re: Paragons "Ruler Designer"

[zakesters]

One of the selling points for Paragons was the ability to choose your ruler's starting traits in the Emprie design screen, thereby cutting back on restarts, but seeing as how you can only pick from a pool of about 5, it doesn't really improve the situation. Before, if I wanted to begin with, say, "reformer," I could get it by restarting or with console commands--as it is at present, I can *only* do it with console commands. Now, if the devs' intention was, in fact, to reduce the pool of starting traits in normal play (i.e. without a bit of cheating here and there,) that's fine by me, but it's a little disingenuous to say, in the blurb about the new update, that they have increased the player's control over customizing the initial ruler, which is manifestly not what they have done. [EDIT: I don't think this anymore: see the thread.]

[tempest.of.emptiness]

If you were willing to use console commands then why would you ever waste time restarting?

If you were using console commands before, why would you stop now?

If you are using console commands now, why does it matter whether what you want is one of the available options?

For players who do not restart the game until they get a leader trait they want and who do not use console commands - which I would hope is most players - the level of control has increased even if the pool of possibilities has decreased.

That said, I'm not sure why they would make starting traits unavailable for choice by the player during game creation... unless those traits are no longer considered "starting traits". If that is the case, then it would make sense that you can no longer start with them, and using the console to add them would pass out of the gray area of "reducing the number of times I have to restart" into the not-gray area of "giving myself something I shouldn't be able to have".

According to the wiki ( https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Governor_traits ), that seems to be what has happened. Reformer is listed as a Governor trait, and not as a Ruler starting trait.

So this change appears to have been intentional.

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

If you were using console commands before, why would you stop now?

there isn't really a downside to advanced starting options in games like these but they are largely absent here.

just look at what your average civ game or endless space offers for map generation settings, here it's barely some basics.

you can't even play in teams.

if you want to play a certain type of game, just let us set it up instead of having to brute force things with mods/console/restarts.

[zakesters]

Originally posted by tempest.of.emptiness:

For players who do not restart the game until they get a leader trait they want and who do not use console commands - which I would hope is most players - the level of control has increased even if the pool of possibilities has decreased.

A fair point: I think you're right. I also think the change was intentional, though I mentioned that already. So, I guess I have no choice but to repudiate my OP. I'll chalk it up to being an unexamined emotional response.

[zakesters]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

if you want to play a certain type of game, just let us set it up instead of having to brute force things with mods/console/restarts.

My instinct tends this way as well, but this game is (in relative terms at least) fairly easy to modify and the console is quite robust. The population of players that want to tailor a certain kind of 'sandbox' experience is (probably) a minority, so I don't mind if the game's front end doesn't cater to us specifically. In this case, I simply thought the new update *was* going to do that, but looking at things more generously, I think I was only seeing things from a restricted perspective.

[ShadowTani]

A wider selection of choice is always nice, but it makes sense that you can't start with veteran traits and are limited to council-specific traits as the ruler can't do work outside the council.

I do wish they added a few more customization options to your empire though, like starting policies and sector name among other, it gets old after a while to specify that each new game, lol.