Eurogamer "reviews" PA

Just in case anyone was interested.
I read Eurogamer a fair bit, and it's generally pretty objective in it's reviews and has some good articles.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-04-21-planetary-annihilation-early-access-review

You will notice that there is no score at the end of this review, and that is because Eurogamer doesn't give scores to games that aren't finished. What's that, a games site that reviews unfinished games as they are? MADNESS

not a bad review, generally gave a pretty good impression of the game. Shame the comments section isn't exactly glowing at the moment. Maybe I'll have to add my tuppence soon. Do your bit for PA, Euro players, and chime in in the comments section too

The game is sold (it's even on sales), so you can argue it's released.
At least they still give it a chance, they are honest, even they shouldn't in my opinion.

Seriously?

When I proposed the feature, the Devs said no way

I'm glad they changed plans.

As for the article I agree that reviewers shouldn't pick up misleading marketing propaganda as a game being in gamma. This comment says it all.

Sorry, but as a gaming site, why are you quoting things like this to give them any substance? As a developer in the games industry it's painful to see something like this put officially into an article on a gaming site.

If the game is being tested but not feature-complete, it's in an alpha stage.

If the game is being tested and is feature-complete (ala tweaking/balancing) it's in a beta stage.

Have to agree with @ToiletDuck too. I know my experience is with traditional, physically published games but I find the trend of 'Let's get some free testing of our buggy software from our customers AND charge them extortionate prices for it' to be quite worrying and annoying.

Anyway, ranting aside I've always been keen to play this game as it sounds like such a cool concept. I just can't justify the price from what I have heard so far.

Sorry but I have zero respect for Eurogamer ever since they allowed this to exist.

So you don't like Ellie Gibson?
http://www.eurogamer.net/author/100

I mostly agree about missing choke points, but no fight over resources or territorial control?
That's not what I feel at all. It reads like the typical statement new players make who have no idea how to play and who just refuse to expand for the most part. If you do not expand you will indeed not fight over territory...
So how do we get new player to realize that if they expand they actually will win most of the games until their opponent does so as well, yielding the most brutal fight over territory I have seen in any RTS so far?

I think they just weren't very clear in their answer. As far as I know, going to a point in time and forking the game was always the plan. What you can't do it jump back and forth doing time travel like in Achron.

where when how?
I thought this was a given!

I also saw that and cringed. All it takes is to watch one video with any of us 'good' players, and it will become apparent that territory control is completely and utterly necessary.

It is also sold as "early access" and the devs say it isn't feature complete. Soooo....unfinished...

I agree with him on the lack of fighting over territorial control. PA is no company of heroes, you don't progress your economy by simply 'expanding' the line of sight you have. The problem is that metal is not scarce and they are in fairly even blobs all around a planet. Also, there are no thermal vents (yet) so metal, which is the one resource everyone, even noobs, can manage fairly well without much expansion.

Actually, I've never seen a true fight over resources unless the mex cluster is huge. I've always felt that there is to much metal, especially since they increased the amount. I liked very early beta when metal was a bit more valuable.

Ellie has always been a bit of a wildcard, but I think she's great.
I don't think it is worth never reading Eurogamer ever again though...

I suspect this will change dramatically once metal sliders are implemented in the system editor.

This is THE one big miss conception I feel many players have. Metal is not unlimited and if you have more you win. So expand all over the planet if you can and take an easy win. If you however play a good opponent (one you won't just easy win vs if you expand a lot) you will suddenly find yourself fighthing for your expansions pretty hard everywhere.

EDIT:
Unless you play crazy big planets (sizes that would require hacks) or multi planet spawn systems that is. Not sure about those.

Sorian said the metal sliders have been hooked up in the system editor, so this might not be a problem anymore. The bad news is that this will change the metal distribution of any saved maps including everything saved to System Sharing.

I never read it in the first place.

My point was that there is a point where having more metal =/= a better economy. There is a point where players reach a sustainable and manageable amount of metal that is too hard to utilise, that's why I always see people, skilled players and also myself, getting 100+ metal, yet negative energy.

Energy should not be worth more than metal per extractor/powergen. A game is an economic stalemate when players have over 100 metal/second. Players don't need to fight over map control once they have a decent amount, but will always need more and more energy.

EDIT: In all honesty, I think having more than 30 metal spots for a 500 radius planet is too much. The numerics of the economy need to be more easy to follow, instead of 00's and 000's each metal spot should give 2-3 metal/second, while power gives something like 100 energy/second. ( A little more like TA )

I have to admit, this may settle many fears about bad reviews when the game is released. They acknowledge that it's not finished, and still give it a fairly positive reading review, which is great! They even seem to have read (at least a small portion, probably front page) of the forums to see what's planned. I hope these reviews get better and better! Good Job so far, Uber!