Opportunity for ISG now that Stellaris just shot itself in the foot.

Discussion in 'Off-Topic' started by Mark, Nov 27, 2017.

  1. Mark

    Mark Ensign

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    Some people have probably already heard the news, but the Stellaris devs have just announced that they'll be removing 2 of the 3 types of FTL choice in the game, and leaving only........ wait for it ....... starlanes of all things, as the one and only mandatory FTL type. Basically Stellaris will be changing into just another game with forced starlanes, like all those other mediocre starlane-only games out there which infest the 4x space genre like weeds.

    So basically they're giving a giant middle finger to all their customers who originally bought Stellaris for the option to use free-movement in their games.

    Aside from the obvious outrage over ripping out a core feature in a fully mature game, which was formerly used as a major selling point, this provides a good opportunity for competing space 4x games which actually treat space like space such as Distant Worlds and of course, ISG. Full story is here...

    https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...y-92-ftl-rework-and-galactic-terrain.1052958/

    As you can see from the gargantuan size of the thread, many angry and dissatisfied Stellaris Customers who dont like the idea of roads, mountains and choke-points being forcibly shoehorned into their space game are planning on jumping ship and ISG might well benefit greatly from their departure. Food for thought.
     
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  2. CrazyElf

    CrazyElf Lieutenant

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    I would not jump on the Paradox forums to introduce ISG, but I agree that this was not a well thought out decision.

    WE will have to wait and see if Paradoxx reverses due to negative feedback.
     
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  3. Konstantine

    Konstantine Grand Admiral

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    Take it in stride gentlemen. Paradox has an entire army of mindless followers that will support its decisions regardless of how good or bad they are. This is actually good for ISG as Paradox may have much less incentive to reverse itself. You also have to keep in mind that all this is leading to Stellaris 2 where paradox hopes to make another killing.

    The main obstacle faced by ISG in my opinion is lack of exposure. This game is quite well thought out and still adding components, it will get better, bigger and become an epic challenge for the player... but that player must know that ISG exists in the first place.

    Paradox is just another example of a company starting to believe its own propaganda. They are talented and have tremendous resources at their disposal... but they may be losing sight of the fact that the player determines if a game is fun or not... it most certainly isn't the developer who makes that determination.
     
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  4. Ashbery76

    Ashbery76 Ensign

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    Lets wait for the result.Strategic Warfare was boring in Stellaris.The three movement types added nothing to the game like it did in SOTS.
     
  5. Mark

    Mark Ensign

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    I honestly wish they had waited for Stellaris 2 to go starlane-only, then I simply would have voted with my wallet and avoided the game entirely. But this is especially irritating because I've already paid for a game + DLC based on core game features which are about to be suddenly removed 1.5 years after launch. The only real option is to stay with the current patch forever but that's a terrible solution because it means no more bug fixes (for the huge number of bugs still in the game) or future content, AND no more mod updates or future mods. Needless to say I'm not going to be forgetting this in a hurry when it comes to contemplating my next Paradox purchase.... :)

    Yes, Strategic Warfare was always quite horrible in Stellaris, but what passes as their "solution" seems to be akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I cant see that waiting for the result will make any difference, there's no way they can possibly implement a forced starlane game that will make me want to play it. Why? Because there's nothing special or different about yet another starlane-only game that we haven't seen in a dozen other mediocre starlane-only games over the years. Its basically just very simplistic land-warfare strategy like RISK with a starry space-skin slapped on, aka. the very last thing I want to see in a space game. If I want land warfare I'll play Civ.

    Also I disagree that FTL choice added nothing, Stellaris's strength was always race design flexibility, story-telling and roleplaying. FTL choice was one of the few distinctive, non-cosmetic race design options which actually made a difference to how your race felt and played. And now we can say goodbye to that. Want to roleplay your next empire as Star Trek's Federation? Bad luck, you're now stuck on fixed space-rails and getting from star A to adjacent star D always means going through B and C first because, reasons.......
     
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  6. Konstantine

    Konstantine Grand Admiral

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    I get it that every one has different tastes and I respect that. Personally though, here is how starlanes have played out for me in the times I tried games with that mechanic.

    Garrison all warp points (for lack of a better term) in a system and build up forces as you constantly fend off minor and major attempts of the AI to break in.

    Build up existing forces while continuing to fend off attacks.

    Break out from your system and attack an adjoining system, at which point...

    Garrison all warp points (for lack of a better term) in a system and build up forces as you constantly fend off minor and major attempts of the AI to break in.

    Build up existing forces while continuing to fend off attacks...

    Sorry, but that isn't strategy to me, that's a grind and quite boring.

    Look at ISG instead.

    There are no doomstack problems because range and speed are balanced well.

    Collect your forces in one system and the AI (which is still only at 1/3 capacity) will just take your un-defended systems.

    Now that requires more strategy that star-lane based games.

    This move by Paradox is not intended to address the problems faced by players, it is intended to allow the devs to implement a solution with the least amount of work possible. To claim otherwise is quite frankly an insult to our intelligence
     
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  7. Mark

    Mark Ensign

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    Yeah you hit the nail on the head with that comment Chris, and taking a look at the Stellaris forums, you're far from the only one to come to the same conclusion.

    Nobody is suggesting that Stellaris doesn't have big problems, particularly with warfare, but the devs are deserving of praise if they work hard to successfully and cleverly crack a difficult problem with innovative design and hard work, while maintaining the existing depth and flexibility of the game, not if they just give up and completely scrap a core game feature because its all too hard for them. Particularly when that feature was the only reason that many people bought their game in the first place. Its basically a decision made solely at the customer's expense and nobody else's.

    Oh well if there's a silver lining to all this it might be that the inevitable flood of disgruntled Stellaris refugees will now be looking for a new 4x space game which doesn't force the use of starlanes, enter ISG.... :)
     
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  8. Konstantine

    Konstantine Grand Admiral

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    Precisely Mark
    They do it because players allow them to do it.
    Let me put it this way
    If I bought a product and took it home, and after a while the seller came to my house and attempted to change it for something I didn't want...it would be quite unpleasant for that seller.
    Further to that I do not understand the attempt to mimic land warfare in space, Naval warfare I can understand, but this...
    Just another slap in the face for customers from an arrogant company that feels it can get away with it... if enough customers are lost however accounting will get involved and I don't think Wiz will like that.
    Stand your ground brother, you are in the right.
     
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  9. Edward the Hun

    Edward the Hun Moderator Lieutenant

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    It makes WW 1 trench warfare look fluid and dynamic! As you can tell, I agree with your response.

    The funny thing is, I don't mind starlanes but I understand their flaws and understand why a considerable number people hate them. I even understand why these people would rather not buy or play games with them. It's a deterministic feature (one that affects the player's decision to purchase a product or not).

    Also, I know a lot of people that are mad just because the multi-FTL is going to be removed. Like they don't mind starlanes, it's the removal of the "feature" that pisses them off. The "No Starlane" crowd are mad for two reasons! People on the other side of this argument need to understand this isn't just about "much starlanes."

    As I said earlier, I actually like the damn things but I am not blind to the situation. Also, too many new space 4X games use them now, especially if you look at those with budgets larger than my credit line. Warp seems to be only present in the mom and pop sized developers. I might like the damn things but I don't want them for breakfast everyday. Give me some of that classic love too.

    Now if I can be excused and put on my suit.

    Changing a deterministic feature of a product is actually a risky move, you only do that if you think you will generate more sales than you would lose and generally this is hard to do because of previous momentum (you generally lose the sales but not get the theoretical increase marketing thought you'd get). This is even riskier if you have a subscription model, which Paradox's DLC policy is analogous to one. I very much doubt their is huge crowd of people going, "if there were only starlanes." Heck, though warfare has been reduced to doomstacks and people hate those, I much doubt the contingency of people saying, "fix this now, I don't care if you have to go with starlanes only," is that big. People wanted a fix for warfare, but not down this path.

    However, there is a large contingency of people that don't like starlanes so I doubt the trade off here is a smart move. I expect the sales curve to decrease from its current slope (if sales were growing I'd expect their growth will stagnation and may even start decreasing, if it was already decreasing (the game is over a year old now) than I expect the rate of decrease will worsen). The sales persistency (% of sales of the DLC versus owned copies of the core game) of the next two DLC (including the next portrait pack, but that too may be affected) will prove if I am right or wrong here. I expect the sales persistency to decrease.

    ((Edit Addition - I need to clarify, I'm not saying there is going to be a huge hit. It could be a small one. However, I suspect there is going to be enough of a dip to make at least a few people in finances concerned.))

    What I am trying to say, if I was a publisher I would have used my veto to block this. Sometimes, the publishers are the good guys and the developers are the one hanging themselves. The problem is most publishers don't understand gamers and miscalculate these decisions, vetoing the wrong things or asking for disruptive changes themselves. Now we can see the problem when the publisher is too developer friendly, it doesn't crack the whip when it needs to. A good publisher is one that can still think like a suit but also understands their audience.

    Okay, I am done sounding like a shareholder and sneaking a tangential rant inside the existing topic.

    People who don't mind starlanes will probably not mind this especially if Paradox delivers on addressing the warfare issue. However, as pointed out there are ways to address this issue without shifting the modes of travel. You both have hard line fixes (force limits on regions to fleet caps) to softer approaches (which ISG is trying, as Konstantine pointed out).

    Now I can understand if the game design of Stellaris prevents them from addressing this issue via the soft approaches (however some of the things Konstantine listed could still be implemented and have a huge impact), considering Paradox is willing to remove a deterministic feature to help them address this, makes me wonder why they didn't just go for the hard line fixes first. Sure those will get grumbles too but they are not deterministic features, and they may end up doing them anyways. So why not do them first?

    Hence why Konstantine's last paragraph is apt, this is to increase workload a bit now (removing the other 2 FTL is not that much work though, heck you can do that now in the options screen) so things will be easier for them to address the core issue and be easier for them later as well when the expand the game. So yes, this "major" change is just a way to find a fix to the core issue with the least amount of work.

    Also, all the cool new things they have announced can still be added without scrapping the other two FTLs. So claiming they need to do this so they can make those additions is something Pen and Teller could do an episode about it.
     
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  10. aReclusiveMind

    aReclusiveMind Developer Grand Admiral

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    All I can do is smash the agree button on all these posts. I am about to the point where I'm going to stop following Stellaris news. I had hoped it would focus more on bringing in the political intrigue and grand strategy mechanics of their prior titles as time went on. I never thought they'd instead try to shoehorn in the land map chokepoints of their many, nearly identical looking, land based grand strategy games. Yet, here we are...

    I knew months and months ago that "starlanes only" was coming. The writing was on the wall once Wiz's gameplay streams started being exclusively "starlane only" games. In fact, even before that, in the very early days, possibly even pre-launch streams, Wiz had complained when the stream voted for his empire to use warp and continue to complain about it during the gameplay sessions. Then he came out and said he viewed the game as more of a 4X than a grand strategy, and well, that was the last thing I personally wanted to hear.

    It feels to me like they took the easy way out. Instead of innovating and figuring out a way to make their combat mechanisms more thought-provoking and engaging, they decided to introduce an artificial movement system that emulates the ground tactics they know and love. Even the idea of it bores me.
     
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  11. Konstantine

    Konstantine Grand Admiral

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    I think it's worse than that aRM,
    It seems they used the thread to gauge reactions and kept it going as a way to contain the negative fallout in mostly a single location. Sort of like
    "Let them vent, they'll get over it"
    Now I have to tell you, I played a lot of Paradox tittles but stopped patronizing them a while ago for multiple reasons. I know how Mark feels though, If I hadn't already stopped being a customer, this would have done it anyway.
    It's more than just the star-lane thing by the way. It's that they feel it is acceptable behavior to renege on their terms at will. If they get away with this now, it will only lead to further situations where the customer gets shafted.
     
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