Forum entered despite heavy storms!

It seems Paradox is really running out of ideas for DLCs. The last one was again centered around machine empires (we already had that with synthetic dawn) and now this.I think I'll pass.

They'd likely welcome suggestions by players.

BTW, not impress by trailer(unlike previous runs) this time. What gives, Paradox?

this, is... impressive i guess .....

curious to see how this will continue, according to the info online it is the same development team still.... if they also create the next stellaris title it must be their crown piece....

The problem was that Synthetic Dawn was not a very widespread expansion. That also meant that justifying significant free patch content for synthetic empires was very hard, and so they always felt left behind.
Their solution was an expansion which unlocks synthetic empires for all owners (you need either Synthetic Dawn or Machine Age to unlock them) which simply had absolutely amazing additional content, especially for synthetic empires and even for non-synthetic ones.
If Machine Age had a flaw, it's that the remaining ascensions (Psionic and Genetic) now feel left behind compared to what the (three new) Synthetic Ascension trees and Cybernetic got.

I mean, cosmic storms have been a thing in mods for years, but I'm sure this will do a better job of it.

To be honest, of the three announcements for season 8, Cosmic Storms is certainly my least favorite. However, the Dev Diaries have only returned from summer hiatus yesterday and there is not really much more out than the most general announcement and some teasers. I'm certainly willing to build some more interest over the next few weeks but it is a slightly uphill battle.

They could have added content to Synthetic Dawn, like they did with the humanoids and plantoids species packs in the past. But I guess that would not have been greedy enough. Anyway, Machine Age at least adds interesting content whereas I have a hard time to believe that anyone ever said "Space Storms are cool, we need more of them!" ;)

While content additions to Synthetic Dawn might have increased its popularity we certainly would not have gotten three very different ascensions just for synthetic empires. It's not only that I enjoyed that a lot, it also set a very good marker for future work on the other ascensions.
For me, Machine Age is definitely one of the strongest expansions over the last years.