IGN Review

Although IGN is a bunch of ****, most people that want to buy a game look at the review and generally would like to see a high rating, since they're thinking about spending money and all.

4.8 is very low, so there is obviously a problem to the average gamer.

Ok, I meant core gamers, not casual ones. Sorry to say, but the release right now is very casual unfriendly. Many, many, many, MANY training wheels missing. Training wheels which, once becoming a core gamer, could be turned off, of course.

Lol, ITT: people to blind to admit when they were wrong.

This thread is made up mostly of people who say this game has a lot of flaws and room for improvement.

I played the Beta for all of 10 minutes and then uninstalled. The screenshots are very misleading.

I've said this before.

Different release wouldn't change anything. It's a bad score from a bad review on a bad site. The whole review isn't even much of a opinion, as it's basically just the reviewer whining about spheroid maps.

Remember, those are the morons who gave 8.8 to the broken trainwreck called rome 2.

Personal preference should have little do with a review in any context on my opinion as well.

I wish people would just deal with the review itself, instead of telling us we should never listen because they wrote a wrong review of another game, or that the guy is an idiot, etc. But I suppose stupid strawman arguments are part and parcel of talking to people on the internet..

He is bang on. It IS the #1 problem with PA. Why?:

It hasn't, it doesn't, and they are still struggling to deal with it today. This is unarguable - the only reason there's even a thread up on a minimap (again) is because this core problem has not been resolved. It's clicky and clunky and you MUST maneuver around and around and around to figure out what is going on .. on ONE planet. Add more to the mix and it just compounds the problem.

Yes, yes it is. You can mitigate somewhat, but you are still forced to spin that planet, and with multi-planet setups you can't even use the PiP to cover more than 1/2 of another part of the battlefield.

That is the core of the review. The rest of the details 'sinks' the game, as he says:

- Shitty tutorials, and worse, tutorials that are out of date. (true)
- No multi-monitor support (true)
- No save option (true)
- Online only (It's pretty damn graceful of him to spend only 1/2 a sentence on this, considering the Uber promises)
- No singleplayer campaign (GW is not a campaign, however much you want to spin it, and Uber admits it on their store page:

(true)
- Galactic war is broken by frustratingly stupid things like landing on a naval planet with no navy tech, orbital battles with no orbital tech, etc. (true)
- GW choice of planets to fight on is entirely meaningless (true)


Probably the only quibble I might have is the comment about the AI being stupid - but then again, we've all experienced the occasional wierdness of the AI not doing what it's supposed to, so it wouldn't be surprising at all to hear a report about how it's not performing like it should.

If you can't refute most of the points, you have absolutely zero basis for coming in here and telling us this guy is full of crap.

Did you read the thread? There's lots of people talking about how the review has some valid points.

Must maneuver around?

Not true. PiP with mirroring on allows you to see the planet in its entirety.

C'mon Brian, you know your solution breaks as soon as you have a second planet. As I said. 1 planet - somewhat full coverage, although 1/2 the planet is 1/10 screen size. 2 planets sharply cuts your visibility, and more than that gets completely unmanageable. I get it, you like spheres. Stop sticking your head in the sand and shouting 'NOT TRUE' at everyone who thinks the spheres add some problems that haven't been sufficiently solved yet.

And as for strawmen, I was just referring to posts like this:

Every heard of Shift 1 and Alt 1? Great hotkeys btw,

But that's the premise of the game, it's like being mad at star craft for not letting units fire when moving.

It's basically very subjective.

Well, considering that many TA fans already criticize starcraft for not letting units fire while moving... it's a poor example . But it's also a great example in that Blizzard looked at the predecessor and carefully thought out what was working and what was not, and decided to replicate a game feature that was originally a programming constraint.

If we had gone from TA -> PA, we'd probably be like YEAH AWESOME. Since TA made you scroll around a lot / use the minimap to jump around, so that was the bar to reach for and exceed.

But we got Supcom instead, and it raised the bar. One fine scroll sweep and you view the entire battlefield. Two scrolls and you're focused on a different area. *That* is what PA is being compared to, and that is why it's an issue today. Take the game Populous for example, where a spherical map was used - everyone was already used to scrolling around a map, so it wasn't a big step for players to go scrolling around a sphere.

Can you imagine the amount of screaming that would have occurred if PA had flat maps and no zoom? It would be taking a step backwards and we would - rightly so - slam Uber for doing it.

PA's 'premise' is NOT that it's a game that must be played on a sphere - its premise is that you are on wrap-around maps that can be smashed into each other. They chose to do this by putting it on a sphere, but they have so far failed to raise the bar on the interface to the level of modern RTS games. So to criticize them for not raising or even reaching the bar is actually pretty objective, even if the conclusion (it's fun / not fun to spin planets around) is subjective.

If you don't use the reply button, I won't get a notification.

This is why we need multiple window support, which will allow us to have multiple PiPs. It's a feature that is coming.

One of the many reasons why launch should have waited.

And that isn't a strawman. It's calling the site's credibility into account. If the site has no integrity or authority, much of the review can be ignored.

Of course TA fans criticize it for that, but reviewers wouldn't, as it'd be entirely subjective. PA's movement of the camera feels so much more natural to me than Supcom's did, and honestly fighting on spheres is definitely one of the core concepts of PA, to state otherwise is to be very ignorant.

Personally I love it, I love having that side of the planet I can't see, or having to check on the other planets. Quickly zooming out to celestial and back to another planet. Setting up camera saves so I can quickly switch between positions on PiP or the main screen, using PiP's mirror functionality, and etc... it's a lot more fun to me.

Edit: and you actually used to be able to zoom out, and move your cursor to the horizon, then zoom to the horizon and it'd move the planet view. I miss that, sad they removed it.

I'm pretty surprised it's not in honestly, as multiple PiP windows is possible, Cola even got it to work through a mod quite a while back. (Sadly broken by now I believe)

Populous isn't played on a sphere

PA's premise is that it's played on planets. I don't think it's fair to say that being spherical (as opposed to flat or toroidal) is not mandatory. I'm not sure how non-spherical planets would be able to smash into each other, either.

It's not objective because this Bar is arbitrary, and worse it automatically penalises non-flat maps or multi-map games for no reason. Sup Com's strategic zoom is great, but only where it's applicable. You can't penalise PA for not having it, without claiming that all games should be on a single flat map (which is where that zoom is applicable). If you don't accept that premise, then that bar is not valid.

Thank you. I was just thinking "am I the only one who paid attention to the camera anchor hotkeys?" I don't get this expectation suddenly that you have to see everything on a battlefield at once for an RTS to be playable. SupCom is the only RTS I'm aware of that really made that a thing. As far as I'm concerned, the opposite side of a planet is just a form of fog of war.

Well, I thought it was a bit of a shame for the community to put down a generally factual review just because of where it's hosted or whatever. I suppose some people take reviews from a particular site as the Truth (or Lies) Because It Was Written By IGN or something, but I prefer to judge each article by its merits.

And y'know how you keep saying 'it's coming it's coming"? I, along with evidently many others, are steadily losing faith that it WILL be coming, not least due to the fact that Uber publicly declared 'we have successfully accomplished our Kickstarter goal and we are happy with the game the way it is."

Populous: The Beginning is Which is what I linked to..

I can think up a deadly easy solution - two flat, corner-less maps, with a unit/structure that allows you to target a spot on the second map, and when it fires, the first map disappears and the 2nd map gets a giant flaming meteor land on it.
Not to say it's a good solution, but it's definitely one that would fit the bill. Heck, you could even make a texture out of the first map & all your units, apply it to the meteor, and get some cool effects. And you'd be able to zoom out to view both maps at once!

Same functionality, different implementation, except my solution doesn't have to rewrite a ton of stuff to make it work on a sphere. So no, being a true, 3d sphere in space like they chose to do was *not* mandatory.

It's not objective because this Bar is arbitrary, and worse it automatically penalises non-flat maps or multi-map games for no reason. Sup Com's strategic zoom is great, but only where it's applicable. You can't penalise PA for not having it, without claiming that all games should be on a single flat map (which is where that zoom is applicable). If you don't accept that premise, then that bar is not valid.[/QUOTE]

I dunno, you have to admit that if you're making a successor to TA / Supcom then you've set *yourself* a bar to reach / exceed. And yes by doing that, you automatically penalize spherical maps, because it's a geometrical fact that we can only see one side of a sphere! So you have to deal with that reduction in UI power, or pick a different geometry to host your game on. It's not enough to just say 'but but it's harder to do because Spheres'.

Yes, UI is harder. So is pathfinding. So is world gen. So is physics. All consequences of a sphere, and likely one of the reasons we haven't seen massive scale RTS games on a sphere in, like, well, ever. Unfortunately Uber didn't have the time/ resources / whatever to do anything more than address the challenge of spherical maps affecting map-awareness apart from some stop-gap measures like hotkeys and PiP. TA has hotkeys. Didn't stop Supcom from solving the battlefield awareness issue with the unprecedented strategic zoom. AND multiple monitor support. AND hotkeys. See the progression?

We've taken a step backwards and in return received a unit that can destroy the map. And for that, we are no longer allowed to criticize their reduction in battlefield awareness and clunky UI.