Offline Play?

WHY is this not posted on the MAIN STOREFRONT on Uber's website, steam's, the general forums and the steam forums?

This would save so much headache. They should not be relying on fans to spread information!

They relied on fans to fund the game, isn't is the best possible way to show you trust fan by letting them spread the word ? Being one of them i keep posting on steam, liking good reviews, disliking bad reviews. And we are many to do this. I understand your point of view, but unless this is going to kill the game sales, what's the problem ? As of today PA is still in Top 20 best sellers on steam and the deluxe edition in in top 70.

No, because it didn't happen. People range from bummed to outraged that game is on-line only, coupled with some peoples poor server experiences, it is frustrating people. And in my opinion it will or has already effected game sales. TA released in 1997, it received a lot of accolades and was universally adored, can we say the same about PA?
I don't think their is much Uber can do except get the offline play sorted asap. I'm sure that and sorting their server issues are probably a high priority. Also I'm not calling for a holy war, I think the game is awesome, I'm just sharing my opinion on the launch and its effect on the game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Annihilation#Awards

PA was built from the ground up to utilize server hosted MP.

There were a lot less games back in TA's day to win similar kinds of awards. Just something to throw out there if you think media-licensed awards are indicative of a game's quality (hey Metacritic).

People need to calm down, really. Some key mistakes committed in this thread.

1. Speaking for other people. Speak for yourselves. Nobody else. Who says a banner on the frontpage will help? You all came in here, you all made five pages of argument about offline play. You're all motivated to find information for yourself.

2. Uber lied to me! No, they didn't. It's not a bait-and-switch. Their plans for release have changed since the Kickstarter. They changed again since the game came to Steam. They've always been upfront about these changes. We've known for some time offline play was going to take longer to get here. We've known this.

3. EA comparisons. Seriously. I know it's a trendy thing to make a one-post account and say "don't be like EA" (that exists in this thread, I think), but that's both character assassination of Uber and reliant upon the (admittedly popular) notion that EA somehow always break games.

(which is interesting, as they plugged a year of funding and updates into fixing their most broken title recently - BF4. They spent the money to get it fixed. And yet, they're still Bad. Ah well, can't argue with gamers)

Am I supposed to be grateful to EA for doing things that are expected and should have been done before release?

And yet you defend Uber from things people expected of them before release.

Software development isn't a static, linear thing. It changes. Things perform differently in-house compared to in the wild (a term for public release). Some of the things EA/DICE have done with BF4's netcode? It's new stuff.

But it was never officially stated the game would have offline at launch, things changed and Uber was very open about those changes.

I personally think Uber released too early.

I'm on your side, but you're hiding behind a technicality there (and a semantic one at that. As someone who studied English - and I am British, that's a messy amount of "technicality" to hide behind ).

I'm illustrating the difference in bias here. I like to feel I judge companies equally. You feel that Uber released too early. I think EA probably released BF4 too early (but that in itself ties into hitting revenue targets to satisfy shareholders - not necessarily a fault of EA or the DICE devs) - but they've invested an entire financial year into fixing it.

And yet, they get little-to-no kudos for doing so. But Uber do? Uber don't have half the financial responsibilities that EA do.

That is a lie. They clearly stated on multiple occasions that there would be offline at launch. That changed when their push to release the game early started and the developers became very coy about answering question regarding offline. Brad's posting was the first I've seen regarding offline being a priority at all.

But here are the links:

Steam Forums:

[Uber] Garat [developer] Sep 17, 2013 @ 10:26pm
Standard skirmish is already supported and will continue to grow as our AI continues to be developed. Galactic War will likely have a number of pre-defined skirmishes for you as you go through it, and the difficulty will determine how many AI's you're typically going up against. We'll be releasing more details about Galactic War as we proress through beta, as it primarily builds upon the core game experience.

But stand alone skirmish (currently online connection required, but will be full offline play at launch) is and will continue to see support and improvement.

[Uber] Garat [developer] Dec 19, 2013 @ 10:50am
Pasopov - that's one of the reasons we very clearly call out that early access requires online to play. Offline singleplayer will not be supported until the game is finished. You can play online singleplayer against the AI, but you are required to login until release.

Steam Storefront had this before they changed this:

DRM Free - Play connected to the UberNet servers, your own private server, or offline. It’s your choice. Early Access online connectivity is required to play.

That statement coupled with the developer statement clearly says that offline will be available at launch.

Again, all many of us wanted (or at least me) was some communication that offline was even a priority given what was said before as some of us wanted a DRM game.

It's not a lie. You cited one post where the word "launch" is used.

The metric then changed - they started using the term "finished". The two are different.

If you want to debate semantics, feel free.

I agree with Geers that the game was release too early. But I disagree with the statement:

I'm sure Geers was not malicious with that, and maybe the word "lie" is too strong a word but that statement is simply not true.

I am not debating the semantics with you. The plain reading of the quotes all clearly mean that when the game is launched, released, whatever, they will have offline present. They obviously changed this, I still consider this misleading customers, especially when (until I saw that recent quote) they were not responding to any of the threads critical of them not having offline.

It makes financial sense for them to hold off the offline mode for a couple of weeks though because it stops the pirates who are swept up in the initial hype for the game. Regardless, they mislead backers and existing customers when they promised offline at launch.

So we've changed from "they said it would happen to launch", to "they said it'd be when the game was finished" to "they promised us it".

Keep at it.

sori typin on fone so lota chopy txt. But yeah they promised and didn't keep that. But I believe that its still locked to fix the bugs and memory issues its still havin. Just like ea did with the SimCity. And now doin with s4. Cheap way of getting the game tested but it might be the fastest. And they get support money to improve... But what I'm disappointed about is the lack of content, where are the astroid belts and unit canons and the ability to shift a planet to orbit another planet and planet smash defences and all that jazz the kickstarter trailer inspired and hyped on. @Uber give us some mind setting rest, please I'm actually loosing sleep because of this. Almost wish it was still in Alfa so id be able to play it without system lag at 12 planet systems. But I still have higher hopes for the planetary awesomeness to come

Are you being deliberately obtuse or are you trying to create a strawman argument? Launching the game is release. Completion of early access is, for all intents and purposes, 1.0. They advertised and stated that the game would have offline now. And they should get flak for this because they released the game from early access too early.

* launch of the game is release.

* launch of the game isn't necessarily when it's finished.

You keep using words that were never used. I'm not being obtuse, I'm pointing out the flaws in your posts.

So if Microsoft Office 2016 launched without Excel, and they gave some vague statement that it "Didn't make it in the launch, but should be patched in sometime after." that would be okay with you, because software that is released doesn't have to be finished.

Microsoft would have a much easier job if all their clients thought the way you do.

With the bugs that released with Office 365 your closer to the truth than you realise...

More seriously though Uber are a very small company compared to the industry big boys. I'm certain that financial / business pressures aside they would have waited longer for release. You also need to remember that PA was one of the first high profile kickstarted games so this is all pretty much uncharted territory.

People are judging the game on the basis "you were funded 2.2 million therefore.." however that sum of money was really only sufficient to get started, games like this cost allot more than that (SupCom cost in the region of 10 million for example) which is why they have offered early access all the way through to keep funds coming in.

The release was earlier than it should have been, I'm not going to argue that, however they probably didn't have much choice. The key point however is that this doesn't need to be a problem *if* they keep working on the game, and everything they've done so far shows that's exactly what they're doing. I personally think it will work out fine in the long run, although I guess none of us will know until we get there.

If Uber had the resources Microsoft did, your analogy might be a tad less stupid than it currently looks.

If Microsoft had launched an Early Access version of Office that lacked Excel, and that they planned to release Excel "when Office was finished", then yes, they could release Excel whenever they wanted.

Oh, so there's a double standard depending on how much money you have. Okay. PA is no longer considered "Early Access" so your defense doesn't carry any weight, but that's okay because your post has enlightened me; I know now that nobody has the right to be critical of a game if doesn't have the development budget of Microsoft or EA. Classic definitions of "Finished", "Early Access", and "Released" need not apply to these kinds of projects.