What happened?

Also what has happened to the Dev Streams or the Youtube channel?
Havnt seen a video for quite a while now.
Even the News only show patchnotes now

Spikes aren't the problem, we have plenty of spikes every Steam sale, the problem is player retention. I have loads of friends who've bought the game because it seems cool and was on sale, but I only have 3 who really play, compared to more than 10 who have bought it, and one of those only really plays when we all play. Even I've found myself not playing that much, compared to how hyped I was about this game. I think it has very niche appeal, and I do also think the RTS genre is on the decline generally. I've actually found myself playing Heroes of the Storm recently, in spite of my previous dislike of MOBAs, and it's definitely managed to grab me in a way PA hasn't. To be fair, there are very games that really manage to grab me for any period of time, I would say recently-ish it would be StarCraft 2, DayZ, Minecraft and Heroes of the Storm that have really drawn me in for significant amounts of time.

It's hard to say what exactly PA does wrong, I don't think it does much wrong tbh, but it lacks a bit of long term wow factor. I really enjoy it, but I can only really bring myself to play casually, it's not like StarCraft 2 where I obsessively laddered for weeks at a time when I started playing. In PA I like to play with friends sometimes, and drop planets on enemy commanders, but that's about it.

I think there are 2 main factors:
a) graphical effects in PA are only "okay". At least to me the smoking wreckages and fancy weapon effects from SupCom:FA are missing. SC2 has such effects as well.
b) the ladder system in SC2 is one of the best around. It is designed around making you play as much as possible. Currently the PA ladder system has a bunch of issues that basically make you play as few games as possible instead, see the other thread on it.

I think PA does nothing wrong overall, its a decent RTS.
The main proboblems i see for PA itself would be mainly about polishing.
- Orbital stuff feels weird in its current state
- Ground units feel like they force you to build a certain factory for specific things (Tanks have the only AA Ground unit, Bots have AO Ground unit)
- Terrain feels...flat
So stuff that can still change. i heard a while ago that there were experiments with planet shapes, donuts, potatoes etc, but i have never heard about it again. Then there was a mod that added features like cliffs and hills, but i cant find it anymore.
Also there were many unit suggestions in the backer forum back then, and i cant remember what the estimated amount of units was at that time, but i think it was much higher than what we currently have.

I have allready mentioned that RTS games are in general not that hyped anymore. There are a few players who love it, but most games today just use a working template and create a clone of it. Let it be a shooter, a moba, mmo or something else...but rts is rarely seen.
The X original clones of Battlefield or Call of Duty that they trow out every few months alone are a lot, not to mention clones from other developers.
Then there is the name. For example StarCrafts name alone hypes players, doesnt matter how bad it would be, there would be enough players to hype it, just because it is starcraft.

I for myself have spend so many hours in SupCom:FA back then. I modded the hell out of it. Obviously i was disappointed by SupCom2 then. So when i heard that there will be PA i was hyped again.
When i heard that @sorian is the guy behind the AI, i was even more hyped (i still fear the day when he releases Skynet "by accident"...)
But its still highly in-dev, so many things can change, so i play it rarely, just for a few days every few months to see what is new.

I guess of one the biggest positive things about most rts games is the modding community.
Thats why i still hope that the devs will consider taking ideas and code from modders, implement community made models or animations and those things. There are some brilliant modders out there.

Edit:

The unit models are "ok", lets be honest, normaly no player zooms in until he can see even the smallest detail. But as you said...the effects of FA were just fancy. The Nukes, the Explosions, the Wreckage...it just felt nice.
Im still in love with the bright glow of the Aeon nuke, i still love the effect when a Monkeylord swipes his laser across the battlefield or when Czar crashes into a base - erm i meant when Czar activates its huge beam and released swarms of aircrafts.
Sure, smashing a moon into a planet is nice...but it all looks the same. the cloud from the explosion just feels...boring. Annihilaser is fun though

Personally I feel the explosion effects in PA are better than FA's however there are better FA weapon effects.

We still have the same 2D sprite for the bot and tank pellet... I still don't get the fact tanks and bots have the same projectile- I'm fact most units use that same pellet. :S

yep, but the work by a few genius effects modders shows that PA supports so much more in terms of particle effects. Hopefully Uber will start to use their own system as much as modders do

Also I keep repeating myself but wreckages would really add a lot of appeal as well. PA feels "clean" to me. But a game about robots waging wars should feel really dirty once the fighting has started. But as it is now fights leave no trace apart from black scorch marks that are removed after 5 minutes for performance reasons.
SupCom:FA had wreckages and black scorch marks that stayed long enough to make me not realize they were removed at all.

Most people like to see stuff crash and burn and games like PA should try to cater for that as much as possible. Get people to play more games just because they want to crash more robots.

Id love to have the TA glass smash effect for units dieing to overkill back rather then SupCom turning into charred black metal.

The TA effects were wonderful, supcom always seemed to downplay them.

Maybe if Uber knows how to use python to make effects like @dom314

xd

Hehe awww thank you <333. Anyhow! I am pretty sure they would have some other tools to create the effects that are probably better than having to use python.

And I only use it because that is the easiest way to create particle animations . Oh and I'm lazy. Very lazy :3

a very important qualification for programmers. If they are not lazy they won't come up with the best way to save time. And if they are hyped about their projects they will work nonstop anyway.

So true x'D

scratch a, I don't think a matters much. TBH starcraft looks like **** to people who like respected proportions. I just cringe my teeth and soldier on whenever i see a marine, scv of better yet, siege tank of THOR come out of their respective factories.

why SC has sucess is indeed because of it's catering to the multiplayer scene.

on the flip side, here at uber the multiplayer scene are just a group of unwanteds, undesireds, the "minority" (i still refute they are the minority) that Uber have to "deal" with.

I wish it wasn't that way...

That isn't true at all. Uber has put in a lot of work to do things like the ladder or improve balance. But they cant ignore the single player players as well.

I think his is a really important point well worth re-iterating. In terms of the atmosphere of PA, to me the death of a single unit feels utterly inconsequential. In the grand scheme of things yes, this is a game of numbers so we should be expected to spend the rest of the game lamenting the demise of that poor ant. But at the same time, I cared a lot more about the loss of a peewee or a t1/2 tank than I do about any of the units in PA at the moment.

I feel like wreckage and terrain damage play a large part into that mentality because you are reminded of it after it happened.

Here's a different point of view...

I've been trying to get my son into PA for a while, and until recently with no success. He plays a lot of LOL, and Warframe, along with whatever is his latest phase. The other day, to my shock, I found him having a whale of a time using the death star laser jobby to fry a couple of AI's.
When I asked him why he decided to give PA a try, he said he wanted a straight forward build and kill game, against a decent AI, with no stress. In his words, 'to unleash my napoleonic complex'. He liked the fact he could 'sim city' a fancy base, and play about with the enormous toy box that PA has to offer.
I, myself, like the cut and thrust of a decent ranked 1V1. But it's not for everyone. In other words, and I think there are stats to back this up, the majority of players fall into the same group as the lad.

And by the way.... it did look like he was having fun.

yes it is.

multiple Uber statements have been very offensive to the multiplayer scene.

such things as "we're not developping the game for you, you aren't the majority"

"no ratings, we disagree with that"

" no global chat, we disagree with that too"

"no ladder, ooop, nevermind. Ladder"

Seeing the state of Galactic War, you could say they don't cater to the single player scene either, so who would you say they are catering to?

GW is being worked on as we speak. which isn't something that can be said for alot of the other element of PA.

they drew a bad straw on GW and they've finally decided to come round and take another look at it. it's not as they wish for it to be and they don't consider it complete.

yeah after letting GW unchanged for month while working on a ladder and multiplayer balance and stuff...

North Korea invaded. They're doing an emergency relocation of their offices.