Yeah they’ve been talking a lot about the changes they are making i terms of quality control, stating that they believe it’s the reason why they did so well in 2015, and that in return, that success will allow them to continue to keep quality high, as they will be able to afford better Q&A and will have the luxury of delaying titles if they aren’t meeting standards.
Yeah, I’m ardently anti-preorder, but I’ll always make an exception for Paradox. They’re the only company making the games I want and they’ve had some of the best customer interaction, even back in the first Victoria days.
So just finished watching the first Stream - it’s archived on Twitch and they’ll put it up on youtube tomorrow (I’ll link when available).
We saw early gameplay, so nothing new really, but they plan on playing through a whole game on these streams until the game comes out, and they will be moving it along so that we get to see everything before the game ships.
The stream was pretty funny, they built a fungus based race called the Blorg who were long lived, but repugnant and extreme Xenophiles. They search the cosmos looking for friends. Their other trait is militaristic, for when friends don’t want to be friends for some weird reason.
They showed off the Empire building menus while building this custom race, nothing really new except that we got to see some of the ship designs, and during the let’s play the Blorg discovered an ancient monolith, which turned out wasn’t a party invite as they had hoped, but they did find a library left behind by some ancient civilization.
I can’t stop thinking about this game… time to bring out the hibernation pod again.
Why do almost all Paradox games have such small font sizes? On a high resolution monitor I practically need a magnifying glass to read them.
Archive is up on youtube:
Long live the Blorg Commonality!Oh man, the Blorg continue to seek friends out in space in today’s stream, which I’m missing. It’s too early for lunch!
Apparently I hear they find themselves surround by xenophobic empires, lol, appropriate.
Blorg Space Friends #2 is up on YouTube, here. They are uploading the videos in half-hour chunks, now.
It was a longer 2 hour stream this time.
Man, there is a LOT to do at the start of the game. They were focusing on only a couple of things, but there a ton of events, anomalies, alien species to exploit and to make friends with. Pretty much every time he fast forwarded his events bar would fill up.
I really like the way the game creates random races for you, instead of having a set of fixed races like most space 4X games. It really adds to the sense of exploration and discovery.
The ship builder looks to have just the right mix of depth and ease of use. I like that there’sa balancing act between energy and components.
These streams are just making the wait for May 9th that much worse.
Another cool thing that was shown in the stream was the way diplomacy and war work, which is different from just about any 4X game I’ve played and closer to what PAradox does in it’s own grand strategy titles.
Firs off, when you declare war you need to pick a goal or sets of goals. This is essentially what your government tells it’s people: we’re going to war to accomplish “x”. That will be the moment in which your leader will roll up on a carrier with a “mission accomplished” banner billowing in the solar wind.
When you are a member of an alliance with other factions, you cannot go to war unless those factions agree on your goals, and therefore your goals will likely have to include things that will benefit them. This type of alliance can make it difficult to change the status quo. But you can also create federations, where a single leader from one of the member factions is selected. That leader can wage war or declare peace, etc, unilaterally, BUT that position rotates around to the other factions after a set amount of time.
Man, all of these systems just sound so amazing, and their unpredictable interactions is what really helps to create an incredibly immersive story line. Just two streams in and the Blorg are more interesting and “real” to me than any of the factions in MoO or endless space.
They’ve discovered precursor ruins, made friends with space jelly fish, made rivals (you can actually make another faction a “rival” giving you bonuses to influence depending on their relative strength) of an empire that sneakily stole a few planets from right under them, had their chief exploring vessel pull a Voyager, by vanishing in unkown territory for a while, and laid waste to a group of zealots intent on eradicating life in the galaxy. During the military build up a pacifist faction of the population rose up and demanded it’s independence, at least until it’s leader was suddenly, and tragically killed in a terrible skiing accident…
This far into most other 4X games I’d be thinking about +10% to this and -10% to that, instead of being enthralled by all these little bits of narrative and story that arise organically from the game’s mechanics.
I want this in my veins!!!
I just liked how the comet event was a good thing. 
I’m amused to note that the Blorg now have fan art.
Angry Joe did a pretty in depth interview with the devs at GDC. A couple of things we hadn’t seen before were surfaced, like ship hull components and a short talk about sectors (you can kind of paint them in a similar way to what you do with districts in Cities Skylines).
Today's stream will also be 2 hours long and it should be wrapping up now (fake edit) the archive is up now: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive/v/57765929A cool thing I also learned:
Humans are the only pre-scripted race in the game, so if you’re not playing as them, there’s a chance they will be one of the AI factions (all other races are randomly generated). If you do encounter them, they will be based in the SOL system, their home planet will be Earth, and nearby stars will be named accordingly (i.e Proxima).
Thing is, you won’t necessarily run into them as another space-faring civilization like you. There’s a chance you might encounter earth when humans were still fighting with swords in the middle ages, for example. You might then be able to enslave or uplift them, or destroy them if you wish. You might even encounter earth as a graveyard world, humans having long ago killed themselves in a nuclear war.
Or you can establish an observation post to watch over them, at roughly WWII period … and then watch horrified as they destroy themselves in said nuclear war without ever having got into space at all … !
Pre-orders are now available at the Paradox store.
Pre-orders are up on Steam as well (the Paradox store just gives you a Steam code, natch).
Doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to pre-order beyond a little cosmetic DLC. If they’d thrown anything, even a 10% discount in, I’d probably go for it. Two notes, however:
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At 40 bucks, I’ll probably buy it within a day or two of release. Just going to make sure early reviews don’t absolutely trash it.
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I am 100% confident that Paradox will give the game all the post-release support and attention it needs and deserves. As a company, these guys have more than earned my trust.
I preordered the Nova version. The preorder bonus includes a few new races, and Nova also adds the soundtrack and a cool looking arachnid race!
Number 3 in the Steam top selling list too.
Man, I’m so hopeful for this, but… well, I never preorder period, and I don’t support Paradox’s DLC practices. If they do the same nonsense as EU4, I’m out.
I always thought Paradox’s DLC was some of the best type. Purely cosmetic stuff that’s optional and a handful of more meaty DLC’s. Not sure what’s not to like…
Also, With Steam, preordering doesn’t really matter. You ca always get a refund.
Fantastic new trailer: a tour of the galaxy - Stellaris - "Tour of the Galaxy" Pre-order Trailer - YouTube
I won’t discuss that here so as not to spread rain on a sunny day. All I will say in this thread is that I used to think the same way. Over time, Paradox poisoned that well but good.
It does. Preordering is a terrible anti-consumer practice, one which has no benefits for the consumer. Even the “free” dlc so often on offer is usually there as a thin bribe. But again, this is an argument for another day.