Stellaris is getting space nomads and scenarios for its 10th birthday
1mon 8d ago by piefed.world/u/Agent_Karyo in strategy_games@piefed.world from www.pcgamer.com
Get ready to live out your Battlestar dreams.
It's been 10 years since the release of Stellaris? 😬
And theyve only realeased 200 $20 priced DLC. They been slacking.
Tbf: this update does away with the three most commonly recommended dlc and rolls them into the base game, and they have been offering a subscription model for latecomers that allow the player to access the entire dlc content for that duration. They also offer "seasons" which are, contrary to the name, bundled releases you can buy (not rent access to) and save a bunch.
That is not to say the paradox dlc model isn't absurdly expensive to obtain for a new player. Always wait for sales.
People shit on Paradox but, as a patient gamer, they are the one studio that I follow. I’m sure they deserve a lot of the criticism. But, I just wait or discover games after the price has been reduced or steeply discounted so I’m always happy with them. It helps that they put out the type of games that I like.
Their games are just extremely expensive but i respect that they're upfront about it. I really like a few of their base games, CK2 too, but it's just crazy expensive to get the DLC, they make games for millionaires and that's OK as long as they're up front about it.
I would argue even with the patient gamer approach (which I follow for non-indie releases) you have a lot of drawbacks inherent to the Paradox DLC model with respect to gameplay and game design.
- There is a strong incentive to create DLC gameplay that is not fundamentally integrated with the rest of the game. It is in your financial interest to compartmentalize improvements, limit their scope and avoid innovative gameplay updates.
- There is no incentive to work on refining less successful gameplay elements that were introduced as DLC, as only a small population of players have it and new players don't buy it due to bad reviews. This creates a lot of abandoned DLC and gameplay features.
- Strong incentive to not only create filler content, but also to mix and match filler content with more useful content (even if its only for a certain % of the player population) for monetization optimization strategies and employ deception to increase DLC attach rates (if the gross DLC revenue is significantly higher than refund costs, this strategy is economically sound, not to mention that Steam doesn't even offer refunds for DLCs).
- Strong incentive to shut down free modding.
These points are dealbreakers for me. Although I can understand how some of these points are manageable if you like certain types of strategy games. I have all the DLC for Cities in Motion 1/2.
I bought Stellaris a few months after release (there might have already been a DLC pack), it was fun, but felt like it needed a bit of refinement and expansion. I decided to come back to the game about 8-9 months later. I saw 3-4 DLC packs.
I would have no issue paying $10 or even $20 for an expansion pack if it contained enough content and the gameplay and content was all integrated. From memory, all the packs combined barely felt like a smaller expansion.
I never played Stellaris since that initial run. Instead I play indie space strategy games. I have 400+ hours in Star Ruler 2; a game that supports mods and where custom ship building is a core part of the gameplay, there are tons of user made ship designs for a bunch of use cases.
You can radically change the gameplay feel and galaxy design using the in-built map/game designer. The gameplay experience can vary, from a quick ~1 hour RTS session with almost board-game-like elements, to 60-100 hours marathon games that feel more like an economic strategy game set within galaxies supporting 1,000+ systems each (with 5-10 planets and moons).
Same here with the game. I even bought a couple dlcs before figuring it out.