After a busy week since the Stellaris 4.0 launch the games director says he's thinking about how to manage big updates in the future.
Muray admits that Stellaris 4.0 was released in a rough state. We showed this by having a big list of known issues in the patch notes but I should have been clearer about its condition. Players need to understand what's going on and how we plan to improve it. Even though the update had a rough start by the end of the week Paradox had already released several patches to fix the major issues reported by players.
Muray says he's sorry for letting fans down but he still believes it was the right choice not to delay the update. He explains that a bigger player base will always find problems that testing might miss. If the update had been pushed back two weeks. it would have been better but they would still have needed to fix issues for another week though not as many. It's tough because there are so many things to manage.
The situation is unusual: the new Stellaris Biogenesis DLC has a mostly negative rating on Steam. but if you read the reviews most people are actually praising the expansion saying it brings some of the most creative ideas to the game in years. The negative reviews are mostly due to problems with the 4.0 update. Has this made Muray and the team think about changing their usual approach of launching DLC and free updates at the same time?
Muray says they are talking internally about making big changes like this in the future. He explains that tying expansions to the main game makes it hard and adds extra work but it might be worth it. This approach could help them understand the base game better without the DLC.
Even though there has been some criticism it's clear that players still support Stellaris. One reason is that the Paradox development team talks openly with fans. Muray and his team write long weekly updates about problems and future plans. We're making this game for our fans So I talk to them a lot he says. I'm proud of my team they did amazing work in a short time. I've worked in games for 20 years and this is the best team I've ever had.
Muray says the team is now focusing on making the game run better easier to use and improving tooltips and the overall experience. The recent pop update helped the game run smoother later on but it's now causing slowdowns early in the game on older computers. There's also a memory leak the team is trying to fix which is making things worse for users with low-end machines. Muray admits We're just starting to optimize for version 4.0 and we have a lot of work to do.
Patch 3.14 was already as optimized as it could be but patch 4.0 is just beginning. We have many ideas to improve things he said. One change which was considered too risky to include in this update, aims to reduce the number of tiny population groups caused by things like changes in ethics. That change alone should help a lot but we need to test it more internally before releasing it.
With the changes made Muray is excited about the possibilities. Population is growing and people are moving more smoothly. He’s also looking forward to the new district specializations. There were four at first but now a fifth has been added hydroponics in the generator district. which allows for solar farming. More new features are planned for the future.
We have some big plans coming up Muray says. Someone showed me an awesome design for resort worlds and I’m really excited to work on it. The new systems are stronger overall confusing at first especially if you're used to the old 3.14 version but by the time we get to version 4.6. I think we’ll wonder how we ever used the old one.
We'll hear more from Muray soon about why Biogenesis is so popular and what it means for Stellaris. In the meantime check out some of the best grand strategy games on PC or try some great games like Civilization.
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