So now what: Competitive Balance of the Future

Alright, lets not discuss it then. Realistically the competitive scene is nowhere near large enough to survive after Uber pulls the plug anyway. For months top viewership of tournies has been in the 100-150 range, and the roster of players is almost always exactly the same. As someone who primarily spectates, it's been boring since a bit before ZaphodX left and Titans only managed to inject about a months worth of fresh interest, at least for me. The 'community' is basically the ~20 people who still regularly post here and a floating cast of about 100 other random people like myself who occasionally pop in to see what is up. I don't expect those of you whose life revolves around this game to accept this, but it's true. From where i'm sitting PA has been a non-stop financial and PR disaster for Uber (and really, crowdfunding in general). Great game but we never even came close to the critical mass needed for it to continue after development stops. And development must always stop, even for successful games, which PA is not by any possible metric.

RIP yah bunch of ostriches.

Lol, I think it's been about as successful as it's predecessors, although I agree from a PR point of view it went badly (which is a shame as it's a decent game). To be honest TA was never that big an online game, neither was SupCom / FA, but when you actually log on there's a healthy number of players and best guestimates + the info we have suggests around a million total copies sold. That's right on the money for TA at least, and also explains why the big publishers weren't interested.

This game was never going to take off StarCraft style for competitive play. Large scale, minimal micro, just isn't what the competitive scene goes for in an RTS. I've seen this before- RTS players (mostly) clamour for *more complexity* which I personally dislike but each to their own (case in point HomeWorld 1 -> 2, loved 1, can't get into 2 it's just too many options and invisible upgrades).

A regular player base of a 500 - 1000 players is plenty to have good games for a long time to come (e.g. Spring and SupCom FAF). As for tournaments, I think the main problem is the *majority* of that regular player base don't come here so are unlikely to learn about the events. The number of people I've played on my *limited* number of games on the 1 v 1 ladder highlight that most don't know of mods / this forum / tournaments (I always ask what mods they use and usually get 'this game has mods?'). That probably explains why you don't see new names in tourneys, not sure what there is to do about that though.

I think you are correct that this isn't going to be the next great spectator sport @philoscience, still you know you *could* join us regulars for a few games or even enter a tournament I mean 1 v 1 can be a bit intense but there have been a few friendly 2 v 2 tourneys which are pretty casual and more aimed at fun than anything else. I'd team up with you sometime

!!!

: D

Chiming in with knowledge of games development stuff yet again:

People can be laid off while the product is still profitable. The aim of games development as a business is to make money. Laying people off when they're no longer needed directly relates to improving profit margins, or at least maintaining profit margins.

Most layoffs occur within months of a product being shipped, because during crunch / leading up to release developers tend to hire or contract lots of temporary staff. Post-release, these and other non-criticals are often let go.

People being laid off doesn't mean the game is necessarily dead, or that future developments will cease. That is an assumption that you have made, that to date you haven't backed up with anything but "look at these layoffs".

People disagreeing with you aren't burying their heads in the sand. They just make different assumptions to you. Doesn't make anybody necessarily wrong, or inferior. Threads take downward turns when you start on that kind of insulting logic.

The AI programmer was laid off Gorbles. Uber's not planning on doing anything further that would have AI support, which is most gameplay features. I'd be very surprised if we saw anything major being added to PA.

I agree layoffs happen as You described, although as @stuart98 points out it does make a difference who it is. I mean sorian has been with the team a while (and incidentally they moved him to envelope vr which shows the bosses obviously value him).

I dunno, maybe your right and we're reading too much into it, and uber will prove us wrong. Trust me, I'd be very happy with that still, if not it's by no means the end for PA.

I think that's maybe where everyone is getting their wires crossed. This is meant to be a positive discussion on how to progress with PA in the event uber are no longer actively adding content.

If that applies now, next month, in a year doesn't really negate the concept imo. At some point the community will take over, and if TA / Spring / FAF have taught us anything is that the community can have a very positive long term impact on the game.

But that can also be vanilla and i think there is nothing wrong with that.

I think calling what you just said "optimistic" would be an understatement.

Actually vanilla is most played by far. I have no idea where all those modded games are if i am not right.

Well there is more to this concept than *just* balance mods I mean thinking much longer term, what happens if Uber no longer pay for the main server service?

I'm fairly sure we can probably get some mods into play to divert the game to private servers (which we know already work), however that as far as I'm aware isn't in place yet (PA:Stats can allow visibility of private servers, but can you get that far without first connecting to play fab?). I'd personally be happier if we have solutions to issues like this *well in advance* of it becoming a potential problem.

Also where balance is concerned- I agree Vanilla is good, although are you honestly telling me you don't think long term it could benefit from some tweaking? Doing some balance work on PA needn't translate to a massive overhaul after all.

This talk of lay offs really irks me. I don't see how this is relevant at all.

Make your mods if you want to. People will play them if they want to.

Whether someone got let go at uber or not has nothing at all to do with your mod.

Ok.... So lay offs only came up because a few people got upset at the mere suggestion uber will stop developing PA.

That isn't really what this was intended to discuss though.

What happens if pa is no longer hosted on play fab?

How can balance adjustments *to the core game* be taken care of now that uber are no longer working on balance?

Support for PA isn't guaranteed forever, however the community can ensure that isn't an issue through initiatives like Phoenix worx (TA), spring engine and faf.

The reason mods get mentioned is this is one way we can make changes to PA, although I'm sure not the only one.

What I don't understand is rather than make helpful suggestions, most people in this discussion are getting angry because we dared question the future of PA development from uber. Why?! No one is saying anything negative against them, just that where things stand looks like future development will be fairly minimal so let's look now at what we as a community can do.

There's a difference between questioning the future and assuming the future is doom and gloom. There have been both, in this thread

I would love to be a part of a smal rework team in the future that takes a look at the weakest aspects of the game (air, grenadiers, typh... etc) and tries to rework it. I think the way to do it is by just tweeking some parts of the game, not mod it to something different

Anyways lets at least see how legion does it first. If it is awesome who knows where it might take us.

There is almost nothing in the balance that needs changes. Ok air is pretty overpowered and grenadiers are broken but i think the balance is really good overall. The thing i am more worried about is terrain features working like magnets on dox etc and them getting stuck or go dancing (literaly).

Yeah, lots of little bugs around, but nothing major.

i am not entirely against that change however both bluehawks and hornet need a dire fix/buff and wyrms need a kind of buff too (maybe a bit more speed and aoe?) .. (also stingraymissiles are ignored by antimissilebeams for some reason)
i would say hornet should outrange the gil-e as it kills their missiles ..
bluehawk should outrange the sheller
which would still be protected by gil-e's (or angles)
so gil-e doesn't outrange the sheller
but still win against bluehawks by getting into range not needing to fear the missiles

i want better anti air then, i don't want to be forced to have air control, why i should?

if my desire in a game is to avoid air, i should be able to do so, if i don't want to build tanks i should be able to do so, if i don't want to build bots, i should be able...ops they are useless already lol

To have control of the air.

i want to have control of the air with ground units, make a better strong aa ground units