Worried PA playerbase is going to self destruct

I'm a bit worried that the PA playerbase is going to tear itself apart due to an internal conflict of gameplay expectations.

The more I've seen people play the Alpha, and from browsing the comments and expectations of players, the overriding feel is that people seem to be expecting a TA like experience, where unit automation is kept to a minimum, base management is minimal, and the focus is on intense fire fights between large armies that requires at minimum a similar amount of micromanagement to TA.

This is exactly how the alpha is currently playing out - lots of micro required, lots of spinning around the globe trying to juggle all the different angles of your base, and so on.

Now, this would be fine if PA was all about being an RTS on an amazing single spherical planet. However, the premise of the entire kickstarter was to have battles across multiple planets, and end with throwing asteroids and enormous kinetic weapons at each other, with managing several battlefields at once, each with several frontlines. (40 player solar systems, 1 million units).

My biggest concern is that in order to achieve the goals of the Kickstarter, Uber is going to have to pull way way back from the current gameplay, and start distancing the player from the units and individual control, simply because it will become way too difficult for players to manage multiple battlefields. There has been little if any information or thoughts about handling the information / input requirement overload of multiple planets, and as can already be seen by the multiple threads clamoring for a mini-map, a spherical play area is already becoming a challenge in terms of managing your base.

I believe it can be done - I just hope that the current crop of Alpha players are ready to give up their current gameplay to a certain extent - otherwise, PA will fall into exactly the same trap of Supreme Commander - play well on small maps (single planet with a moon), and start falling apart on large maps (multiple planets).

(Edit for thread title / clarification.. I'm not worried here about whether or not Uber can do it - worried about player attitudes toward automation and anti-micro features)

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

I still think it's a bit early to make claims like this, while it's true the gameplay is rough, even arguably "incorrect" at the same time I think it could be Uber's way of saying, "We know most poeple don't even know what a true alpha is, so we'll try to split the difference and provide something the average player can actually play as the people doing the 'proper' testing will do so regardless and the better 'playability' is still a plus for them as well."

There are still a lot of things that could be done to really streamline how the game plays, and it's one thing to state that currently things like planet navigation aren't good but another to try and imply that the current state is indicative of the final outcome. Honestly is sounds a bit like fear mongering given the context of where we are in development and considering how many times Neutrino has had to remind people that there is still a lot they plan to put in. We still have at least a month and a half of Alpha left, once we get closer to the end we'll have a much better(but still incomplete) foundation to start making projections from.

Mike

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

I disagree a radical shift is needed; some additional UI features would be nice, but even fighting across 2 or three worlds at the moment would be doable. Larger systems with more players would necessitate a division of attention between the players on a team, but I don't really see a problem with that, and changing the game now without solid evidence that it is even necessary would put Uber in an even worse position.

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

this.
what it needs is a better UI. I am pretty sure that a heavily improved UI will make it waaaay easier to play on multiple planets without many AI helpers.

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

I guess no way to say how it will looks in the end, but he got a point that it will come propably to a information overload. There are limits to every UI, no matter how good you do them. And if you overload a UI, you hit the limit of the human brain and the informations it can handle at the same time. If a UI would be the solution for everything, military commands wouldn´t need 20 different stations to coordinate a attack on several battlefields.

So i think the solution will be the possibility to control a single army with more then 1 player. Only with that tool you will be able to keep up with a large-scale operation on several planets, moons and asteroids. And a teamspeak client does the rest for coordination. The UI itself needs some upgrades, sure. But only to get a better control of your units in a battle and for your basemanagement, not for an empire control. We are still alpha!

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

The keyword I feel ties this whole project together is scalability.

Just as the final game is expected to be able to host a large number of players across a multi-planet system, it is also expected to host battles much like the ones we are playing now in Alpha, with single worlds and as little as 2 armies.

If I play a 2 player game on one world (with a moon) in the final game, I expect that it will play a fair bit like it does now, and I would want to retain a similar degree of control.

When they start expanding the scope, they will see what kind of design choices need to be made for handling those battles, what kind of control needs to be outsourcable to remain manageable. But if you think in terms of 'replacing' rather than 'extending' play styles as I feel you are here, you're going to wipe out the fun of anything but the largest games.

Sometimes people only have an hour or two to kill, folks. Automation will be scalable. And these guys aren't dumb. They're playing their own game as they make it, and when they hit that level they'll see it themselves.

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

This

And this.

If PA fail to be fun on a single planet with a handful of units, it will failed its scalability goal.

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

I have a feeling Pawz thinks the Total War style battles are required in order to properly play over the galaxy.

I kinda want that too. I want a certain feel of Total war in the game cause you won't be able to manage everything just like you do now.

Sure you can group units easily but then it would need to be done so when you group them, thats it, they're grouped. You click on one unit, you clicked on the entire group. That's how multiple battles would work across planets.

I'm sure Uber are not retards and they know how to make glorious galactic battles work, just the community needs to be ready to accept what we end up with, regardless of the expectations. I'm sure it will be glorious, wouldn't have backed the game otherwise.

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

Pawz, in all honesty this game is in such an early stage that it would seem foolish to think that it's anything but a test for platform support. They stated well in the patch notes that for the past weeks leading up to its release that they were testing and focusing on multi-platform systems.

I think we need to wait until multi-planet support is available before we start commenting on the structure and interface of the warfare mechanics.

As of right now I am really enjoying that artillery plays a big role in bigger matches, yet it's weak enough to send in a large army to take out the cannon, and hopefully make a push for territory once that is complete.

Be patient and focus on issues with the current bugs such as responsiveness of the units and matches with more than four players.

For the record, though, I like where your head is at. I agree this discussion will be needed when we have the tools available.

- Graham

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

Honestly to me this simply feels like another "no perspective on game development" post. What you see now doesn't necessarily have any implication on the final game. I want to get as much of the micro out as possible but the systems simply aren't complete enough to do it.

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

You know i hope you listen to music regularly because I can't imagine how tried and stressed you must get. (And the rest of uber) haha it makes me laugh visiting the forums infrequently and jumping into the alpha from time to time.

I'm always blown away by the progress and think you are going to make one amazing game. Maybe i'm just not as close to the game as some other backers, for better or worse. I think it's good of you to write here though because it shows you do actually take this stuff to heart. Which is must be pretty shitty sometimes. Hopefully people will calm down more and just be a little more patient.

Keep up the great work!

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

This is kind of exactly what I'm trying to point out, and more for other player's benefit than yours. The shift in the scale of the battle from a single battlefield (one planet) is going to be huge, and I can definitely understand why Uber doesn't want to move to multiple planets without first having a chance to get some of that micro out of the way.

Perhaps my thread title is ill named.. wasn't sure what to put there. The game itself is going to be fine, I'm just a little concerned that heads will explode when people start to realize just how much automation will be needed to manage multiple battlefields.

That happens with any game; it's called "the difference between the elite and the casual."

You are going to find that there will be 200 out of 50,000 people that truly know how to utilize the game in full, as was the case with Supp Comm. I never found myself ever getting bumped out of the top 200 because as soon as I did it was a joke...

RTS games are not very popular because the amount of commitment needed to be "good" is far greater than any fps game. Not everyone wants that...

Neutrino is being profressional - not nice, which is fine by me. I'm sure there are plenty of people he'd like to flip off and say "go home, you're drunk" based on their commentary; or perhaps, please hit puberty first before writing feedback to professionals.

What's crazy is that Uber has already gotten our money and they have been being very cordial from what I've read on here; for that, I give them an A+ so far.

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

Although I'm not in Alpha (haven't the spare cash so Beta for me), I've been watching allot of casts on Youtube. I agree people are doing micro to get the best out of units but allot of that is compensating for things like the early unit AI / path finding (loosing tanks down craters for example). As with all TA / Supcom games the commander is also microed allot (I don't think this will change).

I'd say that improvements to core functions like path finding and unit AI will greatly reduce the micro from the off- and I can't see this annoying the players.

The other thing I'd point out is that I think allot of the options needed to cater for larger games can be just that- options. Take TA Spring, the standard interface has plenty of management tools that can allow you to set up a base and leave it running if you wish (rally points, auto patrol from factories, auto assist from construction units, factory repeat and so on). Basically with all the knobs and whistles turned on a base in spring can look after itself fairly well. I personally think PA will be much like this. Once you secure a world you leave everything on auto and focus somewhere else.

Now this will leave you more vulnerable as the auto helper and basic AI won't do anything clever (like gather units to head off an incoming attack, or bolster defences for you), so I can see this becoming part of the bigger strategy- actively distracting a player and hiding your true objective.

Say they have a very large resource base on a planet out of the main fight that you discover. The auto defences and controls will mean you can't just walk in with a single unit and destroy it. The trick will be to engage the enemy in the main fight and make them think you're concentrating there, whilst sending a larger force to attack their flank whilst their not watching. If done well they won't notice the incoming attack until its too late. Games on very large maps in spring, original TA and SupCom also play out like this and I don't see that as a fault of the game. One of the key areas to all large scale strategy games is deception and without this large games would never end!

I also find with these games that as the scale of the game gets bigger (more players, larger maps and so on), the micro tends to reduce with it. This is a natural result as the number of units involved increases, so does the tech level and so micro managing a few units ends up being pointless (if your enemy sends 500 tanks at you, no amount of micro with a handful of tanks is going to change the outcome).

It's a tricky balance to get however from what I've seen so far I've got full confidence in the Uber development team to get there

Ultimately tho people will play the game they have in front of them, because really what other choice do they have.

So the real issue, until the player base starts balkanising itself with mods is how many people will like the game enough to play.

More people may seem better but that inevitably means going for popularism and lowest common denominator making the game more like Command and PlanetaryCraft, which isn't a stated aim.

Re: Worried PA is going to self destruct

What I would absolutely love to see (and seriously doubt ever seeing) would be the option to have multiple people use multiple mice and keyboards on multiple screens, while on the same computer.

From a technical standpoint I do believe it's possible (Serious Sam 3 does it, for example), but I doubt it is a feature that would gather enough usage to justify the cost expenditure.

Having a bunch of my bros over to dominate a system would go down as one of the best gaming experiences imaginable to me.

I do think that the community is going to be a problem relatively soon. PA is currently more of a tech demo than a game, but unfortunately it's a rather fun tech demo.

The problem is that the community is treating it like a game, and it's about to change drastically. And I think we all know what happens to a game's community when the gameplay changes drastically, even for the better.

I think Uber should archive a few key snapshots from the alpha and release them as mods for the final game to restore alpha gameplay and balance (or lack thereof ) for those that want it.

I don't really see why different planets are going to change things that much. It's just like playing a map made of islands, you need to use sea units as a bridge to different battle fields. With planets you just use what ever space / orbital tech there is a bridge between battle fields. It's just like having islands that are very far away.

I'm sure we will also get the multiplayer check box that says "just one planet" that people can argue over in the lobby.

It is called alpha for a reason, for those who don't get that they will have to adjust. Games change over the course of development into their final product. There is no reason to add in alpha mods to bring back the broken game that is PA:Alpha. The age of units targeting walls and being flanked by units in range and superior armies losing because of no aim priority along with massed Catapults because there is very little you can do to stop them as you watch your based cripple under the barrage of missiles.

The game isn't done.
Metal spots changed it.
Each new feature will bring more change.
Though I expect the most drastic changes to come during the beginning to mid beta as the features are finished up and polish/balance start to become the main priory. It is when the actual mechanics will start being tweaked.

It's more than different planets. The entire balance of the game is going to change as more automation is added and focus shifts from micro to macro. Your comment reveals that you think that the game is almost done, which actually proves my point: people have fallen in love with a micro-heavy game that simply isn't going to exist in a few months. And when the game starts to shift from tech demo to the actual, intended game, the robotic excrement (...assuming there is such a thing) is going to hit the fan.

Just a note on where I'm coming from: I'm a beta customer, and from what I've seen of the alpha, I'm happy with that decision. I respect the alpha people for braving such an incomplete version of the game and I'm grateful that because of their efforts, the game's most basic systems will work flawlessly on almost any computer. But I don't think that I could personally play the game in that state and still be excited for the final product.