My thoughts on recent developments(HR, PA, and Uber)

Funny you should mention that- that is *exactly* what @sorian and his team are busy working on.

They've already added the ability to view mass spots in the system editor (to allow you to better judge maps and adjust acordigly). The next update will include the ability to view the spawn locations (as spawns automatically adjust mass distribution) in different configs. So if you want to create a great planet for a 10 way ffa, you can now test what the mass distribution will be.

Also I beleieve by using the metal sliders it's already possible to create 'spawn wars' maps where players *only get metal in their start location* which would help create the type of game your talking about. Your not alone in thinking there is room for improvement on the maps, however Uber are working on it which is good to know.

Final thing reguarding 1 v 1, your best bet is to download PAMM and install PA:Stats. This will put you into ladder games with pre-tested maps against other 1 v 1 players. You'll have a chance of some much more challenging games that way (though you'll need to stick with it for a few games- the ladder needs you to play a bit to get you in an approriate position based on your skill).

I am not sure if you guys managed to read this thread by @Col_Jessep.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/you-want-the-truth.64965/

It is really worth the read

Regarding the communication..

There's no doubt Uber devs are very skilled and capable of creating great games but their PR is totally bananas. Sure the approach to the community is very good (both PA and HR have very good hooks that should attract many people) but keeping some sort of good relations with the public and making certain decisions during development.. rather bad.

I've been around since 4 months before the PA kickstarter and went silent when Beta started (PA took too much time compared to the fun I was having). I've been following the updates regularly and I've noticed a significant decrease in proper communication. Perhaps this happened because the community grew, people started demanding a lot and Uber figured its better to not say much cause people and media can twist words in all kinds of ways but the decrease is simply too massive compared to Alpha. We used to know exactly what each dev worked on at that current time and that was beautiful. Beta was okay as well. Gamma and release.. relatively poor.

I know that every livestream they did cost money and time but this is why they hired Brad, he can use a camcorder and go around the office having 30 second interviews with everyone working on the game asking them what are they currently doing. If done once a week, that would be what, 1 hour of "wasted" time and everyone would be happy knowing whats been going on. I'm no expert at anything but I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be any major obstacles at doing this.

Well since the last one had so mush success :

Why a New Apartment is Like Steam Early Access


(not to be taken personally, I do not personally endorse these thoughts.)

yes it is
you want a company to fail with the possible consequenses of its employes eventualy losing their jobs not being able to sustain themselfes and their relatives and futureconcepts that may have been thought about before never going to have any chance to come to fruition nor even be tried ... all for your selfishness of what merely is a luxuryproduct ..
i don´t give a scrap about the free market ... people may decide things and do mistakes ... this however will be no reason for me to be so illthinking to whish someone to fail in life ... i rather call them on their mistakes learning from it and doing better in the future the rest is fate be it a quirk or selfforged ...
and you should be ashamed of yourself ...

I don't think it would be the end of Uber if they failed one kickstarter project, since they wouldn't have invested much into it. They would just come up with a new game idea, and try with that one instead. Besides, they still have PA bringing in money.

i am speaking about principle ... you yourself shouldn´t ever wish others to fail when you yourself don´t want to fail either ... simple as that ...
those working in the company are people who have their own lifes too ... it doesn´t matter if you don´t know them ...

That is the best thing ever.

perfectdark: I totally understand what you mean. Something is missing from this game there is no doubt about it. If anyone thinks the maps are ok or even decent they are nuts..The maps lack any detail or things needed to make a map fun, look at setons or any other number of maps from supcom. When we reference supcom were not saying PA shouldve been like it but to use it as an example of an EPIC RTS game that has everything a true RTS game needs.
The game def slows down & it happens almost every game I play. Other issues with it not being fun could be the lack of different strategies in the game. Supcom is a good example. I remember playing 5 games in a row & I could use a different strategy in each game & it made the game totally new every time. This never happens in PA & mostly the game is about who gets to orbital first (this is when the game gets extremely slow/extremely boring/extremely frustrating) & takes over another planet so they have UBER amount of resources & can build a boring planet smash or annhilazer...Everyone complained to uber not to add experimentals but yet the annhilazer/planet smash is worse...At least experimentals were often not game enders but were fun ways to attack a turtler or to totally turn the tides of losing the game..I also feel that orbital somewhat ruins the game because it makes the actual ground warfare useless. I really want this game to get "a lot" better & I feel it can. Two ways this can happen is by adding more diverse units that can allow us to create new strategies & creating interesting maps with choke points, hills, etc & plz fix naval the game is retail....Again not here to bring negativity to the game but just pointing out its severe flaws. I love RTS genre & have been around since TA & even the first Command & Conquer. I want to see this game succeed & excel from all previous RTS games like Supcom did.

Agreed to all of this. I had feelings that something is missing from PA, and you just nailed it. In beta I decided with my friend to only play in coop against computers until PA is balanced, because there were to many cheesy tactics. And somehow we still stick to coop against AI. Yes we could ad rules like no annihilazer etc, but there is always knife in the back soon or later. But there is some hope in modding tools and modders.

If you think planet-smashing is boring, perhaps you bought the wrong game.

It is a major advertised feature all over the place . . .

It's nothing more than a gimmick Gorbles. It gets people interested because it sounds good, and that's all it was ever for.

It'd good to know that they are working on fixing the slowdown (though considering this was a problem in all of their other games, I'm not overly hopeful) and it's good to know that you have some options when creating your own planets. That's cool and all, and maybe I do just need to play on planets which I have created, but why aren't there default planets set up with exactly what I want so everyone knows what they are getting themselves into when playing a game?

Err. What?

There other games being:

• MNC/SMNC (FPS, not an RTS)
• Outland games (sidescroller)
• Toy Rush (mobile game)

You are illustrating a common economic misconception. Before I illustrate this misconception, I want to point out that neither the person I quoted nor I ever said that we wanted to see them go bankrupt. I expanded on his point by stating that customers should show their displease through their dollar's voting power; that it would be a power market signal; an attention getter.

Now for the misconception. When a company goes bankrupt, lets say due to mismanagement, but demand for a product/service still exists, other companies will enter into that market to capitalize off of the unserviced demand. Examples are always the best way to illustrate this: if customers want Walmart to pay their workers more, than they can shift their demand to a competitor that does this. Lets say Walmart does not change and it collapses, everyone losses their job. Well, the current competitor's infrastructure was geared for a particular % of the market share, which has now increased. In order to meet this shifted demand, they must build (or purchase some Walmart locations which would be at a discount) new stores and hire new workers. As one falls, another rises to fill the vacuum. The workers' unemployment, if at all, is temporary, also known as structural unemployment. In this example, even though the worker may experience a period of temporary unemployment during this restructuring, in the long-run their lives were made "better" (quotes because value is subjective) and customers are happier because their demands are being met.

To relate this to Uber. Lets say they did go bankrupt, the workers still have an abundance of skills known as human capital. Their skills are easily transferable and there is still a demand for RTS games. In addition, the employees could use their savings (assuming they don't consume 100% of their earnings) and personally accumulated capital equipment, also known as investing capital, to start a new company. Ideas and human capital do not die because a company goes bankrupt.

It shows, especially since you're entire argument is sophistry; relying on emotional arguments rather than logic or reason. Hope this helps your understanding of this common misconception.

there is absolutly no guarantee they get realised ... look at the latest CnC by friggin EA ... dead ... when shall be the next time until they try it again 5 years? 10 years?
and what happened to end of nations .. that could have been one of the more innovative games of the century?

yes the demand is there ... doesn´t mean bigger companies will try to satisfy that for when it isn´t as profitable to them ...
and being part of an indyteam makes developing games even more of a risk that could well ruin yourself ...
just because there is a free market there is no guarantee people with experience get to work on what they actualy want to but being told what to work on ...
and as such i find it very wrong of someone wanting to have a project fail that could very well be potentinaly inovate and improve the genre instead of it having it the same concepts and mechanics over and over ...
so again i don´t care about the free market and its unsure possibilities ...

Same five people? You obviously haven't been paying attention at all. The vast majority of the people talking about this subject, especially when you look beyond the forums to the rest of the internet.

A multiplayer game? You do realize that the majority of people who play PA play against the AI? This is not a primarily multiplayer game in the slightest.

Want the company to fail? Again. You are so way off base you obviously have no clue what you're talking about.

From a philosophical perspective, there is also no guarantee that it will not get realized; the future is uncertainty, there are never guarantees. As far as CnC and End of Nations, I do not know why they were unsuccessful but I am pretty certain that the reason for their failure was not because they were great games. If the games failed, I would presume it had a lot to do with unsatisfied customers. So customers voted with their dollars and did not buy their product. That is a good thing because resource can be utilized in efforts that are more desirable for everyone. In addition, just because it may take another 5-10 years before it is tried under that name (CnC series) does not mean the same concept will not be tried within the next 2-3 years under a different company/name.

You are correct to say that bigger companies may not try to satisfy the demand in this market segment. The segment is a niche market with highly volatile profit margins and customer base. There is a lot of risk with, potentially, low reward. Their resources are better deployed toward market-proven genres. This makes sense but this does not mean passionate, indie developers cannot work or build a successful company within this segment. Uber is literally an example of this. Not to mention, every business is a risk that could lead to financial ruination yet people start them and operate them each year.

As stated above, there is also no guarantee that it will not get realized. In general in life, there are no guarantees. These individuals could have under consumed (saved money) and deploy their capital towards starting a new business. You do not need to work for a company, companies do not start themselves, it takes people with an entrepreneurial spirit and savings (either invested capital or personal equity) to start their own business. Again, Jon Mavor and his concept of Planetary Annihilation is an example of this.

Again, there is no guarantees in any economy, especially a mixed or command economy which centrally controls the flow of capital to what en elite few believe the customer desires. Again, I hope this perspective is helpful.

no it isn´t ... what do you want to prove with what we have discussed at the very beginning?
you said you share the sentiment of wanting HR to fail

HR has a higher possibility of being actualy made in the first place ... THAT is the whole point ...
you basicly say you don´t want it to be made

the latest C&C aswell as end of nations weren´t not succesfull they didn´t even have the chance to show weither they were or not because they were not being made/done/finished anymore ...
PA got made with its basecontent released it is by no ones (that counts in the devs TOO!) definition finished
but it is made ..
HR has now too has the chance of being actualy made ...

just having the idea with all the other factors you mentioned makes it simply less likely for something to be done

with the kickstarter HR has a higher likelihood than just that which makes it while not 100% a more concrete thing that could happen ..