Internal Playtest Recap – Matchmaking!

TBH, I think that's a little unfair. They announced that balance was on the list. You can't really ride them for not communicating, and then when they publish a list of things they are going to do and are about to release a much anticipate feature, bemoan how they don't care about some other anticipated feature that they already said is on the list.

Oh, I'm going to ride them for not communicating. Al they've said is "we are working on it"

Who is? Are they spending significant amounts of time on it, or is it just something you both mention at a coffee break and chuckle at the amount of procrastination being done? Is the entire office involved? etc. etc.

They actually said they had made some balance changes and they were going to tweak them a little further.

Where did those balance changes go?

And how can they officially release a strategy game that has such poor naval? Especially since naval was an extra stretch goal?

Uber obviously cut some major corners for 1.0 release. They cut features, they released poor balance, and they released half finished features. The AI couldn't use gas giants at 1.0 and as far as I'm aware still can't use gas giants.

And despite all of this, apparently PA's "vision has been achieved."

If we were still in Beta, I'd understand. But this is supposedly a finished product.

There is simply no excuse for balance to be in the poor state that it is in.

You sure like to pour salt into any wound you can find, no matter how much improvements in communication happen or how many things are being worked on. No matter if Uber rushed the release or not the game would not be in a be better developed state either way. It takes time, but Uber is working on a lot of stuff in general. So no worries

Well, the issue wasn't whether or not 1.0 meets our standards. The issue was whether they care about balance. Their decision to release, well, let's just say their reviews and whatnot speak for themselves, but it's pretty clear they at least want to let everyone know that balance is still being worked on. And you can say tweaked or worked on or whatever semantics you want to use... but the fact that they announced that they are working on it seems to be evidence that they care, imo.

I raised the further issue that riding them for not communicating and then chastising them for saying they are working on releasing things bit by bit when they release this bit and not your personal favorite bit... I mean, doesn't that seem a little counter-productive? To wanting communication that is. Maybe the reason they shut up for a while is because it seems they just can't please anyone so maybe not trying is more effective?

You're right, the issue wasn't whether it met 1.o standards. But since they said months ago that they were working on balance and nothing came of it, and there are so many glaring issues with balance, Uber's actions do not speak well for their current thoughts on balance.

They announced that they were working on balance months ago, so forgive me if I don't just believe a "we're working on it" – especially since they previously said (paraphrased) "we have a new balance pass for naval already part way done" and then heavily implied or said that it would be out for 1.0. And then nothing happened. And then nothing happened.

There have been lots of improvements in communication, as I have said many many times.

But Uber said "we're working on it" months ago and nothing has happened with balance since.

As I had said, there is no excuse for balance to be in the state that it is in.

If Uber said they're working on it, well, I'll believe it when I see progress since they've said that in the past.

And this, right here is a perfect illustration of why they haven't been communicating

The thing is there is stuff that wasn't where it should be at release. Fine, we know that, we can't change it. The question is at this point- where do we go from here?

We have 2 choices as far as I see it:
1: We can create repeated threads about the same things telling Uber everything they did wrong.
2: Accept there were some issues, move on and discuss ways to move forward with Uber (who at the moment are being much more open and receptive).

I sincerely hope we can all just take a step back and realize that irrespective of the fact the game is 'released' the *are* most definitely still working on it. If we carry on like this for too long they're going to get tired of dealing with us and stop communicating again.

They are being much more open and receptive, which means they MIGHT actually fix those problems. MIGHT.

I hold little faith in that. Not since the Vanguards were thrown out for doing their job, then retroactively disbanded as an afterthought. Not since the dox patch.

Look - I am (right now) making waves at Uber. I am, in fact, in full riot mode. They have given us rather empty promises and words about what is going on, instead of a few concrete facts that would brighten everyone's day and promote constructive discussion in the forums.

I deeply appreciate their move towards even more open communication. Hell, they're better than most developers out there today. But that doesn't overlook what they screwed up.

On the flipside, no one can be perfect. Nitpicking just makes people angry, and that's why I acted on my theories. They aren't hypotheses, they aren't theories - they are well into the region of laws. I have always called out those who complain without a logical purpose behind it. My actions showed I was willing to go farther with the balance than even UBER is.

And this could easily apply to any of the other modders in this forum.

So you're saying we shouldn't ever talk about anything that Uber has done wrong because they might stop talking?

If a little criticism is all it takes for Uber to stop talking, then, well. That's Uber's problem, not the community's. Communicating with a community is the cost of doing business in the game industry. If Uber can't take criticism, be it constructive or hateful, well... too bad. That's what happens in the game industry. That's not an excuse for hate and trolling. But that's a simple fact of this industry. People will say stupid crap. Uber needs to learn to deal with that, or hire someone who can deal with that. Because communities give constructive criticism and bad trolling. It is simply how the game industry works. It is not the fault of the community in any way shape or form that Uber stopped communicating. The PA community is warm fuzzy cuddly teddy bears compared to other game communities.

There are glaring issues with balance. We have to talk about them, or as is evident with Uber's history, there is a high likelihood that nothing will get fixed.

All that being said. Uber has made some great strides forward and is doing better at communicating and is all around doing better.

But that doesn't excuse problems with the game, nor their past decisions. Nor does it mean we shouldn't talk about them.

You're right. "Where do we go from here?"

Well, there are many directions for us to go from here. Lots of things to work on, and Uber has quite a few team members and an eager community begging for us to do their job for them.

Hey man, I'm with ya in a big way. I'm not thrilled about naval, especially considering it's my favorite concept, and I think that the current dox meta is boring boring boring, especially since I'm a big fan of watching casted matches (and I don't have to tell you how boring watching dox vs dox for 6 minutes is). I also am a little cynical about the whole SOON bit, it's kind of getting old. All that being said, I just look at this as a sweet game that's only gonna get sweeter as it ripens. But hey, all I really wanted to say is that I'm sure they have people working on the balance, and even though it's not happening as fast as we want, we are still getting more.

Really, I agree with the suggestion and not the sentiment of this quote (which I cut out the sentiment so HIYOO!).

Since ladders are coming, hey, a real big improvement to balance would just synergize this game with the competitive crowd and get a large following, so look at some balance mods and make some decisions of which pieces belong in vanilla. Start with the most basic tweaks in some vanilla-esque mods like Uberbalance or the such. Just adjust the dox, buff unused units like grenadiers and naval, and tweak things like combat fabber cost. A little can go a long way.

And another thread derailed. As I said to you in the other thread you tried to derail, keep on topic. This update is not about balance, which you know - it's about matchmaking. If you want to talk about balance make a new thread or comment in a more appropriate existing one.

It's in my Brain D:

I should probably go back to my corner now.....

This reminds me a lot of SimCity 2013, with the developers saying they're working on something but never releasing any news on it and proceeding to, many months later, say they simply couldn't do it for some ridiculous corporate excuse of a reason. Then they proceeded to say they were working on stuff again, and the game proceeded to be abandoned. This game is following all too much in the footsteps of that failure of a game that could have been fixed if the company had communicated more and prioritized what the community wanted, rather than working on their own agenda and giving up entirely when it was too late to win back anyone. They could still fix it if they chose to, but they won't. I really hope planetary annihilation does NOT go down that route, as right now it's fitting perfectly on that road to abandonment and infamous dislike, but so far it IS going down that route right down to it's incomplete release state and lack of communication that's been padded with a "We're working on it". And the game has a lot of potential too, and while fun already due to it's amazing concept (much like simcity 2013) could just be SO MUCH MORE SO if it were fixed and the core features from the kickstarter added, becoming a memorable classic in the RTS genre, which right now it just isn't. At all. (Just like...you know by now.)

Welcome to the forums dude. Don't worry, the game won't be abandoned and never was! PA is not like the fiasco of simcity at all. It took simcity years to get offline mode out, whereas it's only taken a month or two for PA since they were actively working on trying to deliver on their promises.

Uber is also implementing an online ladder system, which is not something you do unless you plan on supporting the game into the future. With the failure of HR, Uber is well aware that even giving the slightest mis-understood impression of abandoning PA will spell disaster for the company. There's only so much you can do though for people who actively choose to believe and preach otherwise in the face of reality.

First thing you need to know is don't listen to our small resident group of self-entitled doom and gloom whiners. I won't name names because that's really not appropriate, but i'm sure you'll be able to figure out who they are by yourself pretty quickly.

Whining, crying, and drama queening is just what they do. No matter what uber does, they always move on to whine about something else and forget about what they were whining about last. They sometimes even continue whining about issues that are already resolved, which is pretty hilarious to read when it happens.

• They whined about uber abandoning the game for HR and shifting resources away. 100% bullshit, look at how support for PA never skipped a beat. Instead, release of features and fixes has done nothing but increase from before HR was even announced.
• They whined about offline servers and always on drm, uber delivered on their promise for offline servers.
• So they started whining about communicating. Uber started going beyond what you would expect from any other game company on that front, and probably would have done earlier if not for timing issues with hiring.
• They whined about uber not listening to their feedback, when most clearly they are listening, and posting to show us that they are. Not just on the uber forums but the pa reddit as well, and who knows what other social hubs they are tuned into.
• They whined about maps, then uber announced symmetrical maps and the rumour mill has a map editor most likely coming as well.
• Now they whine about balance, even though uber has said they are working on it. I would not be surprised if they are also implementing a statistical backend with the official ladder, which would be an indicator of their intention to provide long term gameplay support.

*Who knows what they're going to whine about next. What i do know is that it's going to be a race to the bottom of the barrel.

Now, one of these individuals will probably reply with a smug grin on their face something to the effect of 'out bitching was a good thing because look at what happened'. They'll try to take credit for the work of others without understanding the difference between correlation and causation.

These guys are a minority thankfully, although a very obnoxious and toxic minority that you would be better off to just ignore.

Or hire a new director of production who quit his job in germany and moved to the USA just to start working on managing further PA development and especially community interaction.

The king has spoken !

And he's just another person. Chill.

What he said is absolutely valid. Not because he beat someone else on the internet, but because it's true.

I believe he was just messing around.

I'd like to add, that also the target group of different balance changes is extremely wide spread compared to other RTS games. While we have high lever players on the one hand mainly sticking with 1vs1 on a single-planet system, the medicore player base often is to be found in 2vs2vs2 multi-planet, or 4-8 players (also often multi-planet) FFA. The pace of the game is so what different between these sides, that I can hardly see a global balance to please all of the players. Forcing balancing only on single-planet 1vs1 would totally destroy the fun of long muli-planet games and vice-versa. As an example: In high level 1vs1 T2 is hardly found because of it's high investment, reducing the price on the other hand, would make T1 on medicore mulit-planet games systems nearly useless, as you can tech up to T2 relatively fast anyways.

Now you could add, that the high level players are the ones who care about a perfect balance the most, but on the other hand the medicore players forming the big player base, which should be pleased aswell.