Indie Game Developer James Green's thoughts on the Titans backlash

Yes, 3 times, saying it was unplayable, not fun, nobody online and abandoned by the devs. Starforge... ARG! Never forget!

Geers, full Horizons price is 40£ here. -10£ makes 30£, which to me is the price of a full, brand new game, and a lot of money just to be able to land a ship on a barren rock and drive a buggy around. Yes, there's more subtle changes, but I was merely using it as an example to point out Planetary Annihilation: Titans isn't such a bad deal at all.

Without discount? 40£? That's a lot of money for any expansion, small or not.

I'd rather buy four packs of PA:Titans.

Not sure what youre talking about exactly here, but Starforge was developed by a bunch of different people. James Green is known for the game Air Mech.

EDIT:
I have yet to read the entire thread so I may be missing something here.

Yeah missing something here but that's okay. I was talking about early backing and stuff

I like this part.

It's just fine to write off that whole part of the story where they said "We're not like the other guys!" "We will not make you pay for DLC to continue to play multiplayer with everyone else."

They didn't. Titans and PA players can play with each other.

Please give me better idea how to profit from hard work they did, and not exclude some people at all. I think what they did is more than good.

Yeah to echo what Geers said, if you look at the game browser, Uber were very careful to *fully integrate* the online component of both version. PA:Titans players can see and join standard PA games without doing anything special at all. Titans players can also specifically host for classic PA by switching mode in settings if they want to.

Whilst I now have titans, I've joined a few classic games already (probably about half of my games since the update) simply because I like both version and I would rather get into a game mode / setup I like than wait ages specifically to play with the Titan class units.

I've also had comments from classic players that games in classic are filling up quicker now since the launch of titans due to the fact that there are more players. Add to that the fact PA and PA:Titans use the same server back end and engine (meaning bug fixes and improvements to things like UI and such are all automatically ported to PA as well) strikes me long term support for PA online is pretty much a given from this point as the new game supports the older one.

Frankly It's a better approach than say SupCom FA was (which had it's only, completely separate multi player which wasn't linked to original SupCom).

I really don't get all the rage. You pay the price for a DLC addon, but only now it is also sold as a seperate game. But if you don't have the original you pay the full price for both. Soo basically a GOTY version as with every major game re-release.... They have even made it so that you can play with non Titans owners as if PA:Titans is the same game. Just like the SupCom2 dlc which you could switch off.

Ahwell, just another week of signing towards the internet I guess.

Tl;dr: They gave it to kickstarter backers for free, even those that paid $20, while early access backers are required to pay again, even those that paid $90. That's the short of it. People are also not pleased with the original PA being pulled from the market and a bunch of other things.

If you genuinely want to know it's very easy to find out why, see Steam Forums, or even some posts around these forums.

@Elate

Say you needed money to start a company, some people believed in you at the begin and give you money, then later you have a company setup and doing business with a promising and proven produce but need some more in investment to take it to the next level. More people see what you have and say yeah I'll invest in that.

If each investor where to get shares in your company would you give the second set of investors shares at the same percentage per dollar as the first group?

If you don't understand the difference here, I think we should all give up on trying to help you.

sorry? that sounds like the place where you'd want equal treatment for both groups? actually no. you'd want a better treatment for the part of both groups that payed more than the rest. if someone of the first group payed 4.25 times as much as someone from the second group he should get 4.25 as much return. and if someone from the second group 4.25times as much as someone from the first group he should get 4.25 more return.

so please? you just supported @Elate argument

Your example is poor, investors are in no way similar to customers, and as Prudentia pointed out, those that pay more would get the better treatment. Either way, kickstarters are not investors, they aren't getting money back from the project, nor should they expect to, which is kinda the whole issue. They're getting something back which was not stated when they backed the project, but other customers are not, even though they paid more.

How about this, say I have some people that commission me, some pay in advance, some pay when I give them a concept of the finished piece.

Later down the road I decide to give the ones that paid earlier a free commission, but I charge those that paid half way through, though I give them a discount.

Know what would happen? I'd have a lot of very angry clients because I showed favoritism towards some.

I am an EA buyer. When I think about it, I don't think that gives me the right to getting the expansion for free. I paid to have early access, and I paid to support Uber in creating the game that they presented with the kickstarter. And that's what I got.

Anyway, I actually agree with you, Kickstarters and EA should not be treated differently. But instead I believe Kickstarters should not have gotten this expansion for free.

Yeah that's what I've said from the start. I don't think anyone should have gotten it for free. As it stands now I'm just waiting for word from the devs as to what they think of the whole matter.

i'm pretty sure there'll never be ANY comment... rule #1 of PR: if it's not promotional and/or positive, never say it. excuses don't exist, bad decisions never happened

But I prepared the sacrificial dev summoning altar and everything man..

Well it's the weekend so you'll have to wait until Monday (well depending on time zones, so ~14 hours at least) if you hope to see a response.

Personally I think it would be good to have an explanation for this stuff, or even an apology, but don't expect anything else because they can't change their minds on the EA vs KS treatment... that would be even more unfair to the EA people who bought it on a discount already. "I FAKING BOUGHT THE EXPANSION, AND THEN IT'S FREE FOREVER THE NEXT DAY????? WTF MANE"

Although honestly, from a company standpoint, I doubt any kind of apology will be made for the EA backers. Companies don't like to be wrong admit they made a mistake.

Still, this crap is out of hand.

As much as companies don't like to admit it when they make mistakes, generally the reaction when they do admit it can be very positive. It calms people down, it shows them that hey, it's still humans running things, not CORPORATE ROBO-LAWYERS, and y'know, it just generally goes down well.

Aye I was discussing what course of actions Uber could take at this point. Giving EA backers it for free as you said, probably wouldn't work. Still, it'd be nice to see some of those guys that laid down $90 get it.