PA Steam Reviews

Hello. I've been a part of Planetary Annihilation since early beta and I must say, I love this game. However, Steam seems to really disagree. A lot of people don't seem to be happy with the current status of the game in it's release state. Is there anything we can do to combat this negative criticism? I really don't want PA to end up not being successful because of a lot a negative launch press.

I agree, Steam is just super whiny. =/

Edit: they also just spam misinformation and give everyone the wrong idea about the game because they won't take the five minutes to research into it.

I looked at the main page yesterday and it was full of positive reviews...

EDIT:
When...What...How....What the.... I don't even...

Do not engange into discussions with them. Only post corrections of informations with links to the sources once.
Then start posting about all the awesome things PA already has and ignore the naysayers.

Well,I certainly hope that the steam criticism doesn't bring down the game. A lot of the current press seems to be very negative. Most of the top-voted reviews are overwhelmingly negative. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a doom speaker, I'm just wondering if there is something we can do about it.

Make good reviews? And also try to battle off the misinformation in the forums.

Ok, but there's only so much one person can do. Anyway we can band together to fight the misinformation and general crap-slinging?

Ok, thanks for the advice, gonna go play pa now.

No. Well, unless you can open the entire world's eyes on negative press just trying to get a rise in their views. If you could sink those negative reviewers, I'd love you forever.

I will do my best to post on steam, I agree with colin, I am just linking a ton of corrections making negative nancys look misinformed and "retarded' is I believe what other internet people would call it. I already gave it a review.

EDIT: 4/9 found my review helpful. *Sigh* I may sound elitist, but 90% of this planet can go to walmart and buy a ladder so they can get up onto my level...

I wish. One can dream right?

Yeah, I just really hope this game does well.

I still think it was a bad idea to release, and i guess those people do also.

I'll be honest; if i just bought this game and knew nothing about the community or game itself, i would not be impressed.

Yes this is a one-of-a-kind RTS and Uber has done the almost impossible, but the lag and missing features, including bugs with crashes, lobbies etc would be the game-breaker.

The lag is better than ever, the missing features assumes one knows about the community, the bugs and crashes were largely snuffed out on release, the lobbies have been fine...

On top of that, the game is 30 dollars. It has 30 dollars of features... It isn't free to play, at the same time it isn't a 60 dollar title, and it also isn't a 15 dollar title on a common indie engine (unity/unreal), so the price is in the par.

STEAM REVIEW:

This game is still in development, but currently has a release build. It will be updated frequently and is very openly coded for modding.

I will list below actual facts, and keep in mind this game is $30, is not built on an existing engine (unreal/unity) so is using new programming from scratch, and isn't free to play but isn't AAA either. It is in the par range for a kickstarter.

Pros:
--Easy open coding for easy modding
--"Maps" are the surfaces of spheres, planets which orbit a star, can be multiple planets and planets can orbit planets
--"Macro" themed, so large volumes of units and bases that cover the faces of the planets in-game.
--Procedurally generated, each "planet" is generated like a minecraft map. Several planet types, the earth planet has determining factors for different biome generation on different parts, and metal points to capture and mine are scattered across the entire planet.
--Orbital gameplay, the gateway in and out of a planet is the orbital layer, where single unit transports can travel through, fighters can attack units in orbit, stationary orbital platforms can attack orbital and the surface below, and satellites can gather intel.
--Weapons of awesome, such as "Nuclear Missile Launchers", Orbital Laser Platforms, "Halley" planetary engines to crash small planets into larger ones as a kinetic collision weapon, and "Annihilasers" armed from metal planets to obliterate other planets.
--The AI is built by "Sorian" who made the AI Supcom Mod. The AI is strong, expands rapidly and plays aggressively. Normal, Hard, Relentless, and Absurd, as well as an Eco Modifier Handicap, to give oneself more/less eco and to give each player/AI more/less eco. The AI is controlled in difficulty better by the eco, set to .8 an absurd AI won't outspread a decent player, set to 1.2 a normal AI will still have t2 before most human players.
--Multiplayer, AI Skirmish, and Galactic War Campaign. Galactic War is less based on story and has a lose description serving that purpose, and more based on procedural generation. A starmap is generated, the player is given a section and 3 other factions have sections, the player chooses a starting technology (vehicle, bot, air, artillery, orbital, lone buffed commander), and collects more technology each starsystem traveled. The player must fight battle at a time, each starsystem into the enemy territory, until the "leader" is located. Upon beating the leader, his territory is relinquished. Annihilation is final and defeats end the save so you must start over (TIP: you can alt-f4 very quickly after your own loss or even before your own loss, and the save will still start you at the start of that same battle)
--The "Chronocam" replay system records gamestates in a replayable state, which save to the database to access later. You can use replays mid-game, to rewind a few seconds or minutes back to check for things. You can use a replay at the game's end to see any part or the whole thing from your and/or your enemy's perspective. You can look up the game to replay at a later time.
--The last push for release brought huge strides to simulation speeds and bug fixes. A day before release, GW antinukes didn't work and linux had a 90% crash from a UI error. Release build has functioning GW antinukes and the linux UI fix for full stability. Overall, game is "release" quality stable.

Cons:
--Servers are ran from Playfab (formerly known as UberNet, now an independently ran service across multiple platforms); There is a definite work in progress to have the game work offline DRM free but it is still in development although designed from the start for public use.
--The game cannot save mid-match in-battle. This is a feature intended to be developed through the "chronocam" replay system. The pros is that the game will virtually autosave constantly, as any moment of a game will be loadable from that instant of the game's replay. The cons is that the feature will take time to develop and the developer didn't opt to make a half ♥♥♥♥ gamesave feature to tie-over as it would be obsolete at a later date.
--The original kickstarter video concept video portrayed a "unit cannon", a cannon to fire units at places as a means of in-planet and interplanetary transport; the game currently lacks this but when developed would be a free update.
--Naval is on the weak side, this is remedied by server mods as some of them can buff or add naval (the author of this review developed "Naval Redux" mod, expands naval as 1st class citizen, land/air is vanilla)
--The game is currently missing a map editor, it has a mapmaker using slides to control the procedural generation, you can control if it is a snow world or desert world or how much water, but you cant specifically place plateaus or chasms onto the land. This may be moddable, or developed as a free add-on later.

Maybe the complaints on Steam are all valid.... The types of things myself and others have been saying the whole time. Why try to suppress or combat them? Surely if the complaints are baseless they will be overpowered by positivity.

I'll just say it: PA is failing. It's already too late. They jumped the gun on release, 1.0 ISN'T just a"label".

They valid the people to said them, but many are misinformed and so have kinda jumped the gun.

Suppressing them isn't the point (Or if it is, for god sake guys) the point is to correct the misinformation that has been spread.

But frankly, a lot of people were disappointed before release even came....so this was just the people who weren't on the forums like us.

No kidding. I dug one page down, saw the positive ones. Steam is the short name for Valve's services, because typing "steaming pile of absolute bullturd" every time you try to talk about it is time consuming. Like we call basic t1, we call "steaming pile of absolute bullturd" "Steam".

Yes, the lag is better but still not good. 10 player games on more than 5 planets results in 1 FPS sims sometimes.

If i bought an RTS i would expect to have matchmaking and ladders, also offline mode.

There are many bugs; to name one the radar bug is still alive.

Lobbies still have that bug when someone un-readies at the very last millisecond, the loading screen with the comms gets stuck. I made a thread on it actually, a while back.

There is nothing we can do to help with the negative reviews besides writing positive reviews.

It's not failing. There are over 1500 people playing right now on steam. That's like a 200 percent increase.