Is Uber aware that what appears to be a WIP promotional site for Human Resources is still active? Stumbling upon it one day was quite the depressing experience; I'd post a link if I were allowed.
Well, it is down now. But you can take a look at it at Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.uberent.com/humanresources/
That's not the site I was talking about. Here; I'll just upload a file with a picture of the link in it.
I am in no position to welcome you since i am no admin, but welcome! You will love it here. I do! Its a great forum. Enjoy
That is weird. I hope they take a look at the link at realise that their idea was amazing at it was their own fault that people didnt get to know about it. Tho it will never happen
It was a confluence of things that they had varying degrees of control over. 1. PA art winding down. With annihilaser and gas giants in release, only three more updates would involve art (pre-TITANS): Unit Cannon (December), Subs/Phoenix (January), and Asteroids (July). Artists need work, so Uber puts them to work on a new game. 2. Release. This is sheer speculation, but I'm guessing Uber thought it'd be better for PR if they announced a new kickstarter *after* their last one had launched, so they launched PA. 3. Poor prioritization. Offline mode had not been finished before release. Uber underestimated something: just how much people would be outraged if offline/drm free wasn't in the release version. This was the first definite mistake. 4. Bad PR. Uber launched PA in September and people were outraged, predominantly about no offline mode. Ignorant gaming noobs wrote a scathing review criticizing the very concept of playing on planets and complaining about having to look stuff up on an "unofficial wiki", the IGN Wiki, not a month after said wiki was announced as the official wiki by the then PA community manager (in a move that spited the author of the far more useful PAMatches wiki). The Internet developed into a hive mind as it does, and that hive mind was very, very unkind to Uber and PA. In all this, for basically the entire month of September, Uber was silent. Hardly a peep was heard. Those few active on the forums had some idea that offline mode and other missing features were coming, but by and large the community heard nothing. This month of silence was the second mistake. 5. Blindsided. Out of the blue, after a month of nothing, Uber announces a new kickstarter. A new game, not a month after Uber had launched their last one a year late and lacking something as basic as offline mode. The new project was less ambitious yet asked for 50% more cash than the last one, with mediocre at best backer rewards. Worst of all, Uber seemed deaf to PA's situation, stating arrogantly "With Planetary Annihilation, the results speak for themselves" while vaguely promising new updates. The anti-PA and anti-Uber hivemind intensified, declaring PA a scam and HR an attempt to fool everyone a second time. As of October 2nd, HR was dead on arrival. While those active community members who still had faith in Uber were quick to fund and projections looked promising, very soon funding slowed to a crawl. I don't think anything Uber could have done differently after October 2nd would have saved it. 6. Oh, the difference a week makes. October 6th, Offline mode is announced for three days later. 7th, Jables, cherished from the SupCom days is brought on and immediately sets about fixing the communications issue. And of course on the 9th offline mode is released. In the span of a week literally 90% of the issues people had with HR are vanquished. Nonetheless, first impressions are not easily changed. HR's funding continued to be anemic. The problems solved but the perceptions remained. Tragic, really. One week made all the difference. I truly believe that if Uber had only waited seven days to launch the HR kickstarter, we'd be playing Human Resources right now.
I'd go so far as to say they should have waited a year. I came online after all of that, so I wasn't involved in the call, but at least the Offline Mode and Naval and Unit Cannon patches should have hit first. That said, I was brought in to get PA where it deserved to be, which as a $250 backer, I wanted TITANS came online from @tvinita being awesome excited, and the core game feeling at a point where the original design folks were happy. I pushed to add in the stuff I felt it was missing that made FA good where it made sense with PA's design. As for HR, there were quite a few issues, but I'd agree with timing being the worst one. We've been doing VR titles since TITANS but I try to push the fact that you only get one release for the vast amount of people to be satisfied with the game, so it needs to be good. I think we eventually got PA to a place where I'm happy with it, with the additional units in TITANS bringing it beyond the original pitch into what I personally consider a more fun title (I like big units which is why I never win online matches in FA) and the community patch adding the support needed to keep the game going long after we are gone (hi TA Spring and FA Forever). As for me personally as a game dev, so not speaking for Uber here. I'd love to get another strategy game going one of these days, as well as do more work on PA, but timing needs to line up to make that a doable thing. I'd also love to make a new SupCom or an official TA sequel working with Chris again too, but it's mainly just me loving making games in this genre. With IP's being owned by all sorts of folks, none of whom are us, I doubt any of those will be happening.
Uber doing another strategy game would be awesome. A rts game that is not in a round map or even another expansion for PA. Most devs don't post here anymore, only VR titles now, I don't see they making another rts for a long time.. shame =(
@jables, I never thought we'd see a TA sequel (official or spiritual like PA)- then out of the blue here we are. Never say never! There's still a lot of love for this specific rts genre in general- personally I love PA / Titans, which I think has really nailed the 'grand scale' aspect. What I'd love to see next would be something a bit more 'up close' like TA / Spring Balanced Annihilation mod- medium scale with a bit more focus on unit micro / use of terrain (not loads of abilities like Starcraft though). That's what I've always felt PA and SupCom lost compared to TA- the little details that were important (e.g. wind speed, terrain height, los and so on- a highly skilled player could sometimes win with a handful of units and extreme micro skills, or you could 'go wide' and overpower someone with numbers, the choice in tactics and approaches made it really interesting). Maybe we can lobby Chris Taylor (and Jon for that matter) to come back and have another crack at it in a few years- you'd definitely have my support for what it's worth.
yea chris leaving wargame and doing his own thing kinda made me consider a TA sequel highly unlikely .. as for supcom may be nordicthq calls you guys someday .. as for PA ... realy it doesn´t lack too much anymore imo ... like if you guys can get the time to add some more orbital units (like 2 or 3?) to particularly make gasgiant/pure orbital battle more intresting as well as adding a advanced hovercraft factory (buildable on land and water) aswell as orbital- and hover- multiunittransports ... maybe MAYBE a sort of nonenuke interplanetary artillery/indirect fireplatform and some ballance on less used units .. hornets and wyrms barely get used for instance .. at least for me the game would be golden then ... platinum even ... so .. i´m asking for 5 to 8 things ... edit: oh forgot one thing ... but that´s kinda big: overwork orbital visibility and bring orbital radar back so the way i thought about that is making only orbital travel visual as pips by default .. so at the very least in a multiplanetgame poeple know when there is orbital activity but not know what´s coming and where exactly it will enter a planetoid .. maybe give a massage for when someone has build his first orbital unit ... orbital radar would be only planetary so meaning every planet would require such a radar .. level one radar would only show pips on a planets orbit and level 2 radar would uncovers all of a planets orbit .. ok i shut up now ..
