Why the balance forum feels like a waste of my time

I know we have a bunch of fans of the provocative title, so I felt I should participate in kind. Anyway, there are a few things that contribute to why many companies conclude they should do their balance work behind closed doors.

TL;DR Visibility inspires panic.
On turning Dox into grenadiers. Everybody is assuming we turned the dox into grenadiers with no thought to keeping them. While we did consider their overlap with the t1 tank, we never said we wouldn't have dox. When we go to the balance branch and want to try out a new unit, it's often easier to just take an existing unit and change it in to what we want to try than to create one from scratch. But of course if we then show the build, people start to panic.

TL;DR Semantic nit-picking
There's been a number of ways to express the transition from T1 -> T2. "The right time," or "risk vs reward." etc. How it works is inevitably complicated, so let's not latch on to one phrase and attack it for being oversimplified. We want to make the move to T2 a strategic decision. I'm sure that phrase is sufficiently open to debate that I could fill my day arguing about it on the internet.

TL;DR You can't be all the things to all the people all the time
We've stated that we're ok having direct upgrades in the game. People tend to think that means that we're planning to make everything a direct upgrade. Some people feel there should be no direct upgrades. Other people think it is fine. We have to make a game with reasonably broad appeal or we go out of business. Some people want everything available at T1 or with no cost to go to T2, and others think that is crazy. So we're going to build what we believe is a good game, and we accept that some or even most people won't agree with everything, but we hope that it is fun for many.

TL;DR Everything gets said over and over
We actually do read your stuff and listen, and even try to acknowledge. However, if I don't agree with your posts, I will forever hear that point, often in every thread or discussion. Waste of time.

Hello metabolical.

I understand that we, as the community, are sometimes a pain in the ***; this is only because everyone wants this game to be the best in the world; and everybody think they are right, and the internet is wrong. I often do myself this mistake: I apologize.

Please take this free hug, and do not forget that, for every voice that shouts here, a hundred of voices are enjoying this game.

Aw, shucks.

Don't worry, whenever I need a smile, I can just watch this:

so, your actually saying it is not a waste of time?

Yes, of course! It's not a complete waste of my time.

You mean having a dozen threads and half a dozen useless polls with fractured, overlapping discussion on the same subject isn't a great idea?

Perecil's right.
This is definitely true, but I think a lot of the people voicing their opinions realize this already. If someone would really like to see X implemented, they'll try to voice their opinion as much as they can (even if they know it probably won't be). It doesn't mean they think their way is the only way, or even that they're fully convinced they're right. Some of them probably just really want to see their ideas tested, which they can't otherwise do until final release of course.

Mister AWESOME!

Yeah we are a waste of time, but the time we want to waste is with your contribution to an AWESOME GAME!

ppssstttt: you did just make this post to get some feathers up your arse didn't you

There are decisions you make and will continue to make that I disagree with, but you guys have been making an incredible game so far. I think people also tend to be too quick to assume they know how to play just from seeing the numbers. Yesterday's kotp between Godde and Matiz shows that even the old "stable" balance has a lot of room for new and interesting strategies even after people have played it so much.

Another thing I think gets overlooked is the map choice. There are a lot of good reasons why competitive 1v1 has stuck to just one planet so far, but the new balance with a t2 that becomes relevant so much later might really open up more options for getting off planet and eventually even smashing something. I want to start seeing more crazy systems even in 1v1.

I knew you were planning on keeping the Scamper all along

Also, sorry for all the spamming of polls and such, a lot of people seem to like biased data

Personally and now I try to be as accurate as possible on my way to see this kind of projects and i speak seriously .

This is actually a relatively new phenomenon in the video game industry has been changing the way games are made : crowdfunding.
You guys adopted a system that is extremely simple and that was exactly what was missing in our industry agree this market with little new to the consumer side .I felt that and many gamers with who i normaly play also feel that too .It is also more way to increase the number of options that the public has to get the games you want.

Another important achievement that crowdfunding conquered and conquered me , was to show how much fans are willing to put your wallet where your mouth is and pay the amount necessary to bring the dream project to life .This was and is a major important reasons for my choice to give you a help on advance purchase games or in this case Planetary Anhilation .


However, as every strategy newfound ends up having a dark side, often we start blaming the creator of the project itself, while in other situations can be ourselves, fans largely the guilty off some lack of motivation of team production for the various stages of this project to be achieved successfully.

To start with the right foot and not leave anyone depressed (yet ), let's see the good side of that collective financing presents, whether for developers to large companies and end for us as consumers and fans.



No matter the name, all of which promote crowdfunding are based on promises and bets.
Promises that this game will work, what fans really believe in yourself as a whole to bring that goal to the fullest, betting your money to twist everything goes right and when that game comes out, that really is all that was expected during the long development period.
Exactly what is happened in this project.

Or do you think that they would be wasting time, if not believed in this project.

Sometimes the more you criticize is when you most believe in something!

Haha, love it !

Uber team is full of really smart people.

Meta, you might be aggravated, rightfully so, but these posts show you certainly do care. I agree with you quite a bit, I've actually ducked off the forums because they are becoming silly and full of nonsense. However, if you ignore the duplicates, you can at least see that there aren't all that many issues, which is awesome. Also, the more annoying we are about it, the more likely we will affect the game, or the more likely there is some sort of problem.

Not always the case of course! Sometimes we're just annoying.

Edit: Also, check out http://calmingmanatee.com/ I think you Uber guys might enjoy it!

I think I still have a link to that in the FAQ from ages ago. One of my favorite links.

The community behaves the way it does because it is the first crowdfunded (and community funded?) RTS games. We are only used to development behind closed doors and many of us don't know how stuff really happens behind these doors.
We lack experience and maturity but we are getting there. (Soon)

Don't forget, the amount of critics we give is proportional to the love we give to this project. We do this because we care about it.

Well, it seems what i wrote is a duplicate from the posts above me.

How did it even become like this? Please dont stop beliving, need love, alot of love
I have played the whole day today, had alot of fun! it was super fun! everyone has bad day.
I think i OD on superpowers for one day tho
Giveing u a huge mannly kiss meta.. SMASK!

I wouldn't say that the dox thing was panic, more concern.
That's not to say that there's never been panic, everyone remembers the great argument back when the T2 change happened.
Ah... good times...
Except not at all.

I might have to start giving you week;y hugs, just so I can slip a note into your pocket that lists my over-stated opinion once again.

But hey, maybe I'll throw in some ice cream....

Can anybody, anybody at all, think of a certain Stomper which was changed to become the Gil-E?

I don't think it's fair to disregard the discussion as being ridiculously over dramatic. You never made a comment to disregard that assumption. You just let the panic happen. I'm not going to remind you who the developers are, and who is most in charge of communication between the community and the devs. People will take changes at face value, not invent wonderful conspiracies where the changes the devs have presented aren't really the changes that are going to be made.

I don't think it is semantic nitpicking. I'd appreciate it if you didn't just dismiss people's arguments like that. It's not conducive to discussion. I'd very much like to do the same to you, but I don't, so I do expect that same respect back.

In my opinion, the transition from T1-> T2 should be a question of "if", not a matter of "when", if it is to be a strategic decision. If you could start with 200 metal income, 20000 energy and a T2 factory, would you in all situations?

Edit: I don't particularly mind direct upgrades. But the tech tree in this game is so incredibly shallow that I don't see what value is brought to the game by units that share the same role as another unit, just doing it harder, better, smarter and faster.

But hey, this is just your thread to have a whine on the forums, so I don't see that replying further is worth my time.

If I was a dev, I would only be using balance forums as an input source, and not a process. You should never design simply to suit the loudest voice or the majority voice, so I hope meta actually continues not to care about the balance forum .

Community vision < RTS devs who know what their doing vision

Curious to see where PA will place at release. The current emphasis on things being initially cool and feeling awesome without seeming to consider any big picture/fundamental RTS gameplay relationships tends to make me think PA is in the middle, but we will see how things mesh together in the end.

As long as it's not community led, the game shouldn't be a total disaster.