Rob Zacny

Episode 355: Stellaris

Recommended Posts

This is a bit off topic, but as I am enjoying Stellaris in a mild way I am thinking I would like to try EUIV. I'm a bit confused by all of the DLC and I have read some reviews suggesting the "base game" has become unplayable without the DLC. Is that right? Is there fun to be had in this game without investing hundreds of dollars into it? 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This is a bit off topic, but as I am enjoying Stellaris in a mild way I am thinking I would like to try EUIV. I'm a bit confused by all of the DLC and I have read some reviews suggesting the "base game" has become unplayable without the DLC. Is that right? Is there fun to be had in this game without investing hundreds of dollars into it? 

 

"Unplayable" is an exaggeration. The base game gets updated and patched with every expansion, so many of the new mechanics that came online with each expansion are in the vanilla game.
 
The biggest tip is to buy the game and DLC on sale. It goes on sale pretty often and can be picked up for less than $20 easily. The DLC is also marked down.
 
There is a lot of DLC but you can skip all of the cosmetic stuff. I would say the Art of War is the best first purchase and contains some of the most useful new content. The base game + that will keep you busy for a whle, after that you can look into the other DLC and see if they add aspects of the game you are interested in. Common Sense and Wealth of Nations are also solid adds.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There is a lot of DLC but you can skip all of the cosmetic stuff. I would say the Art of War is the best first purchase and contains some of the most useful new content. The base game + that will keep you busy for a whle, after that you can look into the other DLC and see if they add aspects of the game you are interested in. Common Sense and Wealth of Nations are also solid adds.

 

I feel like at least every major content DLC has a feature or two not included in the patched version of the base game that'll really gall a player who's learning. Trade leagues, protectorates, religious leagues, and cardinal automation are all DLC-only features that are desperately needed to play the base game. In general, EU4 is worse than CK2 at sectioning off optional features, maybe because the base game lets you play as all cultures and governments, so there's not as much of a drive to section off culture- and government-specific features into DLC.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
The base game gets updated and patched with every expansion, so many of the new mechanics that came online with each expansion are in the vanilla game.

 

That's the one unfortunate thing about Steam.  I'd love to be able to choose which patch version of a game I use.

 

Ah, for the days of patches-scrolls.de!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's the one unfortunate thing about Steam.  I'd love to be able to choose which patch version of a game I use.

 

Ah, for the days of patches-scrolls.de!

 

At least with Crusader Kings 2, Paradox preserves popular old patches as beta forks on Steam (1.111, 2.0.4, 2.1.6, 2.2.1, 2.3.6, and 2.4.5)...

 

Checking now, it appears that they do the same with EU4! The final patch prior to every major piece of DLC is available as a beta fork.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So am I the only one that can't download this podcast? Using Podkicker.

 

I haven't seen any other issues and I don't believe we've gotten any emails to that effect, so it might be something with your podcast client.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think my feelings after playing this game the last few days fall closer to Rowan's take.  I had hoped that Stellaris would pry me away from EU4 at long last, yet I quit my communist space mollusk campaign last night out of boredom and found myself booting up EU to try a Nepal campaign I had been putting off.  I think the increased demands on the players attention have a lot to do with it.  There are so many things I wish were automated; constructing mining bases, starbases, auto-explore, colonizing.  Every action seems to take two or three more mouse clicks than it needs to.  Even just switching from system view to galaxy view is a chore.  Why is there not a seamless zoom transition to galaxy mode in 2016?  Where are my map modes and ledgers?  I haven't heard anyone mention this, but I was surprised there was no distinction between the public and private sector in this game.  I realize that this is a feature specific to certain games like Distant Worlds, but it seems like an elegant solution for micromanagement to be handled by an uncontrollable private sector that determines things like trade routes and mining bases, whilst still preserving the kind of autonomy that is supposed to be implicit with the sector governments in Stellaris.

Anyway, I hope the game will get more fleshed out as time goes on, but right now I feel like it is the least 'paradox-y' game they have released.  I was expecting a Europa Universalis in space and what I got was another MOO clone.  The problem is, I already have plenty of those.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think my feelings after playing this game the last few days fall closer to Rowan's take.  I had hoped that Stellaris would pry me away from EU4 at long last, yet I quit my communist space mollusk campaign last night out of boredom and found myself booting up EU to try a Nepal campaign I had been putting off.  I think the increased demands on the players attention have a lot to do with it.  There are so many things I wish were automated; constructing mining bases, starbases, auto-explore, colonizing.  Every action seems to take two or three more mouse clicks than it needs to.  Even just switching from system view to galaxy view is a chore.  Why is there not a seamless zoom transition to galaxy mode in 2016?  Where are my map modes and ledgers?  I haven't heard anyone mention this, but I was surprised there was no distinction between the public and private sector in this game.  I realize that this is a feature specific to certain games like Distant Worlds, but it seems like an elegant solution for micromanagement to be handled by an uncontrollable private sector that determines things like trade routes and mining bases, whilst still preserving the kind of autonomy that is supposed to be implicit with the sector governments in Stellaris.

Anyway, I hope the game will get more fleshed out as time goes on, but right now I feel like it is the least 'paradox-y' game they have released.  I was expecting a Europa Universalis in space and what I got was another MOO clone.  The problem is, I already have plenty of those.

 

Honestly, reading through the old Developer Diaries now that I've played the game, it seems like Stellaris team suffered from a lot of "not invented here" syndrome. They tore out a lot of the automation and information in the Clausewitz engine from EU4 and CK2 because they had ambitions of designing a Paradox game that didn't need map modes or a ledger, so they removed those functions entirely (and many other basic ones that came from years of player feedback with other games) to keep them from being crutches to design. Unfortunately, that kind of aspirational design typically has big gaping blindspots, which Stellaris is definitely full of.

 

Also, the Clausewitz engine can't handle seamless zoom, which I understand, but what I don't understand is why zooming out past the maximum in system view doesn't take you to galaxy view and vice versa. That's really basic usability that Paradox needs to get better at catching without the help of prominent streamers and fans pointing out.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Honestly, reading through the old Developer Diaries now that I've played the game, it seems like Stellaris team suffered from a lot of "not invented here" syndrome. They tore out a lot of the automation and information in the Clausewitz engine from EU4 and CK2 because they had ambitions of designing a Paradox game that didn't need map modes or a ledger, so they removed those functions entirely (and many other basic ones that came from years of player feedback with other games) to keep them from being crutches to design. Unfortunately, that kind of aspirational design typically has big gaping blindspots, which Stellaris is definitely full of.

 

That's interesting, I hadn't heard about that, but it certainly makes sense given how many standard features of their other games are missing here.  I certainly appreciate the sentiment in trying to get away from the spreadsheet qualities of the previous games and obscuring information is certainly a valid design choice in the strategy game sphere.  The problem I have is that the information is all still there, it's just requires more tedium to access it.

 

 

Also, the Clausewitz engine can't handle seamless zoom, which I understand, but what I don't understand is why zooming out past the maximum in system view doesn't take you to galaxy view and vice versa. That's really basic usability that Paradox needs to get better at catching without the help of prominent streamers and fans pointing out.

 

Or they could have designed the game map in such a way that it isn't necessary to have discreet galaxy vs system views.  It's very rare that I actually need to go into system view for this game.  Once I'm out of the early game, ship combat is about the only thing I use system view for and even then its not terribly important since fleets just sort of gravitate towards each other during combat.  That and checking planets in my sectors, because for some reason they don't show up on the quick bar.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Very unfortunate to see internet reacting to Rowan's review in the way it did.

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/09/stellaris-review

 

Just read the comments. Comments are so disgusting Paradox had to intervene and say sane thing which was suddenly perceived as some messianic revelation.

 

Well, I don't think Rowan Kaiser is a particularly nice person, so if he's taking heat over the internet then that's fine by me.  Just karma doing its job. 

 

Speaking purely about the review, let's just look at the facts.  The guy was writing for IGN and using their rating scale.  So, in that context, was a score of 6.3 for Stellaris a fair one?  Let's have a look at the scores given for full release strategy games over the past year:

  • Stellaris - 6.3
  • Offworld Trading Company - 8.0
  • Battlefleet Gothic: Armada - 7.1
  • The Banner Saga 2 - 8.9
  • Dead Star - 7.1
  • Ashes of Singularity - 7.7
  • XCOM 2 - 9.3
  • Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak - 8.8
  • Tharsis - 4.8
  • Hard West - 7.3
  • Prison Architect - 8.3
  • Might & Magic Heroes VII - 6.4
  • World of Warships - 8.3
  • Massive Chalice - 6.7
  • Heroes of the Storm - 6.5
  • Galactic Civilizations III - 8.6
  • Invisible Inc. - 8.6
 
So out of the 17 strategy games released in the past 12 months we are told by Kaiser that Stellaris is only better than Tharsis. 

 

Now let's compare Stellaris to other 4x space games:

  • Star Drive 2 - 6.9
  • Sid Meier's Starships - 6.5
  • Homeworld: Remastered - 9.0
  • Ancient Space - 8.3
  • Planetary Annihilation - 4.8
  • The Last Federation - 6.9
  • Horizon - 6.5
  • Endless Space - 8.0
  • Faster Than Light - 9.6

So, Stellaris is not just the second worst strategy game of the past year, it is also the second worst space strategy game in recent memory.  Wow!  Quite an achievement from a usually reliable developer.  I wonder what went so wrong?

 

I can respect an opinion I disagree with if it's born of valid reasons but awarding a low score to a big release that has been excellently received by critics and players simply smacks of attention-seeking.  That's why Kaiser has copped so much flack for his absurd review.  

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you listened to the episode, Rowan went into a lot of detail about his criticisms of the game. Having played it for about 10 hours now, I can certainly see where he is coming from, while at the same wondering if he somehow managed to play a game where nothing terribly exciting happened - which strikes me as something the engine is quite capable of doing, certainly combined with some of the ways it is possible to play the game.

Now I also disagree with Rowan (I think Stellaris is a very good game, and once some DLC has dropped I expect it'll be an excellent one) but he is more than within his rights to review and game and give it a score he feels it deserves. Quite why that makes a review 'absurd' I completely fail to see. You have also compared review scores for games that were reviewed by different people. That's so illogical it genuinely is absurd! To be blunt, if IGN didn't use the 'score out of ten' system I seriously doubt that Rowan would have received anything like the vitriol (let's call it what it is) he has. I read some of those comments, I seriously doubt many of the commenters actually bothered to read the review.

Arguments about 'reputable' designers or development studios are utterly pointless. Any studio can release a stinker. Just because you have a good track record doesn't mean you should get a pass.

The sense of fanboy entitlement and misplaced loyalty in reaction to his review stinks of everything that is worst about The PC game playing community. Something I thought these forums were wonderfully free from. What a shame I appear to be wrong.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You've clearly not read my comment properly at all. As I said, I can understand his individual criticisms of a game (even though his experience of the game seems to have been unique). However, when a reviewer is writing for an outlet, they should have some awareness of the scoring system they are being asked to employ. It's all very well for you to say "well if only IGN didn't use this, etc..." but the reality is that they do use it and he knew this before submitting the review. This was not rowankaiser.com it is IGN and if he knowingly gives a score using their scale that is practically the lowest for a strategy game for several years it doesn't take a genius to realise that this will be perceived very poorly if the game is obviously one of the best (if flawed) strategy games of the past few years.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Scores are stupid. Pretend they don't exist and read reviews for the text and not the number attached to them. If you disagree with any of Rowan's actual complaints, that would make for a lot better discussion than you comparing the arbitrary dumb number he assigned to the arbitrary dumb numbers assigned by IGN's other reviewers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The scores, as far as they matter, are usually relative to a game's potential. I would play Stellaris before FTL on most days because a partially awesome grand strategy game is still much 'more' than most other games, but I agree FTL deserves a higher score because it was such a good execution of a limited concept.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You've clearly not read my comment properly at all. As I said, I can understand his individual criticisms of a game (even though his experience of the game seems to have been unique). However, when a reviewer is writing for an outlet, they should have some awareness of the scoring system they are being asked to employ. It's all very well for you to say "well if only IGN didn't use this, etc..." but the reality is that they do use it and he knew this before submitting the review. This was not rowankaiser.com it is IGN and if he knowingly gives a score using their scale that is practically the lowest for a strategy game for several years it doesn't take a genius to realise that this will be perceived very poorly if the game is obviously one of the best (if flawed) strategy games of the past few years.

I read your comment and understand your point and I disagree.  I think a 6.3 on that scale is, if anything, generous to Stellaris.  Having played most of the strategy games on that list (what the heck is Dead Star?) I would put Stellaris at or near the bottom of it.  Rowan's experience is not unique, if you read the paradox forums, you'll see many similar complaints.

 

 

Scores are stupid. Pretend they don't exist and read reviews for the text and not the number attached to them. If you disagree with any of Rowan's actual complaints, that would make for a lot better discussion than you comparing the arbitrary dumb number he assigned to the arbitrary dumb numbers assigned by IGN's other reviewers.

Scores aren't stupid, people are stupid.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You've clearly not read my comment properly at all. As I said, I can understand his individual criticisms of a game (even though his experience of the game seems to have been unique). However, when a reviewer is writing for an outlet, they should have some awareness of the scoring system they are being asked to employ. It's all very well for you to say "well if only IGN didn't use this, etc..." but the reality is that they do use it and he knew this before submitting the review. This was not rowankaiser.com it is IGN and if he knowingly gives a score using their scale that is practically the lowest for a strategy game for several years it doesn't take a genius to realise that this will be perceived very poorly if the game is obviously one of the best (if flawed) strategy games of the past few years.

 

No I read your comment properly, I'm just calling it for the completely ridiculous statement that it is. 

 

You're basically arguing that Rowan should have rated the game much higher just because some people might not like the score he's given the game. So you believe that Rowan should compromise the integrity of the review he's given on the basis of scores that other people have left, using the same scoring system from the same website. "This is an 8/10 game but it's a steaming pile of shit" basically. what's the point of giving a game a score if every game ends up 8/10? People will just start bitching that "this games sucks but you said it was 8/10" rather doing the hard graft and actually, you know, reading the review. And understanding why Rowan reached the score that he did

 

Disagree with Rowan's opinions all you want, but don't be arguing that reviewers should go around censoring themselves just because you don't like the score they give.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think Stellaris right now is even close to the best strategy game in a few years, much less space 4x game.  Perhaps this fictitious Stellaris that ends up being an interesting game in a few years is, but I think this game has more structural flaws than is immediately let on.

 

It's also not difficult at all and while the districts system might end up being interesting, the game is so easy that you can win it with 5 planets, no problem.

 

Rowan is pretty spot on with how the game never presses you with conflict.  Maybe some people are into that, but not me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

the game is obviously one of the best (if flawed) strategy games of the past few years.

 

fanboy detected

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

No I read your comment properly, I'm just calling it for the completely ridiculous statement that it is.

You're basically arguing that Rowan should have rated the game much higher just because some people might not like the score he's given the game. So you believe that Rowan should compromise the integrity of the review he's given on the basis of scores that other people have left, using the same scoring system from the same website. "This is an 8/10 game but it's a steaming pile of shit" basically. what's the point of giving a game a score if every game ends up 8/10? People will just start bitching that "this games sucks but you said it was 8/10" rather doing the hard graft and actually, you know, reading the review. And understanding why Rowan reached the score that he did

Disagree with Rowan's opinions all you want, but don't be arguing that reviewers should go around censoring themselves just because you don't like the score they give.

You're arguing against a position I don't hold. It's obviously a little too nuanced to fully grasp.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You're arguing against a position I don't hold. It's obviously a little too nuanced to fully grasp.

 

If you think this game is the best strategy game in years and Rowan doesn't, how can you possibly say his score is wrong?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

However, when a reviewer is writing for an outlet, they should have some awareness of the scoring system they are being asked to employ. It's all very well for you to say "well if only IGN didn't use this, etc..." but the reality is that they do use it and he knew this before submitting the review. This was not rowankaiser.com it is IGN and if he knowingly gives a score using their scale that is practically the lowest for a strategy game for several years

 

One problem with this approach is that unless the Stellaris reviewer is the same person who reviewed the other games, fitting his or her score into the site's ratings for those other games will be impossible, simply because he or she might rate the games differently relative to one another.  For what it's worth, in all the years of reviewing games for websites and magazines, I never once checked to see what rating someone else had given a game for the purposes of deciding my own score.  The only considerations were my opinion and the rating scale I was given.  Not the ratings scale I perceived to be in use.  If a website said that 5.0 was an "average" game (and at one time, most of the major sites did) then an average game got a 5.0 from me.  It was then the editor's job to take the review and make sure that the text matched the score assigned, and that the score matched the website's scale.  I once had a game score significantly lowered because the editor felt that the text did not support the score as laid out by the magazine's scoring system.  And editorial control is important: if the editor feels that the score does not match the site's/magazine's scale, then a discussion should (and often does) take place between the editor and writer. I have had scores tweaked up or down (with my approval) and have also rewritten reviews to match what I felt was an appropriate score (with editorial approval).

 

Another problem is that the sites themselves aren't quite sure what their ratings systems mean.  In the early-ish days of Gamespot, I went back and forth many times with editors about whether a marginally above-average game on their scale was 5.5, 6.0, or 6.5.  7.0 was supposed to be "good."  But even then, the 1-10 scale seemed to be unsuited to the purpose.  I noticed in one comment on Rowan's review that the writer considered 6.3 absurdly low because it was just 0.3 away from 6.0, which was a score that should be reserved only for horrible broken, unplayable games.  Which immediately made me wonder what 1.0 to 5.9 was for.

 

Scores are stupid. Pretend they don't exist and read reviews for the text and not the number attached to them. If you disagree with any of Rowan's actual complaints, that would make for a lot better discussion than you comparing the arbitrary dumb number he assigned to the arbitrary dumb numbers assigned by IGN's other reviewers.

 

Scores can be very useful screening tools when you are looking for a few games to choose between in a genre, for example, and don't want to read 10 or 20 different game reviews.  The problem is that with all the pre-release streaming and gameplay information, scores have become more about validating people's opinions than actual purchasing guides. At least it seems that way to me based on how many people complain about scores while announcing that they haven't purchased the game yet but fully planned to do so and would be back shortly to really show up the reviewer.

 

Well, I don't think Rowan Kaiser is a particularly nice person, so if he's taking heat over the internet then that's fine by me.  Just karma doing its job.

 
I have never met Rowan Kaiser, but I would personally never justify criticism of his work based on my dislike of his person.  And it seems rather poor form to even bring it up. Although I am pretty old-fashioned.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you think this game is the best strategy game in years and Rowan doesn't, how can you possibly say his score is wrong?

 

Personally, I think it's a solid base that will be fleshed out into a something special over time.  It's certainly one of the better space strategy games released.  My issue isn't about how Rowan felt about the game per se and maybe if I was reviewing it on my own scale I might give it a 7 or similar.  However, my issue is that his score (which does exist and does influence people - despite what people on these forums would like to pretend is the case) is way too low in context to the scoring system employed by IGN.  

 

I don't think you can simply act in a vacuum and then be surprised when others react to it.  The points people have made about, "well scores are silly anyway", "different reviewers will see things differently" etc aren't wrong but they are irrelevant to this conversation.  My point is that the score is way lower than the review when judged on the scoring scale of the site it was written for. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My point is that the score is way lower than the review when judged on the scoring scale of the site it was written for. 

 

From IGN's own score description page:

 

7.0-7.9 - GOOD

Playing a Good game is time well spent. Could it be better? Absolutely. Maybe it lacks ambition, is too repetitive, has a few technical bumps in the road, or is too repetitive, but we came away from it happy nonetheless. We think you will, too.

6.0-6.9 - OKAY

These recommendations come with a boatload of “ifs.” There’s a good game in here somewhere, but in order to find it you’ll have to know where to look, and perhaps turn a blind eye to some significant drawbacks.

5.0-5.9 - MEDIOCRE

This is the kind of bland, unremarkable game we’ve mostly forgotten about a day after we finish playing. A mediocre game isn’t something you should spend your time or money on if you consider either to be precious, but they’ll pass the time if you have nothing better to do.

 

 

Reading Rowan's review, it seems like he did indeed find the game "Okay." Which is somewhere in the 6-range. Sounds appropriate to me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now