With new Stellaris DLC The Grand Archive now out in the world, developer Paradox is considering what the future of its spectacular space 4X game looks like. As it considers the game’s future, game director Stephen ‘Eladrin’ Muray says the team is going to slow down the speed of updates “a little bit” to minimize disruption for players. Furthermore, he asks the game’s community to give feedback on what elements are most core to their experience as the team looks to determine what comes next.
“What is Stellaris?” That’s the question Muray poses at the start of his latest developer diary. The simple answer is that it remains Steam’s most consistently popular 4X space game more than eight years after launch, as well as Paradox’s most successful branch away from their typical grand strategy format into the world of 4X games overall. But with 360 developer diaries behind it, the team is circling right back to the beginning, and the subject of its very first: “The vision.”
“The vision serves as a guiding tool to keep the entire development team aligned,” Muray explains. “As the game evolves, we work hard to update it regularly to remain accurate and consistent with our core vision.” At this point, he outlines core tenets defining what makes Stellaris tick.
First, it’s a vast sandbox capable of holding “every story, trope or player fantasy in science fiction.” Second, it’s a living experience, “a 4X grand strategy game with role-playing elements that continues to evolve and redefine itself.” Third, every game of Stellaris should feel different, even when playing the same empire repeatedly, offering “a sense of uncertainty and wonder about what could happen next.”
Above all, however, Muray tells players that “Stellaris is your game.” He notes that comments and feedback on The Machine Age expansion have heavily influenced the plans for the content coming in 2025, noting that the game’s long development timelines mean that things under discussion now aren’t likely to actually surface in 2026 and beyond.
One key takeaway is that players feel the quarterly release cadence of recent years is too rapid, causing things to change “too quickly and too often” and disrupting in-progress games and mods. As such, Muray states that Paradox is “going to slow things down a little bit to let things stabilize.”
The current plan is for an open beta featuring some of the biggest changes in the first quarter of 2025, which will replace what would have previously been the timeframe for the 3.15 update. This will pave the way for “a bigger than normal release” that should arrive some time around the game’s May anniversary, “giving us the opportunity to catch up on technical debt, polish, and major features.”
As Paradox glimpses the future, Muray asks for your feedback. “How does this match what you think Stellaris is, and where it should go? Would you change any of these vision statements? What systems and content are ‘sacred’ to you, which would make Stellaris not Stellaris any more if we changed them?”
Muray says he wants this discussion to continue for the remainder of 2024’s Stellaris developer diaries, in the hope that the future of the game’s galactic journey is as exciting as possible.
He also gives a shoutout to the Chinese Stellaris community for discovering a hilarious bug that allows players to capture “inappropriate things” with the Treasure Hunters’ boarding cables, including Cetana’s flagship or an entire Enclave. The team likes it so much that it won’t be fixed in the upcoming patch 3.14.159, but will be sorted a short while later; for the interim, he puts out a challenge to capture the most ridiculous haul possible.
For even more ways to keep things fresh, scour the best Stellaris mods in 2024. Or give another of the best strategy games a try in the meantime instead.
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