Stopping to enrage raging people.

Yes I am seriously going to make a thread on the drama and I am going to actually lecture the people who are not raging right now, because I feel there is something going wrong in the discussion of early access vs kickstarters and who was more important and I want to make it visible.
A lot of people who are trying to argue against angry early access buyers are arguing like this:

"Hey you realize that kickstarters just were the reason they game came to be? You're early access was nice and all but kickstarter was more important because it was there month before and they took more risks and all that stuff".

Yes that may be even true in some way. But only in some way.

Let's go look at the situation of a person who paid 90€ on steam for PA on early access. Why did they do that? The often given answer is: "They just wanted to play the game right at that time". Yes that might have been a part of it. But if you kickstarted the game for 90€, then did you not also wanted to play right at the time? Yes of course you wanted. You could not, but you wanted. But was that the only reason you pledged those 90€?
No.

An important reason why you pledged 90€ was because you wanted to support the game. And you know what? There may be a lot of early access buyers who acted out of the same reason. They didn't want the game right now. They wanted to support it. And they felt as supporters of PA and Uber. Somewhere in their mind they had the same proud feeling that you as a kickstarter backer had. "I am a supporter of this project".

Now Titans happens and suddenly they are told that the kickstarter backers are so extremely important. And they, as early access supporters, are not. They get the same treatment as a person who randomly bought PA on some super sale.
That must hurt. Hurt that proud feeling of being a supporter.

When arguing with a person who is obviously hurt like that then telling them how more important the kickstarter was won't do any good. You're throwing salt into the open wound.

Please stop that. Early access buyers as far as we know were damn important to PA. From what we know the kickstarter money got PA until alpha or beta or something like that. It is early access buyers who then paid further development.

Thank them instead of lecturing them. Yes your support was important for PA. It funded development of PA just as much as kickstarter money. That's awesome. It's sad Uber could not find a better deal for you. Money and all that. Sucks. But let's look at the future and see that the project you supported is not dead yet. It's alive and kicking thanks to your support.

Some of them may be trolls and just continue how horrible it is and how worthless the game is and blablabla about how Titans isn't worth 13€. Ofc that is rubbish. The game is awesome and Uber did a great job, so don't feed them further. But some are honestly just unhappy because they felt they were important supporters and that feeling was broken.
Yes this is all about a mere 13€. But you may be speaking to a person who isn't angry about that money but about the lost feeling of being important for PA's development.

So thank you dear early access buyers.

Thanks for posting this. I agree that too many people are taking a hostile approach against the 'outrage' (calling people entitled, etc). Uber may not have done anything wrong, but there are still legitimate reasons why people may be upset.
I outlined a few other reasons in a post here.
If you're going to engage in conversation with people who are upset, you have to put in effort to look at things from their perspective. Accusing people of trolling / immediate hostility can just make things worse.

Unfortunately, there's not really a way to fix this. The solution to just give it away to everyone for free would just be financial suicide. Also can't take away the free copies from the KS backers. They do have a point to be upset, but trying to write them off as overreacting and blowing things out of proportion just fans the flames. Sure, some are there just to stir crap up, but there's also people legitimately upset with how things have unfolded, and there's not really a viable solution available. All that can really be done is to ask people to stop fueling the situation and to just be as helpful and courteous as possible. Trying to trivialize the problem is only going to make this situation worse than it already is, and that's exactly what isn't needed right now. Being level-headed and empathetic is instead needed.

I guess a lesson to be learned from this is not to treat the KS backers as special in any way. I fully understand Uber's desire to thank the backers that made this whole thing happen to begin with, and it's appreciated, but it seems that treating the KS backers as special in any way is causing far more strife than good.

Removed. I understood it wrong.

The OP should be postet as sticky to the steam forums FROM A DEV. This could cool down the whole situation.

Important is only that a dev post this, so the EA ppl. feel taken seriously.

+1

It is sad to see how Uber's generosity backfired like this. I'm Early Access supported but I'm more than fine that Kickstarter backers got the TITANS for free. It is nothing away from me but only from Uber's incomes. I still wouldn't like that Early Access supporters would get TITANS for free because Uber deserves the money and I like to play their games in the future as well.

Well, anyway. Well written OP although I slightly disagree with it.

I hope this wont mean the end of Uber of Planetary Annihiliation, when EA returns with Command & Conquer or WarGaming gets the game with Chris Taylor, or any other company. :s

It's nice to know some people aren't outraged by all of this. The fury about this really doesn't make sense to me, but then I never really saw what Uber have done that's so terrible however somehow they've upset a very vocal group

I'm just greatful we have a new game in the genre of rts that TA inspired all those years ago.

PS Welcome to the forums

Yep it is sad, but I think it is important to move towards the people who got upset about it and try to understand them.
There are enough real trolls who just want to create chaos, it's important that everyone who is really just honestly upset is treated with respect and not like a troll.

All I want to do is hit my enemy's planet with a moon. That's impossible because every time I play any game mode, skirmish, or custom solar system the enemy chooses my planet. What's the point in planets if you are always on the same one as your enemy. Might as well make it one flat map. I can crush the ai with speed if they're on my planet and then I can't even use the cool weapons on here.
On a side note I played the galaxy campaign with a sub commander and not at any point did I get to play. Why did you create allies on the hardest difficulty and enemies on the easiest one? As I would prepare something excessive to kill the enemy with, by drawing out the match, the sub commander would destroy all my enemies. What's the point when the game is coded to avoid what it claims to be able to do? It also takes forever to load everything even with a great computer. Skyrim doesn't even take this long to load. RAID actually makes every game take roughly 2 seconds to load. Still I want forever for a single let down, er match.

You need to create some custom systems imo and play with a load of AI in skirmish.

You can set as many planets as you like to 'starting planets' when you make your own map.

Make a map with say 4 medium sized planets (say R800 each) all starting planets. Put different amounts of metal on each, and if you like smashes you can set asteroids to enter into the game later on so you don't have to rush them from the start.

The AI will most likely pick a starting planet with more metal. If you create a game with say 5 AI in a big FFA, you can deal with any AI that start with you then move onto smashing to kill the rest

I got PA as soon as I heard about it, and *just* missed Alpha. I don't mind having to pay for the expansion.

What I *do* mind is Uber's website to advertise it - it's terrible!

Uber: Hey, we've created an expansion and it's got Titans!
Me: Cool, what are they? What do they do?
Uber: There's FIVE of them!!
Me: Erm .....
Uber: AND .. AND .. we've added 21 new units!!
Me: Ooooh, sounds good! What are they? What do they do?
Uber: They're cool!
Me: ......

It's great that they've done it, and it's great that they're enthusiastic! But .. how about details? At the moment you have to either find a third-party site or just buy Titans and see for yourself.

Actually their original website's just as bad, there's just very little of ANYTHING. No descriptions of units, no models, nothing. Compare that to Blizzard's website for Legacy of the Void (which hasn't been released yet) - here's the new units they're adding, here's what they do, here's their stats, a 3d model and a short video of them in action.

What's worse, one of the bigger sections is Concept Art, most of which hasn't made it into the game (look at the Desert Biome section, for instance). If you look at that stuff, isn't it reasonable to see something like it (or better) in the game?

There's loads of great stuff that Uber can brag about - put that stuff on the website, and remove anything which isn't in the game. The game itself is really good; the website which advertises the game feels like a placeholder.

Yeah Exodus did a much better job of explaining what's in Titans that Uber did. I guess web design isn't one of their strong points :S

If they wanted to support the game so bad, then what's the problem with paying an extra £10 to support it further? These 'supporters' should be grateful for the opportunity to provide further support!

Sadly Uber's PR was never good at any point since the start of Planetary Annihilation...
But they are good techs !

They would really benefit from a good PR guy trought... A few carefully chosen words and decisions could have saved them from a lot of the backlash they received !

You say that, but then star citizen has some great PR and masses of community interaction and they are still getting accused of being vapour ware and such. I think it comes with crowd funding unfortunately.

Honestly, as a Kickstarter backer I would have been fine if I had to pay for the expansion. In fact, if Uber ever releases a boxed collectors edition like they had for kickstarter, I know I'm gonna grab it. (please do Uber!)

Yes, totally agree. Even let the people know what the 1GB patch did to vanilla PA. Any performance increases, what bugs have been mainly fixed. Titans, what is really new, what are those units doing? A few more explanations in general would be great!

Jables is good though, everybody loves Jables.