Space 4x Game Stellaris This week marks its 9th birthday and to celebrate its developers, Paradox has long launched one of its most transformative updates, along with a fresh extension, Biogenesis. However, it’s not all a smooth voyage. The new DLC for strategy games has been widely praised, but the Stellaris 4.0 update has increased issues such as lag, crashes and other bugs. Speaking exclusively to , game director Stephen ‘Eladrin’ Muray says he will bite more than the team can bite and apologize to players who are disappointed, but he insists that the patch launches is the right move.
“We released this in a rough manner,” Muray admits Stellaris 4.0. “I felt that having a big known issue list in the patch notes indicates that I have a bit of known issue. But I should have been more clear about the state of having it. Despite the Rocky Start at the launch of Monday’s update, by the weekend, Paradox had already rolled out multiple patches for a quadruple game that targeted most of the serious issues that players reported.
Reflecting the statement made in the wake of 4.0, Muray says, “I’m sorry for letting the fans down,” but explains that he is still happy with the decision not to delay updates as it reveals issues that are not always shown in the tests. “If I pushed for two weeks, I don’t think I’d caught that many issues. It would have been better, but I’d still have a week of hardcore patching.
This situation has created a rather unusual phenomenon. The new Stellaris Biogenesis DLC now has a “almost negative” average steam rating, but read reviews of them. This can be praised for the expansion, which includes the most original and mechanically flavorful ideas that have been brought to space games over the years. The herd of thumb down responses is almost entirely the result of 4.0-related problems. Has Muray and his team rethink their standard policy of launching DLC and free updates at the same time?
“This is something we’re debating a little internally for the future once we make this magnitude change again,” Mure replies. He says the way expansion is tied to the base game will make this “very difficult and cause more development overhead,” but I feel it might be worth it in the future.
Despite the blowback, it is clear that players are willing to stick to Stellaris. Part of that trust comes from how well the Paradox development team communicates. Muray and his colleagues provide an extensive weekly development diary discussing current issues and future plans. “We make games for our fans, so I need to talk a lot with them,” he says. “I’m proud of my team. They did things that I couldn’t do for me with an unreasonable timeframe. I’ve been in the gaming industry for 20 years and haven’t had a better team.”
As for the future, Muray lists tooltip optimization, ease of use, and overall user experience improvements as current priorities. Pop Rework improved performance later in the game, but it produced more slowdowns in early games on low spec machines. It’s combined with the nasty memory leaks the team is currently trying to pin, and it’s “a lot of stuff” for users of older machines, he points out. “We’re the first thing we’ve done with 4.0 optimizations and we need to improve.”
“(Patch) 3.14 is at the limits of optimization, and 4.0 is just beginning. There are many ideas on how to improve things,” he continues. One change deemed “too dangerous” to include in the current update is set to reduce the number of very small pop groups that can be created as a result of a system such as an ethics shift. “It should be a huge help, but more internal testing is needed before publishing it.”
However, there is a lot of chance that Murei is excited when he has a rework in place. He highlights the future of specialising new districts, along with simultaneous pop growth and car improvements. In addition to the first four, a fifth was introduced, after adding hydroponics to the habitats of the generator district and adding habitat hydroponics to enable solar farming.
“We have some pretty big plans for a few other things,” teases Murei. “I have a Resort World design. It’s amazing and I’m really looking forward to quitting it. I think the system is more robust in general. I’m confused at first, especially if you’re used to the 3.14 system, but 4.6 is “Oh, how did you use the old system?”
We have more thoughts from Mule about the popularity of biosynthesis and what it means for Stellaris’ future in the coming days. For now, take a quick look at the best Grand Strategy Games on your PC, or perhaps the best games like civilization.
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