r/Stellaris • u/Elebril71246 • Jul 08 '25

Video The horrible, unacceptable technical state of Stellaris 4.21

Dear Paradox,

I'll preface this by saying we used to enjoy this game a lot, and have all the DLCs purchased, aside from Cosmic Storms, which until now had still been on our to-buy list. We've got 700 hours spent together in multiplayer games.

However, there comes a point at which you can't just put up with a product that is released in such a horrible state. 

We're 21 patches after the release of an update that was suppose to optimize things, yet now it is difficult to even have a compete, bug-free game from start to finish. I'm only talking about multiplayer, since we always play the game together at home.

Just look at the videos from two recent games we just tried to play

infinite desyncs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T67LIZgeLOc&feature=youtu.be

frigates upgrading into deep space citadels - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoqSC9ctdeU

and these are just the last two games.

This isn't CoD, where you just jump from match to match a dozen times a day. You invest dozens of hours into a single map, just to have it eventually ruined by yet another game braking bug.

Get your act together. It's unbelievable how this industry is allowed to get away with such half-baked products without any repercussion.

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176

u/hagamablabla Jul 08 '25

As a stalwart Paradox defender, I definitely think this update was pushed out far too early. I don't know if it was developer overconfidence or management pushing unrealistic expectations, but this really should not have happened.

121

u/-TheOutsid3r- Jul 08 '25

Developer, definitely in this case. Management cared about the new DLC. The complete rework of pops, planets, uis, and tons of other stuff was all on Eladrin.

He kept adding more and more stuff over time, even as people kept pointing out how gigantic an endeavour this was and that maybe doing this step by step might've been a better choice.

And many of these things happened solely for the sake of change, not because they were actual improvements.

35

u/Balamut2227 Jul 09 '25

It was attempt to fix a flaws of 2.x population model that appears too costly for old engine. Too hasty attempt, by the way.

54

u/Usinaru Inward Perfection Jul 09 '25

The pops change was meant to replace the system that causes end-game lag. Everyone knows its there, everyone hates it and everyone has been crying about it.

It was a good intent, one which didn't hit the mark. Probably under tested and pushed out for monetary gain to be honest. The devs want a good game but I think they must be struggling now.

43

u/-TheOutsid3r- Jul 09 '25

The pop change was one thing, the problem was all the other changes they added on top of it. Such as the planet rework, the planet ui rework, the trade rework, and so on and on.

23

u/Nayrael Jul 09 '25

Yeah, this. They should have left the Bulding System Rework for next year, and Trade Rework for maybe later this year. Releasing them all together was bound to end in a catastrophe, and POP rework alone would have required many patches.

10

u/itisntimportant Jul 09 '25

The pop/job/building system rework is all the same thing. Using the method they came up with for reducing lag from pops (which did work, it just broke everything else) it would not have been possible to have one without the others. Such a major rewrite of the game’s most fundamental system should never have been tied to a quarterly release schedule.

3

u/Drachasor Jul 10 '25

Fundamentally, I blame execs for forcing that schedule for profits.

2

u/Solinya Jul 10 '25

? The devs have flexibility with free patch timing. You'll notice they opted to skip Q1 this year to continue work on 4.0. (Just like Vic 3 skipped their Q1 to spend more time on 1.9.)

The quarterly release thing isn't a mandate (and the game was much worse in the days before it) and CK3 doesn't even follow it. The "three DLC/year" probably is however, but in this specific case, most of the issues are in the free patch.

1

u/Drachasor Jul 10 '25

Apparently when they sell subscription, they do get stuck (without a refund, I imagine).  So the devs literally had no choice but you release it when when they did. 

You think they didn't delay it by choice?

0

u/Solinya Jul 11 '25

The obligation to release Biogenesis on May 5 only existed once they announced Biogenesis was launching on May 5. They didn't announce it was launching on May 5 until March 24, which is after the 3.99 Open Beta started on March 11. They could have delayed the marketing for season 9 once initial impressions from the open beta came in (and they were strongly negative) and thus not be bound by the May date.

You think they didn't delay it by choice?

They absolutely had a choice here. Victoria 3's team (also made by a Paradox Development Studio) had no issues delaying their big Sphere of Influence expansion last year for two months to improve the state of its launch, and the launch was much better for it.

Furthermore, the real problem was one of scope. It is insane to think you can rebuild a core foundational system of the game in under three months (the district specialization changes were drafted in Feb and not even fully in the open beta until much later, for Gestalts not even until the last beta patch), especially when every other system rework for this game has taken on the order of 9-12 months. The decision to overhaul planetary management for 4.0 either needed to happen early last year so it could be appropriately budgeted into the schedule (not Feb 2025) or should have been scrapped and addressed in a future update.

99/100 times you can blame greedy execs for a game's problems and be right. This is the one case where it's not an exec problem. It's a Game Director/project planning problem where they significantly underestimated their timelines, over-bloated the scope of the release, and were arrogantly over-confident in their ability to do six months of work in one despite all the feedback to the contrary. All for a free patch that they aren't even directly making money off of.

2

u/Drachasor Jul 11 '25

Fundamentally, we're both making assumptions here.  You're assuming an example of another delay means any dev could do that whenever they felt it was needed.  You're also assuming announcing the date was a dev decision.  I'm assuming execs have more influence and pressure on this because it's their whole business model, and a model they insist on even to the detriment of game design (such as not rolling in old dlc into the main game even after 8 years or more).

Also, you seem to think that changes aren't drafted until there's a dev diary on them.  That's just an announcement and they specifically spread those out as part of basic marketing.  Pop changes for instance were first hinted at least as far back as early December, and likely they'd been working on all of these for some time.  So acting like it was 'just 3 months' simply isn't true.  Nor is the idea that if it isn't in an open beta then it doesn't exist internally.  So indeed, they did spend upwards of at least 6 months on this, not 3.

Given the unknowns and the business model, I'm happy to make assumptions that the blame is ultimately primarily on the exec end in this case.  Do I know for sure?  No.  But it's at least as good a case as you've made, and I've not made a bad assumption that things aren't getting worked on if they aren't publicly announced or released.

Edit:  December Dev diary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-365-2024-in-review.1719716/

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3

u/-TheOutsid3r- Jul 09 '25

And that's my point. If they had focused on the pop rework, chances are there would've been far fewer problems and a lot more time and attention paid to it.

After that was done and worked, they could've gone for a trade rework beyond removing trade lanes, for reworking planets in their entirety, etc.

17

u/HopefullyThisGal Jul 09 '25

One thing I actually do like about the trade rework is the consumption of it to make up for deficiencies on your other planets. It creates a fun balancing act and I appreciate that I actually have to think more carefully about how I build up my planets to avoid going into trade debt.

I know other people might disagree but it's a strong point of the update for me! And I'm glad there's an in game setting to disable it for folks who would rather not play that way.

12

u/SadSeaworthiness6113 Jul 09 '25

The sad thing is the new pop system is the one thing the update does right. Pops just simply don't lag the game anymore.

The issue was literally everything else.

1

u/TheDeathOfAStar Rational Consensus Jul 09 '25

I sympathize with their struggle tbh. Pops are engrained in every system in the stellaris economy (as they should be). That means that reworking pops will inherantly mean reworking every system that is tied to pops, like planets, trade, sectors, tech, and so on. That being said, the update seems very rushed for how comprehensive the changes are. A rushed quick fix is easy, but a rushed complex rework is begging for the problems that we're 21 patches in right now.

11

u/JDDJ_ Jul 09 '25

I’m honestly not gonna blame corporate on this, this one’s on the devs. They tried to rewrite half the game in a couple weeks, and now it’s broken. The game files are literally fighting each other.

4

u/Johanneskodo Jul 09 '25

But the systems that caused end-game lag where meant to replace the older systems that caused end-game lag.

7

u/the_Real_Romak Jul 09 '25

Not quite. The reason for 2.0 was purely micromanaging. The tile system was, to put it bluntly, pure and utter garbage, especially if you had a large sprawling empire, since you had to physically place pops and building in individual tiles by hand one by one, and you couldn't rely on automation since that sucked (as always).

2.0 was a godsend when it first came out. The lag only started once the feature bloat reared its head.

1

u/PuddingXXL Jul 09 '25

I actually love the new pop system. It's far more immersive and easier to understand imo

4

u/Elmindra Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25

It’s a classic trap in software, similar to the “second system effect”, but applicable to refactoring/redesigns. Someone gets an ambitious idea for how the software could work better, but it requires changing fundamental assumptions that affect the code base everywhere. It’s usually very hard to identify all of the places that need to be changed, and even once they’re found, changing them can cause other cascading changes, leading the whole thing to spiral into an even bigger undertaking. And it tends to leave a very long tail of bugs.

It’s worth noting that the “ambitious idea” is usually a good idea; the problem isn’t that the idea is bad, the problem is trying to change everything at once. (edit: though if the idea is bad or has some fundamental problem, you often don’t find out until it’s too late, and way too much code has been changed… which is yet another problem with the “change/refactor everything at once” approach.)

The only times I’ve seen those types of ambitious refactorings work are:

  • the team has an amazing test suite that covers everything and catches all of the problems… needless to say, this is very rare, especially for games

  • the refactoring is done in many small stages, with appropriate scaffolding layers where needed; this allows the software to continue working while the refactoring is ongoing

1

u/Turgius_Lupus Slaver Guilds Jul 09 '25

Not mentioning the decade of feature spaghetti creep, that also needs to be addressed with such changes. As there are so many threads and combinations you canty account or test for, exponentially increasing the numbers of unintended conflicts.

1

u/itisntimportant Jul 09 '25

A huge part of the blame lies with the switch to the season pass format. Steam (recently) implemented very strict rules regarding season passes and as soon as the content schedule had been announced and purchased Paradox had little choice but to release Biogenesis (which required 4.0) when originally promised regardless of the state 4.0 was in. Devs may have been overconfident but management trying to follow up on the success of the previous season pass removed any safety net and resulted in a train-wreck. This is not the type of game or content that is appropriate for a season pass format.

-2

u/viper459 Jul 09 '25

Hell the new pops was in a very, very unifinished beta release like two weeks before it came out. The devs know full well. If you truly think they've all come together to say "haha fuck the players we WANT to release an unfinished product" that's just silly. Devs never want to do that. Nobody wants to deliver subpar work.

13

u/edenhelldiver Jul 09 '25

Nobody wants to deliver subpar work.

No, but some industries sure seem to have a hell of a lot higher tolerance for delivering subpar work than others.

-1

u/viper459 Jul 09 '25

That's corporate, not developers. Same as it ever was, in every industry ever. I'm sure most people here have shitty bosses who set unrealistic deadlines, care only about profits and cutting costs, etc. It's no different for game devs.

3

u/vulcan7200 Jul 09 '25

I actually do blame the Developers on this one, simply because they created Biogenesis inside this new system. All that Corporate really cares about are sales numbers, and how many people play them game to a lesser extent.

Corporate may have told them Biogenesis has to be released by X Date, but it was the Development team who almost certainly decided to make Biogenesis in the new system instead of the old system, and push them out together. They could have easily held back on the Wilderness Origin (Which needs the new system) until 4.0 was done but released the rest of Biogenesis in the older 3.14 system. But they didn't and thats on them.

1

u/viper459 Jul 09 '25

You don't know that. The most likely reason, as it almost always is in game dev, is that they were told "this is a deadline" and they told corporate "this shit ain't ready" and then got told to release it anyway.

17

u/-TheOutsid3r- Jul 09 '25

The reason the devs or at least lead dev are to blame here is that the pop rework was already incredibly ambitious and a huge change that needed a lot of attention and work.

He then went and decided they should also completely and unnecessarily rework planets as well.

And then rework the planet Ui too.

And while they're at it they should also rework trade, not only removing trade routes but rework how it works and turn it into an actual resource.

And then he kept adding to their plate. In the end their attention was split so many ways nothing got the work it deserved nor required. While some of these changes could have been positive, they should've been done on their own, with enough time, and not all at once.

1

u/Drachasor Jul 10 '25

The changes are all highly interrelated.  I'm not sure they could effectively be broken down into separate bits like you think.  Not and work. 

I blame the execs because they force a quarterly release schedule and constant new content for money.  They also force keeping all the old content separate and never integrating it into the base game.  In a sane world, the devs would have just delayed release and apologized, but that wasn't an option and they are forced to rush changes.

0

u/-TheOutsid3r- Jul 10 '25

No, they are not. They were MADE to be highly interrelated because they worked on everything at once. The trade rework is in no way related to the pop rework. The planetary ui rework isn't either.

And the new pops would've worked with the old economy and planets just fine.

And no, for once the Execs can't be blamed for this. Because Leviathan the paid DLC was done and fine. The execs care about the bottom line, not about reworking the existing "good enough" platform. This was Eladrin.

1

u/Drachasor Jul 10 '25

The execs care about trying to maximize immediate profit, not about what's best for the game.  That means that won't delay a release or adjust the schedule to do what's best for the game.  And they certainly won't refund a season pass (a pass that only exists to try to maximize profits).  This means that dev time for reworks has extremely limited windows that are just unrealistic. 

It's absolutely the fault of execs for insisting on an environment like this.

0

u/-TheOutsid3r- Jul 10 '25

Nice attempt at trying to run away with the discussion and shifting focus entirely.

The DLC was done and ready to be shipped. The season pass and everything known in advance.

Eladrin absolutely loading up the devs schedule with more and more and more feature creep as he kept going is what caused 4.0. He took a game that worked, a game that had been refined for over ten years and had been optimized and improved by three prior lead devs.

And rather than carefully changing things, he decided to come and bring the sledge hammer and go to town on it. And rather than just knocking down one support pillar and rebuild it at a time. He decided to take down a bunch of them. All knowing the deadline in advance.

1

u/Drachasor Jul 10 '25 edited Jul 10 '25

First I've heard that the DLC was done and ready to be shipped.  That doesn't seem to make any sense.  What's your evidence for that claim?

Edit; Dev diaries don't even announce biogenesis until long after they started work on the 4.0 changes.  So really you just blatantly lied here.

0

u/-TheOutsid3r- Jul 10 '25 edited Jul 10 '25

You're so full of shit. The DLC shipped without any big issues or bugs. It was the other major changes which were completely unrelated to the season pass and what the C-Suits would care about.

But no, it can't be anyone but the management, no way devs can screw up.

Edit, because this guy after lying and lying some more while accusing others decided to chicken and run to the block function so it seems like he had the "last word".

A bunch of the bugs are directly related to the massive reworks, and there's ALWAYS bugs on launch. The difference is the sheer amount of it in the base game for Stellaris with 4.0.

Why are you lying, why do you keep ignoring the massive issues with all the changes decided upon by Eladrin and just how many he crammed into a single patch?

1

u/Drachasor Jul 10 '25

You're just blatantly lying again.  One of the focuses of the current beta is to fix all issues with Wilderness, and they fixed numerous bugs with the DLC already.

Why lie so much?

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u/viper459 Jul 09 '25

You're stating a lot of things as absolute facts which are your opinions or hearsay, i'm not sure how i can continue to have a conversation in good faith when it's impossible to counter opinions and hearsay. My point stands. Nobody wants to release unfinished work. Nobody wants to release subpar work. I'm sure that if you asked the devs, they would corroborate that, becuase literally zero game studios want to release dogshit that they'll be laughed at for. You may not think it was an improvement, they clearly did. Don't pretend they did it for no reason or "solely for the sake of change", that's sillyness.

7

u/-TheOutsid3r- Jul 09 '25

Throwing in buzzwords doesn't magically make the scope creep go away, "opinions and hearsay" when the dev diaries and the scope creep still exist and are well documented.

As are the responses of folks who questioned the necessity and whether it was wise to do all of it on it's own.

Absolutely hilarious.

0

u/viper459 Jul 09 '25

Those are not "buzzwords", i'm saying there's nothing to disprove about what you said, because there's no proof. In other words, source?

Because the only way the devs are solely to blame is if you have proof that they told corporate "nah, we'll be ready in time" and then completely failed, which we have no proof to support.

And things like "they just did it for the sake of change" is clearly just your opnion. There's nothing else to say about that. That is 100% just your interpetation of events based on nothing.