PA Steam Reviews

It's smooth, but slow. The sim speed decrease very rapidely, and is already not a full speed after 10-15 min usually.

Here's one review I found on steam:

when i write my "review" i will be as honest and and unbiased as possible about it .... might do it later the next week

Found that video entertaining. Got a good laugh out of it.

Steam reviews are filled with spam, they're angry, they're usually written by ignorant and misinformed users, they're a dime a dozen, sometimes they're outright lying and many are just written to get that Steam achievement for having written a review.

However, they're also a (superficial) metric of judging a game's acceptance. A game's weaknesses will ruthlessly be eviscerated in Steam reviews. Its strengths will be praised to the heavens. Even more so than Metacritic, a flawed game will see its review scores drop whereas a good game will have its fanboys and -girls gush all over their keyboards.

I'll take the first three negative reviews from Steam right now. They're on the review front page so everyone looking for user feedback will see them first.



Alright, this is very short and offers no detail whatsoever ... but a significant part of the "dedicated" community agrees that while the game is a great piece of work, it has several core features missing, especially regarding its future development and player retention. I can't really disagree with this one.




Clear case. No offline play. Strong language, but not wrong per se.



Well, "buggy as hell" is very general speaking. But then again the game does suffer from performance issues, from UI issues, and a lot of people are running into trouble despite having decent rigs and up-to-date drivers.

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Obviously these are picking on the negative points of the game (or they wouldn't have a thumbs down). But can we really, honestly, truthfully disagree with everything they're saying?

Saying Uber lied is wrong. I've yet to see an official source that says "On launch you will be able to play offline".

I wasn't so fancy with screenshots, but I picked apart negative reviews too. What about the ones I found? I personally commented on their review

http://www.uberent.com/pa/faq/


How is that not a lie?

DRM free is a lie, and they omit to say "and play the game" in the list of things you can't do without being online.

Was pretty obvious this would happen. Might be impossible to avoid it all with the game's state, but offline was the most important thing.

Yeah, updating games without internet is pretty hard. Go figure.

Offline is coming anyway.

Also, am I dreaming or the DRM-free promise has disappears from the kickstarter page !?

Actually it disappears from every page except the FAQ... I wouldn't be surprised that it will never come.

I think that we have to be fair, sit back, and think about why these people are giving the game negative reviews. Take this one from your analysis:

Yes, Uber pumped out a ton of improvements during the final week. Doesn't change the fact that it's perfectly fine for someone to judge the game based on one of its final builds, especially if the devs repeated time and time again that they "already consider it released".

Take a look at the lot of us here on the forums. We're obviously all passionate about the game and invested in it (financially, emotionally, otherwise). It's very, very easy to get an echo chamber effect where we're all understanding and patient about delays and cut features, and where we'll keep supporting Uber despite the occasional uproar over this or that.

We're not representative (which is why Uber usually isn't wrong in partially ignoring the forum community and their "demands"). We have to take a look outside - at Steam reviews, at Metacritic, at feedback from the folks who rarely post on the forums - to understand how the majority of users are receiving the game.

What I see...

No, I am serious, NOTHING disappears from the internet. That page has been screenshotted more times that could ever be erased by the US government even.

What are you talking about?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts
According to web archive there was no changes still 2013 at all.

Also news about DRM-free and LAN support is still there:
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...nihilation-a-next-generation-rts/posts/289765
And I doubt Uber can actually edit anything after so much time pass.

Personally I'm really respected all your work on FAF, but it's really sad to see how you bitching about some page on website not being updated in time like it's some great conspiracy theory while everyone know devs was busy on PAX and dealing with other issues.

The really unfair thing is that, without UBER, such a game would never have existed. Never, Ever. Simply because it's too much risky for an editor to fund such a game. So there must be trade off. How is it possible to compared PA to any other game which is funded by editors ? How is it possible in this world to not stand that yes, the perfect delivery in time may simply not happen. That it may just take much more time to do it ?

I said this would happen.

What's would happen?

Comparing time where PA appear on Steam first time there is nearly zero negative reason on release.

The fact that people are buying it and that a Lot are unable to play correctly will increase the backlash. And just wait until this reaches big journalism sites, people will LOVE dissing this game just because of the fact that it was crowdfunded.

This not related to server-side issues in most parts would say there is few a lot bigger and a lot important problems that actually cause real negative impact in current version:

• Compatibility issues with 3rd party software that not under Uber control.
• Intro video which wasn't well-tested and likely cause issues.
• Broken integration in Steamworks so at least part of players can't register and get accounts linked in-game. Possible related to video.
• Decreased sim performance. E.g not server-side limit in general, but fact it's become worse than before.
• Steam keys not delivered for backers who notice they have access to game only now.

And I hope developers going to fix them fast because it's more important than offline mode.

Vocal minority is vocal.