A list of community interaction with Uber

So in another thread I made quick list out of my head about what things Uber has done terms of community communication. Many people seem to feel Uber has not communicated about PA at all. This is mostly a result of tens of thousands of backers having all their own ideas, throwing them at maybe 2 dozen devs at Uber. Ofc it is hard to see the influence of a single person from our perspective and they can't just follow balance suggestions thrown at them from all directions as well.
I am sure from Ubers perspective there are a lot of things in PA that came from the community. (maybe somebody at Uber can post a few things for the list as well)

I'll keep a list here of community interaction and community influences in PA. If you remember any interaction with Uber that should be added to the list post in this thread, preferably with a source, I'll keep it up to date. No other discussion here please, I'll be quick to delete offtopic posts.

1. In very first interviews during the kickstarter they talked about flat maps that would use some graphical illusion effects on zoom out to look like planets. Feedback made them change their mind on that.
2. During the introduction of gas giants for the ks they first wanted to have them land masses. People told them that is unrealistic, so our gas giants today are orbital only.
3. Later on when the alpha started I made a twitch stream and quickly had a bunch of devs watching me try their game for the first time, getting help from them at debugging issues I had.
4. They have asked us for unit ideas.
5. They invited a bunch of high level players to do those balance experiments a while back with metabolical.
6. They gave us help with a lot of modding questions, so people i.e. could understand the file format for 3d models or I found that I can control which alerts are sent, so PA Stats now can show army compositions.
7. Some devs put in their free time to help cast community tournaments.
8. When first showcasing the first commander model, someone mentioned how much more prominent the gun would look, if they were seperated to a nanolathe arm and a cannon arm. They immediately made that change to the showcase, the commander having a cannon arm and a nanolathe arm, because he is unique enough to warrant breaking symmetry. src
9. At least two bits of code directly from mods are/were included in the PA source (one is no longer used). If you don't believe me, search for "raevn" in the ui/main folder
10. Changes inspired/probably by mods: economy %, in-game bug tracker, probably many more if I look in the mod forum for older mods.
11. Faction names were voted by the community
12. When I made PA Stats I had a pm conversation with garat where he helped me identify the lobby id as a unique identifier for games.
13. The pip pop-up when you mouse over a notification started as a mod.
14. When they added area commands and let us try them out, we immediately requested that dragging over the whole visible planet cause a full-planet command. They added that really fast.
15. A couple devs got really excited when we started modding pips. They helped out a lot in those mod threads.
16. Dev streams. They were doing one or two a day for a while. Those were about as close to the office as we could ever expect to get.
17. A lot of devs have made big dev journal posts when they have something interesting to talk about. I don't want to try to name them because I'm afraid I will miss somebody. My memory is not so good.
18. The team-coloured nanolathe particles were originally a mod, but were incorporated into the game for release. They were uniformly green before.
19. The Vanguard program was established as a direct result of a letter to Uber.
20. I think they used some of the stuff you did with KO-deferred UI stuff, Colin? => @masterdigital experimented with them, though it's not finished yet

Uber ran their first 'official' tournament with a community organisation helping.
This is mostly stuff I, as a single person, remember with a few additions from @raevn and @cptconundrum and @cwarner7264 so far
I'll look up sources for this in a bit, I need to leave now, no time for research :S

@cola_colin - I don't think anyone's accusing Uber of not communicating at all. And everyone who's been following the game one way or the other has certainly noticed that the team does speak with their fans, and be it in the form of Kickstarter updates.

I see the issue in the fact that Uber haven't communicated anything recently, and also somehow refuse to communicate on anything important. They have a passionate community asking questions anyone interested in the game's longevity would - and they're either vague, or ignorant, or silent. Be it offline play for the single player crowd, matchmaking for the driven competitors or servers for the fans of custom games - we have no news. On any of these features, or on most others for that point.

My frustration stems from the fact that I would very much like to play PA in several months or perhaps even years from now, and I would like to do so with friends. In its current state, I can't do so. If Uber's road map is to release a "meh" title, be done with it and focus on the next project, then please - they should tell us! I'd be disappointed but I'd get over it. But with their radio silence they're leaving all fans in a limbo of hope and frustration.

They're already hemorrhaging players, fans and support left and right. Let them continue like that for another month or so, let Human Resources' KS campaign finish without PA seeing massive improvement or a realistic road map - and Uber's reputation will never recover. Their hardcore fans will have left, the 6/10 reviews will be cemented forever and even the last person with casual interest will have heard of how they treat their projects.

.

in the the beginning the interaction was really good. Later on (beta) Uber was listening less at the community atm there is almost no interaction at all because they have a hard time taking criticism from the community.

In a way I can understand it because they have to take the business part in consideration.

From the community point of view I can understand people feel a bit betrayed and let down (HR).

I'll repost this again seeing as you guys missed it the first time;

Technically they were intended to be asymmetric from the beginning according to the concepts, it was the Delta that bucked the trend because it was thought of to be more "combat focused" at the time. I don't think it was ever intended as the new standard. This was still back when having differences between commanders was still on the table after all.

And hen you list it out like that, doesn't it feel underwhelming? Sure it started out "strong" but where did we end up? Being ASKED for unit ideas with no follow up(they barely implemented any new units at all after they had asked anyways). Being tasked with selecting one of 4 potential names?

In the end Uber tried, they just didn't execute it well. On top of that all of this potential good is overshadowed by how things like the Delta/Invictis, Able, Unit Cannon, Orbital and Balance were handled. Uber thried a new way to make their game by using kickstarter and coming to the community directly, but after that, they mostly approached it in teh "Traditional" fashion where the consumer is almost any enemy of sorts and that's a bad thing to do when you ask for help of the basis of letting the community help with more than just money.

Mike

Read point 8, just a different wording

I know there is a lot of grumbling, you guys don't have to restate it. I agree with some of it myself. But in thinking a little I realized a bunch of things I personally experienced that I had forgotten in all the recent negativity and I wonder how much more there may be I missed. That's why I ask others to post the positive little things that happened. I don't think there is a need to repeat the issues already posted in other threads. This is not a thread to collect negatives, it's looking for positives instead.
I am sure there are far more than 11.

The team-coloured nanolathe particles were originally a mod, but were incorporated into the game for release. They were uniformly green before.

The Vanguard program was established as a direct result of a letter to Uber.

The Uber cannon was named by a community member.

The efficiency percentage being displayed was inspired by a mod.

I think they used some of the stuff you did with KO-deferred UI stuff, Colin?

Uber ran their first 'official' tournament with a community organisation helping.

Will add more as I think of them.

I think it's not exactly "fair"(probably not the best word but it's what comes to mind) per say to have a thread with only positives unless you have a sister thread with the negatives too.

Mike

Finding negativity is easy atm is it?

That's not the point. Trying to up-sell the positives while ignoring the negatives isn't going to solve anything.

Mike

• The pip pop-up when you mouse over a notification started as a mod.
• When they added area commands and let us try them out, we immediately requested that dragging over the whole visible planet cause a full-planet command. They added that really fast.
• A couple devs got really excited when we started modding pips. They helped out a lot in those mod threads.
• Dev streams. They were doing one or two a day for a while. Those were about as close to the office as we could ever expect to get.
• A lot of devs have made big dev journal posts when they have something interesting to talk about. I don't want to try to name them because I'm afraid I will miss somebody. My memory is not so good.

Just my two cents:

• Uber incorporated a lot of community feedback - but rarely on core aspects of the game.
• The best discussions and exchanges - which there were a lot of detailing the technical nitty-gritty - took place in the absence of the designated community manager.

Especially with Uber persisting to keep silent about legitimate complaints.
To me, silence is worse than anything else. Most importantly, when you see something is going wrong and you know it can impact the success of your next project, and you know that what's going wrong should not because there's no valid reason, then the very first thing you do is taking action to calm people down. Otherwise i means something is really going wrong and you know there's nothing you can do about it.
John comes has provided a second kickstarter update by this week-end (i won't comment about it because as you said we allready have lots of negativity). Could it be he did not read all the complaints posted and threatening this new kickstarter ? On the one hand complaints have no reason to exist because they have a plan to deliver soon offline, and in that case a simple update sent to PA backer is enough (simply stating when we can expect offline server to be delivered). On the other hand, it can definitly be interpreted as "we don't care, we cross the fingers, pray ..." .As far as i'm concerned i really think next week will be very decisive.
Uber speaks about Apocalypse .... which Apocalypse ? Apocalypse is allready on the way on PA steam forums ....

I do not fear for the HR-kickstarter. The pitch is good, the money comes rolling in steadily, and the scope of the whole thing looks so infinitely more reasonable than what Uber set out to achieve with PA that I cannot imagine them botching that.
And I would really hope for them to succeed with it, for it looks to me like a project they might actually be fit to deliver on.
As to PA, well, they really should polish up the engine and license it out. It is a mediocre game built on an awesome technology, so that seems a sensible thing for me to do. Let someone else with the manpower and the funds to pull it off go crazy with it.

Nice list colin, it does show Uber is not all that bad ^^
But there is always room for improvement. Communication and decision making is the main issue where things went/go wrong, where some decisions were just plain bad and have been corrected and apologized for. I would have loved to see a different approach to there communication, of not saying anything anymore but instead evaluate, adjust, be more structured and informative.

We also got to make some custom planets to have as presets for players.

Look, you can make a...'list'...about it but for a kickstarter company they need alot more visibility given to their investors then what they have now.
I mean, the only Uber employees i even know about well are Varrak, Sorian and BradNicholson because they constantly interact with the community in meaningful ways

lolnope

Scathis and Meta used to be quite active, but then they mostly disappeared.

nice nitpick =P