I did see your interview with CynicalBrit.com. You said that there is going to be 1 faction. Players may be bored by seeing the same units all the time. I have solution how to make factionless game and make it interesting. Introduce traders and weapons corpotations into game You don't need just factions or units for those. Look at Forged Aliance Forever Lobby. Every player has a rating there. It is something like total score. Introduce such rating into Planetary Annihilation. Rating rank should unlock units or their upgrades. For example if Galactic Collosus (GC) costs 3000, SpiderBot (SB) costs 2000 and Mavor costs 7000, and Paragon costs 8000, a player who has rank or rating of 7000 can unlock Mavor or GC and SB but not Paragon. Of course his rank would not decrease but the rank could mean how good the player is and what units/tech he can unlock. If there is really many kinds units at the unlock price of 3000, 2000, 7000 and 8000 then he can not poses all of them unless he has incredibly high rank. Player could save his unit choice and he should be able to change units/tech before and after the game. He should have last choice selected when he turns computer / logs in next time. Basicaly the idea is to give player the choice of units he could use. Higher rank = more choices. Units are not chosen for good and player should be able to choose different units for different game. For example, he should be able to replace choice of naval units for land units for the map that doesn't have water. This would mean very likely players would not have the same units or upgrades through the map even if there are no factions. Trader/corporation would be just part of interface/lobby that would give player choice of units to use. The choice player could make would depend on his rank. The higher rank more kinds of units he can choose for the game. Player should not be forced to select units/tech all the time before the game. Last selection should be saved. From the development point of view this would create faction like variety of units on battlefield withoud actually having factions.
This makes it hard for a new player to adopt strategies of older players, which I think is not a good thing. It also encourages grinding to unlock units which I think would also be bad.
Well, experts do not like to play with noobs and noobs do not like to play vs experts anyway. Did you play SupcCom? If you were a noob joining pro game you were kicked anyway, and you didn't like to play vs pro even when he was the same faction and had the same choice of units as you do. The truth is expert would kill you even if he had your noob units and you had his experimentals. The problem with factions is ballancing selection of units vs other selection of units and provide some kind of equivalent of or countermeasure for other faction. This is a kickstarter game and faction costs real money, because they would have to create a whole set of units for each faction and spend time on balancing it. If SupCom was just UEF only or AEON only players would be bored quickly because they would know what strategy to expect from enemy. Variety enforces strategy. If enemy's units are not the same as yours, then the enemy can not do what you can, therefore strategy must be different and game is more interesting and less predictable. If you had set of units to choose from but you would not be able to choose all, then you would do balancing on your own by just making the choice, and you would not need 2 factions and therefore to have a game that has each unit times 2 but with different looks and fx. Basically that's what faction is. Same unit many times but different FX, and balance problem. Once you have a whole a pool of units but you use 10% of it then you do not know what enemy units are going to be and he doesn't know yours, and you do all balancing. After the game is released, developers can just add one unit and it would not screw the balance. If it was good then everyone would choose it. If it was sometimes good then it would be chosen sometimes, if it is bad then only noobs would use it.
This is why you have a ranked match. It matches games based on player skill. Also paragraphs. They're good.
I'm siding with erastos, sal0x2328, and Zordon. Also, this has been discussed, debated, and debunked twice over. I suggest everyone goes and re-reads that thread.
Honestly, if PA turns into FA version 2, vice a spiritual successor to TA as it was billed. I'm going to be pissed.
I like the idea of players being able to customize there version of PA's one faction but I would not want it to be implemented like that. I think that the implementation used in Empire Earth. If you haven't played Empire earth essentially each player was given so many points to spend on upgrades and/or changes to some of the mechanics of certain units. larger changes generally cost more points. I think this is superior simply because I do not think that any to player should be disadvantaged to another player because of anything but there own skill. If I win or lose a game I want it to be because I am a better player. Not because I have spent more or less points on upgrades then my opponent. Note, if the developers are dead set on unlock able upgrades rewarded for playing more games then I do think this could work in this implementation provided that enough set of upgrades are given by default. This way long time players may accumulate a greater variety of upgrades then a new player they still could not spend more points on upgrades then a new player and in that way there faction would never be stronger then a new players faction. If PA does do upgrades I do hope that they or not pure upgrades but trade-offs instead so taking one strengthens you in one area and weakens you in another. but that is just personal preference.
CnC 4 tried a variation of play, get score, unlock units. And it's HORRIBLE. (Disregarding that CnC4 may be the biggest travesty in all of RTSdom.) On-line is literally dominated by a handful of players that have unlocked all of the units and can wreak havoc upon the poor low-tech new players who doesn't stand a chance against them.
People seem hung up on factions. Complaining that there is only "one" faction. This is wrong, there is as many factions as there are players(well not quite as seems they will implement team play of one faction(or team)). Each and every commander is a faction. Skins for commanders good. Skins for units..... maybe, but can be abused in gameplay. Limiting units based on arbitrary pay/play to win is BAD. Very, Very BAD. *insert do not want poster here*
In the "vanilla" PA game, there should be a single toolbox that each player has full access to from the start of the game. The contents of the toolboxes for each player are the exact same, and for the work Uber has committed to, will also have the same aesthetic. A person can still manifest their uniqueness and ideals in how they play, and if they so choose, in the fiction they write related to their Commander. I will not be surprised to see mods that replicate the contents of the toolbox, but package it in a different skin to represent a different visual aesthetic. I strongly believe that these types of mods will still resonate with the core audience the game seeks to attract. There will also be folks who have desires above and beyond that, and to them I say that the push shouldn't be for Uber to generate the content, but to hold them accountable for what they've already committed to (via the kickstarter): So in other words, folks pushing for more variation should instead be pushing to make sure that they have the tools to create that variation, and have Uber focus on building a solid foundation for the community to then build upon further. If the tools that Uber builds for modding have a low barrier to entry, then the community will be able to generate more content than Uber could, faster than Uber could, and without the same budgetary limitations that Uber has. But without a solid foundation to build upon, it won't matter how many factions/races/commanders/upgrades/etc. they provide because nobody will want to play the game at all. At least that's how I am viewing it.
