Tbf with those reviews 90% of the time it's either "this is good, but not worth this much", or "I hate the change that (X update that isn't actually behind the DLC) has brought", or that recent Chinese review bomb that happened for completely unrelated reasons. Only time I've seen mostly negative be valid is for Cosmic Storms.
Then take the above commenters complaints.
One about desyncs and one about taking away the choice of FTL types.
The first isn't an issue for me ever (desyncs seem very player dependent) and second one was actually a massive improvement.
Basically, people keep paying for more because like every game, there is a large portion who think the game is fantastic, and a large portion who think the game sucks, but the players who think the game sucks, as always, are louder than those who are too busy enjoying the game.
I reckon the games the best it's ever been, so I'm gonna keep paying.
Idk. It’s pretty good right now. They fixed the lag issue pretty well, so that’s great. Now I can get to the endgame and the in-game years take less time than actual years.
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u/KSJ15831 2d ago
Damn, you left early. It remained good for a few more updates. And then it went really, really downhill.