What's the deal with all the negativity?

To be fair, this still blindsided us, the fact that it blindsided us four days before it would have otherwise doesn't change much. If this had been said weeks or even a month or two before the event, I think we would have seen a different story.

Appreciate the even-handedness of your thought, but we didn't know weeks or a month ago how this was going to shape up. I said it as early as I was sure it was going to happen.

Yea, the life of a game developer isn't easy, but remember just because we are frustrated does not mean we are not still confident in your ability to deliver. Often this sort of thing is dictated by the circumstances and things can't be made to fit the ideal plan. Just keep things together and keep pushing out updates along with fixing the big things that need to be fixed and I personally will be good with the money I have spent. Please don't let momentary displeasure on our part sour you on the community overall. The most noisy forum members are bunch of arseholes anyway, myself included. Don't take us too terribly seriously.

Wait a moment.
So my theory was right, that you guys got caught red-handed by the release date published by Nordic Games? And the PAX event just happened to be timely aligned for demonstrating 1.0 in public?
It's not a shame to admit that and surely more comprehensible than going silent all together.

After all, you left the community in the belief that there was still a lot of time left to shape out missing features before release, so of course discussion in this forum went easily off topic on a regular base. Then being confronted with imminent release all of a sudden was doomed to cause discussion to flip over and to cause users to ask for more transparency next time.

Sure, the intonation wasn't so nice in some cases. But that's more of a generic issue with forums of a given size in general. After all, non controversal threads happen to be forgotten in these forums within mere 12-24 hours, due to vanishing to page 2 of the corresponding subforum. So people will naturally troll to keep their concerns visible at least, even when this goes to the disadvantage of the informative content or the quality of the criticism.

I think this idea that some people are just "being negative" is potentially quite damaging. It paints a picture that everyone is either 100% certain that PA is guaranteed to be the best thing ever, or 100% certain that PA is going to be the most horrific nightmare imaginable.

This black and white thinking is common amongst people on the internet and it's stupid. People are capable of nuanced belief about the future of PA. We are all capable of saying "this part is bad, but this part is good". For example, how many of these so called "negative" people have ever said a bad word about the game's music? None! PA's music is absolutely excellent. How many have had critical words to say about balance? Lots, because there is clearly some difficulty going on with the current balanced. See how its possible to have a nuanced belief about the game?

When someone says something nice, they are applauded for being supportive. Yet, when someone points out a flaw, they are lambasted for being "negative", for "pooping up threads" or for proclaiming doom. I think some people need to examine their own biases, and look at such feedback in an emotionally detached way as possible. Mainly because games don't get better when surrounded by yes-men. They get better when critique is debated and addressed. If we want PA to improve as time goes by, then we don't need to tell the devs the parts that they are doing right, because they are doing them right. We need to explain the parts where PA is failing in a calm and polite manner. I understand that it is difficult to constantly hearing what is wrong with a product, rather than what is right, but that's part of the process. Any creator will go through the same thing.

I can see one issue on the "negativity", in that a lot of threads point out the problem without suggesting a solution, which is normally a good heuristic for rating how constructive a suggestion is. However, this is normally because the solution has already been pointed out elsewhere and has been ignored. I think this can be fixed by people just being more careful with their posts and frequently linking things.

At the end of the day though, we critique PA because we want it to be a better game. Anyone with half a brain can see that even the most negative person on the forums still cares about PA and really wants it to succeed. The proof for that is logically obvious:

If anyone felt that PA was doomed, and that there was nothing to be done to improve its flaws they wouldn't be here.

I mostly agree with this. I don't know whether the OP was referring to particular people being overtly negative, or whether they just noticed an overall negative tone to the forum at the moment.
For what it's worth, we tend to swing from negative to positive at a moments notice, and often because of particular upset or new build etc. I wouldn't say that lots of people are being negative, and indeed we should take into consideration that many people voicing criticism have legitimate concerns.
I think generally, Uber does listen to criticism, unless it appears to be more vitriolic or hate filled than the rest. Perhaps people are annoyed because they see the same complaint threads popping up over and over again, and assume Uber are ignoring the problems raised. I remain doubtful that this is (generally) the case, and am optimistic that if a problem has been noted several times, the devs are most likely aware of it, and possibly even already working on it.

It will certainly be interesting to see what the mood is on the forums once the big 1.0 hits. Fingers crossed and hatches battened down

Edit: to be fair, the OP is primarily calling out the people who say the game isn't ready for 1.0 release. I think there are decent arguments for either side of this debate, but personally I think the game is ready for a 1.0 release to the general gaming public. Work still needs to be done to retain those people post release, but it believe this can be achieved. And we still don't know what the 1.0 build is like yet either.

Unfortunately no, even this piece of art was criticized, I can remember some pooping about "Lorem ipsum" thingy

the reason people go crazy is because they want uber to lay ALL the cards open ... and have a bigger say on how things should be done ... the recent balance discussions are a prime example of that ... showing to what rediculous levels of drama some are willing to go for showing their disappointment not realising they damage the credibility of the comunity as a whole .... and frankly i am far more disgusted about that than being disapointed
about some missing features not comming now but still eventualy in the future ...
same bs as the whole "x is greedy" bla bla for when people themselves show how greedy they actualy are ...
it's such a joke ...

If its a joke, why is nobody laughing?

You actually say it right "eventually" means uncertain, if one thing humanity does not like it's uncertainty, they want certainty! That's why storms are created ect ect ect

there is still only so much people can do ...
also in live there is only one thing that is absolutly certain

Well they would, just not on linux.

I honestly started becoming more and more disappointed with the community recently. Almost every thread either Brad or Neutrino started had to be locked as people started whipping up drama and taking discussions in the wrong direction, discouraging them from engaging with us completely.

But there is hope. It's a vocal minority as Brad said. People being reasonable, submitting bug reports and objective feedback to the right places don't get noticed as much. But we're still here, Uber, and we do our best to help.

People on the internet can be whiny little crapholes a lot of the time.
Being critical of something you love is an important part of liking something, because it shows passion for wanting something to be the best it CAN be. But whining and moaning and being very aggressively negative helps nobody, you have to actually be constructive of how PA could be better and take in mind all the factors that Uber has to work with (ie being a small company with limited funds on a brand new engine)

Also I hope you people never get a unit cannon

It's a shame, because there are real problems that need to be discussed, constructively, but every time the discussion is started, it gets derailed into vitriol or whining. Not helping anyone.

That and people either not taking no for an answer, or not accepting that they aren't being told every minute that the devs are working in their problems (apparently this means Uber is not transparent, and therefore a big evil developer who just wants your money. FFS they have talked to the community throughout this process, even as certain members were getting, quite frankly, entitlement issues)

My two cents...

If you want a feature complete game with no bugs don't buy games that have been newly released and certainly don't buy into early access. Your setting yourself up for disappointment.

I remember the days before patching where games had to be perfect. (or sold horribly)

I've only played PA a few times, but the experience has been good even with it's current issues. I played sup com for years with massive fps lag due to a slow cpu. Chill.

This by far is the dumbest topic on this entire forum. GJ pouring oil guys. Especially Brad for that super-necessary extra dump you took on Nano, way to go man!

I see al this negativity as a positive sign. It means that people here really want this game to succeed and be the best RTS ever!!

The negativity is probably caused by the optimization work. People don't see big changes/updates to the game because the game is the same, except the framerate/performance is better. Because we don't see big changes people think uber stopped working on bigger features which causes negativity because they were talked about but we don't know if and when they are coming. Also Uber keeps the upcoming big features silent for marketing purposes while the other developments were very open because the game was far from 1.0. New unknown features will generate hype which delivers better marketing

Uber has made my favourite RTS game, I can say without any doubt that PA has surpassed TA and Supcom easily. I really love the speed and scale of the game, I love the spherical planets, I love smashing planets and I love the art style. I really look forward for the 1.0 version of the game and can't wait to see this new annihilation option and gas planet gameplay!! Thank you Uber for making the game I've played and loved the most since I got beta acces!!!

"Maybe if we ignore the problem it'll go away."

Yeh fine, no more posting, people need to calm down and this thread isn't helping. Let's just see where. 1.0 takes us already. Any news on that? Coming out today? pretty please??