The Vanguard Newsletter - Issue 3

He said uncontrollable factors in general, not merely an overzealous distributor. There are lots of things that could potentially push release dates and a distributor is only one of them. Thankfully it's one Uber doesn't have to contend with (other than professional courtesy), but it doesn't mean there aren't others.

Sorry, can I just get a little clarification here. Are you talking about Uber? Because Uber is not a big company by any stretch of the imagination. They have I believe 30-40 employees, while big companies have thousands. Secondly, what do you mean by "paid-per-play"? That sound like customers pay for each time they get to play the game, like some sort of digital arcade. That idea has never even been close to floated here, and is a monetisation policy so remarkably different from PA's that I'm confused as to why it is even being brought up.

I think you're misunderstanding the issue; when someone carries out an interview or meeting such as this with someone, the assumption should be that the readership wants to hear from the person being interviewed directly, not the interviewers re-wording of what was said. This isn't an attack on your integrity, it is an attack on your methodology. To be blunt, as you said there has been a lot of debate on the issue of the "unit cannon" lately. You said in your intro you had a detailed discussion about the unit cannon with someone intimately involved in the decisions relating to that unit, but then didnt provide any insight into what was actually said:

This sounds really interesting, I actually genuinely want to know more about this since I'm interested in game design and have been for a couple of decades. To me, this is far more interesting than what has been cut and what hasnt, I want to hear some insight into the design and game play decisions. So what does the article actually say...

Where is the detailed discussion? Even a paraphrased discussion? People want to know what you guys chatted about (or at least I do).

I understand there is an issue here in that you cannot reproduce the meeting verbatim, but instead I've been left with the feeling that you are dangling an interesting conversation in front of us, but we cant see it because I guess we dont deserve to know the details of this closed doors conversation. Fair enough, but dont tease us with it if you have no intention on actually discussing it.

The vanguard is a good article, I like reading it, I just would like to see a bit more of what is actually said during these meetings.

It is the first time I hear about the market place for mods and additional content. I also assume that what we know as "missing features" will be added beside the market place, and I have no reason to fear otherwise.

It has been said that Planetary Annihilation will be more a platform than a stand alone video game. In this sense, a market place for Mods makes sense.

I have nothing against it in principle. I wish Uber the best in getting it right, at benefit of everyone.

Regarding the size of the company, there are much smaller Game Development companies than Uber, 50 employees is already a good number. But it is really not relevant. What does is matter is that the more people work in a company, the more paychecks have to be produced at the end of the month. And money do not grow on trees, for what I know

You mean the methodology where Uber reviews what we wrote to ensure there isn't any spin on it?

Just think of it this way, everything in the Newsletter is Uber-Approved, we might write the newsletter But Uber really has the final say on what goes up, so again, there is no spin.

Mike

No, the methodology where you tease conversation topics and go on to provide no insight into actual content, then paraphrase other statements from the developers leaving us none the wiser as to what was actually discussed. It's not surprising Uber approves as there is literally nothing new brought to the table on the topic of gameplay, design, or the ever popular topic of the "unit cannon", despite what was said in the opening paragraph.

did you talk about "the role of the Unit cannon, how needed it is, the difficulties associated with it, and Uber’s development cycle" or not? I have no clue from actually reading the article, as much as I would like to. Aside from the fact that you said you did, which as interesting as that is, doesn't really tell us all that much.

So what happens when the game fails at launch, gets all the bad press as some of us expect and does not make enough money to complete development?
There are tons of announced features missing which certainly require a big amount of money to complete (subs, unit cannon, gas giants, death stars, amphibious units, galactic war, ....), judging from how much money Uber already got which still was not nearly enough. I know game development is expensive and am very well aware that 2 or 3 million is anything but much, but I am very worried at this point.

A huge thanks to the Vanguard guys for this write up and to Uber for being much more clear about what's up.

My biggest concern wasn't that certain things wouldn't be in the game for 1.0 - I was worried that if post-launch support wasn't financially possible, we'd never even be able to mod them in because the engine wouldn't support us fundamentally. Not through any intent on Uber's part, but just simple financial reality that all those things must be paid for somehow. So I'm very relieved to see Uber confirm their long term support.

So again, a big thanks to the Vanguard for clarifying the situation. You all earned your little blue names this time.

You cynics are why I stay away from Planetside's forums nowadays.

Stop preaching doom. There is NO INDICATION that there will be any bad press for Uber upon launch, which is a few months off.

If something comes up before then, that is actually SUBSTANTIAL.....you let me know.

Until then, the developers who have used two years of their lives to give us this game are preparing to finish what was started with a vision of AWESOME.

If you want bad press, go to MWO. Stay away from here. Don't wish for it. Don't instigate it. Don't spread rumors about it. This forum is for offering suggestions and constructive feedback. Anything else should be in offtopic or the modding forums.

That's more or less the way I thought the unit cannon could work too. But the more I thought about that, the more it seemed like a hacky workaround. Kinda like TA modding. And if Uber has technical problems such that they're stuck hack modding their own game ... that's not good.

Calling my post cynic and then this....

That would require quite the horrific failure for things to go so badly that PA has to be completely dropped. Far beyond simply some "bad press".

Mike

THIS. this is very, very well put.

about this, I've stipulated my idea before about mods being ranked with their own ladder by one method/idea or another :

I see this as a very important feature because mods are generally hurt by "vanilla puritans" who are astonishingly numerous, and numbers of players are what makes a game fun, but my experience with faf has been that having a ranked safe haven for mods counteracts this phenomenon entirely, and people shed themselves of the fear (and loathing?) of mods and discover a world where cohabitation is possible.

Unfortunately, a single person is in charge of all the choices there (zep) and he doesn't see pushing this experiment further than with UI mods as a good use of his time, whereas, say in the case of nomads this means the difference between the life and death of said mod.

And slowly, because of this phenomenon, the whole modding scene is going decrepit; what I mean is Nomads, phantom, murder party, Total Mayhem, Wyvern, Black ops, king of the hill, claustrophobia, supreme destruction, zone control hosts have ALL disappeared in favor of stock ranked.

It doesn't matter that the modders are still active, their mods aren't being played.
So what about my idea?

how about them mod hunger games?

I don't get this. The guy is just questioning whether or not leaving certain features out of 1.0 will cause review score havoc, and if it does, will this cut sales and thus long term support. I'm not really convinced that this will be a major problem, but then again I ignore metacritic entirely, so whatever. Either way, it's hardly negativity for the sake of negativity.

And in all fairness, there is also no indication that there will be any good press either. He's just speculating and voicing a reasonable concern as a backer of something he cares about and enjoys, like most people here. This CHEERLEAD OR GTFO shtick is tiresome.

It depends how you measure failure. I dont think it will be.

I think the community will recongise the main achievement here which is a committment to opnenness and community support, which tends to be the key to success in a lot of cases. The developers are creating a tonne of extra headaches by making this cross-platform, but personally I love them for it. Extremely progressive thinking, especially with how things are heading with Steam OS.

Uber certainly have a lot of challenges, and I dont doubt the community will seriously judge them by how they continue to support the game after release.

However, sales matter a lot, and given that the RTS genre is quite a big market - I think there is the potential for Uber to do quite well from PA. It will more than likely be a slow burn, but if they get it right it has the potential to be the go to game and platform for RTS enthusiasts for years (or at least the ones that want a change from SC2).

Ha!

What happens if I get a hemorrhoid?

Really, what happens if launch is delayed, and the modders leave because there wasn't server side for the longest time?

Really Really, what is wrong with getting a launched game in an unavoidably imperfect state (because you are starting with newly built game and assets, there will always be a better implementation discovered down the road), and then getting enough updates to pretty much rebuild this game over and basically getting a sequel for free built from the initial game? It worked for TF2, no complaints in the reviews that it took too long to make or that it was over budget or that it was buggy on launch. That game pretty much built Steam as we know it, didn't it? When you do something right, you can do it abso-****ing-loutely right, and it could not all come at once, like TF2, but one has to not worry what happens if something external throws in a wrench.

Besides, we are a great community. If we keep the gears rolling hard and fast, it will crush wrenches like Big Ben would likely crush a human hand. (Wait, just caught myself, the bell is Big Ben, the tower is Elizabeth Tower, right?)

Don't fret over getting shorted. They want to continue work on this game post-release. Ideally, you might be getting all you would get in a sequel for free out of updates.

What is the advantage of a 1.0 launch, exactly? Why shouldn't Uber keep milking the Greek alphabet for another year, buy some more time, and do what they set out to do that way? Is this really about releasing the server in a shorter amount of time?

I think part of it is this launch has already been delayed for awhile and it's not the best course of action to keep delaying it (say, until next December). The other part is that a release sort of says "the game is playable, I'll be over here working on cool and awesome additions (like the unit cannon)" while an ongoing beta/gamma/whatever says "NOT DONE YET".

You are right. I would totally support they go into Delta, they release server side, and physical rewards, minus physical disk unless they specify it's version and updatability on it, and kick some *** in the advancement of annihilation.

That is one of two options I support. The other just being release. You know the difference in those options are?

Name. Name is only difference in those options. One, you doing same actions, and calling it Delta. Other, you are doing same actions, and calling Release/1.0.

As long as it means we get server and they kick some *** in the advancement of annihilation, I am fine.

In general I'm starting to see more of a backlash against games that stick around in "beta" for too long, particularly titles like MWO and Hawken(Hawken in particular is still in Beta and development started around July 2010).

Hawken and MWO have the additional complication of being F2P games, with fully functioning marketplaces despite still being in Beta,, PA doesn't have this problem, but so long as it stays in Beta it does have the potential for some goodwill turning sour.

I think that releasing the server is a big milestone, especially when you consider how big of a catalyst it will be for the community, mostly focused on Modding. And Investing in modding is a huge long-term play and will make the game "playable" for a wider range of people.

Mike