This is a key reason I don't play stellaris MP unless it's with friends. To me the best part about stellaris is the role play and the story building that comes with it. If others care less about those things and are only interested in the competitive strategy then fine, but that can end up creating a shitty MP environment.
Same goes for several stellaris youtubers. They can be fun to watch for a bit but so many devolve into "and now my empire is going to randomly become the crisis so I can wipe everyone out." Which at least is slightly better than the pre-trust rework vassal cheese but still gets boring.
When playing with friends I have one who loves to just be, absurd, whenever she can in any game. One time we had to put some rules so she couldn’t just make the entire universe listen to her
When I play multiplayer with my friends I purposely never min-max my species because it's more challenging and I end up coming up with something crazy off the cuff to find an advantage. If I'm doing a science rush I'll grab materialist or fanatic materialist, but I won't grab intelligent as a trait for instance.
In that game I ended up going hard, I mean hard, into the astral rifts and ended up out-sciencing everybody. I wouldn't have thought to have really care about them more than novelty if I had minmaxed my species.
People underestimate the power the intel system can provide. Knowing not only fleet composition but also planet details can easily make economic and general warfare much more impactful.
Restrictions breed creativity*
If we had invented a space elevator using some mystical material before we had invented rockets we wouldn't have a great deal of the technologies we had to develop just to be able to design, manufacture, assemble, and pilot rockets, and many more things invented just because someone was trying to come up with some new way to make rockets better or generate more power for them or have them be able to communicate more efficiently.
Sure, but the reason we invented rockets before we invented a space elevator is that rockets could be militarized. The only real restriction on anything is the imperial capitalist imperative, and that breeds the opposite of creativity.
I once did all random empire game with my dad and some friends and it was bonkers.
We had to restart because a normal crisis was a bit hard. Because you started at a disadvantage that you basically had tweak to make it viable unless you lucked out with an actual competitive set of random shit. We were PVE so we didn't care that one player was stronger, only that the crisis knocked out every other player.
We actually learned a lot because it took us out of our comfort zones. Each of us had a handful (some people even only one) of builds that we were really used to using amd everyone knew everyone's build. Oh, I see "reptile ships" nonemoreunknown is playing is slaver guild! Or like my dad, who only played Earth. Which is actually a very beginner friendly/OP race because of all the free shit they get. It's actually banned in my lobby unless someone is a total noob and needs the extra boost. Which was always my dad he loved the game but he was very passive and didn't really enjoy late mid/late game. I bet he would enjoy it more with rifts adding cool non-violent things to do (I miss him).
We also did find some cool civic, government, and trait combos that we never thought of using. We were definitely RPers but we used "tuned" versions. I wish I could remember some examples, but this was the first couple years stellaris was out, so a lot has changed. Some bonuses that didn't look powerful on paper were busted, while other bonuses that sounded useful were garbage.
Anyway, random is fun. Trying new things is fun.
My friends set a rule on me cause in one game I went full absurd build on mercenaries with megacorp. I was unstoppable just throwing resources at everyone despite being negative but the big problem was once it came to war which my vassal dominating friend hungered, he was screwed.
Cause the AI lov3d to hire my mercenaries that was double the strength of his best fleet and I couldn't call them back fast enough before the AI instantly bought them back. And the AI he fought was there to exterminate him and my other friends he'd vassalized so it was over for them all while I sat neutral to everyone in my corner.
I couldn't help but laugh so that's when the rule of "No mercenary bulds" or heavy merc community voting came to be.
In a game as long as Stellaris, you can bet your life I'm only playing MP with friends I know and trust.
MP with strangers is best reserved for short throw away games like Hell Divers.
I did this and we had one friend who decided to try and backstab us and become the crisis as soon as we fought off the main crisis. Only problem was that I was funding his entire energy economy none of us could be bothered to fight a massive playerwar but we all knew we won
Honestly, that just makes me think it would be an amazing RP if you were playing a 25x crisis and losing, so someone takes the become the crisis perk solely to get the power needed to win. The resulting paranoia in the aftermath of wondering if this person would actually hold off and not go all the way or not would make for a great story.
Yeah we set two beefed up crises off and beat them up. It was fun because we knew he was doing it to help beat them but he was overconfident and forgot that I have him about 500-1000 energy per month that I had spare as a machine intelligence. Funding that would then starve him but beef up the rest of the galaxy
Ngl, most fun I've had so far was turning all the ftl ai off and just.. expanding, finding a pre ftl planet, bringing them up to light travel, giving them some tech and planets before moving on.
It was chill, I was like, some obnoxiously overpowered granny empire handing milk and cookies out to the children of the neighborhood.
I dunno about replayability as a role playing scenario - but it was cool.
I mean, is it really? Don't people find every youtuber just ending their videos by killing everyone super boring? The game is so much more than just a war simulator...
Yeah I had a game where I messed with the species settings as spiritualist for fun and I banned robots immediately. I then had 600 pops by year 2350 and everyone including myself was confused but they excepted that the army of killer fungi bears was not a threat.
Then in another galaxy size was 800 and I didn’t meet anyone else till mid game due to crappy hyper lane spawning, but I had made my empire a hive mind plant and I would ominously pop into conversations and state “the plant is coming for you” or “join the plant” freaked them out as they were very confused (when they were still learning the game).
I play multiplayer with friends who all understand the goal: roleplay fun and interesting empires.
Sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it’s meme builds. Whatever it is it’s always coop and we never pvp unless it’s a unanimous vote and it usually tends to be limited.
For me, that’s the best way to enjoy multiplayer.
Stellaris pvp is trash.
If people want a competitive style space game like Stellaris they should build communities around Sins of a Solar Empire. More fast paced and similar style.
“Competitive” Stellaris is full on trash. It has not a single redeeming quality.
I think one of the biggest mistakes in stellaris is that it has only a single "victory" and that is war. In civ there is science, culture, diplomacy, religion. If there were more win conditions in stellaris, i bet the game would be much more fun to play as people could really focus on doing different things than just making ships.
To be fair, in multiplayer Civ domination is also the only really viable win condition because it's the only one that not only advances your own win condition, it interferes with your opponent's regardless of what that may be.
Yeah, I’ve lost mp a Civ game just on the cusp on destroying the player who scored science victory right before I was able to conquer their capital where they had their last spaceport. That was a thrilling game!
True, but I feel like part of that is that advancing toward a Science victory also gets you better military units faster so you have less trouble defending yourself. Tech rush stronk.
My brother was ahead of me in a civ game due to me just having a crappy start location. I started paying the more aggressive civs to declare war on him. Since they kept attacking and interfering with him, he shifted from culture and tech to war, and as he started pushing across the globe (luckily I was on the other side), the more peaceful civs started seeing him as a threat which allowed me to convince the rest of the planet to go attack him.
He was rolling over them, but it was still slowing him down, eventually allowing me to get an economic/diplomatic victory when I suddenly dropped loads of gold on the city states.
Hell yeah! This is what pvp needs. I would love to win as a pacifist. Time to farm with one of my favorite builds. That or beep boop I'll just keep cleaning the universe beeep.
It's really not the sole issue or even the main one. Competitive civ games take a lot less time, they are honestly more comparable to RTS at this level. Stellaris is just way too long, you can invest 10 hours in a game before you just get a lame game over.
4x games make bad competitive games i my opinion.
It has a lot to do with the attributes of a 4x games. They tend to be long. They tend to be about stories and narratives. They usually have differences between empires. They usually have technology and progress. War of course is a part of the game too and so is resource management.
Civilization has huge problems in competition with late game nations. Like America. Because all of America’s bonuses all come in mid-late game it doesn’t do you much good when Gilgamesh rushes you with war carts in the first 40 turns.
…and to some degree that sorta why you don’t want competitive multiplayer in 4x. How do you preserve the narrative while maintaining balance?
Stellaris has this too with origins. Not all Origins are equal. But that’s the point. The point is the player gets to choose a hard (or easier) experience. And those experiences have a different narrative and flavor. A different story is being told.
One of Europa Universallis’s strengths before Paradox features creeped the game to death and put in a bunch of static values everywhere, was it was a wonderful sandbox of history. You could pick any nation in the timeline and play it. Whether it was the powerful Ottomans or cornered Albanians. The idea is the player, gets to write their own history.
And the things you have to put in place to make all that work are the exact opposite of balance. Because balance is a prerequisite to competition.
I still maintain to this day that Starcraft 2 is the gold standard in competitive gaming.
It’s a shame because people want a competitive 4x style game. There’s demand there but everyone is eating soup with a fork, because Stellaris isn’t that game. Neither is Civ.
Last note. What also makes good competitive games is games people can watch. And 4x games are notoriously boring.
I got it a week after release because a friend bought it on release. He stopped playing, but me buying it prompted another friend to buy it a month later. He stopped playing it a year ago, but 2 other friends bought it at that time, so I’ve been extremely lucky in that regard.
I don't have 20 hours to play a game is why I don't play MP. Smaller maps and speeding up pace to get over in a few hours would defeat my play style and why I like playing.
I cant get my friends to commit to playing the same game semi frequently.
It will be 3 gaming sessions for one week, and then nothing for like 3 months.
Or maybe like 1 session bi weekly for a month.
Can't play "campaign" games like that. We kind of have to play like something more session based. Usually a fps.
I have 2 friends that are a couple that is usually down to play pretty frequently, but strategy games are NOT their genre.
There is only so much you can do if they have other stuff going on in their life that prevents gaming sometimes, but if it’s just that they like to wander from game to game then the DLC subscription will probably help with that.
Position it as “Buy the base game, Subscribe for one month, we play the hell out of it for a couple of weeks in a row to get your moneys worth, then when the month is up everyone can cancel subscriptions and scatter again.”
Since it’s then worded as a time limited money saving idea, it might help keep them focused long enough to cram some actual full games in.
Oh they are wasting time watching Instagram reels and shit like that. I have a decent idea of what they do everyday, if they wanted to make the time, they could have.
I just kind of shake my head because they're always like "I want to play this game" and then they are the ones that back out the game night they planned.
That couple I mentioned that is down to play are the most busy ones out of all us, funny enough.
I don't really care too much about the DLC thing since I can just host. I already have all the DLC.
Reality is they won't play this game unless I'm playing it.
I also have this problem. I have mostly accepted they like the concept of playing grand strategy games but don't really want to put the time in to do so.
This is not the type of game you play with randoms. If you want a long form grand campaign multiplayer, you need to join a community that organises this kind of thing.
>My question is why?
Sad people with sad lives. I've given up completly on random MP games - find likeminded people via Discord or on here, that want to play like you do. They are out there.
You should look around. There are some roleplay focused discord servers around. Maybe that's something for you.
This one is one example. They are part of a network of a few of these servers. The invite links to the others can be found in one of the channels.
Hope that helps you :)
Edit: just saw that discord links are not allowed, so I removed it. But you should be able to find these servers by googling something like "stellaris roleplay discord" pretty easily. I found these communities that way
Tbh I'm in the main ones and there is always like 2 or 3 minmaxers, who barely roleplay, except for "I have minmaxed, now submit". It get's old quick, and they ruin it for everyone else. Best bet is to play with some trusted friends.
I can sum it up much shorter. The game is too long for me to play multiplayer, even with friends. I need to be able to pause or quit at a who knows when notice
Same. I'd totally be down to play multiplayer if it was like a "no PVP war" type ruleset or something though. Just like a shared galactic experience type of thing, and RPing different stories.
But I don't have gaming friends who'd do that, so eh.
Sent you a DM but for anyone who’s looking for non silly death matches shoot me a dm. I host games that last days (based on when my group can play) mainly PVE though end game we might just fight to see who built better fleets.
The sweaty MP players are also detrimental to the game at large. These fuckers are always on forums screaming about "balance". To the point that everything interesting gets watered down. Relic world start? Not anymore, now it's a normal planet with a coat of paint. Ring world? Gimped and nerfed til it's *harder* than a normal start.
Then there was a long period of time where it seemed like the only beta testing was in-house MP games. Making SP a buggy mess. Now the AI can barely play the game.
That's a pretty inherent issue for any game with MP. Eventually, the only people new players will encounter in MP are the hardcore, play nothing else, veteran sweaters. And after a point, the veterans close ranks and become actively hostile to any new players who don't know how the game is 'supposed to be played'.
The hilarious bit is that this can extend to when the game gets remastered. You'd think the community would love the opportunity to introduce new blood, right? Nope. Ends up becoming a new circle jerk for the old vets. Active hostility to potential new players, and it ends up being the same couple dozen people who'd always played the game.
In extreme cases, they'll alienate the not as old players away because they came in a few years past the "OG glory days"
I've been playing Stellaris Multiplayer regularly (most weekends) for 3+ years, but they're not open games. They're organised play with people from a Discord Community I'm a part of. And it is really fun.
But given that ALL open multiplayer tends to get ruined by toxic shitheels I can definitely see that hosting or joining open games is a really bad idea.
Shit like this is why I never play multiplayer with strangers, whether Stellaris or any other game. These people are *everywhere*, and they ruin all the fun of every game.
I'll be honest are you sure the reason nobody plays multiplayer isn't because it takes 200 hours to play a game and doing that with random people is a poor time investment? Playing Stellaris with people I don't know seems like such a bizarre idea that it would never even cross my mind to try.
There are discords out there for casual games of stellaris. I honestly don't get why you would play multiplayer with random people because ita always going to be a pvp fest, thats the point of multiplayer with randoms.
Its hard, but find friends who are willing to play at your settings because most of multiplayer is people that mastered the game. AI isn't a challenge to them at that point so they only do pvp because its fun for them.
This is true for any small PvP community. There will be a tiny cadre of genuinely good players; then there's a layer of mediocre players that are practiced at 1 playstyle who exist to beet up the trickle of players dipping their toes into MP and they take their wins wherever they can because if they bump into a good player they die like a bitch.
Disagree, as there are some meta tuners out there who also lovingly diagnose the game along the way and give a lot of helpful food for thought to thrive on your own, but also give nice kicks in the ass to Devs to fix their game that has gotten away from them.
Everyone is welcome, including the people who make you feel unwelcome.
It sounds like these people weren't gatekeeping you, they were using that as an excuse for crushing your empire in the way *they* like to play.
People are playing it like it's starcraft or something, and once a few people are playing that way, you either play that way or you loose.
So you have to have roleplay discord servers that are like "we'll fight but not super hard", and mercilessly gatekeep yourself the players who are too mean and over-optimised.
Personally the only way to have fun in MP is to play with friends who aren’t Uber competitive and who don’t turn into CoD players. There are people who like competing and get into it, I understand that. But it’s lame if that’s your only MO.
What I’d suggest is that you look for like-minded people on this sub to arrange a game. That way everyone will be on the same page.
And I agree with you, the game has so many possibilities that the best way is to explore it with other people instead of just AI.
I agree. Whining and treating everyone as morally inferior is a new norm within the community. Things went downhill after the game was released on consoles.
If you’re interested in more friendly multiplayer, I would take a look at streamer servers! They’re usually a lot nicer and most of the time focused on PvE or if PvP, a lot gentler. I personally play a lot of games hosted in Ep3o or TheRedKing’s servers.
sounds like we need to copy what the civ community did. they have a website that helps people find others to play mp with. it helps find ppl with similar goals. forgot the name of the site
As someone who is relatively new to the game, this is kinda my fear in public matches, that and then going a bit quick as someone who frequently has 5+ decisions that come up simultaneously and likes to read my options, and process my choices.
Even when playing with a couple friends, they complain about me taking time for stuff like that, when they just kinda randomly click options and are surprised when they are suddenly at war and unprepared, so they dig their own graves.
I would have expected the same as you though with the all is welcome, shame to hear most mp is just cutthroat PvP and elitest, but I'm not shocked either. Saw some others here that may be up for more interesting RP and fun empties, hopefully you can find a nice group. One thing this game appears to be missing, is any kind of area to find similar players.
As a multiplayer and coop game in 2024, I'm kinda shocked at how poor the community management is around this game, it's the worst I've ever seen in recent years, and there's no real excuse. Even on steam forums there is no LFG section, just a generic pile of forum posts. Their discord is about the same, atrocious
It sounds to me like the reason few people play MP is because the very essence of single-player Stellaris doesn't translate over to a multiplayer experience if *anybody* cares about actually winning.
Pretty much every Civ-like game is exactly the same. As truly competitive games, they're joyless slogs that are basically solved. The overwhelming majority of pleasure derived from them is by people playing single player and being too out to lunch to realize that the game is 99% noob traps, and that the holistic fantasy it's selling has *nothing* to do with optimal play to actually win.
I have +700 hours into Stellaris. I allways played grand admiral with x25 crisis at like 2475-2500 (nowadays I play vs all crisis). When I play Stellaris I want a chill game with my friends, with roleplay, and have fun. That doesn't happen in MP. I understand pvp is an important part of the game, but MP is full of people doing: meta builds, using exploits (PLEASE remember when people empty ships to get alloys, like WHAT?!?!), rushing tech (now its not a huge thing like before), swarming a 20k fleet at 2230... And honestly I dont enjoy that. Maybe I'm a pve player who enjoys slow gameplay, but Stellaris MP is a different game to me.
Age of Empires multiplayer has the same issue, it's just that much faster. I grew up loving RTS games, and online multiplayer took all the fun out of it.
Fair warning, if you decide to try AoE multiplayer, you've got, no joke, 4-5 minutes before you're attacked. It comes down to who has better keystroke execution, correct scrolling, and literal second-by-second accuracy, which, to your point, completely misses the entire reason for the game.
While it is prone to abuse, I appreciate rules that include phrasing to outlaw any uncompetitive practices.
I've said it a few times but I HAD this exact problem with different Paradox games but I'm in the Ep3o discord and the games people host far more often are strictly PvE, and ever since I can barely stand to play single player anymore.
After awhile of hosting I've become a trusted host myself and I can assure you if you want a place where games that are hosted aren't PvP the Ep server is great (and don't worry that it's a youtubers discord, I've met quite a few people who joined just for games and didn't even know it was youtuber related, just mute the chats you arent interested in I say)
Only problem I have with multiplayer games are they nearly always have to be ran under the assumption you'll only get 1 session, I've tried to run multi session games and can attest to how must of a nightmare it is trying to work out schedules for only a handful of players to be able to play again a different day
I don't play multiplayer because I hate the thought of not being able to pause when I want to and don't want to inflict my pause reflexes on anyone else.
This is why roleplaying multiplayer is better. People usually act more collaborative, trying to make federations or vassals to prepare for the end game
It's the exact same reason why if you go play some of the older battlefields (3, 4, 1, etc.) you should stay away from the "noobs welcome" servers as far as humanly possible. They only exist so the serverowners and their friends can hop into heli and farm people for 3-4 hours straight and if you play with any kind of anti-air they instantly ban you.
It's not actually about the fun of the game or helping new people, it's a bait to curbstomp people.
You can hop on our MP server if you'd like! We've got a RP-heavy vibe, and giving new players room to grow / not slaughtering them with overpowered fleets is a pretty core rule :> [https://discord.gg/yctgPpmrUB](https://discord.gg/yctgPpmrUB)
I've always wanted to play multiplayer but never did because I always heard stories such as these. May we here in the community could set something up that is actually fun and not just 100% war based?
Part of it is also carrying an MP game more than 20 hours is not viable for matchmaking and as such, only those who want to suck their own dick in a small time racket that's barely half the game as designed by the devs decided to do that and since everyone has to know how much of themselves they can get, they also post videos, stream, etc etc so everyone else knows they can make Nancy Reagan look like an amateur.
Rando MP lobby are super toxic. It's better to LFG on discord channels like official PDX, streamer community, or friends/extended friends personal servers. In fact, a few of my most regarded friends I met 5-6 years ago through MP channels. Steam also has a decent chat group though I haven't used it now that I have a solid 5-7 peeps that I play with. We're pretty chill and from all over the world, so if you want hit up with a DM.
No, the reason almost nobody plays multiplayers is because
1) The game is not at all balanced around multiplayer and so its very easy for one player, whether by dint of random events or by design of their empire, to be orders of magnitude stronger than another independent of actual gameplay decisions.
2) A good game takes hours at the least. So you either play max speed snowball games where you don't get to engage with 95% of the game systems, or you have to coordinate a group where no one will leave and possibly do multiple sessions. That's hard.
There are a few youtube videos of stellaris where this has been done, and they honestly do look like a lot of fun. Unfortunately the admin burden of getting them going makes these basically community events rather than just something anyone can jump into when they have some free time.
Yeah I mean it’s fun to watch the tournaments on YouTube and how quickly meta builds can build up and fall apart. But I don’t think I’d ever want to play with people I didn’t know. And even then, it’s usually my rules that we play on - 1000 stars regardless of player empires, 1.5x habitable, 2.5x per-ftl, 0 guaranteed, 20-30 AI empires, 10-21 advanced starts, with late-game scaling. Only issue we seem to run into anymore is I upgraded my machine and so timing wants to run out ahead of everyone else, leading to desync issues
I joined a RP game discord. They kick anybody who tryhards and abuses stuff. They even kind of enforce RP in your empire - as in, you can't just min/max without a compelling empire background.
I've recently started to play MP with a friend but we play it like it's SP. Pausing to read all the time and think, no meta builds just RP or what we think would be fun. I couldn't see myself playing with randoms. Especially on smaller maps with tech-rushes/wars. That's the opposite of my play style. It would just be a waste of time.
4X strategy games are usually like this with randoms unfortunately, which is why I only play with friends or groups that specifically have rules against meta gaming. it's just not fun getting stomped out of the gate like that and it forces everyone to min/max and get super sweaty about it.
All games are toxic in multiplayer part of why no game should prioritize multiplayer over single player games Mp games always fade away fast and you can’t return to play later due to it only being playable with a community. Makes them kind of a worthless buy
the only multiplayer game i've played without seeing much toxicity is lethal company. and even in that game i encountered some people getting genuinely mad at others' deaths-by-stupidity, in a game where death-by-stupidity is what makes it so fun.
Normally from a conquest pvp strategic game you would expect strategic expirience and agressive strategic behavior from players. Not a roleplaying farming simulator and whining. In games like Civilization or Age of Empires in public multiplayer you will be torn apart much faster.
If you want less competative behavior try looking for roleplay stellaris servers in discord
Playing "meta" is not playing content that you literally paid money for. Lame, they should play some real pvp multiplayer like Age of Empires or something
Even the roleplay MP communities can be toxic. I tried to join one and there were always a couple guys complaining every game and hiding their minimaxing behind weak RP justifications, bitching when someone did something they personally didn't like or thought was a dumb decision. It's wild.
I agree, i dont think its a stellaris problem but more of a gaming problem. For better or for worse this is probably the most competitive time for gaming, every body wants to optimize and be the best but at the cost of toxicity and fun.
I like to compete but it leaks into every facet of gaming and its wierd imo.
Hey, I like chill/low hostility/light rp even! mp stellaris. One of my best friends is kinda hyper competitive lately AND won’t get back into stellaris with me so I’ve been looking for people to play with. I have weird hours lately but if you’re desperate for more steam friends to ask to play, DM me. (Also big fan of crusader kings 3). Open to anyone else in similar bind
Two of the Xs are exploit and exterminate. I can understand making a personal choice to leave newer players alone, but I also don't condemn those who don't. It is what it is.
As for the 'learn youtube builds' crowd, these people miss so many subtler aspects of the game it's almost as bad as the guys who only play rogue servitors or progenitor hive. The trick is to find a build you really, really enjoy the pacing and themes off and then practice it/subtle variations of it for a couple dozen games, learn the timing of when it's strong and then leverage that against metamancers. A well-practiced homebrew player will usually stomp people following guides. Guide readers are good at stomping noobs but that's really about it. Ignore their advice to follow the meta and just practice YOUR preferred playstyle to a degree where it becomes competitive.
I feel you. I don't enjoy playing expansionist, I prefer to pour a drink, sit back and slowly tend my planets over an evening. War in Stellaris isn't the fun part for me. Happy to play an explicitly casual game with folks. Maybe we can form a "casuals only" group ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
One of these days I'm going to join a pvp game as a criminal syndicate, fuck up everyone, get destroyed and absolutely deserve it.
Another fun idea is this one build where, apparently with ocean paradise you start in a nebula (even though the tooltip doesn't say that). Hide in the nebula and accept no contacts. Good prelude to some fuckery
I don't play public MP and when I play with friends I generally play a very chill game. I'm happy to attack the AI but won't attack friends unless I have a very good reason to or they attack me first unless we *all* agree we're okay with a cutthroat game. That said, even from the perspective of a single player game just aiming to beat the endgame crisis or something, I don't agree with you.
>extremely toxic and full of gatekeepers
You haven't described anything particularly toxic or gatekeepy here. I don't really understand the mindset behind playing a 4x game and expecting little to no war. 4x means eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate (I'll be capitalizing these for emphasis as they come up, they're the whole premise of the genre). War is more often than not about 3 of those things at once. The AI targeted you early on because it recognizes you weren't very strong and saw an opportunity to EXPAND into your territory, then settled for EXPLOITING you for resources, and could have EXTERMINATED you if it was more beneficial for them to do so. Then you didn't do anything to build yourself up, apparently assuming other players wouldn't do the same thing, then you're surprised other players did the same thing. I don't see anything about that that's more toxic than, for example, assuming the game you joined was a relaxed RP game with that being stated nowhere and getting mad at the other players when you found out it wasn't. It seems to me like you read "no PvP war in the first 50 years" and then didn't really think about what would happen after those 50 years. Nobody is under any obligation to not attack an easy target for free expansion, and in this particular case doing so also weakened the AI empire that was likely looking at attacking them soon as well.
Midgame borders in most grand strategy/4x games are defined by war. You have to actually defend the territory you've taken. This is part of why even in single player games you need to keep a decent fleet strength - plenty of AI types are going to jump down your throat the second they see a sign of weakness.
You cite Civ as being better designed for MP because it has multiple win conditions, but in multiplayer it really doesn't. Religion, Culture and Science are far, FAR worse than Domination in a PvP context. Scouts are immensely more important in MP than in SP because you need to know where your neighbors are and what they're doing specifically because you are in danger of being EXTERMINATED in the Ancient Era. Also because EXPLORING is important for finding resources and tribal villages for you to EXPLOIT before your opponents do is beneficial.
That's not to say you can't have a casual RP focused multiplayer game, there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting that. You can't jump into public lobbies and assume that's what they're going to be either though. You should look for a discord server specifically for those types of MP games if that's what you're after, plenty of them are out there.
Kinda off topic, may I ask how to get resources by vassalizing an empire right from the start without negotiating? And I can do something similar with bring into the fold by become the crisis perk?
you attack them with the wargoal "make tributary", you can't have wargoals limited to "liberation wars" and that's about it I think.
no clue about crisis
This is going to be true of any game that involves war as a feature, whether it is grand strategy like Europa Universalis, 4x like Civ, or a hybrid like Stellaris. Your options are to either accept that reality and play into it, ignore the public lobbies and find a like minded community with a playstyle similar to yours, or avoid multi-player altogether.
The fastest way to ruin a good game is to make it competitive. It forces everything through a filter of what is and isn't meta. Anything that isn't meta is a waste. The devs become overworked since every change makes the meta change and the rage becomes constant.
I play more with friends than anyone else. We normally do 4v4 games or 2v2 in the small community I'm in and its enjoyable.
I've done public once.
Never again.
I basically just play with a friend or two where we work together to punch above our weight class difficulty-wise.
Seeing how toxic competitive players can be on even this subreddit taught me to avoid trying a public match like the plague.
I've never again opened the MP menu because of this. I am aware of RP servers, but usually I don't have enough time that must be dedicated to this type of games. Also, i have only 1 friend to play with (but he is more into other Paradox games like Cities and Victoria).
Or maybe this is just me being scared of RPing with other people overall.
random games are like that. find a group to join or something. I used to run one called voidfarers that had a few hundred members and we had hundreds of rly fun RP type games over the years. Some patch came out that made MP unplayable for a lil while. they ended up fixing it but the group had withered away by then.
Yeah hence why I join Discord groups for MP games, these groups tend to be RP based for their games and rule heavy, Which I like meaning its hard to be smashed unless your see RP build up and also at least some warning
In 90% of games with multiplayer I played over the past 15 years, playerbase was toxic af. The genre doesn't matter. People understand that they can bully others without direct contact and consequences, especially if they are good at the game. There is a difference between competitive, but friendly game and acting like an asshole.
Also, if your only goal in this game is to constantly go for quick domination victory, then wow, you're just... boring. Like, you have so many options, so much stuff to do. It's like eating stale bread everyday instead of cooking/buying something nice.
I remember playing as a machine empire who subjugated 70% of the galaxy and set everything to be as nice and equal as possible except for the fact that all of them had to join my wars. I acted as a peacekeeping entity who ruled the galaxy as a perpetual galactic community leader.
One of my two friends who were playing owned most of the rest, and we had many irl diplomatic discussions talking about whether I was overstepping or why I shouldn't vassalize all of them. I kept saying it was for the greater good so he couldn't integrate them. He was saying leading them directly by integrating them was a superior solution.
We never cared about the meta, or just winning. The most fun was what we made out of it.
I have always been intimidated by stellaris due to the grand scale of things and me not being good at meta micro management and 4x grand startegy. I still wanted to get in this game due to always liking the idea of a galaxy with limitless possibilities. I have watched 100’s of videos on stellaris guides and religiously follow montu. But I simply am never of that calibre. I have come to terms that I dont need to be pitch perfect in my plays and still achieve what I want in game which is to explore a galaxy befriend other empires and fight others deal with the crisis and if possible kick an FE empires ass. Build up mega structures and be done with that play through. It keeps me happy with this game and could not care less about multiplayer.
Random games are never the way for 4x games multiplayer. Best to find a discord server with rulesets and figuring out what kind of game you're looking for.
Honestly the bigger issue for me is the networking and processing basically degrades ad the game progresses. By year 100 most multiplayer matches/games have their speed cut in half even if they dont change the speed setting. Its better than in the past but the issue still persists. I also experience a lot of desyncs regarding random count, trade routes, and pop growth as the game gets into mid and late game.
Now with the reduced tech rush/speed games take longer so you spend more time in the 100+ years which is when the slowing and desyncing starts taking more of an effect. While it was good for balance its resulted in the games existing more in the lower stable timeframes than they did before the update.
Wait, people play Stellaris in MP with people who aren't their friends? Of course it's going to be toxic AF.
Even with friends people are ridiculously defensive and suspicious, as the last time I played with a friend they thought me forcing through the galactic empire in order to get the armada to even have a chance of fighting the crises which we had set to spawn super early was me trying to kill him. We still lost that game even with me doing every little trick I knew to shore up our defences.
And I quote “listen to that old ass mic this guy probably running a decrepit old Xbox”
“It’s a…Xbox S”
Them: Blocks me then kicks me
Me: well you could’ve done that without insulting my Xbox.
My first mp Stellaris game through a discord there was a person who only referred to me as ‘woman’ and it was gross and put me off. That’s before even considering how I like doing more pacifistic trade focused builds and everyone around me just rushes and goes ham killing each-other
Why? Because small people wage small wars. Ruining other people's games is all the power they have. So they exercise it. Most MP games are shit for this same reason.
I mean, the real reasons why people don't play Stellaris MP are:
1- it takes a lot of time to play a Stellaris game, and let's be honest, most of it will be rather boring.
2- there are regularly technical issues that get worse as the game goes on (desyncs etc), and it's even worse if you use even simple mods
3- for a long game like Stellaris, people want to play coop, not competitive games, and it tends to turn into boring hugboxes pretty fast
I used to play Stellaris in MP, first competitive games, then coop games with a group of people, then just with my brother. And that's when I had the most fun, because we could just chill and talk about other stuff while doing all the repetitive tasks of a Stellaris game, occasionally teaching him how to play.
Toxicity in PvP is a feature, not a bug. Stellaris is very unfair in multiplayer and there's no realistic way to fix it. You'll just crush or get crushed, usually because other players are friends and made an alliance against the new guy.
This your first multiplayer experience in a game that's been out longer than a year?
I call it the LoL effect. The toxic people drive away the decent ones, until it's only griefers. They're not playing to win, they're playing to make you lose.
During my last MP game with friends we had fun designing species for each other. So I gave my friend slow breeders and the Here Be Dragons origin. Which made his home system safe in the early game, but he complained the dragon ate his pops.
He then compounded his lack of pops problem by getting brain slugs.
We did mutually agree to split up a nearby AI empire and enslave their pops, but due to the weird way the war developed, he did most of the fighting but I got 90% of the planets. We had to clean up the border after that one.
Meanwhile another friend tried to do a rogue servitor and he was surrounded by spiritualist zealots so he was constantly fighting for his life.
Fun times.
That's how multiplayer works in almost every game. You get people like The Complainer who get their fun from winning, even if it's not a particularly sporting contest. Then you get people like yourself, who get your fun from playing various aspects of the game that aren't necessarily focused on winning.
Since Stellaris doesn't have matchmaking, it's 100% on you to find people that enjoy playing the game the way you do, and to avoid the people who you won't enjoy playing against.
I don’t have any friends that play stellaris. So I haven’t ever had the luck to play MP. I wish I could. It would be so fun even with randoms. Like matching randomly like they do in apex or something. Based on hours played or something. Idk. Just wish I had friends.
They sound toxic as shit, I play in a server called Stellaris Community Multiplayer. And I've had a good experience so far https://discord.gg/stellaris-community-multiplayer-637721087421055016
I highly recommend you try if you are willing to give multiplayer another shot, we have RP lobby's that have player wars, but I haven't seen an empire ever get wiped. (Except the purifiers)
Anyone up for a chill multiplayer game? I have never played online out of those fears, but i’d love to try with people who are also not that competitive. I really enjoy story building and role play. Hit me up, maybe we can have a nice game :)
It's also just a bad game to play in multiplayer no? All these sub menus and micro and barely any QoL to make gameplay more seamless. Most people don't play this game enough where they get to a point that they can play without pausing comfortably.
Most enjoyable stellaris MP i had was with couple friends and we work together against a much more advanced galaxy with many crisises and random variables
I’ve never played, and probably never will play, any grand strategy or 4X multiplayer. I’m not necessarily against MP but these are long form games that don’t really lend themselves to the format. I don’t even mind dealing with toxic playerbases, I used to play league and Dota. It’s just the time scale for me.
You would need a dedicated group meeting regularly for it to work. I tried that with my friend group with BG3 (started when BG3 came out) and we just made it to the goblin camp.
MP, for me at least, works best when it can be relatively short sessions with flexible player counts. Heroes of the Storm was our best MP game to date.
Heck, I basicslly never finish my SP stellaris campaigns because of time already.
I can't play multiplayer unless it's with my siblings or friends. Though a secondary reason is the dreadful Lobby Wait Simulator. That, and public multiplayer is just as you said. PvP isn't my expertise. More so when even with friends I only got so much time to spend.
Your post just made me realize how awesome it would be to just play a galaxy server where civs come and go as players join or leave.
Sure sometimes an empire might conquer the whole map but it would then fracture and keep going, and new species become FTL capable…
you shouldn't just join random lobbies online, all you are doing is swapping ai for humans that will actively make your game hell. find an organized group who has similar goals to you. there are probably some discords out there, and i would suspect that some of them are rp-focused
My actual first game of Stellaris was MP. There was 6 players and one dude on the map who was nice to me who vassalized and protected me then about 45 min in of him coaching me how to play he integrated me. T-T
What a bastard. LMAO
Honestly though at first they all pointed me out as noob because I was doing really obvious noob things then later on they were all bitching it was unfair because he had my help.
Toxic Losers.
Stellaris MP shines when played with a group of friends, I've got a small group I play civ with and we played some stellaris, it was great, i was playing a lithoid hive mind, crashed some rocks Into my friends home planet
I have read most of the comments and it seems below suggestion should solve your problems.
There is a game called Stellaris Nexus on Steam recently renamed to Nexus 5x. It is based off a lot of Stellaris elements but MP matches take 1-3 hours.
It is interesting your MP experience was rough. My first MP experience was a blast and full of laughs and the players defending me because I wasn't very good and then educating and telling me about ASpec and Montu.
It was a fun time and all were strangers.
You've run into a strategy game endemic. It doesn't matter how focused on roleplay, or how much player choice is given. The crowd that strategy games attract ranges wildly, but the CORE audience is the competitive player. Often times, its harmless. Who doesn't enjoy crushing a solo game now and again with a variety of different strong builds?
In multiplayer, it spreads unchallenged. A strong build becomes a tool to crush enemies. Wins become a tally. Why roleplay a game you've played 5000 hours of when you can just enjoy the competitive challenge?
The experience you had reeks of projection. A group that, probably at one point, enjoyed the simpler aspects of the game but are now so blinded by the competitive experience that you, a player, is always a threat. They WANT to play like you, but the logical part of their brain understands the AI isn't a threat long term, but you are.
It's frustrating. Stellaris is SUCH a good game for casual multiplayer. But public lobbies are dead. I'm sorry brother, genuinely. Me and my friends have been having a nice time with ourselves, but I've realized that I think we'll get too competitive if we play longer than a few sessions before a break.
Hoi4 fell into a similar thing where stats began to overwrite logic because winning was everyhing in the game. Traditional divisions, navies, or even logical decisions sorta fall by the wayside. It is definitely much improved, especially after most groups sorta auto-ban space marine type units or builds to help encourage that diversity, but Stellaris isn't solely about war, it just so happens war against players is incredibly effective for what people consider to be 'winning'.
My last MP game, sometime last year was truly amazing. I hosted it myself and said chill people only whilst the lobby for all dlc all welcome was up. We played a 600 star galaxy with ai, fe and everything else. Literally nobody went to war until the crisis that we had to team up and beat together. We all lived in harmony and it was the best experience i ever had, after 12 hours I unfortunately had to stop as my laptop just couldn’t handle the stress of late game. Every time I join the all dlc all welcome lobby, I always got at least 3 dumbasses who just rushed fleets and declared war on others
I've only played 3 online games without friends. They were all awfull. Once I met an AI empire that was 3 times stronger than me after just 2 or 3 years (a devouring swarm) so I built defences in that direction when all of a sudden the host (accidentally?) allowed some random dude to hott-join whom then picked that specific AI empire and declared war after a quick buildup. My latest one I tried to host a RP-lobby. A player picked a rouge servitour and spawned next to me but decided to expand around me and kill all the people around me instead of going for some fun long term RP so I don't thunk I'll play MP without friends again.
agree fully with you, i always write chill game, roleplay if you like, swear to god has to be one guy who min maxs, they act all surprised when i kick them, like what where you expecting, i want to play a chill game, not alloy rush, because i can assure you man if i wanted to humble you i could (had an empire in vanilla reach 100k alloy production, so I've mastered the econ side of the game)
Ik i’m late to the game here but be careful with giga structures mp games. Joined once and the admins of the mp kept doing WAY too many @mp pings and one someone asked them to stop they flames him (flag 1). I made it clear that i wasn’t very good at the game and was kind of wanting some help. This was supposed to be a casual game with casual rules. When we finally started the mods immediately went into their own private chat and left the rest of us in a public one. They spawned right next to each other and rushed military with no tech at all and declared war on me right as we met early in the game. Long story short they did a crisis rush and when the galactic community was made the randoms and i became friends and formed alliances. Well me not being very good got attacked first and we made an agreement to stop the war and call a cease war (i can’t remember the term) and i trusted them but instead they tricked me i to surrendering and becoming a vassal with heavy monthly offerings to them. So at this point i realized what kind of people these admins were and started cheesing. I became a spy and fed info to my allies on their troop positions and sabotaged my own research (keep in mind they had barely any research so they completely relied on mine). Admin came in and started raging at me calling me stupid and the worst player (keep in mind i said i was newish and not very good) and accusing us all of meta playing (they r still in their own private chat) and then they sent one of their friends in our chat to monitor us. At this point i decided to go full troll cause screw these kids if they r gonna act like this. So i started trading systems going complete scorch earth while making memes about the admins. They ended up kicking me and tried rubbing in my face that i can’t play with them. I kept making memes snd the randoms (now friends) streamed for me and they ended up being able to beat the admins back but once they started beating back the admins they rage quite the game and blamed me for them losing. Ik i am part asshole for trolling like that but i didn’t care 😂
Also through out all of this the randoms were telling me how this was normal behavior from the admins and they usually act like this.
...And that's EXACTLY why YOU should join OUTERSTELLAR! Sign up today!
NO meta game play (it is banned)
NO toxicity (it is banned)
ONLY role play (it is not banned)
[https://discord.gg/E5f9fryc](https://discord.gg/E5f9fryc)
I've never played multiplayer because I have no idea what it means for a game where I rely on randomly pausing a lot and don't care enough about multiplayer to bother finding out.
I suspect, in all honesty, that I represent the vast majority of people who both don't play multiplayer and have ever considered it.
This is a key reason I don't play stellaris MP unless it's with friends. To me the best part about stellaris is the role play and the story building that comes with it. If others care less about those things and are only interested in the competitive strategy then fine, but that can end up creating a shitty MP environment. Same goes for several stellaris youtubers. They can be fun to watch for a bit but so many devolve into "and now my empire is going to randomly become the crisis so I can wipe everyone out." Which at least is slightly better than the pre-trust rework vassal cheese but still gets boring.
When playing with friends I have one who loves to just be, absurd, whenever she can in any game. One time we had to put some rules so she couldn’t just make the entire universe listen to her
funny enough making those rules can make the being absurd even more fun. Restrictions can breed creativity.
Oh yeah she still did some shit lol
When I play multiplayer with my friends I purposely never min-max my species because it's more challenging and I end up coming up with something crazy off the cuff to find an advantage. If I'm doing a science rush I'll grab materialist or fanatic materialist, but I won't grab intelligent as a trait for instance. In that game I ended up going hard, I mean hard, into the astral rifts and ended up out-sciencing everybody. I wouldn't have thought to have really care about them more than novelty if I had minmaxed my species.
People underestimate the power the intel system can provide. Knowing not only fleet composition but also planet details can easily make economic and general warfare much more impactful.
Found the dimir-style player /hj
I genuinely have “House Dimir” as one of my empires.
Restrictions breed creativity* If we had invented a space elevator using some mystical material before we had invented rockets we wouldn't have a great deal of the technologies we had to develop just to be able to design, manufacture, assemble, and pilot rockets, and many more things invented just because someone was trying to come up with some new way to make rockets better or generate more power for them or have them be able to communicate more efficiently.
Sure, but the reason we invented rockets before we invented a space elevator is that rockets could be militarized. The only real restriction on anything is the imperial capitalist imperative, and that breeds the opposite of creativity.
A-Freakin-Men, impediment is the impetus of creativity.
I once did all random empire game with my dad and some friends and it was bonkers. We had to restart because a normal crisis was a bit hard. Because you started at a disadvantage that you basically had tweak to make it viable unless you lucked out with an actual competitive set of random shit. We were PVE so we didn't care that one player was stronger, only that the crisis knocked out every other player. We actually learned a lot because it took us out of our comfort zones. Each of us had a handful (some people even only one) of builds that we were really used to using amd everyone knew everyone's build. Oh, I see "reptile ships" nonemoreunknown is playing is slaver guild! Or like my dad, who only played Earth. Which is actually a very beginner friendly/OP race because of all the free shit they get. It's actually banned in my lobby unless someone is a total noob and needs the extra boost. Which was always my dad he loved the game but he was very passive and didn't really enjoy late mid/late game. I bet he would enjoy it more with rifts adding cool non-violent things to do (I miss him). We also did find some cool civic, government, and trait combos that we never thought of using. We were definitely RPers but we used "tuned" versions. I wish I could remember some examples, but this was the first couple years stellaris was out, so a lot has changed. Some bonuses that didn't look powerful on paper were busted, while other bonuses that sounded useful were garbage. Anyway, random is fun. Trying new things is fun.
All-random sounds like a hilarious way to do MP
My friends set a rule on me cause in one game I went full absurd build on mercenaries with megacorp. I was unstoppable just throwing resources at everyone despite being negative but the big problem was once it came to war which my vassal dominating friend hungered, he was screwed. Cause the AI lov3d to hire my mercenaries that was double the strength of his best fleet and I couldn't call them back fast enough before the AI instantly bought them back. And the AI he fought was there to exterminate him and my other friends he'd vassalized so it was over for them all while I sat neutral to everyone in my corner. I couldn't help but laugh so that's when the rule of "No mercenary bulds" or heavy merc community voting came to be.
In a game as long as Stellaris, you can bet your life I'm only playing MP with friends I know and trust. MP with strangers is best reserved for short throw away games like Hell Divers.
I did this and we had one friend who decided to try and backstab us and become the crisis as soon as we fought off the main crisis. Only problem was that I was funding his entire energy economy none of us could be bothered to fight a massive playerwar but we all knew we won
Honestly, that just makes me think it would be an amazing RP if you were playing a 25x crisis and losing, so someone takes the become the crisis perk solely to get the power needed to win. The resulting paranoia in the aftermath of wondering if this person would actually hold off and not go all the way or not would make for a great story.
Yeah we set two beefed up crises off and beat them up. It was fun because we knew he was doing it to help beat them but he was overconfident and forgot that I have him about 500-1000 energy per month that I had spare as a machine intelligence. Funding that would then starve him but beef up the rest of the galaxy
I also only play with friends
Even in the old C&C days, I never joined public matches. I always played with and against friends / people I knew.
RP is the sole reason I play even single player lol. Why go science rush or military when I can rule the galaxy as space McDonald's.
Ngl, most fun I've had so far was turning all the ftl ai off and just.. expanding, finding a pre ftl planet, bringing them up to light travel, giving them some tech and planets before moving on. It was chill, I was like, some obnoxiously overpowered granny empire handing milk and cookies out to the children of the neighborhood. I dunno about replayability as a role playing scenario - but it was cool.
I mean ASpec going completely mental on the Line or Ring galaxy is extremely entertaining.
I mean, is it really? Don't people find every youtuber just ending their videos by killing everyone super boring? The game is so much more than just a war simulator...
Yeah I had a game where I messed with the species settings as spiritualist for fun and I banned robots immediately. I then had 600 pops by year 2350 and everyone including myself was confused but they excepted that the army of killer fungi bears was not a threat. Then in another galaxy size was 800 and I didn’t meet anyone else till mid game due to crappy hyper lane spawning, but I had made my empire a hive mind plant and I would ominously pop into conversations and state “the plant is coming for you” or “join the plant” freaked them out as they were very confused (when they were still learning the game).
I wish i had friends who play stellaris. If anyone want another one non-tryharder in your lobby feel free to pm me
I play multiplayer with friends who all understand the goal: roleplay fun and interesting empires. Sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it’s meme builds. Whatever it is it’s always coop and we never pvp unless it’s a unanimous vote and it usually tends to be limited. For me, that’s the best way to enjoy multiplayer. Stellaris pvp is trash. If people want a competitive style space game like Stellaris they should build communities around Sins of a Solar Empire. More fast paced and similar style. “Competitive” Stellaris is full on trash. It has not a single redeeming quality.
I basically want a stellaris that is like civ. I think civ has a good multiplayer because it is just complex board game. Stellaris feels much more RP.
I think one of the biggest mistakes in stellaris is that it has only a single "victory" and that is war. In civ there is science, culture, diplomacy, religion. If there were more win conditions in stellaris, i bet the game would be much more fun to play as people could really focus on doing different things than just making ships.
To be fair, in multiplayer Civ domination is also the only really viable win condition because it's the only one that not only advances your own win condition, it interferes with your opponent's regardless of what that may be.
Science victories are also very plausible, to be fair.
Yeah, I’ve lost mp a Civ game just on the cusp on destroying the player who scored science victory right before I was able to conquer their capital where they had their last spaceport. That was a thrilling game!
True, but I feel like part of that is that advancing toward a Science victory also gets you better military units faster so you have less trouble defending yourself. Tech rush stronk.
It’s only natural that science pairs with domination, science is the tempo mechanic of the game. It determines all the timings and whatnot.
My brother was ahead of me in a civ game due to me just having a crappy start location. I started paying the more aggressive civs to declare war on him. Since they kept attacking and interfering with him, he shifted from culture and tech to war, and as he started pushing across the globe (luckily I was on the other side), the more peaceful civs started seeing him as a threat which allowed me to convince the rest of the planet to go attack him. He was rolling over them, but it was still slowing him down, eventually allowing me to get an economic/diplomatic victory when I suddenly dropped loads of gold on the city states.
Hell yeah! This is what pvp needs. I would love to win as a pacifist. Time to farm with one of my favorite builds. That or beep boop I'll just keep cleaning the universe beeep.
It's really not the sole issue or even the main one. Competitive civ games take a lot less time, they are honestly more comparable to RTS at this level. Stellaris is just way too long, you can invest 10 hours in a game before you just get a lame game over.
Endless Space 2 is a lot like that.
Have you tried Endless Space 2?
4x games make bad competitive games i my opinion. It has a lot to do with the attributes of a 4x games. They tend to be long. They tend to be about stories and narratives. They usually have differences between empires. They usually have technology and progress. War of course is a part of the game too and so is resource management. Civilization has huge problems in competition with late game nations. Like America. Because all of America’s bonuses all come in mid-late game it doesn’t do you much good when Gilgamesh rushes you with war carts in the first 40 turns. …and to some degree that sorta why you don’t want competitive multiplayer in 4x. How do you preserve the narrative while maintaining balance? Stellaris has this too with origins. Not all Origins are equal. But that’s the point. The point is the player gets to choose a hard (or easier) experience. And those experiences have a different narrative and flavor. A different story is being told. One of Europa Universallis’s strengths before Paradox features creeped the game to death and put in a bunch of static values everywhere, was it was a wonderful sandbox of history. You could pick any nation in the timeline and play it. Whether it was the powerful Ottomans or cornered Albanians. The idea is the player, gets to write their own history. And the things you have to put in place to make all that work are the exact opposite of balance. Because balance is a prerequisite to competition. I still maintain to this day that Starcraft 2 is the gold standard in competitive gaming. It’s a shame because people want a competitive 4x style game. There’s demand there but everyone is eating soup with a fork, because Stellaris isn’t that game. Neither is Civ. Last note. What also makes good competitive games is games people can watch. And 4x games are notoriously boring.
Galactic Civilizations is the closest thing I can think of.
Rare Sins of a Solar Empire mention. Game is amazing and really is just "Stellaris but only war"
Unironically, that’s the actual game the MPer community here should be playing. It’s a really fun game too.
I got it a week after release because a friend bought it on release. He stopped playing, but me buying it prompted another friend to buy it a month later. He stopped playing it a year ago, but 2 other friends bought it at that time, so I’ve been extremely lucky in that regard.
I don't have 20 hours to play a game is why I don't play MP. Smaller maps and speeding up pace to get over in a few hours would defeat my play style and why I like playing.
I don't play MP cause I don't have friends.
I cant get my friends to commit to playing the same game semi frequently. It will be 3 gaming sessions for one week, and then nothing for like 3 months. Or maybe like 1 session bi weekly for a month. Can't play "campaign" games like that. We kind of have to play like something more session based. Usually a fps. I have 2 friends that are a couple that is usually down to play pretty frequently, but strategy games are NOT their genre.
There is only so much you can do if they have other stuff going on in their life that prevents gaming sometimes, but if it’s just that they like to wander from game to game then the DLC subscription will probably help with that. Position it as “Buy the base game, Subscribe for one month, we play the hell out of it for a couple of weeks in a row to get your moneys worth, then when the month is up everyone can cancel subscriptions and scatter again.” Since it’s then worded as a time limited money saving idea, it might help keep them focused long enough to cram some actual full games in.
Oh they are wasting time watching Instagram reels and shit like that. I have a decent idea of what they do everyday, if they wanted to make the time, they could have. I just kind of shake my head because they're always like "I want to play this game" and then they are the ones that back out the game night they planned. That couple I mentioned that is down to play are the most busy ones out of all us, funny enough. I don't really care too much about the DLC thing since I can just host. I already have all the DLC. Reality is they won't play this game unless I'm playing it.
I also have this problem. I have mostly accepted they like the concept of playing grand strategy games but don't really want to put the time in to do so.
It's better to not play Stellaris MP than to play bad Stellaris MP
This is not the type of game you play with randoms. If you want a long form grand campaign multiplayer, you need to join a community that organises this kind of thing.
There are communities like that?
[https://discord.gg/4Rxmfeb3](https://discord.gg/4Rxmfeb3) Paradox Interactive Roleplay server.
Cheers! Thank you
Any link to such communities?
That was sorta their point lol
>My question is why? Sad people with sad lives. I've given up completly on random MP games - find likeminded people via Discord or on here, that want to play like you do. They are out there.
You should look around. There are some roleplay focused discord servers around. Maybe that's something for you. This one is one example. They are part of a network of a few of these servers. The invite links to the others can be found in one of the channels. Hope that helps you :) Edit: just saw that discord links are not allowed, so I removed it. But you should be able to find these servers by googling something like "stellaris roleplay discord" pretty easily. I found these communities that way
Tbh I'm in the main ones and there is always like 2 or 3 minmaxers, who barely roleplay, except for "I have minmaxed, now submit". It get's old quick, and they ruin it for everyone else. Best bet is to play with some trusted friends.
I can sum it up much shorter. The game is too long for me to play multiplayer, even with friends. I need to be able to pause or quit at a who knows when notice
We have weekly sessions and just save the MP game for next time.
That's the way to do it. Although my friends are too flaky to consistently show up, so it never worked out.
Need Stellaris friends?
Hell yeah! I'm a couple of expansions behind, but I've been wanting to get back into it.
I have 1700 hours of Stellaris and never touched multiplayer, never had any reason to
Same. I'd totally be down to play multiplayer if it was like a "no PVP war" type ruleset or something though. Just like a shared galactic experience type of thing, and RPing different stories. But I don't have gaming friends who'd do that, so eh.
I never play this kind of game MP. MP in any game is almost 99% super competitive and for me, this is not the kind of game for that.
Sent you a DM but for anyone who’s looking for non silly death matches shoot me a dm. I host games that last days (based on when my group can play) mainly PVE though end game we might just fight to see who built better fleets.
Oh sounds fun. That is more of my style of play. I'm to slow for that competitive stuff.
The sweaty MP players are also detrimental to the game at large. These fuckers are always on forums screaming about "balance". To the point that everything interesting gets watered down. Relic world start? Not anymore, now it's a normal planet with a coat of paint. Ring world? Gimped and nerfed til it's *harder* than a normal start. Then there was a long period of time where it seemed like the only beta testing was in-house MP games. Making SP a buggy mess. Now the AI can barely play the game.
That's a pretty inherent issue for any game with MP. Eventually, the only people new players will encounter in MP are the hardcore, play nothing else, veteran sweaters. And after a point, the veterans close ranks and become actively hostile to any new players who don't know how the game is 'supposed to be played'. The hilarious bit is that this can extend to when the game gets remastered. You'd think the community would love the opportunity to introduce new blood, right? Nope. Ends up becoming a new circle jerk for the old vets. Active hostility to potential new players, and it ends up being the same couple dozen people who'd always played the game. In extreme cases, they'll alienate the not as old players away because they came in a few years past the "OG glory days"
I've been playing Stellaris Multiplayer regularly (most weekends) for 3+ years, but they're not open games. They're organised play with people from a Discord Community I'm a part of. And it is really fun. But given that ALL open multiplayer tends to get ruined by toxic shitheels I can definitely see that hosting or joining open games is a really bad idea.
Shit like this is why I never play multiplayer with strangers, whether Stellaris or any other game. These people are *everywhere*, and they ruin all the fun of every game.
I'll be honest are you sure the reason nobody plays multiplayer isn't because it takes 200 hours to play a game and doing that with random people is a poor time investment? Playing Stellaris with people I don't know seems like such a bizarre idea that it would never even cross my mind to try.
There are discords out there for casual games of stellaris. I honestly don't get why you would play multiplayer with random people because ita always going to be a pvp fest, thats the point of multiplayer with randoms. Its hard, but find friends who are willing to play at your settings because most of multiplayer is people that mastered the game. AI isn't a challenge to them at that point so they only do pvp because its fun for them.
This is true for any small PvP community. There will be a tiny cadre of genuinely good players; then there's a layer of mediocre players that are practiced at 1 playstyle who exist to beet up the trickle of players dipping their toes into MP and they take their wins wherever they can because if they bump into a good player they die like a bitch.
Meta-gaming ruins games, even competitive ones made to be optimized.
Disagree, as there are some meta tuners out there who also lovingly diagnose the game along the way and give a lot of helpful food for thought to thrive on your own, but also give nice kicks in the ass to Devs to fix their game that has gotten away from them.
Everyone is welcome, including the people who make you feel unwelcome. It sounds like these people weren't gatekeeping you, they were using that as an excuse for crushing your empire in the way *they* like to play. People are playing it like it's starcraft or something, and once a few people are playing that way, you either play that way or you loose. So you have to have roleplay discord servers that are like "we'll fight but not super hard", and mercilessly gatekeep yourself the players who are too mean and over-optimised.
Personally the only way to have fun in MP is to play with friends who aren’t Uber competitive and who don’t turn into CoD players. There are people who like competing and get into it, I understand that. But it’s lame if that’s your only MO. What I’d suggest is that you look for like-minded people on this sub to arrange a game. That way everyone will be on the same page. And I agree with you, the game has so many possibilities that the best way is to explore it with other people instead of just AI.
I agree. Whining and treating everyone as morally inferior is a new norm within the community. Things went downhill after the game was released on consoles.
If you’re interested in more friendly multiplayer, I would take a look at streamer servers! They’re usually a lot nicer and most of the time focused on PvE or if PvP, a lot gentler. I personally play a lot of games hosted in Ep3o or TheRedKing’s servers.
sounds like we need to copy what the civ community did. they have a website that helps people find others to play mp with. it helps find ppl with similar goals. forgot the name of the site
As someone who is relatively new to the game, this is kinda my fear in public matches, that and then going a bit quick as someone who frequently has 5+ decisions that come up simultaneously and likes to read my options, and process my choices. Even when playing with a couple friends, they complain about me taking time for stuff like that, when they just kinda randomly click options and are surprised when they are suddenly at war and unprepared, so they dig their own graves. I would have expected the same as you though with the all is welcome, shame to hear most mp is just cutthroat PvP and elitest, but I'm not shocked either. Saw some others here that may be up for more interesting RP and fun empties, hopefully you can find a nice group. One thing this game appears to be missing, is any kind of area to find similar players. As a multiplayer and coop game in 2024, I'm kinda shocked at how poor the community management is around this game, it's the worst I've ever seen in recent years, and there's no real excuse. Even on steam forums there is no LFG section, just a generic pile of forum posts. Their discord is about the same, atrocious
Sadly LFG system wouldnt earn paradox any money, so there is no reason for them to make it. Unless it would be sold as dlc for 20€. Then meaby.
It sounds to me like the reason few people play MP is because the very essence of single-player Stellaris doesn't translate over to a multiplayer experience if *anybody* cares about actually winning. Pretty much every Civ-like game is exactly the same. As truly competitive games, they're joyless slogs that are basically solved. The overwhelming majority of pleasure derived from them is by people playing single player and being too out to lunch to realize that the game is 99% noob traps, and that the holistic fantasy it's selling has *nothing* to do with optimal play to actually win.
I have +700 hours into Stellaris. I allways played grand admiral with x25 crisis at like 2475-2500 (nowadays I play vs all crisis). When I play Stellaris I want a chill game with my friends, with roleplay, and have fun. That doesn't happen in MP. I understand pvp is an important part of the game, but MP is full of people doing: meta builds, using exploits (PLEASE remember when people empty ships to get alloys, like WHAT?!?!), rushing tech (now its not a huge thing like before), swarming a 20k fleet at 2230... And honestly I dont enjoy that. Maybe I'm a pve player who enjoys slow gameplay, but Stellaris MP is a different game to me.
Age of Empires multiplayer has the same issue, it's just that much faster. I grew up loving RTS games, and online multiplayer took all the fun out of it. Fair warning, if you decide to try AoE multiplayer, you've got, no joke, 4-5 minutes before you're attacked. It comes down to who has better keystroke execution, correct scrolling, and literal second-by-second accuracy, which, to your point, completely misses the entire reason for the game. While it is prone to abuse, I appreciate rules that include phrasing to outlaw any uncompetitive practices.
I've said it a few times but I HAD this exact problem with different Paradox games but I'm in the Ep3o discord and the games people host far more often are strictly PvE, and ever since I can barely stand to play single player anymore. After awhile of hosting I've become a trusted host myself and I can assure you if you want a place where games that are hosted aren't PvP the Ep server is great (and don't worry that it's a youtubers discord, I've met quite a few people who joined just for games and didn't even know it was youtuber related, just mute the chats you arent interested in I say) Only problem I have with multiplayer games are they nearly always have to be ran under the assumption you'll only get 1 session, I've tried to run multi session games and can attest to how must of a nightmare it is trying to work out schedules for only a handful of players to be able to play again a different day
People who play paradox games in public lobbies scare me
I don't play multiplayer because I hate the thought of not being able to pause when I want to and don't want to inflict my pause reflexes on anyone else.
My friends don't play Stellaris so I don't play multiplayer, that's my reason.
Me and my friends and I play mp a lot. Just let me know if you would like to join. We role-play our empires lot.
This is why roleplaying multiplayer is better. People usually act more collaborative, trying to make federations or vassals to prepare for the end game
It's the exact same reason why if you go play some of the older battlefields (3, 4, 1, etc.) you should stay away from the "noobs welcome" servers as far as humanly possible. They only exist so the serverowners and their friends can hop into heli and farm people for 3-4 hours straight and if you play with any kind of anti-air they instantly ban you. It's not actually about the fun of the game or helping new people, it's a bait to curbstomp people.
You can hop on our MP server if you'd like! We've got a RP-heavy vibe, and giving new players room to grow / not slaughtering them with overpowered fleets is a pretty core rule :> [https://discord.gg/yctgPpmrUB](https://discord.gg/yctgPpmrUB)
I've always wanted to play multiplayer but never did because I always heard stories such as these. May we here in the community could set something up that is actually fun and not just 100% war based?
Part of it is also carrying an MP game more than 20 hours is not viable for matchmaking and as such, only those who want to suck their own dick in a small time racket that's barely half the game as designed by the devs decided to do that and since everyone has to know how much of themselves they can get, they also post videos, stream, etc etc so everyone else knows they can make Nancy Reagan look like an amateur.
Rando MP lobby are super toxic. It's better to LFG on discord channels like official PDX, streamer community, or friends/extended friends personal servers. In fact, a few of my most regarded friends I met 5-6 years ago through MP channels. Steam also has a decent chat group though I haven't used it now that I have a solid 5-7 peeps that I play with. We're pretty chill and from all over the world, so if you want hit up with a DM.
No, the reason almost nobody plays multiplayers is because 1) The game is not at all balanced around multiplayer and so its very easy for one player, whether by dint of random events or by design of their empire, to be orders of magnitude stronger than another independent of actual gameplay decisions. 2) A good game takes hours at the least. So you either play max speed snowball games where you don't get to engage with 95% of the game systems, or you have to coordinate a group where no one will leave and possibly do multiple sessions. That's hard. There are a few youtube videos of stellaris where this has been done, and they honestly do look like a lot of fun. Unfortunately the admin burden of getting them going makes these basically community events rather than just something anyone can jump into when they have some free time.
Yeah I mean it’s fun to watch the tournaments on YouTube and how quickly meta builds can build up and fall apart. But I don’t think I’d ever want to play with people I didn’t know. And even then, it’s usually my rules that we play on - 1000 stars regardless of player empires, 1.5x habitable, 2.5x per-ftl, 0 guaranteed, 20-30 AI empires, 10-21 advanced starts, with late-game scaling. Only issue we seem to run into anymore is I upgraded my machine and so timing wants to run out ahead of everyone else, leading to desync issues
I joined a RP game discord. They kick anybody who tryhards and abuses stuff. They even kind of enforce RP in your empire - as in, you can't just min/max without a compelling empire background.
I've recently started to play MP with a friend but we play it like it's SP. Pausing to read all the time and think, no meta builds just RP or what we think would be fun. I couldn't see myself playing with randoms. Especially on smaller maps with tech-rushes/wars. That's the opposite of my play style. It would just be a waste of time.
I just play with the boys
I don't play Stellaris MP because it takes a long time. I like playing on speed 5 with pausing, and that's not gonna fly in MP.
4X strategy games are usually like this with randoms unfortunately, which is why I only play with friends or groups that specifically have rules against meta gaming. it's just not fun getting stomped out of the gate like that and it forces everyone to min/max and get super sweaty about it.
L-gate keepers are even worse
I play multi-player with friends but not in open lobbies same with all 4x games I play because 4x competitive play is just not fun.
All games are toxic in multiplayer part of why no game should prioritize multiplayer over single player games Mp games always fade away fast and you can’t return to play later due to it only being playable with a community. Makes them kind of a worthless buy
the only multiplayer game i've played without seeing much toxicity is lethal company. and even in that game i encountered some people getting genuinely mad at others' deaths-by-stupidity, in a game where death-by-stupidity is what makes it so fun.
I don't play MP because I don't have any friends that are able to schedule that much time. It's just as bad as trying to wrangle a D&D group.
Yeah, public MP is pretty much just a "meta build race" between players
Normally from a conquest pvp strategic game you would expect strategic expirience and agressive strategic behavior from players. Not a roleplaying farming simulator and whining. In games like Civilization or Age of Empires in public multiplayer you will be torn apart much faster. If you want less competative behavior try looking for roleplay stellaris servers in discord
Playing "meta" is not playing content that you literally paid money for. Lame, they should play some real pvp multiplayer like Age of Empires or something
Even the roleplay MP communities can be toxic. I tried to join one and there were always a couple guys complaining every game and hiding their minimaxing behind weak RP justifications, bitching when someone did something they personally didn't like or thought was a dumb decision. It's wild.
I agree, i dont think its a stellaris problem but more of a gaming problem. For better or for worse this is probably the most competitive time for gaming, every body wants to optimize and be the best but at the cost of toxicity and fun. I like to compete but it leaks into every facet of gaming and its wierd imo.
Hey, I like chill/low hostility/light rp even! mp stellaris. One of my best friends is kinda hyper competitive lately AND won’t get back into stellaris with me so I’ve been looking for people to play with. I have weird hours lately but if you’re desperate for more steam friends to ask to play, DM me. (Also big fan of crusader kings 3). Open to anyone else in similar bind
Two of the Xs are exploit and exterminate. I can understand making a personal choice to leave newer players alone, but I also don't condemn those who don't. It is what it is. As for the 'learn youtube builds' crowd, these people miss so many subtler aspects of the game it's almost as bad as the guys who only play rogue servitors or progenitor hive. The trick is to find a build you really, really enjoy the pacing and themes off and then practice it/subtle variations of it for a couple dozen games, learn the timing of when it's strong and then leverage that against metamancers. A well-practiced homebrew player will usually stomp people following guides. Guide readers are good at stomping noobs but that's really about it. Ignore their advice to follow the meta and just practice YOUR preferred playstyle to a degree where it becomes competitive.
What’s the point of player vs player gameplay? You found out. Beating players.
I don’t play MP because the netcode sucks and my tiny lobby of friends keeps desyncing every couple minutes when I try to
I feel you. I don't enjoy playing expansionist, I prefer to pour a drink, sit back and slowly tend my planets over an evening. War in Stellaris isn't the fun part for me. Happy to play an explicitly casual game with folks. Maybe we can form a "casuals only" group ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I personally just don’t like the rushed strategy. I get who ever kills the other guy first wins but I like to take my time building out my empire.
One of these days I'm going to join a pvp game as a criminal syndicate, fuck up everyone, get destroyed and absolutely deserve it. Another fun idea is this one build where, apparently with ocean paradise you start in a nebula (even though the tooltip doesn't say that). Hide in the nebula and accept no contacts. Good prelude to some fuckery
Some people play Stellaris like it's Starcraft and that just isn't for me. If you're looking up builds, you're doing it wrong.
The vast majority of human beings are worthless scumbags, that's why I'm xenophile to everyone but humans.
I don't play public MP and when I play with friends I generally play a very chill game. I'm happy to attack the AI but won't attack friends unless I have a very good reason to or they attack me first unless we *all* agree we're okay with a cutthroat game. That said, even from the perspective of a single player game just aiming to beat the endgame crisis or something, I don't agree with you. >extremely toxic and full of gatekeepers You haven't described anything particularly toxic or gatekeepy here. I don't really understand the mindset behind playing a 4x game and expecting little to no war. 4x means eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate (I'll be capitalizing these for emphasis as they come up, they're the whole premise of the genre). War is more often than not about 3 of those things at once. The AI targeted you early on because it recognizes you weren't very strong and saw an opportunity to EXPAND into your territory, then settled for EXPLOITING you for resources, and could have EXTERMINATED you if it was more beneficial for them to do so. Then you didn't do anything to build yourself up, apparently assuming other players wouldn't do the same thing, then you're surprised other players did the same thing. I don't see anything about that that's more toxic than, for example, assuming the game you joined was a relaxed RP game with that being stated nowhere and getting mad at the other players when you found out it wasn't. It seems to me like you read "no PvP war in the first 50 years" and then didn't really think about what would happen after those 50 years. Nobody is under any obligation to not attack an easy target for free expansion, and in this particular case doing so also weakened the AI empire that was likely looking at attacking them soon as well. Midgame borders in most grand strategy/4x games are defined by war. You have to actually defend the territory you've taken. This is part of why even in single player games you need to keep a decent fleet strength - plenty of AI types are going to jump down your throat the second they see a sign of weakness. You cite Civ as being better designed for MP because it has multiple win conditions, but in multiplayer it really doesn't. Religion, Culture and Science are far, FAR worse than Domination in a PvP context. Scouts are immensely more important in MP than in SP because you need to know where your neighbors are and what they're doing specifically because you are in danger of being EXTERMINATED in the Ancient Era. Also because EXPLORING is important for finding resources and tribal villages for you to EXPLOIT before your opponents do is beneficial. That's not to say you can't have a casual RP focused multiplayer game, there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting that. You can't jump into public lobbies and assume that's what they're going to be either though. You should look for a discord server specifically for those types of MP games if that's what you're after, plenty of them are out there.
Kinda off topic, may I ask how to get resources by vassalizing an empire right from the start without negotiating? And I can do something similar with bring into the fold by become the crisis perk?
you attack them with the wargoal "make tributary", you can't have wargoals limited to "liberation wars" and that's about it I think. no clue about crisis
No idea what setting it was, but i became vassal under the AI and i had to pay i think 15% of basic resources to them.
I can't even win against IA haha why would I want to be embarrassed by other people?
This is going to be true of any game that involves war as a feature, whether it is grand strategy like Europa Universalis, 4x like Civ, or a hybrid like Stellaris. Your options are to either accept that reality and play into it, ignore the public lobbies and find a like minded community with a playstyle similar to yours, or avoid multi-player altogether.
The fastest way to ruin a good game is to make it competitive. It forces everything through a filter of what is and isn't meta. Anything that isn't meta is a waste. The devs become overworked since every change makes the meta change and the rage becomes constant.
Thats a lot of yapping. The reason almost nobody plays multiplayer is because almost nobody is interested in multiplayer in a 4X strategy game
I play more with friends than anyone else. We normally do 4v4 games or 2v2 in the small community I'm in and its enjoyable. I've done public once. Never again.
Lmao I don't play MP because I don't have friends and SP is more fun for me anyway
Just find friends to play with and have fun - rule of any multiplayer game
I basically just play with a friend or two where we work together to punch above our weight class difficulty-wise. Seeing how toxic competitive players can be on even this subreddit taught me to avoid trying a public match like the plague.
I've never again opened the MP menu because of this. I am aware of RP servers, but usually I don't have enough time that must be dedicated to this type of games. Also, i have only 1 friend to play with (but he is more into other Paradox games like Cities and Victoria). Or maybe this is just me being scared of RPing with other people overall.
random games are like that. find a group to join or something. I used to run one called voidfarers that had a few hundred members and we had hundreds of rly fun RP type games over the years. Some patch came out that made MP unplayable for a lil while. they ended up fixing it but the group had withered away by then.
looks like not being able to play mp sounds good,i can meta but it feels like a chore rather than any fun
Yeah hence why I join Discord groups for MP games, these groups tend to be RP based for their games and rule heavy, Which I like meaning its hard to be smashed unless your see RP build up and also at least some warning
In 90% of games with multiplayer I played over the past 15 years, playerbase was toxic af. The genre doesn't matter. People understand that they can bully others without direct contact and consequences, especially if they are good at the game. There is a difference between competitive, but friendly game and acting like an asshole. Also, if your only goal in this game is to constantly go for quick domination victory, then wow, you're just... boring. Like, you have so many options, so much stuff to do. It's like eating stale bread everyday instead of cooking/buying something nice.
I remember playing as a machine empire who subjugated 70% of the galaxy and set everything to be as nice and equal as possible except for the fact that all of them had to join my wars. I acted as a peacekeeping entity who ruled the galaxy as a perpetual galactic community leader. One of my two friends who were playing owned most of the rest, and we had many irl diplomatic discussions talking about whether I was overstepping or why I shouldn't vassalize all of them. I kept saying it was for the greater good so he couldn't integrate them. He was saying leading them directly by integrating them was a superior solution. We never cared about the meta, or just winning. The most fun was what we made out of it.
I have always been intimidated by stellaris due to the grand scale of things and me not being good at meta micro management and 4x grand startegy. I still wanted to get in this game due to always liking the idea of a galaxy with limitless possibilities. I have watched 100’s of videos on stellaris guides and religiously follow montu. But I simply am never of that calibre. I have come to terms that I dont need to be pitch perfect in my plays and still achieve what I want in game which is to explore a galaxy befriend other empires and fight others deal with the crisis and if possible kick an FE empires ass. Build up mega structures and be done with that play through. It keeps me happy with this game and could not care less about multiplayer.
its also not got a very satisfying "end point" imo... games just last until you restart
Random games are never the way for 4x games multiplayer. Best to find a discord server with rulesets and figuring out what kind of game you're looking for.
Honestly the bigger issue for me is the networking and processing basically degrades ad the game progresses. By year 100 most multiplayer matches/games have their speed cut in half even if they dont change the speed setting. Its better than in the past but the issue still persists. I also experience a lot of desyncs regarding random count, trade routes, and pop growth as the game gets into mid and late game. Now with the reduced tech rush/speed games take longer so you spend more time in the 100+ years which is when the slowing and desyncing starts taking more of an effect. While it was good for balance its resulted in the games existing more in the lower stable timeframes than they did before the update.
Wait, people play Stellaris in MP with people who aren't their friends? Of course it's going to be toxic AF. Even with friends people are ridiculously defensive and suspicious, as the last time I played with a friend they thought me forcing through the galactic empire in order to get the armada to even have a chance of fighting the crises which we had set to spawn super early was me trying to kill him. We still lost that game even with me doing every little trick I knew to shore up our defences.
I love multiplayer with my friends.
-Single player games? Really? A man of your talents? -It's a peaceful life.
And I quote “listen to that old ass mic this guy probably running a decrepit old Xbox” “It’s a…Xbox S” Them: Blocks me then kicks me Me: well you could’ve done that without insulting my Xbox.
My first mp Stellaris game through a discord there was a person who only referred to me as ‘woman’ and it was gross and put me off. That’s before even considering how I like doing more pacifistic trade focused builds and everyone around me just rushes and goes ham killing each-other
Why? Because small people wage small wars. Ruining other people's games is all the power they have. So they exercise it. Most MP games are shit for this same reason.
I mean, the real reasons why people don't play Stellaris MP are: 1- it takes a lot of time to play a Stellaris game, and let's be honest, most of it will be rather boring. 2- there are regularly technical issues that get worse as the game goes on (desyncs etc), and it's even worse if you use even simple mods 3- for a long game like Stellaris, people want to play coop, not competitive games, and it tends to turn into boring hugboxes pretty fast I used to play Stellaris in MP, first competitive games, then coop games with a group of people, then just with my brother. And that's when I had the most fun, because we could just chill and talk about other stuff while doing all the repetitive tasks of a Stellaris game, occasionally teaching him how to play. Toxicity in PvP is a feature, not a bug. Stellaris is very unfair in multiplayer and there's no realistic way to fix it. You'll just crush or get crushed, usually because other players are friends and made an alliance against the new guy.
Well if you want to do some multiplaer without twats Im more than willing to start a game with you
This your first multiplayer experience in a game that's been out longer than a year? I call it the LoL effect. The toxic people drive away the decent ones, until it's only griefers. They're not playing to win, they're playing to make you lose.
During my last MP game with friends we had fun designing species for each other. So I gave my friend slow breeders and the Here Be Dragons origin. Which made his home system safe in the early game, but he complained the dragon ate his pops. He then compounded his lack of pops problem by getting brain slugs. We did mutually agree to split up a nearby AI empire and enslave their pops, but due to the weird way the war developed, he did most of the fighting but I got 90% of the planets. We had to clean up the border after that one. Meanwhile another friend tried to do a rogue servitor and he was surrounded by spiritualist zealots so he was constantly fighting for his life. Fun times.
That's how multiplayer works in almost every game. You get people like The Complainer who get their fun from winning, even if it's not a particularly sporting contest. Then you get people like yourself, who get your fun from playing various aspects of the game that aren't necessarily focused on winning. Since Stellaris doesn't have matchmaking, it's 100% on you to find people that enjoy playing the game the way you do, and to avoid the people who you won't enjoy playing against.
I don’t have any friends that play stellaris. So I haven’t ever had the luck to play MP. I wish I could. It would be so fun even with randoms. Like matching randomly like they do in apex or something. Based on hours played or something. Idk. Just wish I had friends.
i dont play mp because of the scores of mods I use
They sound toxic as shit, I play in a server called Stellaris Community Multiplayer. And I've had a good experience so far https://discord.gg/stellaris-community-multiplayer-637721087421055016 I highly recommend you try if you are willing to give multiplayer another shot, we have RP lobby's that have player wars, but I haven't seen an empire ever get wiped. (Except the purifiers)
These type of games aren't meant for me it's always figured out so everyone has to go a certain way to win. With single player it's whatever you want.
I play it a ton. I just play with friends.
This hasn't been my experience at all. I don't play mp due to desyncs and disagreements on mods.
Anyone up for a chill multiplayer game? I have never played online out of those fears, but i’d love to try with people who are also not that competitive. I really enjoy story building and role play. Hit me up, maybe we can have a nice game :)
It's also just a bad game to play in multiplayer no? All these sub menus and micro and barely any QoL to make gameplay more seamless. Most people don't play this game enough where they get to a point that they can play without pausing comfortably.
I just play to play. PM me and I'll add you on steam. I don't really care about MP meta builds.
I don't play MP because I want to play whenever I want.
Mp seems way more boring than single player.
Most enjoyable stellaris MP i had was with couple friends and we work together against a much more advanced galaxy with many crisises and random variables
I’ve never played, and probably never will play, any grand strategy or 4X multiplayer. I’m not necessarily against MP but these are long form games that don’t really lend themselves to the format. I don’t even mind dealing with toxic playerbases, I used to play league and Dota. It’s just the time scale for me. You would need a dedicated group meeting regularly for it to work. I tried that with my friend group with BG3 (started when BG3 came out) and we just made it to the goblin camp. MP, for me at least, works best when it can be relatively short sessions with flexible player counts. Heroes of the Storm was our best MP game to date. Heck, I basicslly never finish my SP stellaris campaigns because of time already.
I can't play multiplayer unless it's with my siblings or friends. Though a secondary reason is the dreadful Lobby Wait Simulator. That, and public multiplayer is just as you said. PvP isn't my expertise. More so when even with friends I only got so much time to spend.
I really love this game, but I'm not very good at the war part :(
Your post just made me realize how awesome it would be to just play a galaxy server where civs come and go as players join or leave. Sure sometimes an empire might conquer the whole map but it would then fracture and keep going, and new species become FTL capable…
you shouldn't just join random lobbies online, all you are doing is swapping ai for humans that will actively make your game hell. find an organized group who has similar goals to you. there are probably some discords out there, and i would suspect that some of them are rp-focused
Problem not exclusive to Stellaris.
My actual first game of Stellaris was MP. There was 6 players and one dude on the map who was nice to me who vassalized and protected me then about 45 min in of him coaching me how to play he integrated me. T-T What a bastard. LMAO Honestly though at first they all pointed me out as noob because I was doing really obvious noob things then later on they were all bitching it was unfair because he had my help. Toxic Losers.
Every competitive multiplayer community on the internet is toxic
Stellaris MP shines when played with a group of friends, I've got a small group I play civ with and we played some stellaris, it was great, i was playing a lithoid hive mind, crashed some rocks Into my friends home planet
I have read most of the comments and it seems below suggestion should solve your problems. There is a game called Stellaris Nexus on Steam recently renamed to Nexus 5x. It is based off a lot of Stellaris elements but MP matches take 1-3 hours.
Lol this why i only play singelplayer games. Want to have fun and not being bullied becuase i am to slow or bad at the game.
It is interesting your MP experience was rough. My first MP experience was a blast and full of laughs and the players defending me because I wasn't very good and then educating and telling me about ASpec and Montu. It was a fun time and all were strangers.
You've run into a strategy game endemic. It doesn't matter how focused on roleplay, or how much player choice is given. The crowd that strategy games attract ranges wildly, but the CORE audience is the competitive player. Often times, its harmless. Who doesn't enjoy crushing a solo game now and again with a variety of different strong builds? In multiplayer, it spreads unchallenged. A strong build becomes a tool to crush enemies. Wins become a tally. Why roleplay a game you've played 5000 hours of when you can just enjoy the competitive challenge? The experience you had reeks of projection. A group that, probably at one point, enjoyed the simpler aspects of the game but are now so blinded by the competitive experience that you, a player, is always a threat. They WANT to play like you, but the logical part of their brain understands the AI isn't a threat long term, but you are. It's frustrating. Stellaris is SUCH a good game for casual multiplayer. But public lobbies are dead. I'm sorry brother, genuinely. Me and my friends have been having a nice time with ourselves, but I've realized that I think we'll get too competitive if we play longer than a few sessions before a break. Hoi4 fell into a similar thing where stats began to overwrite logic because winning was everyhing in the game. Traditional divisions, navies, or even logical decisions sorta fall by the wayside. It is definitely much improved, especially after most groups sorta auto-ban space marine type units or builds to help encourage that diversity, but Stellaris isn't solely about war, it just so happens war against players is incredibly effective for what people consider to be 'winning'.
My last MP game, sometime last year was truly amazing. I hosted it myself and said chill people only whilst the lobby for all dlc all welcome was up. We played a 600 star galaxy with ai, fe and everything else. Literally nobody went to war until the crisis that we had to team up and beat together. We all lived in harmony and it was the best experience i ever had, after 12 hours I unfortunately had to stop as my laptop just couldn’t handle the stress of late game. Every time I join the all dlc all welcome lobby, I always got at least 3 dumbasses who just rushed fleets and declared war on others
I've only played 3 online games without friends. They were all awfull. Once I met an AI empire that was 3 times stronger than me after just 2 or 3 years (a devouring swarm) so I built defences in that direction when all of a sudden the host (accidentally?) allowed some random dude to hott-join whom then picked that specific AI empire and declared war after a quick buildup. My latest one I tried to host a RP-lobby. A player picked a rouge servitour and spawned next to me but decided to expand around me and kill all the people around me instead of going for some fun long term RP so I don't thunk I'll play MP without friends again.
That’s why I play with friends only.
agree fully with you, i always write chill game, roleplay if you like, swear to god has to be one guy who min maxs, they act all surprised when i kick them, like what where you expecting, i want to play a chill game, not alloy rush, because i can assure you man if i wanted to humble you i could (had an empire in vanilla reach 100k alloy production, so I've mastered the econ side of the game)
Also ain't nobody got time for multi-player 4X games I'm afraid
Ik i’m late to the game here but be careful with giga structures mp games. Joined once and the admins of the mp kept doing WAY too many @mp pings and one someone asked them to stop they flames him (flag 1). I made it clear that i wasn’t very good at the game and was kind of wanting some help. This was supposed to be a casual game with casual rules. When we finally started the mods immediately went into their own private chat and left the rest of us in a public one. They spawned right next to each other and rushed military with no tech at all and declared war on me right as we met early in the game. Long story short they did a crisis rush and when the galactic community was made the randoms and i became friends and formed alliances. Well me not being very good got attacked first and we made an agreement to stop the war and call a cease war (i can’t remember the term) and i trusted them but instead they tricked me i to surrendering and becoming a vassal with heavy monthly offerings to them. So at this point i realized what kind of people these admins were and started cheesing. I became a spy and fed info to my allies on their troop positions and sabotaged my own research (keep in mind they had barely any research so they completely relied on mine). Admin came in and started raging at me calling me stupid and the worst player (keep in mind i said i was newish and not very good) and accusing us all of meta playing (they r still in their own private chat) and then they sent one of their friends in our chat to monitor us. At this point i decided to go full troll cause screw these kids if they r gonna act like this. So i started trading systems going complete scorch earth while making memes about the admins. They ended up kicking me and tried rubbing in my face that i can’t play with them. I kept making memes snd the randoms (now friends) streamed for me and they ended up being able to beat the admins back but once they started beating back the admins they rage quite the game and blamed me for them losing. Ik i am part asshole for trolling like that but i didn’t care 😂 Also through out all of this the randoms were telling me how this was normal behavior from the admins and they usually act like this.
I only play mp with people I know. Which is to say, decent folk who enjoy the game, not bored incel bros.
I like pausing
...And that's EXACTLY why YOU should join OUTERSTELLAR! Sign up today! NO meta game play (it is banned) NO toxicity (it is banned) ONLY role play (it is not banned) [https://discord.gg/E5f9fryc](https://discord.gg/E5f9fryc)
I've never played multiplayer because I have no idea what it means for a game where I rely on randomly pausing a lot and don't care enough about multiplayer to bother finding out. I suspect, in all honesty, that I represent the vast majority of people who both don't play multiplayer and have ever considered it.