Beta is childsplay compared to alpha

In alpha it was common to have 50 t 1 unit producing structures with 4 to 8 t 2 unit producing structures with huge armies fighting all across the map by the twenty minute mark. This leads to epic fast passed games. This is also a single players production not a team of people.

In beta with a team of three on a large planet you can barely match the production of what a single player could do in alpha.

This tremendously reduces the skill ceiling of the game. Which I think is bad for competitive play.

I love all the additions we have and will see in the beta. I just hope the economy reverts back to alpha.

Also with the changes we see far less targets of opportunity and less of a reward to higher apm more mechanically sound players.

It also becomes impossible to spread across the planets as fast along with obtaining access to higher tier structures at the same time.

I really hope uber doesn't have the intentions of slowing the game this much while making the army engagements so puny in comparison to alpha.

If this is the direction we are headed I can see most of the better players splitting off to various mod versions of the game that are faster paced and larger scale.

I would love uber s ladder to be the dominate ladder in the competitive scene but it won't happen if they stay this course with game speed and economy management.

Beta feels like a tutorial in comparison to the epic scale, and speed of alpha.

I dont think it reduces the skill ceiling, it just forces another type of gameplay. You cant make calls on it currently due to the uniformity of metal across a planet, so give them some time yet.

In my view alpha was something you could consider an almost finished game in its own rights (it needed more units and bugfixes, but it was pretty damn good with a single planet), but now with all these features that are barely implemented, and no decent way of moving between planets, it has the feel of a half finished game.

I know what you mean, if originally it had just been presented as a large scale RTS but on a spherical Map I think it still would have done fairly well, and the Alpha showed it off pretty good for an Alpha.

But with the stuff introduced so far(and with more stuff to come) I think you'll see the Beta really change over time. Neutrino has recently commented that he's thinking about maybe reworking the way Metal placement is handled, and with the fleshing out of the unit roster, overall balance reworks and more coming down the pipe, it'll change yet again more than once I'd guess before release.

And god knows what's in store for PA post-release.......

Mike

Hopefully back to the large large games we were able to have in alpha.

No, the large games were detrimental to raiding and basically made games too linear and based on pure macromanagement. This isn't supposed to be SimCity.

Two points:

1. There will be sliders to control resource quantity. Don't panic, zerg games can still happen.

2. There will also be multiple planets in a system - it is likely that some will have more resources than others, making them more worth fighting over.

Large games allowed for more harassment in more locations..........and I was under the impression this was suppose to be a huge scale macro game......

And yet you're measuring player skill with APM?

I am fully aware that this system is still very much a work in progress. But at the same time the current implementation is such an overkill that it really ruins the gameplay that the alpha allowed for.

Why do people assume this? Skill is measured by the ability to make correct split second decisions, and that is synonymous with apm. Skill is not taking 5 minutes in deciding whether to send units east or west from your base, it is deciding whether 1 group of mexes would be a better target than another group due to enemy army concentrations, expectations of what are at thos mexes and other things. It is wrong for you to say that apm is not involved with skill, because even if it is indirect, it is still related.

what about long term strategy? Slower pace makes you think further ahead.

Well I really liked to look at the mass spam of alpha. Now the game seems very much slower and on a smaller scale.

I never said that it is not involved with skill - I was responding to the implications of:

I appreciate that APM is a result of better, more ingrained knowledge of the game, but I just got the impression that JOG was implying that high APM itself should be rewarded, which it shouldn't in isolation.

Smaller games allow for earlier and more potent harassment, relative to the forces you have available, and your units will spend less time circling around your opponent's base to attack his flank. That means you'll have less time to spend exclusively on early macro.

That said, don't be too worried. Metal placement and economic balance is still very much a Work In Progress. There aren't even wind and solar generators yet. There is probably much spam yet to come.

I agree completely. Less metal can be fine, but sometimes we want massive battles. I know the slide bar of how much metal you can put on a planet will be in the game, it's just we need it NOW. I think, for now, competitive PA is dead. Imagine judging spawns where it takes you up to 5 minutes to get your basic 4 metals and 1 energy because of walking

Removed, as I've discussed with the person I responded to elsewhere.

I love those threads. Game is in developement. Game doesn't get changed in some while. People get used to how the game is. Now game gets changed. End of the woooooorld!

Basically you refuse to adapt during the ongoing developement of a game. I predict many more dissapointments in your future.

Five minutes? Five minutes!? What the heck is wrong with you people? I admit I've only seen five maps so far, but none of them took that long for basics. Either you're playing very differently, or I'm receiving very different maps.

It's not that we refuse it, it just makes the game worse. We want fast paced massive destruction, not long commander walks. Having scarce metal can be good, but not every single map. Everyone wants a challenge, that is up to your opponent. Spawns are just completely unfair now. Your opponent can spawn on a cluster of maybe 6 metal and you're over there doing a 25 second walk just to get 1 metal, then another 25 second walk to get your second.

In smaller games you can't harras as much because the enemy is always in the correct location thus making harassment options forced toward heavier handed more all insh type attacks.