Forged Alliance and PA: Titans

I didn't really have an internet presence in the SupCom days, but when Forged Alliance came out, what happened? Did the SC community die immediately? Did Chris Taylor start receiving letter bombs? Did everyone start calling Gas Powered Games literally Hitler? How long did it take before everyone migrated to FA? What was FA's original launch price? Did anyone throw up a big fuss back then?

It's not the greatest comparison but I can't think of a better case study.

I honestly don't understand the whole issue with PA: T expansion properly. Why the rage over $13? (Apparently thats expensive according to certain individuals).

The way I see it kickstarters funded the game back when it was purely a concept. Steam Early access no matter the price paid when there was an actual game to play and proof that the game was in development. Steam buyers did are not the individuals that made the idea possible the way I see it.


And honestly I'm legitimately interested. If you were the devs how would you fix this whole issue now?
It's not easy by any stretch of the imagination. (The only explanation I won't buy is "The expansion should be free since the game was never completed". I'm sorry thats a bullshit argument if I ever heard one).

Sorry @Geers had to vent a bit and was just on your thread at the time.

EDIT:
Oh and this is just a general post not directed at you @Geers.

I was not active in the GPG forums back then, but in GPGnet it felt like everyone loved it. I certainly did. I remember harassing a worker in a games store to search their daily delivers of new games for FA on release day.

Is there an archive of those forums somewhere? Would be interesting to dive into those.

I think GPG is dead, I cant find the forums anymore.

What does that picture mean?

Don't know if serious or not.
But anyway the pokemon is slowpoke (I think) basically inferring about you being a bit slow on the uptake (the news is very old in other words).

...

I'm so sorry but I just couldn't resist.

(it's a joke. No hate malice intended Quests)

Well, after Googling it appears the company is bought by Wargaming.net or something, and that Chris Taylor is working there on a secret project. Supreme Commander 3?

Half Life 3 confirmed.

yep people are wondering since a while what it is going to be.
Add in: Wargaming outbid Uber for the TA IP. So now wargaming spent 250k$ I think on getting the rights to the name "Total Annihilation"...

So turns out, I was there People who bought FA we more or less similar to TITANS players. Happy with the additions. Forums had a lot of people who hadn't bought it mad at having to pay for new content and splitting of community, but forums were a smaller thing back then, so the voice was not as loud as it would be now days. Also, as both were boxed copies only (steam was a brand new baby system and devs weren't thinking it was always worth the effort to port the game to it yet), the outlook of stand alone xpack was a much more normal thing.

lol. About FA.

FA.

xD

the problem is, that everyone backing in kickstarter was rewarded, while some people only paid the same amount of money or even more few weeks later and didnt get the update. If everyone had to pay 12€ maybe noone would get angry.

on the other hand Uber always promised free updates for PA in the future INCLUDING content, and Titan is just an update with new content. it may be a big update, but it still is an update.

This explains some of the anger. It's uneven treatment on the on hand and on the other it's a bit odd to sell an "update" that was included in kickstarter and early access promises.


Except for this the update is huge and maybe comparable to Forged Alliance (although FA changed more than PA Titans)

I never played TA, so I do not really know how that game was. My first RTS was C&C3 Tiberium Wars and played all C&C games onward (RIP C&C), right before Supcom 2 was released I got into Supcom and FA, where I saw the Kickstarter announcement in Supcom2 news on Steam.

I'd love to see the story of Supreme Commander continue.. I miss Rhianne Burke. Sad she died.

I really think it is a missconception that Uber promised free updates for PA and failed to deliver. PA had a ton of patches. It still will get bugfixes as well.

Uneven treatment yes, though one would think that somebody is capable of realizing that Uber is actually pretty awesome for giving away so many free copies to their ks backers. I am sure if they were not doing that the situation would be the same, but you would have a few more angry people who go "I backed this on kickstarter and now I have to pay again"...

That crazy Cybran guy from SupCom2 was great tho!

To me this is all just another page on the great PA case study for why the "pay more to get in earlier" model of early access is a bad idea. It just sets a developer up for this kind of ragefest because whatever you do, people will justify their ridiculous purchase decisions with "this game will be so good it will have been worth it".

yep. I totally agree by now that at least early access in one way is a bad idea.
On the other hand Kickstarter + early access was the only way to get PA done.

:s