That's one of my biggest problems with Paradox. "The next patch will make things great!"
It's always the next patch. I end up never playing because there's always a next patch.
I'd always heard this about Paradox, but never realized just how true it was until Stellaris (as it was the first Paradox title that I really got into).
To be fair, I generally enjoyed Stellaris as-is (at the time), so at least for me, the patches merely improved on what I felt was already an excellent 4x/grand-strategy experience. What bothers me more about the updates is that they've often never fixed ongoing issues that have existed since the game released. I know that's not exactly unusual for PC games, but it sure is annoying -- especially when the devs say said issues will be addressed or at least looked at (but then aren't).
Worst of all -- from my perspective -- Martin Anward (the lead dev at the time) took Stellaris in a direction I never wanted it to go, leading to the craptastic 2.0 and 2.2 updates. The former (with its ridiculous hyperlanes-only maps and handicapped AI) leached much of the original game's fun factor for me, and the latter (with an even dumber AI and its over-focus on a boring economy) pretty much destroyed any remaining enjoyment I once derived from it.
I still play Stellaris, but only on earlier versions. Distant Stars was the most recent DLC I picked up for the game, and I'm pretty sure it will be the last. .
It's nice that we can bash on all the publishers equally. Fair and Balanced
As long as none of us are secretly Sean Hannity.