Uber Weekly Update - August 13, 2014

This at least describes my experience completely. I think every early access game I've purchased, I simply became bored of and never returned too. I won't purchase any more early access, even if I like the game a lot, simply because for me it definitely ruins the experience. I feel that very much with PA - I think my greatest enjoyment was actually back in beta when we were having massive blob wars. Since then it's just become an endless loop of finding out which features won't actually make it and dealing with the ever changing balance and new emergence of the latest fad cheese strategy. I don't even play the game anymore and i'm not terribly excited by release, but all-in-all I guess i'd have to say I got my money's worth way back in beta. I think in the end, I would recommend to people to give it a try on release if they really like RTS, as it's definitely a fun game for at least 40-50 hours. But for me, this is with out a doubt the last game I will ever buy on early access - it really ruins the experience, even for great games.

I often wonder if the extreme drama about release comes mostly from people who spent +150$ dollars? Might be why they are so freaked out. I paid like 40$ on one of the first steam sales, so i'm basically happy that I got to have some big planet battles that were fun for a while, even if I don't currently enjoy the game and probably won't play anymore.

I believe everyone would have a lot lower blood pressure if we accepted the likelihood that the game we have now will largely be the one we get at release, plus some polish and maybe a few more minor features. I don't believe there will be a large influx of new players at release - personally I think we've had the biggest peaks there will be and the majority of the core fanbase has already played the game for 100s of hours. I am happy with what we got, and if by some small miracle the game goes viral on release, or if this community manages to hang together and mod something that gains a dedicated competitive following, then far down the line who knows what major features might make it in? One thing is certain - if we don't start collectively reining in our expectations, release is going to be a dramabomb nightmare. That will certainly seal PA's fate - when the media outlets start running reviews like 'PA: A game with great potential, but KS failure leads to fanbase uprising' or some crap.

So your greatest enjoyment of PA was back in early Beta but you won't be buying early access again. Seems a bit of a contradiction??

Fair enough, I guess I just don't see these things doing irreparable damage to the game or it's legacy. Time will tell.

No not at all, you've totally misread what I meant. What i'm saying is that overall level of enjoyment would have been highest if I had waited until release. I enjoyed the 100+ hours I spent on PA, which were generally the highest back in beta (when I was still new to the game). My experience with this and several other early access games is that I lessened the overall enjoyment by experiencing the early 'romance days' when they were still buggy as crap and largely feature incomplete, and that going through the prolonged open development process (for me) is like seeing what goes into the sausage before you eat it. It lessens the final experience.

That's what I was thinking at the beginning too, but it turns out I have really enjoyed the sausage making process

Well one thing we have to remember is that we, the Active Online Community, are not really the "Target Audience", even if we were to all play PA forever and buy loads of DLC, we wouldn't be enough to support PA for years and years alone. Sure there will be a portion of buyers that become the same type of "Invested Fan" as many of us are but I think it's safe to say that even then we'd still be a minority of total distinct players.

It's not that Uber's plan is fundamentally wrong, the idea of providing a base game and expanding it over time isn't a bad one, it;s merely the specific elements of the execution of that plan that seem awkward or incorrect to some.

So we have;

Us, the "Invested Fans" that Support PA with a Larger than average Budget(through Kickstarter or Micro-Transactions and whatnot) but we aren't numerous enough despite our larger budgets per person to Support PA

We have the "Never played" Buyers, who for whatever reason barely or didn't play PA at all despite the Purchase. Out of these guys Uber still gets the profits from the initial purchase but that's all they get.

Then we have all the shades of gray in-between, with various levels of investment and commitment.

Uber counts of people from that middle ground because even if they aren't spending as much per person there are a heck of a lot more of them than Us.

The catch is that those people only tend to pay out over time, We dish(ed) out mostly up front with some stuff over time as it becomes available and the "Never played" only dished out once up front. So you need to retain as many players as possible because they're pumping money in over time and even simply thier activity can generate new players/Micro-Transactions(basically like word of mouth style advertising). Many in the Community are concerned because what many see as the long term hooks that help to retain those players will not be present at release. Even with the "promise" of them coming after release we're still concerned about the time frame. Even a month is a loooooong time for a video game, and it's even more grim if Uber are still sticking to wanting the game to be released by the end of 2014 because they'll be competing for the player's attention in a time when there is so much else out there demanding it as well, and it's not an older game with new stuff that they're already played, but new stuff, stuff they've been waiting for potentially and that could be a hard sell for Uber to deal with.

That's not to say that when these delayed features come out that it won't bring old and new players in, it will, the concern is that it won't bring in/bring back as many as PA could have retained by having it up front. How many people will Ladders bring back to PA 2 months after release compared to how many would still be playing if they could have laddered from the beginning? How many Modders seek out PA to create quality mods if we don't get all the tools and hooks we until 3 months later? How many players will come back to play those mods even once they are created(which of course takes time as well)?

In the end it's not about damage to the game, the game will, in theory only improve over time, the problem as some see it is one of retention, not potential.

Mike

Is that ALL the wreckage being removed or just units? Reclaiming enemy bases was a great and fun way to play.

It seems to only be wreckage from mobile units so far, thought in the end one can/should still be able to reclaim units as a "weapon" just that there wouldn't be any metal gained from it.

Mike

Just the units.

I love PA and I think Uber is doing a great job.
I understand the removal of unit wreckage because of pathing problems. But I think wreckage should really add something to the game.
With supcom I was a hugeee turtler and always had a lot of defences. So when armies came in they were blocked by their own wreckage which really helped to support my base. I also really liked to use that cybran reclaimer building which was a huge mass income when armies came in.

So how to make wreckage better? Maybe make it so that if wreckage is in a units path, it will shoot the wreckage just enough for it to pulverize and then the unit will walk over it? Or smart units which avoid wreckage in their fireing. If they want to fire but wreckage is in the way it will move just enoug so that the bullet won't hit wreckage anymore.

Anyway, great work and those optimiziation of the thousands of small things really make the game better. Its a lot of work to rewrite and optimize a lot of old working code. The problems is that we as users only notice some bugs dissapearing which doesn't seem as much work as releasing new features.

So I hope unit wreckage becomes viable again. And keep up the good work Uber!! I can't wait to see the gass giants!!

Edited because of below

Actually wreckage in Supcom didn't block units nor did it block projectiles... heh.

Means I haven't played supcom for too long (A). I thought it did. Never really seen it that wreckage was ignored by units then. Ahwel I did like reclaiming it so I'd like to see back just for the visuals and reclaiming though

I know, I didn't know it didn't block those either until just today.

My memory fooled me!! Then supcom did a good job of hiding unit-wreckage interaction for me.

Wreckages in TA did block projectiles, even though not pathing.

Thats wrong, they blocked both.

Ah, right. You had 4 stages for wreckages. Intact, damaged, big pile of rubble, small pile of rubble. Only latter two were pathable.

Right, and that is also what neutrino said it would be like in one of the earlier livestreams.

Btw.: Thats probably going to be the temples and/or volcanoes for the Jungle biome.

Unit canon isn't in sight yet.

Yep, and intact really blocked units, especially the really big wreckage.

Reclaim was so nice in TA, but so microintensive D: