TITANS Impressions

So you GUESSED it. And now you REFUSE to believe it was otherwise. You are really full of yourself.

If Uber never stated anything like that, its not a fact, and you can't say that it was for EMP nuke. Until Uber says anything about that, we have nothing. And like you said, its for distinction of commander explosion in game.

Sup Com has a lot of problems. Tech tree is more useless on low side the longer the game goes. T1 become useless really fast after early game, and later on its never used. On late game T3 and T4 is only choice, mostly T4.

Netcode is really bad, and one person with bad PC (and there are a lot of them) makes it impossible to play bigger than 5km map games.

And mostly, SupCom is DIFFERENT RTS, not better or worse. It can be worse at some things, but its just different. I would not call it the only RTS, what the f that does mean.

Just like we said, PA is INSPIRED by TA, not copied from it. Round maps make it way different, we also have so much different UI and eco and orbital and much more. If you would ever actually play TA, you would see how much slower it is, and different in feel. Gameplay of PA is way different, in many ways, like map, tech tree (right now we have Titans, so that adds up), orbital gameplay and game enders like smashing, laser planet, Ragnarok etc. Also Even economy is little bit different in energy and mass. Also you dont have different mass nodes like you do in TA. So just stop that comparing, and just accept that its INSPIRED, not COPIED. Just like Dota and LoL are symilar, but WAY different in feel.

Better one (this one made by @neutrino) - source

The problem with this forum, and the reason why is so damn boring, is that as soon as someone comes here with a fresh attitude expressing a valid opinion that differs from the mainstream (which means the general opinion of the 12 people or so that attend this forum... 'cos it's a very micro cosmos in here), he's bashed for no reason other than arrogance (and the inability to respect a different point of view).

Seriously guys. It's not a behavior to be proud of.

Are we in the same thread?

He made assertions that were factually untrue, OK, fair enough, we'll inform him of his errors so that he can refine his opinion based on correct information.

Except the response to this was either ignoring counterpoints, or flat out refusing to accept any evidence conflicting with a complaint that he wants to make.

"hey guys, this game is really being held back by the insistance of using cubed for the planets, really, this game just sucks because of this"

"Uhh. the planets are spheres. I think your complaint of the game is based on an assertion that doesn't actually exist"

"So anyway, the Planets being cubes is a real flaw, anyone should obviously see that the planets in the game should be spheres. This game being similar to, but not exactly identical to another game makes me angry!"

If anything, calling out others on arrogance or the inability to accept different opinions is ironic in the extreme.

I fully agree.
See the problem is that in the early days we really were told PA would be a lot like TA.
Uber eventually went a different route for a lot of elements, even though many choices were very questionable.
In the end a lot of people left for those reasons, never getting a proper explanation from Uber.
What remains is a few people who love PA the way it is, defending each and every design choice by Uber rigorously, scaring even more people away.

BmB has some very valid points in his original post, especially about the whole orbital stuff and how factory progression works and how spammy the game feels.
But there is the problem: The die-hard fans of PA are quick to chime in and say "just accept it this way", ignoring any reasoning one might have.

For those very reasons PA will in my book forever be "the game that could have been awesome".
Don't get me wrong - I still like the game, but it could have been so much better without too much effort.

I'm pretty sure everyone in this thread agrees with those points, at least definitely the orbital one. We don't agree with made up stuff though.

That may very well happen in other threads, but in no way is that what's happening here. The reason the majority are taking to task is on the basis that assertions were made that are untrue.

Looking at someone's reasoning, and then disagreeing with it, is not the same as "ignoring any reasoning one might have."

Time and time again, people argue that something about the game should be different, and often, we agree, but there are many different reasons why one might ultimately disagree. For instance, maybe we agree with an idea, but we disagree with implementation. Maybe we agree that implementing an idea would be cool, but disagree that it should be implemented, on the basis of budget or dev time constraints.

Having reasoning behind your opinions does not mean everyone should automatically agree with you, and if they don't then they haven't understood your reasoning.

That, and bunching everyone in as 'die-hard fans' and generalising their intentions and opinions is pretty unfair.

Totally in with your analysis, Ace. You put it down quite neatly, thanks for your feedback.

You can agree with the OP without bashing the people who disagree with the OP . . . by criticising them for bashing the OP.

Sorry.

Can you quote topics where Uber said it will be a lot like TA?

And, spammy point, game is that way because Uber made it that way on purpose. Its game about clashing big armies. Almost everything is making this game go on fast speed, all the game enders, all the eco, everything. ITS A DESIGN CHOICE. Its not a bug. Its not a flawed feature. Its a fast paced RTS. Everything that was done in the game is made this way, to make it fast, awesome and epic. How often game goes for longer than an hour? Not many times. And that is often good, because if game goes for longer than an hour, there is a point why, because opponents are so good, it takes time to defeat everything and make good strategy to kill commander. Not because game is slow and that how it always is. If units go slow or building army is slow, its making game longer for stupid reasons.

You know why me, we, just people on this forum like PA how it is or what is in game? Because we discussed game way before it was even working. We were on those forums and many people made so many arguments about every point of game. What we have here is not something Uber made up on a spot. Its community effort, Uber's experience and time put together. We are getting somewhere, Titans fixed A LOT of stuff community was saying on forums. A LOT. They just needed time to polish those ideas into actual game. Sure, you say you dont need effort for good ideas, but what I see is 10 months of good effort is needed to give us pretty damn good expansion that fixes many aspects of game, and expands on good stuff. So its not that easy, just because you think so.

I think as a rule, we could all do with being a little more respectful to one another in this thread - that's both sides. If your post contains "You are [insert adjective here]", that's probably not relevant to the point you're trying to make.

Have a look at the old livestreams. They listed plenty of points that never got implemented the way they said. I am very sure Mavor said (don't remember the exact words) "it will be more like Total Annihilation than Supreme Commander".
Also, there were plenty of old reddit posts about features like wind generators, geothermal vents etc.. which never found their way into the game.

First of all, fast is not equal to epic, quite the contrary in fact. Huge slow Titans are epic - fast dox which die to being tickled are not.
Second - yeah it is a design choice, one that made many players leave this game because there is no emotional connection to the paper units we have. This was a huge criticism point from the community which was brought up again and again until those people eventually simply gave up and left.

The length of a game has no relation to how tanky units are (except maybe for the commander which is tanky enough to survive an early rush) or how many you build.

I doubt that the community's feedback has changed more than 5% of the game until release.
Like I said - plenty of negative yet constructive feedback about all kinds of things which Uber chose to ignore.

Yes I agree.

It would have been easy if not for the tons of poor design decisions early on. There are (were) mods out there that improve the game up to a point where I wonder why anyone would play vanilla.
Sure, it's also about design choices, but those choices scared MANY people away.

Just google it, really it's that simple.

Or make a search on the campaign page for PA on Kickstarter, for "Total Annihilation". You'll find few sentences that refer to it:

"If you love to play games like Total Annihilation your options are pretty limited. This is where Planetary Annihilation comes in. It is meant to be a truly innovative spin on what RTS games can and should be."

"Planetary Annihilation brings Real-Time Strategy to a new generation of gamers in a way they’ve never been seen before: Total Annihilation-inspired gameplay on a planetary scale."

"Planetary Annihilation’s rendering engine is brought to you by the team that developed the rendering engines for Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander."

"Jon (Mavor) wrote the graphics engine for Total Annihilation and was the lead programmer on Supreme Commander."

"Steve Thompson got his start in 1997 at Cavedog Entertainment, where he worked on Total Annihilation."

And here a bit of old forum-hype for the incoming Kickstarter campaign for Planetary Annihilation with how people have been lead to perceive the concept and premise of the game: http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42937

It seems easy years later denying that PA has been promoted as the truly spiritual successor of TA. Fortunately the net has a good memory and one can simply google it and find out by himself.

Not trying to be abrasive or anything here, but reading the above quotes i'm trying to understand exactly what you are attempting to argue here.

Half those quotes mention that they have devs from that game in this team (So that is their prior experience).

The closest quote you have to say that they said it would be like TA is (Planetary Annihilation brings Real-Time Strategy to a new generation of gamers in a way they’ve never been seen before: Total Annihilation-inspired gameplay on a planetary scale.") the rest are all irrelevant. And yes the gameplay is already TA inspired (for one look at the eco system). Nowhere do they claim that they will copy TA unit for unit or balance wise. All they have said is that it is inspired by games like TA.

Thinking that "...the rest is irrelevant" is rather naive. It's called marketing, Nicb1. PA had been marketed as spiritual successor of TA, and it was intentional.

Otherwise it'd hardly got funded on KS.

Another individual earlier stated how supreme commander was heavily marketed as a spiritual successor to TA and yet the gameplay was quite different. Supcom appears to be a fairly loved game still.

Your point is?

To state that it would have not been funded on kickstarter is a fallacy as well.

Edit:
Anyway offtopic I'm still trying to work out what is being argued here. I'm running off the assumption that you are claiming that the devs said they would essentially copy ta, balance,eco,unit and mechanics wise. Correct me if I'm derping hard.

You are a cat. HA!

Being a lot like TA and being inspired by TA is a different case. I never said PA was not inspired by TA.

1. Yes, its true, PA is more like TA than SupCom. So? It was INSPIRED by it, it was not copied or same as TA. I think people don't know what "inspired" and "spiritual successor" means.

Were those reddit topics by Uber devs?

Also, pre-release design has a lot of stuff you say you will do, try it, and then disregard it, because it does not work or is flawed. So whatever devs said on livestreams does not have to go into game, and nobody is saying it will. Devs REALLY don't like to make promises. Ask Jables, he will never promise you anything, because people think its easy to make something that works well into game. ITS NOT. Making game is not magic, and effort and work that go into making something stupid like big Titan is far more than people think.
People think that work Uber did making this expansion was not worth a couple bucks and should be free! People are insane!

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2. If you have 200 Dox and attack horde of units with them, it can be epic. Anyway, its really up to person and likes. Not a topic of argument.

PA is not about units like it often is in other RTS, I really like that I dont have to care THAT MUCH about single units. PA is about armies, and making them slow and tanky does not mean it will work or be good for gameplay. More tanky units means more micro and it might slow gameplay. If you make units more tanky, you have to make everything more tanky. Slows down gameplay, does not help that much for PA.

I would say PA is like Dota, units are more of glass cannon, and PA is far more punishing if you choose wrong units for battle. I don't want units to work like in Warcraft 3, if you dont know what I mean, watch some competetive matches of W3.

And what the hell emotional connection means? Its an army.

PA has character kind of, units have they own sounds and talk, are more or less unique. Uber tries, and with Titans you can see that even more.

If people gave up, they never wanted to play this game, they wanted something different, if they dont like those design choices. They choice, PA is not going to be perfect RTS for everyone, and no game can be.

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3. I said more or less that slow gameplay, slow units and slow eco make game longer. Just like in SupCom some units are slow, and it takes time to go from one point to another, because maps are big and unit slow. It does not help to make game short.

Tanky units can mean more micro, AND longer games if it takes more time than is needed to kill enemy, just because. Tankyness does not mean units have more emotions, or whatever you mean by emotional connection.

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4. I doubt its a small amount, just by looking at Titans and what we talked on forums before release and what we got. But talking about numbers is stupid, there was used community feedback on Titans and on Classic, and you can see it in many places. Even some mods (not many) were used in game.

Negative or any feedback does not mean its any good or that it should be used.

Feedback is just feedback, but its still Uber's game, and those are smart people that made games like this before. They use something, test it, and if its not good, it does not go into game. Some ideas are not as good as they sound at first.

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5. Ok.

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6. What mods? And really, its not so easy, and even so, people make mistakes. Nothing is perfect at first, and it needs polish. And Uber wants to polish, as we can see from free updates.

Just like I said before, its not going to be perfect game for everyone, not all will love it. Design is how it is and its not gonna change that much. If people run away, we can't stop it. We would had to make different game altogether.

Yes, sure. If fact it's called Planetary Annihilation. Perhaps for a reason... who knows?

Yes I have to agree, come on guys it was obviously intended to be a spiritual successor to TA. Don't pretend like it's not, actually argue with how "spiritual successor" doesn't mean "exact copy" 'kay?