What can we do for the backers?

Now that the game is out to the alpha backers I've been trying to think of the best way to use this forum. At this point it's a closed forum but there isn't really any secret stuff to talk about like we've had in the past.

So what's the best way to use this forum? What do you want to hear about the game? Let's talk about it. I want this place to still be special.

Man... you're awesome!

But well, you can do something: Go to bed! You deserve it!

You could use it as a sounding board for your ideas. But if I were to do that, I'd probably do it in a public forum so that more people can critique things.

You could use the forum to talk about your cat. That would be a good use for it.

Don't have one? Every mad supervillain (and aiming for blowing up planets is absolutely in the supervillain category) have to have one, you know. Else you'll never be taken seriously.

Yeah, I already do that quite a bit. I could do more but like you said doing it in the public forum might be better.

Just looking for ideas.

PS No cat.

No cat? What a bummer..

Hmm.. As a programmer, I'd love more detailed / inside info about things. More technical stuff in general (my favorite screencast so far was actually the one covering path finding) would be fun for me at least

Maybe there are parts/areas of the game you especially want players to stress test?

Have you got names for all of your planned units yet? You could run some form of test/competition, offering the naming of a unit as a prize? (Yes, I know we could have backed $10k for the privilege )

yeah, as terrasque says, more inside info might be nice.

Using this forum as a first brainstorm of some ideas could be interesting.

Example : i have a nive idea, what do you think about it ?
Or How could we do that ?

Something like the "Megabot Experiment" maybe ?
(was a pretty interesting thread before some people started to tear each-other appart :lol: )

Or some special developpement / life of PA annecdotes (like Garat's insight on the SupCom 2 Console version), or how you discovered a super idea by watching your empty cup of coffee in the morning ?

Some early draw up idea's for planetary killers and what the different planet types actually boil down to in regards of gameplay would be a neat thing... (completely disregards general discussion forum for a reason)

Might be good to "test" announcements in the backers area and then second that post over into the public and see how the larger masses receive and react to it. I think you would be surprised to see how the seperate demographics react to features. Especially gameplay based decisions. At current state, an early alpha might not be the right time for discussing gameplay as much though.

Really appreciate that you guys want to keep this place special for us.

i would still love to see some videos involving the artists creating their 3d models, maby a speed modeling video or something. generally any behind the scenes with the artists would be great imo.

Maybe you could somehow use this as a place to post test builds about things that you aren't quite positive about for general folk to give a more focused feedback on something.

The backers forum is all right, it's basically a PA misc. forum.

I like the idea of occasional concept art or screenshots of interesting stuff as its being worked on e.g. unit catapult.

As others noted the backer forum seems like a natural place to test the waters on ideas or approaches.

Unless I am mistaken that is why it was not show on the public fourm.

give us some information on what you and the team are currently working on. That would be most interesting! Not detailed or anything (though details would be cool too)

Personally, I'm an idea person. Any test balloon ideas you might not want to expose to the angry community at large would be welcome here. Equally various dev opinions on how systems will work. A lot of this might benefit from being public, but it might be worth letting us know at an earlier stage, especially when you want to measure reaction without it becoming a big deal.

Also, the open forum seems to be having a bit of a toxicity problem at the moment, so we might provide a sounding-board until the open forum calms down a bit. More then anything else, interact with us. We're, most of us, silly people who like to hear about the dev process, so if you want to, tell us about it.

I know it's always a balance with giving out information, even to us, because then people may have expectation issues. Hopefully most of us will be mature enough to be smart about it, and if you're careful to let people know what is brainstorming and what isn't, we might be able to handle it.

Just my 2 cents:

Make it a place with a lot of sticky threads containig usefull information (like a kb)

ideas for stickys:
-keyboard shortcuts
-gameplay tricks
-strategys
-console commands (if there is a console)
-developers visions
-feature lists
-Mod tools
-cheats

I know most of this information is available spread throughout the forums, with a bunch of sticky threads is a lot easier to find and with this you give the backers a intelligence benefit.

hi @ all

allthough i am new to this forum and don't feel like one of the old folks... i guess insight would be nice... videos about the modeling, design, art and the generell work on the project would be nice... but thats up to the devs of course :-D

from the perspective of someone always into features/stuff "behind" the game itself this would be and excellent addendum or outlook in regards of the artbook...

also there is quite a lot of stuff concerning the work behind the game i am quite interested in... what software do you guys use... what specs has the server currently and what is planned... dev blogs like the ones ccp does for eve online would be nice :-D but of course once again not mandatory

whatever you guys see fit with this part of the forum... i am sure its gonna be worthwhile :-D keep up the good work... especially in regards of the excellent communication with the community so far

For the moment, this forum becomes useless.

As you said, nothing to say here that can not be in the public forum as your are working on making the base game working.

May be once the game will be released you can use this forum to discuss on game evolution (who said experimental units ?).

May be like many evolving games, giving access to closed beta of next game version and talking about it.