So it's 2 days left until Retail-Release....

But was TA missing what many feel are Important Features?

I don't think anyone thinks that PA doesn't have the potential to get better over time, only that by cutting some many baseline features that they're shooting themselves in the foot in regards to the long term prospects.

Mike

As far as I recall TA was missing no features at all.
The Core Contigency only added new units.

As far as I recall, we were never told about features TA dropped.

As far as I recall, we were never promised features of TA that later would be dropped.

That is only because they didn't tell anyone about the development process.

And why here in PA, it has caused problems.

There really weren't any expectations for TA either way. For me (as a kid at the time), it was everything I wished Dune II, C&C and RA could do but didn't. The ships, the aircraft, the long range cannons, the chaotic battles, units felt powerful and over-the-top - that was all a huge surprise. TA really was ahead of its time then. So for me it wasn't two years of hype on the internet - it was just a kid staring at box art in a computer store wondering who could possibly afford to buy another 8 megs of RAM.

I'm not sure what Uber needs to do to keep this rolling long term. I don't know that Uber will shoot themselves in the foot as far as the average Steam user cares - they're like me looking at box art 16 years ago. So they don't care about the long list of issues that people here (myself included) are concerned about. They'll just be pleasantly surprised. I hope that's enough to keep Uber doing good business so they can make good on their vision and keep making stuff for years to come. And, most importantly, provide enough of a platform for modders to do the rest - mods are the real legacy of these games and it's why people still care today. This 1.0 bull-**** is just a marketing milestone.

I know what I'd like to see at launch, but I'm not so sure that the vast majority of Steam Sale players care about that kickstarter, about this forum, about my nostalgia, or about TA or SupCom legacies. A lot of die-hards on this forum seem to have one foot out the door already, and I can certainly appreciate why, but I think it's premature. Uber's going to be on autopilot for the next several months. Just going to have to see where it goes.

I don't think this is about the Kickstarter really.

Remember, ignoring things like promises and stuff like that, the idea is that Uber will use a portion of PA's revenue to continue to improve PA. In of itself that's reasonable. The catch is that it becomes self-dependent. The worry is that by leaving out things that many feel are important long term features that would help to retain players won't be as effective coming out some months after release as compared to being part of the release. Based on Uber's comments they seem to feel that Pa's popularity will only go up after release making delayed feature release an irrelevant concern but this seems counter-intuitive to many int he community.

Many feel that PA release as-is will be not have the long term traction with "average" players. Many will lose interest early on without more "long term hooks" like Ladders while other will just be disappointed by being limited to Uber's servers or have insufficient Internet and simply not be able to play and while some will come back as delayed features appear this will probably happen in fewer and fewer numbers as time goes on.

We'll just have to wait and see what happens, how things go with 1.0 will play a big part in how things go afterwards.

Mike

On the subject of releasing important features post 1.0 (server, ladders, etc) ... I have a feeling that half the Uber office will be in the Caribbean exactly the day after 1.0. That SOON meme around here is going to turn into LATER. If ladders and offline play are indeed crucial features to many players, I hope that they're in 1.0 or have a solid release date right after.

Drifting off topic somewhat and onto long term support .... I'm curious to see how Uber can wring more revenue out of this game in the future. I think that if they really want people coming back to the game over a long period of time, it seems like there two good major routes: DLC and Hats Mods.

DLC is generally ok with me, but it's pretty dodgy if it means paying again for KS features. Then they can start a sequel. I call that the ANGRY FAN SHITSTORM PLAN. But this too shall pass. Eventually. /strawman

What I'd really like to see is Uber go full steam ahead on a mod marketplace. I would call it the MONEYSHOVEL PLAN.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something about the second option that sounds like a clear winner to me.

If Uber can show modders that it's worth the effort because you'll get paid, you'll see both incredible content and continued support. Uber makes money providing engine tech and tools, modders make money providing content that draws in more players (customers). I'd love to see it work.

Uber's engine tech is amazing and tech is their real strong point. I think they should open the flood gates to the mod community ASAP to outsource the design side to anyone who can do it better (ie, mod market). I don't want Uber to end up like Cavedog where the really good work goes on long after the company is bankrupt and the modders are left doing crazy stuff with no support. And likewise with GPG to some extent.

But right now we're sitting in this boring *** doldrums waiting for the wind to fill the sails again. Uber probably halfway doesn't know what they're going to do, and halfway won't tell us. Nothing you can do about that.

Uber have been extremely quiet as of late. I would have thought the updates/PTEs would be coming through hard and fast if we are really this close to release. The amount of things which are still not completed (unit pathing, boats, etc) is ridiculous.

Neither of you know what features were originally supposed to be in the game that were dropped.

I know of two, solar panels were supposed to be affected by tiles, similar to how the water pgens do. Lighter areas gave more energy, areas hidden behind a mountain- gave less.

The galactic gate was also dropped, a teleporter, it was supposed to be in the base game as well.

Two features, one that would arguably be a very game changing feature were dropped for unknown (most likely technical) reasons.

Edit:

Not to mention TA's unfinished ai, Cavedog didn't go through the trouble making any ai maps and ai were almost completely controlled by base programming.. which means they didn't really know about the maps, how to use units, groupings, etc.. affective at all.

TA's balance is another than 1.0 and pretty much all of vanilla TA balance was bad, it never really improved either.

Hope this helps you realize- game design is hard and PA is not the only game to face these problems, even your holy, beloved TA was riddled with problems and cuts.

And yet TA felt like a complete experience, since nothing like it had ever been seen before.

PA does not have that luxury; It's a derivative of TA and SupCom, so dropping features that those two had just makes PA feel that much more hollow.

We're comparing a 16 year-old game to a game made in 2014.

• The AI was worse but that's not surprising.
• Solar wasn't perfected on a per-tile basis and instead became a "magic power box"... but it's not like any other game in the franchise has tried to do better, so TA is still on par with other titles there, and it DID have wind and tidal power, putting it ahead.
• Balance wasn't very good, but then again neither was SupCom, FA or SupCom2, so again it's at least par for the course.

PA has made no significant advancements in these areas. So while you may say that TA had problems (and it did), it at least wasn't any worse than what we have now, and many here would consider it better.

You could release PA tomorrow and it would be in a more complete state than most games I've ever played online.

The entire multi-planet bit is not something has never been seen before? I don't know.. there's just many new features PA has that it's past versions lacked, something that arguably makes it very different.

But does it make it BETTER?

Jury is still out on that one.

I'd argue that the PA implementation of many of these new features (aside from the AI) has not improved upon the gameplay of its predecessors... and in some ways, has made it worse.

---

I don't know if that's a commentary on the sad state of the gaming industry today, or just a reflection of poor judgement on your part.

There are some things that certainly do help with game play though, you must admit. (Although this doesn't mean what's lacking doesn't count)

Things like area commands greatly improve game play, making the game a lot more fluid and less tedious. Granted Spring was the technical first PA is the first actual game to implement such features. Stacking of metal extractors is also very nice, because it allows for a simple move to advanced without the issue of having to reclaim metal extractors and build a new one on top. You could argue supcom already had it but it's in my opinion that's model for going about it was less optimal. A double edged sword of a feature for PA is its random generation, it means there are countless different maps of countless different sizes available (and that's not even factoring in multi-planet maps), though it does pose the problem of imbalances. Overall I'd say PA is pretty off or on when it comes to features, not much of a middle ground.

You're citing features that don't add anything to gameplay. A less frustrating UI does not turn a shallow game into a deep strategic experience.

The problem lies with the game itself , not the manner in which we interact with it.

I would argue that, due to the expanded scope of the game, the UI is actually further behind in comparison to what we had in TA. I feel more hamstrung in my ability to command my units in PA than I ever feel when I'm playing TA.

Sorry, I tried to resist nitpicking but failed. I think I have seen this said before. Spring is an engine and PA must have some engine behind it. Both of these engines implement area commands. Both of these engines have 'actual games' that run on them. Games use engines and get to use whatever the engine offers.

Well if that's all you can come up with that PA is by far in a more serious position, because non of those things easily compare to not having ladders and offline play/Server hosting. Of course, even in teh things that are missing there are comparables, we aren't getting the Unit Cannon, Pathfinding is still not where we think it should be, interplanetary and Orbital of pale imitations of what they could/should have been.

No matter how you look at it, PA is in a worse position compared to TA and it really shouldn't be that way.

Mike

That's just all I KNOW were not in the game that was originally supposed to be, there could me many, many more.

Edit: You're just arguing because you didn't expect anyone to know of any missing features, ay? (Mostly joking )

Edit2: I also can't imagine how you don't think those are some pretty big features. Many people (including you) complain horribly about PA's balance, yet it's alright that TA had bad balance as well? Also, the fact that Cavedog barely worked on their ai is okay? Why's that? Don't tell me "Well that was so long ago, they couldn't get good ai!" No, they could, many ai mods have clearly shown this. One of the biggest problems for the ai in TA was that all of it was mainly based around it's base code, it could only do what it sort of knew what to do. Ai mods often refined that code to be much better AND often create ai maps for the maps so ai actually has an understanding of a map rather than just walking around willy nilly. The galactic gate could have been a huge feature! Think of the galactic gate like the unit cannon of TA. As in.. such a huge feature and that if everyone were told it'd be in the game, are you saying NO ONE would be like "omg no galactic gate, wtf Cavedog."

It seems pretty hypocritical to me, biased.

My apologies if it seems to offend you at all (being a developer of ZeroK and such) I know that in essence Spring games are well.. Games- but I mean't game as in a well known, paid for RTS. Please note I completely agree that what you guys have made is a game and utilizes the spring engine for said game.

Edit: Aha, I found the term. The first "Major RTS" to use Area commands, is that any better?