Dispelling Myths About PA: WIP Article

I am sick and tired of all these bad reviews that are quite often based on incorrect information. So I want to make a massive article that goes over a lot of the misconceptions related to PA.

I would greatly appreciate some help compiling a list of topics that are often misunderstood and compile links of sources correcting them.

I'll start off with a few myths

• $2,000,000 is more than enough to build a RTS game, Uber only asked for 800,000, and got a lot more. The game should be more than complete.
• PA is, and always will be, online only
• Game is extremely buggy and unplayable
• PA is all about spamming as many units as you can and sending them in a straight line to the opponent

And then I'll probably talk about a few other hot topics

• shields
• experimentals
• commander upgrades
• factions

I'm tired... otherwise I'd come up with more.

I'll do the hot topics for you.

• shields - NO

• experimentals - NO

• commander upgrades - NO

• factions - LORE ONLY
  
  All done.

Brian, I understand you're trying to help a game you're passionate about. But this article of yours will not do any good.

What's the message you want to get across? That the game has so many issues and its developers communicate so little that senior community members have to take things into their own hands and write a FAQ? No matter your intent, that's how it's going to look.

Who do you want this message to read? Metacritic reviewers? Readers of online gaming press? Because you'd have to chase them down at their place (i.e., their message board) and either paste your article or link to the forums. And you know how that looks? Like a desperate fanboy copying & pasting a wall of text to spread some agenda. Posting it just here on the forums won't help as, you know, we're already here and in the know.

I understand you want to help, but as it's so often the case, the opposite of good isn't bad, but good intentions. Leave it be. People turned away from PA by a single negative review probably wouldn't have played it anyway. Curious people will ultimately find a community like this forum or the PA subreddit and stumple upon all the great sources and people who'll gladly help with any myths and whatnot.

Except it's not just one review. And the vast majority of people won't create an account on forums to research whether they're buying a game.

My idea behind this article is to use send a link to people who have misinformation, and to use it as a point of reference for PA fans to talk elsewhere.

"Leaving it be" is rarely a good thing, especially when quite a few of these reviews would be entirely different if they just knew one or two pieces of information. If there is bad press out there, the last thing you want to do is ignore it and pretend that everything is fine.

I think is unnecessarily cynical, to be honest.
Yes, some people will make up their mind based on the review, but if they are there reading it, then they obviously want to find out about the game. So, having comments underneath that discuss the shortcomings with the review would hopefully encourage people to think more about whether it is a game they would want to buy, even just eventually.
Even on Steam, where people are generally pretty stubborn, just talking with them about some of the misinformation going around has at least made them reconsider writing the game off entirely, often saying they wil pick it up if those problems get fixed (offline mode, for example).
I agree, it shouldn't really be up to the fans to do Uber's work for them, but if they aren't doing, then someone should.
It won't magically turn around the games fortunes if that is the way it is going to go, but it may change some people's minds and encourage them to give it a try.

I don't mean to be cynical. I just think that passionate fans scrambling to their game's defense can easily do just as much harm as negative press does in the first place.

First common misconception is that $2 million dollars doesn't make a decent RTS.. Well Uber asked for $800,000... Maybe it's more to do with Uber creating that vision. It's all well and good saying after release that that money was no where near enough to make a good RTS game, maybe they should have guestimated a lot better and talked about it more openly at kickstarter until leaving it at last minute and turn round and say "well the money we asked for was nothing like the money we needed" Some of this is Uber's doing.

Online only at release is a bummer, however you look at it, it hurts.
The game in fairness on the release build, was laggy. The game has its bugs.

Delaying release to get stuff finished is respectful, and for the majority of us was the only choice. You can't release a product and say well features are coming, mind holding off on the reviews for the "Super Finished Release Build."

I know you're trying to help, but it may backfire..

I guess. I have just been trying to correct misinformation over on Steam, and encourage people to try the game, because it is a good game. For my troubles, one person went and found quotes on here to discredit me and claim I am just a blind fanboy. I love the game, but I can recognise the flaws and missteps it has, and Uber has made. Apparently that is enough to warrant character assassination though. Sad panda.

I'd do it, just because I am tired of drafting new replies to the same old ****. At least with an article, the same answer can be copy-pasted in the same generic PA-bashing posts.

Also, the devs don't aknowledge this because of what it is. A waste of their effort. If they even remotely replied back to a server release thread, it would demand constant discussion from them. If they made one comment and not another, it "proves they are scammers sucking money from the community". If they constantly address attacks in the thread, they spend several minutes scattered throughout the day repeating the same stance as if they don't understand english so they need a few repeats to run it through their head and sound it out...

I don't think anyone needs more of a statement about the servers, than they already got. Neutrino gave a pretty clear answer like July 25th or so.

The 2 million thing:
https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilt...misinformation-and-bad-publicity.64115/page-2
Seriously, just link the image. It shuts up everyone who tries that old approach. And if they try "but artists cost more", point out that artist are part of the staff size.

Regarding online only/DRM:
You can already download a steam-less version. All you need is a ubernet account wich can be made free of charge:
https://store.uberent.com/download/pa
They just need to upgrade that the page saying "alpha".

I can play the game completely without having steam running already.
Once they released the server there will be nothing to prevent piracy. And that was thier plan all along.

Unlike a Steam account that cost a lot?

But the people who want true offline are still stuffed. That's the problem. Doesn't bother me mind, but it seems to bother a lot of people.

This was an argument against the "there will always be DRM crowd". There is already a way to play without having the DRM platform steam in the loop. At all.

Another point against always DRM:
The current servers are leased from amazon (as can be found out by watching PA's network traffic with the resource monitor).
If they wanted to keep them they would buy them, not lease them.

Can't help but agree.

Wanting to help is a nice sentiment, but we're already being described as Uber's Editor Police, and those Uber Fanboys.
And while that's anything but a nuanced assessment, it's not altogether incorrect. We do point out the fallacies in other's arguments, we constantly try to point out the invalid criticism directed at PA. So it's not that weird that people perceive us as being biased.

And adding an article in the mix, well it's ultimately not going to change anything.

They released the game too early and unfinished, which es the general consensus there is no reason to defend this.

In the kickstarter they wanted 800k to make a good and awesome rts.
Now they tell us that 2.2 million was not enough and is never enough for a game this scale.

People are angry because they think they got lied to and their right is to share their opinion!

I honor Chris Taylor for telling the truth, he said he could not make a rts game for 800 Dollars.

A lot of people have poor internet connection and/or data caps. They can't afford to be always online.

Multiplayer works. Singleplayer works. People are playing tournaments left and right:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/upcoming-tournaments.58480/

Mod support works on both sides.

I used to think it was too early. But honsetly this game is fully functional for it's primary purpose (Multiplayer) and I am having enough fun in singleplayer for a game that never had a focus on SP to begin with.
Not every feature that is still planned? Sure.
Not functional or fun? Hell no.

And since the metacritic score is still stable at 6.8 I don't think as many people as you would thinkg agree with your point of view.

If people feel the need to tell wrong things that I can correct with one link or one cite, then obviously thier point was shitty to begin with. Reality is only effective against very weak arguments.
I can't stand people trying to make thiere poor research or intentoinal falsehoods into attraction catching threads. They are disrupting the proper working of the Forum I use. If I can nuke thier point with a single link, I do so. If I have a thread with the links compiled: All the easier to nuke thier points.
Just because I want to refute them, does not mean I have to spend time on it, right?

@Bhaal I am beginning to think you might be among the crowd that loves to spread missinformation and are jsut trying to distract us from getting this done.

@Brian: Just keep on going and ignore people that don't like it. Even just a collection of links in the OP is all the logical ammunition we need.
And since we are at the thematic of links, here is the one against the whole "DLC commadner skin" argument (if somebody should be stupid enough to try that one again):
http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/10/6131069/kickstarters-planetary-annihilation-uber

The kickstarter campaign was basically a market research. It's just people has to be deceived into believing it is the main funding source of the game development to make the market research valid.

Of course they couldn't! You don't understand how Kickstarter works it seems.

2.5 M is nothing, uber put a lot of extra money in the game.