PA - Game Experiences

list of bugs that are constantly occurring for me (wether in the client or in the actual "game") -->

random bsods
reconnecting to games dropped from won't work in 50% of the cases
units won't move/shoot/build to orders
unit's just stop doing what the're supposed to for no reason (also build/shoot/move)
unit's stuck in the terrain
commander stuck in the hills at startpoint
some ressources still inaccesible
assisting won't work if the assisting unit is not in the range of the other unit building
assist hitboxes are far to big in general, u cant move units close to buildings without assisting with them by accident
serious mouse selection bugs, selections either wont work at all or cancel in progress of a selection
ships cruising through landparts


game instability

ridiculous..., about 30-50 % of all games joined or created crash to bsod.

performance

a complete joke, dreadful performance issues for no comprehensible reason. graphics suck anyways, textures are way worse then the old total annihilation from 1997!! 40 fps for the start but quickly dropping to 10-15 fps if i am going to spam units! seriously?! (spamming units is the deal with this game or am i missing something?)

but the one thing that annoys me the most is the way units move. the pathfinding is simply beyond belief. u can barely control your army, makes the game unplayable combined with the performance issues.


and on top of that bullshit, missing things that should be in the game but are not.

no altitude difference in the terrain
no special units (mobile radar for example)
no gamebalance at all
no experimental units (tier3)
no factions with their common advantages and disadvantages
no hovercraft units
no research


iam a total ta fan, but THIS is a complete joke.

i as a dev would be ******* embarrassed by this.
face it, your game is unplayable most of the times, due to performance, due to orderbugs, due to bsods, due to other ****, and units are doing random things or **** up in the terrain.
seriously, what were you thinking?

yes, it is alpha, but release isnt that far away and i simply can't see this game getting done to it's date. For god's sake, its moddable at least, that's the only good news so far, so people can repair what has been fucked up badly.

have a nice day

a angry customer






EDIT ---> SO FAR COLLECTED FOOTAGE

I'd be curious to know what were you expecting from Alpha, would help set the context.

Mike

i was expecting that i could move units..just for example

a strategic game with my army not doing what i say is absolutely pointless, even in alpha.

Could you provide your dxdiag? I'm curious about your system specs. We're well aware that performance isn't great at the moment - something that will get a lot more attention in the next few weeks, as well as throughout beta. But knowing if you're on a top of the line machine or a netbook would help to understand your experience vs. your expectations.

Sorry the experience hasn't been great yet. All I can say is it will get better. This is a real alpha, not what most people see as an alpha. There is a lot of optimization yet to be done.

But, Gameplay isn't what you refine in Alpha, it's hard it not possible to do that effectively when you're in the middle of implementing all the different features of a game.

Many of the things you list are the kinds of things you generally don't see until mid-late beta/release. Also it seems you have a lot of assumptions about things that are going to be in the game, all of these things;

no experimental units (tier3)
no factions with their common advantages and disadvantages
no research

Were never part of PA's Design, if you check the Confirmed Features Sticky you'll be able to find Dev comments on these and many other features.

Other like these;

no altitude difference in the terrain
no special units (mobile radar for example)
no gamebalance at all
no hovercraft units

Are just not the things a Dev worries about in Alpha, also there are altitude differences, try hopping into the planet generator and messing around with the sliders on a small planet and you should be albe to see hill as you pan around the planet.

As for Performance, well nobody is getting perfect performance, but that is just part of the Alpha process, BSODs are potentially indicative of some issues with your hardware/drivers. If you are unhappy with performance the best thing to do is ask for help and share whatever info you have liek in a DxDiag and such actively to help Uber out.

Mike

Removed because I'm not a hateful person and that was making me feel bad...

My point stands though.

here it is..

2600k , 16 gigs of ram and a hd 7970 lcs should be enough to run it. thats top hardware.

no problem what so ever with all of my other games. They are running perfect.

that is no problem with my hardware, the game performs dreadfull with all kind of systems.
my laptop which has even a better cpu (i7-990x) and nice gpu's (6970mobile), also drops to 15 fps.
friends of mine which have equivalent or even better hardware than me also suffer from this.

this is not a local problem on my machine.





i really dont want to start quoting posts in here. but lets answer it in general:

i paid over 80 euros for a game where bugexperiences are so intense, you can barely play, its that bad. doesnt feel nice, simply as that. wouldnt be so bad, if the release wasnt just month away, right?

Well, things improve incrementally, and in the future, we, and others, will be a lot more inclined to discuss things with you when you don't feel the need to swear.

We've tried to make it clear that Alpha is for those with a high tolerance to bugs, performance issues, and random strangeness. Compared to the first alpha build, even the performance is significantly improved. But we have a long ways to go.

If you have decided this isn't for you, please PM me and we'll see what you can do. It seems like you didn't quite realize what you were signing up for with a true alpha build of a game.

I have a hilarious glitch caught on video I'd like to share but I need to increase my post count first.

How many posts until I can create a thread?

@ garat

thx for answering in my thread first at all. Feels good to get an answer from someone that is deeply involved with the project. it also shows that u guys care.

i knew what i was signing up for, definetly and the amount of buggy games i played in my life is sufficient, let me tell you that.



But let me get to the point where this whole game really angers me.

gamers that are playing your game build up expectations, also for patchlogs and all the things the devs write down in there. we take them seriously.

patchlogs that tell us that the pathing (for example) has been improved, won't do it for us, when the actual experience ingame clearly shows that nothing has been improved.

why are u writing it in patchlogs when it obviously isnt the truth? i would really like to know that.


one clever hint --> dont write it in there when the changes dont affect the gameplay at all. People test a patch to see the differences in gameplay...they also wanna get an idea of what the devs can do. how they improve something and how fast a game develops. if u write something in patchlogs and nothing changed, people will download the patch, play it and finally be dissapointed for a good reason.

When did you pick up the Alpha? Or rather, how far back does your experience with the Alpha go?

Mike

You should be able make a thread. There is no posts minimum requirement that I know of. you should be able to find post new thread button or user name (your handle). click on conversations and then click on start new conversations.

i cant tell u exactly but i've seen a few patches so far and some of the improvements stated in there were simply incorrect.

for example "pathfinding"

in busy games units barely move or react to orders. totally broken gameplay. it cant get worse, seriously, what should the units do instead of nothing to be even more useless? Shoot at my own base? Tell me cause i dont have an answer for that.

To be frank a couple patches isn't enough, as Garat saida nd I can confirm, the game has coem a loooong way since the first build, back then units weren't even smart enough to avoid crevices and would gleefully fall in.......if you could get a game to launch.

I think you're just reading into what the patch notes say too much. They aren't lying when they say pathing has improved. Improved doesn't imply anything other than that it works better than before, it doesn't imply they fixed anything in particular(after all they never say they 'fixed' pathing) and just because a particular issue isn't fixed doesn't mean that progress hasn't been made elsewhere or that the improvements are always 'visible' to the player. If they improve the performance of the pathfinding code it doesn't mean the pathfinding itself is better, it just uses less system resources to run for example.

To be frank, I'd have to say you're the one setting up all these expectations, and if not it's certainly not Uber's fault.

Mike

I'm sorry to bring this to you but, you don't seem to know how to handle alpha software properly. Your expectations are all twisted.

You should also do some research on what is supposed to be in this game and what not. There is a full feature list about this and a ton of other threads.

It seems like alpha just isn't for people like you. You'd be suprised how amazing games looked in their alpha state.

A small note on pricing. You didn't pay 80 euros to play this game, you paid 80 euros to fund it. It just so happened that you got an early copy of the game as well.

And trust me, the game has improved. And if you wait for a bit, it'll improve more, especially once they get into beta and start working full time on performance improvements.

thx dude, but as the total annihilation fan that i am since 1997, i know perfectly good what is supposed to be in this kind of game and what is not.

u still cant get a simple game to launch, what improvements have been made? i am more busy starting the game over and over again than actually playing it. thats ridiculous. 17 crashes today in 2 hours gameplay. wow...

when patchlogs tell me that the pathfinding has been improved, i expect the pathfinding to work better in the way it functions. Simple as that.

Something completely broken over weeks and month, now using less system ressources to run it in the messed up way it is, is an improvement to you ? really?
Who the **** would programm a whole week to get broken routines work more economical, when the actual function is still messed up? this makes no sense. first comes the function, then comes the finetuning.

ell your experience certainly doesn't reflect mine then I haven't had nearly teh same level of issues, oh sure still the occasional crash and such, but 17 in a row really sounds like something else is having an effect and compounding the issue to me.

It does fall under the definition of improvement yes. But specifics don't really matter as Uber doesn't provide those, so long as there is an improvement to pathfinding overall it fits. I think that you should ask for is more detailed patch notes rather than trying to scream and shout about them being full of lies when they really aren't.

Also your last sentence is pretty funny in that is the basic Description of the Alpha and Beta periods of game development.

I suggest you take up Garat's offer if you haven't already and re-evaluate the game after release sometime in December(maybe).

Mike

i would be ashamed to write such things down, when they obviously arent improved. Improvement has a clear definition.

Yes, alpha - functions, beta - finetuning.

But now we have alpha - broken functions, beta - finetuning and in a few weeks it will be beta - still broken funktions - no time left for finetuning. And that is the big problem with PA.

We are in the last days of alpha and fundamental functions are still messed up. Units wont build/move/shoot proper . That is something quite ******* basic with the game, don't you think?

i would have had no problems at all if the game would have just looked like sh*t, but with the gamemechanics working in a proper way.

but this isn't the case here. The game is released in december right? 4 month left right? 4 month left for the dev team and units wont proper move in the terrain, this leaves gamers clearly in doubts... for obvious reasons.

there are so many things messed up with this game, i wouldnt even know where to start with. all this problems, completely gone in 4 month to face a good release?

that sir, is quite an optimistic thought..

And yet;

The fact is that by the definition of improvement it is the truth, Pathing has improved and continues to do so, you just have a small frame of reference and not all improvements are visible to the player.

Mike