Gazing into my Crystal Ball...

As I've mentioned before, there have been multiple blow-ups on the forum in the past, of varying degrees of severity. I don’t enjoy such drama, and I tend to not get involved. Ideally, I’d like to avoid them in the future.

So it’s a good job this crystal ball I bought from Amazon has arrived! The first thing I'm going to do is peek into the future and see what is in store for PA’s release. After all, release is going to be a critical time for PA, as it’s when we expect to get a big slug of new players (both completely new and those who put PA down a while ago in order to wait for a bit), who will jump start the multi-player scene again, give us lots of new people to play against, and give Uber sufficient revenue via the armoury/mod marketplace in order to sustain PA for a long time, allowing it to grow and evolve indefinitely!

So, lets whip the cover off and see…

I see…

I see…

Oh dear. That’s not good.

It looks as though in the run up to release, Uber are going to be working extremely hard. They have still got lots of features to put in and an enormous amount of polish still to add. I can see them trying as hard as they can, but it’s a near herculean task. After all, PA is still an extremely ambitious game to create and Uber, although talented, is only a relatively small team. I see…

Oh bugger.

It looks like in order to make their targets; they had to cut a couple of features. In fact, they had to cut a couple of features that everyone was really looking forward to and had assumed would be there at release. I really wish I could tell what those features are, but it’s only a cheap crystal ball and the resolution is a bit pants. It looks like the cutting of features had to happen. It’s perfectly understandable to do such a thing, given the extraordinary difficulty of the task at hand, and I doubt that anyone else could have done better. But that doesn't matter too much.

See, someone had been telling the community how awesome things were going to be. Instead of rationality and discussion, there was hype (which as we all remember is short for hyperbole, or the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device, in this case as a marketing tool). After all, everyone in the games industry knows that hype is the best way to sell games. Unfortunately, this set up unrealistic expectations.

As a result, when the things they really wanted to see weren't there, the community flipped its biscuit. I mean, people went absolutely mental bananas crazy pants. If you thought the recent forum fracas over the Able commander was bad, you should see this one. It is a shitstorm of unbelievable proportions! And it’s spilling out of the forum! I can see it now! It’s spilling onto the reddits, and the steam forums and the facebooks! It’s only a few people, but they are very angry! And… And…

Oh no. It’s got worse.

See, all those people out there waiting for release before they buy, they are fairly cautious consumers. They haven’t jumped in yet and they are not going to until they see some pretty good reviews. There are of course some good reviews, but a lot of them have someone explaining about all the missing features, and saying unfortunate things in the review comments sections. Those cautious reviewers are seeing all these extremely negative bits of information, and it’s putting them off. It’s putting them off a lot. They’d rather just wait until PA was $5 on a steam sale. If at all.

And PA is suffering for it. In fact, the multi-player scene of PA isn't really growing as much as everyone hoped for. In fact it’s barely stabilising. And now it’s starting to shrink again. There just weren't enough games for people to find their own level. They kept on running up against hardcore veterans, getting stomped, then getting sick of PA and leaving. And the modding community is steadily shrinking too! There weren't enough new people joining to make new and interesting mods. The existing ones are trying valiantly, but with only a few people to play them, they end up giving up.

PA is turning into a ghost town. There is a hard core of dedicated players, but not many. They have already bought all the commanders that they are going to, and it looks as though Uber’s revenue stream is drying up.

In fact, the financial case for keeping the servers going is looking shaky. They end up being closed down. The only people who play PA now are a few dedicated fans with their own servers. Everybody is incredibly bummed out about this whole chain of events.

Well, that was a downer.

But wait, what is this label on the crystal ball? Oh thank Science! It says that “Due to quantum effects, FutureGaze Inc cannot guarantee that all events witnessed in this crystal ball are 100% accurate. Please use at your own risk.”

Well that’s a relief. It looks like this stark and chilling dystopian future doesn't have to happen. It doesn't have to happen at all!

See there are a number of things that people can do to avoid this future.

Community members. We all know that passions run high at times. People really want this game to succeed. It’s tempting to think that if someone would just listen to you, then everything would be fine and dandy. That may well be true. But every person who decides to not buy PA is one more who takes us down this dark path. I'm not saying that you should evangelise about things that you disagree with, but I am advising caution. When something isn't going right, avoid creating a stink. Discuss matters calmly and rationally. The more you lose it, the more damage potentially gets done.

Uber Entertainment. The hypothetical scenario I have posited is not your fault, but it is something you can do something about. You have an enormous amount of power when it comes to influencing the state of the community here. You need to give us information. Tell us, to the best of your ability, what is being worked on and whether you are optimistic about it making it to release. If circumstances change then that’s fine, but tell us there and then rather than allowing misconceptions to ferment for a long time. It is better to have mild grumblings now, than needless outrage later. If you want your community to trust you, then you need to trust them back, and bring them into the process. Don’t leave them in the dark, because that is what a lot of people seem to feel at the moment.

I was reluctant to make this post, because it has the potential to be every bit as negative as the scenario I have tried to parody. However, I believe that there are things that everyone can do to ensure that this kind of needless mess doesn't happen again.

Mad scientist... is a wizard!

how?.....we are not good, never good, after all....we are only human

I think this is very important right now. We all know there's been a lot of speculation about upcoming features; asteroids belts, gas giants, improved naval, more terrain features, death star lasers, an official ladder, 40 player games, fried pork products... everyone's got their fingers crossed for something, and I seriously doubt we're going to see all of it in the near future.

All this speculation has gone on without any actual indication of what big rock features may or may not be in the works or planned for the near future. Heck, I've seen posts made by people who seem sure that asteroid belts are currently in the works, and I've seen nothing to even suggest this so far.
I know there really isn't a timeline, but I'd like to know more about what's prioritized higher or lower right now.

Along these lines, it would be enormously helpful for Uber to take a look at the expectations from the kickstarter days, give us a realistic outline of what will and won't be in the game at 1.0, and then some kind of assurance as to how/if the other "big rocks" will be added in post launch. I don't think people will go nuts if Uber lays it out realistically. But people obviously do get mad when a promised feature gets yanked or delayed, and the only way to know about it is to hawk over vague dev postings all day or study the old livestreams. Then nobody knows for sure, unrealistic expectations abound, and people are taken by surprise. It's silly and avoidable.

I WAS GONNA SAY THAT! I DESERVE TO SAY THAT! .

"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. "

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,' said Scrooge. 'But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."

Got to love Dickens, even in July

You mean... even my mom has to buy a copy of PA?

- Arthur C. Clarke
Fixed that for you.

You might want to return your crystal ball. I think they sent you the crystal ball that sees into an alternate dimension where uber has a non flexible release date.

Well they're going to have to enforce a deadline on themselves. If they don't they could be stuck in a state of perpetual development. So it is a possibility of Uber dropping features in order to stick to their deadline. Also let's not forget the distribution partnership with Nordic. They could need a month maybe for pressing of the discs. They don't have infinite amount of time. Project Management 101 - Never enough resources or funding or both.

Well if someone beat me to Clarke I'm just gonna call out the crystal ball BS.



You're welcome.

Lol, this is basicly the same i said about a week ago and i think your absolutely right.

Completely agree with this.

Well, I guess that I'll post this here.

guys the stuff he sais is to be listened to. There's a lot going on here that's easy to predict. I have similar fears. I feel PA would be hurt badly from being released in a non-perfect polish shine state.

Best post ever. Both in its content/ what it wants to convey and the way it is written.

We have one (a tentative release date) in mind. I wouldn't be surprised if we talked about it pretty soon. Just gotta make sure all our ducks are in a row.