2 months to release and the game feels like pre-alpha and is a letdown. Please delay the release.

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by larse, October 27, 2013.

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  1. skywalkerpl

    skywalkerpl Member

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    1. It's a matter of experience.
    2. Sure. But they aren't developing a "fart" app either.
    3. Obviously you have no idea what happened in MWO and SotS2. Long story short - these games failed to great degree mostly because devs weren't listening to the players telling them that the game is nowhere near being ready for release. Now SotS2 developers are near bankrupt, and MWO devs just run another crowd-funding campaign to support the game - Project Phoenix. Meanwhile it still doesn't fulfil promises made in initial game announcement or resolves major gameplay issues that existed even back in Alpha version. So there are hundreds if not thousands of players who could be loyal gamers but got scared off by underwhelming initial state of the game. But both of these are very long topics for separate discussions.
  2. paulusss

    paulusss Active Member

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    Please stop saying were complaining because were not, were stating facts and yeah you may disagree with them, be my guest.

    Were just asking the devs to clear the air, give information about the future, what is going to happen? because were all pretty mutch concerned!

    End of story.
    bradaz85 likes this.
  3. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    can YOU tell how much resources those companies have to get/spent more time further developing the game?
    how can you as the Player exactly determine weither a Company can release their game later or not ?
    you are just a Player, you are not part of the Company nor managment in question, there is no way for you to get to know what the exact resources are and/or what has been discussed outside the Forums to come to a decision ...
    weither you yourself consider a game not releaseready or not still may not affect the developers final decision at all ...
    people easily say"OH the devs didn´t listen to the Players" but there are many more factors then just the current state of the game deciding weither or not to release or delaying it adding more feeatures or optimising stuff and so on ...

    everything else is just assumtions and hairsplitting, unless there is clear evidence ...
    those games failed to deliver on release? fine then they failed ... nothing realy to do about it
    they used their resources wrong and made the wrong decisions maybe on the wrong Project entirely ... or did they?
  4. skywalkerpl

    skywalkerpl Member

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    Dude, you're jumping waaaaay out of your league.
    I never said nor implied anything like you suggest. And I'm not just a player - I happen to work as a software engineers on a comparable projects to PA, and got plenty of experience with other games seeing their failures, and seeing how some (mind you: not all) of the schemes that I seen there appear to be repeated in here.

    Besides - you most likely have even less idea about anything you speak of than I do, so why you prevent anyone from discussing how the game feels like a let down (for OP) or how it feels like an Alpha instead of anything close to being complete (for me) ?
  5. ghost1107

    ghost1107 Active Member

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    At the moment it is impossible for all of us to know how far the game is completed. Uber has been seen that much in the forums for several weeks. There haven't been any large game updates with new features.

    I assume the dev-team is working hard. But unless Neutrino or someone else from Uber posts a message we are all just speculating.

    If the game will be succesfull or not, I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see. The only thing we can do is: be supportive, report bugs and trust Uber.

    Please be more possitive and don't condem the game before it's even out of beta.
    ace63, stormingkiwi, bradaz85 and 2 others like this.
  6. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    and? still same question ... do you have any exact inside of the resources and discussions of uber outside of the forums to tell them weither they should and CAN delay release or not?

    i don´t ... i commented on the subjekt of people wanting the devs to dealy the release ...
    yeah the game OBVIOUSLY isn´t complete and wont be even on release, yet there still is a timewindow for it to be releaseworthy ..
    and i just asked People to be a bit more patient at least for another month
    Last edited: October 28, 2013
  7. skywalkerpl

    skywalkerpl Member

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    As far as I can see - noone has any doubts about that :)
    I would be much more positive if they'd move release date by at least 2 months. For a start.

    You don't? Cause from your passive-aggressive tone in every post you made in that topic I see nothing else but an attempt of forcing everyone to stop discussing this topic entirely.
    NOONE argues that this game is completed. That's not an issue. And I have no slightest idea how are you so certain that there's a time window till end of December to have it complete.
    Could you please, explain that? What makes you so sure of that? Because surely I hope you got a basis for such a strong statements and it's not just a blind faith - it's not a church after all.
    This would be much more constructive to the discussion than an exchange of pleasantries.
    stormingkiwi and bradaz85 like this.
  8. dukyduke

    dukyduke Active Member

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    Agree.

    Most of the work is down the hill and can't be seen by us.

    Adding new units can be very fast since all the background is here. For example, they have base skeletons for animations that are used for a wide range of units. So they do not have to redo animations each times...

    For UI, they have recently stated that two new guys had joined the team to work on it. They can do a lot in two month !

    I understood that multiple screens technologies is already implemented in the game, they are just no UI yet to use it.

    And so on...

    Personally, one month before beta release, I was very doubtful in the possibility of having orbital layers working and they did it ! (OK, it's not very usable for the moment mainly due to UI issues)

    I'm sure we'll see soon some big contents updates ! (that will be the better Uber answer to this thread)

    December is a very challenging date and they'll probably a little late and they will probably lack a little of polishing at released but main issues will be quickly fixed in the following week (as for beta)

    "In Uber, I trust !" ^^

    In anyway, please, do not condemn them before release or start of January. We are all passionate about this game (which is a great thing) and so we all fear for it but keep faith...
  9. Culverin

    Culverin Post Master General

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    Oh?
    Where did you hear this?
  10. zaphodx

    zaphodx Post Master General

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    On the livestreams they've mentioned at least 1 new guy who is I believe working exclusively on the UI.
  11. dukyduke

    dukyduke Active Member

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  12. smallcpu

    smallcpu Active Member

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    So basically they release an unfinished game (without the beta tag) at the end of the year with the promise of fixes in the future and you think this will be well recieved by a wider audience? (Or even the small population of RTS fans that still exists.)

    Its not that the current game misses little things, it misses almost everything that would make it a fun and interesting game. It currently has the barebones of engine tech with place-holder quality content. Its not just only little things. Additionally adding units is not as simple as reusing a unit skeleton with some new model and some changing of stats, at least if you want something more interesting then t1-t3 variation of the same tank.

    I've been in some closed alphas and betas of smaller games which had major issues at the end of their dev cycle (2-3 months before release) and not a single one of them managed to get the game in a state that could be called good in those short time frames.

    Even if one manages to brute force additional content and a good UI in at an amazing speed, balancing and fine-tuning mechanics just takes a lot of time and feedback and you can't just get a good game in a short time without having some time to tweak those mechanics and sleep over decisions once in a while. Too long on some product and in crunch mode and often the necessary distance to see issues vanishes (and feedback won't be listened to since there is simple no time, not maliciously at all but because there's no other way) leading to glaring issues that are obvious to outsiders but not to the devs who have invested enormous effort into a game and are under a lot of pressure.

    And lets be frank, the current game is an interesting tech demo with lots of potential. But its in no way close to being a great game.

    (Yeah, I'm a bit pessimistic but I've been burned before... four or five times. ;) Having said that, I still think my 90$ were well spent as just the attempt at it is a great and unique thing. )
  13. stormingkiwi

    stormingkiwi Post Master General

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    Software engineer to undergrad engineering student, is this a beta (spiral model)? Or would it still be considered alpha, seeing as it isn't feature complete and we know what to expect on release?
  14. stormingkiwi

    stormingkiwi Post Master General

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    Agreed. As far as I see it, we're still in Alpha. Keeping the Beta tag for quality control would be a very good thing come December. Keep price clearly Beta pricing and allow them to do a proper release further in the future
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  15. MrTBSC

    MrTBSC Post Master General

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    reading a bit too much into my words?

    oh i am definitively NOT certain .. it´s simply a mere possibility .. but still a possibility ..
    that´s why i´m asking to wait at least a month before asking them to delay release .. faith has nothing to do with it ..
    considering uber started betaphase by the end of the September aswell ..
    if they choose to release it bevor christmas it could be 20th or 21th ..
    Last edited: October 28, 2013
  16. dukyduke

    dukyduke Active Member

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    You misunderstand me.

    I've just said :
    - we don't and can't know in what state they'll release the game.
    - we don't and can't know if they'll release the game on schedule.

    So please do not blame uber team on speculated unfinished and/or late game release.
  17. skywalkerpl

    skywalkerpl Member

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    Hehe, it depends on a company you work for :)
    Back in early '00s it was clear: What PA is right now would be considered Alpha version. But now? Every company is using different nomenclature - I seen companies calling software "beta" as soon as they went out of prototyping stage. With 95% of software not being even worked on.

    I think you wanted to say: "IF they release an unfinished game at the end of the year" ;)

    Ok, so be it than. Fair enough. :)
    Last edited: October 28, 2013
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  18. qwerty3w

    qwerty3w Active Member

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    The game was supposed to be released in July if its kickstarter only reached the mininal goal, so it should feel like a releasable game before that time, but right now it don't even have a proper camera control system, which should have been one of the biggest priorities for a game like this.
    bradaz85 likes this.
  19. DeadStretch

    DeadStretch Post Master General

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    I have been here for a very long time and I can tell you one thing. Uber typically does NOT respond to anything when they are in the crunch. They spend all their work time well working on the game. Just because they haven't said anything yet doesn't mean they don't have anything to say. If you want direct interaction Twitter is the thing to use though Mavor doesn't do Twitter. The rest of the dev team do and usually respond in a timely manner. But don't expect any answer to anything if they don't have one prepared or it's not that time yet.

    Also I don't get why everyone is so concerned about the retail release date? It's not like anything is concrete nor is a delay uncommon.
  20. shotforce13

    shotforce13 Well-Known Member

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    Sigh.............and this is why we dont get TRUE BETAS anymore.
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