What can we do for the backers?

Thx Jon, nice to hear!

On a side note, played the game after the latest patch a few times and wow... from early alpha to now, the game is really really coming together nicely!

Congrats to the whole Uber-Team so far!

Finally the new forum is here! I'm going to have to get used to this.

Thanks Lennard!

Congratulations on the first "like" ever neutrino, here have another

Edit: oh and great job on the forum Lennard, looks saawweeeet!

What can we do for the backers?

Make the Planetary Annihilation poster available again! (or part of the cosmic limited edition )
Would gladly throw more money at you guys for it. Upgraded to cosmic limited edition the day it was re-released for pre-order.

While I have hopes that we can figure out a way to make at least some form of poster available, it's low priority, and for a simple reason: Shipping posters is one of the biggest pains in the *** ever conceived of for package delivery. Unless they're folded (which sucks horribly), shipping them is expensive, unwieldy, and still often results in damaged posters.

I hateses shipping posters! They are not my precious.

The devs are clearly just fishing for likes

It's been the biggest hurdle for most of the crowdfunding stuff I've looked at, especially shipping internationally, even on the same continent. So, much agreement on this. I'd rather see more hi-res wallpapers. That may be cus I have my pc hooked up to a 46" tv, but wallpaper slideshows as a mix of my fave games is really nice to watch sometimes

Works for me

I'd love some hi-res wallpapers, for sure. I understand the issues with posters, I've received a few back in the day from Relic and it's basically been impossible to stop them getting damaged

well if the posters could be given (or sold) as a file, everyone could print them at a local copy shop

I know I'm a bit late to the game, but...

Can we hear John Patrick Lowry's voice? I don't really care what he says. I just want to hear his awesome voice.

I second this motion.

I don't know if anyone else here feels the same way, but I'm getting an awful lot of tumbleweed vibes from the backer's lounge at the moment. I know that Uber is hard at work, and doing a great job on the stuff we've seen, but I think that the current communication model between devs and backers could perhaps be improved a little. I understand that the devs are already communicating more than they ever have before at this stage in a project, but I think that both devs and forum-goers are still getting used to this more open-style of game development, and there is still room for improvement. We've already had some instances of people snapping because they don't feel they are being listened to. I would hate to think that the lesson some people take away from this is that "Being rude and disparaging gets a dev response while genuine rational discourse is ignored".

I think this is more down to miscommunication then any sort of genuine negligence. But I believe there are some quick and simple ways that can be used to improve communication quality between devs and forum-goers in both directions, without requiring any significant time commitment:

1. Details on how features will work:
To date, probably the single biggest thread with the most discussion in it is this one, in which the economy is described. I would love to see a new thread like this popping up once in a while. Theres still an awful lot of areas left where we have little idea of how the game will play, such as orbital combat, movement between planets, the different types of units available, how asteroids can be defended against, plans for the mod marketplace, etc. Just a few quick bullet points at the start of a thread will generate an awful lot of discussion, and help places like the backers' lounge become much more lively and engaging.

2. Question Threads:
I'm sure that there are lots of features that haven't ironed out yet in terms of mechanics. That's fine, and to be expected at this stage in development. So why not directly ask us backers what we think about them? Again, this is something that's been done before on multiple occasions. It helped focus discussion then, and it would help move things along now. Even if it's a topic that has already been discussed elsewhere, just having a thread started by the devs indicates that this is (to whatever extent) a priority area, and one that is worthy of discussion.

3. Dev Plans:
There are a lot of people on these forums, myself included, who are very interested in game development and about how PA is being built in particular. Games have formed a large part of our childhoods, and continue to be an important past time to many of us. We enjoy watching things like Extra Credits, and reading commentary or critique on how the games industry works. Simply posting todo lists, or .plan files is always very interesting, and it lets us know just how things are moving along. Even if it's just a "I spent most of today modelling bombs and shells" in a generic "what we are doing" thread. As before, this isn't something the devs have never done before. It also has a very important side benefit. A huge amount of the more inane questions, suggestions and criticisms thrown at the devs are borne out of ignorance about how difficult it is to develop games, and how the game industry works. By explaining what's going on, people get a better idea of the challenges faced in making PA. The more information released, the higher the quality of feedback and discussion will be.

4.Interesting Topics:
I know on pretty much every livestream, the devs always say that they are watching the forums and that feedback is important to them. I'm sure that this is true, but if someone has spent a lot of time composing long and well thought out posts, then it's a little unsatisfying to get such a generic response. Putting a lot of time into discussing something, and having no idea if it has any impact whatsoever on the state of the game (even if it was a silly idea to begin with), is a recipe for disengagement. I understand why the devs might not want to answer on a number of topics, incase it appears they are picking sides, or making a commitment to something where no such commitment has been made. Clearly, it's not practical for a dev to answer to every thread in excruciating detail, but that's also unnecessary. Simply popping into the odd thread and leaving a "This is interesting" or a "Keep up the discussion guys" would work wonders for letting people know what topics are the most relevant for discussion. Currently, the majority of dev responses have been to unfair criticism. Obviously, when someone says something nasty about someone else on the internet, they will want to respond to such criticisms. Unfortunately, this creates the situation whereby the only way to get a response on a matter is to say something unpleasant about a dev. I really don't want to be on that kind of forum, and i believe that it's entirely avoidable for a minimum of effort. Even just creating a "these are the threads we found interesting over the last few days" thread would do wonders for avoiding this situation, and would help forum-goers know where their opinions are most likely to matter.

I hope this has provided some constructive suggestions for how communication can be improved, while not getting in the way of the creative process. Uber is already doing a better job than most studios when it comes to community communication, especially without a dedicated community manager. Most of the criticism leveled so far has been born out of ignorance, and the only cure for that is more information. I think a few small tweaks here and there are all that's needed to put rest to the vast majority of communication issues. I'd love to hear if either the devs or the rest of the community has any other suggestions as to how things could be improved.

Agreed on all points, MadSci. However, I do have a lot of sympathy with Uber on this. Finding the right balance between actually making the game and keeping up good communication with fans I can only imagine is an extremely difficult task.

I think Uber are aware of the issue, and I suspect communication will improve significantly once Uber brings their community manager on board.

You got my vote MadScientist, and another like.

Talk to us Devs, please?

some act like Uber employees never talk in this forums. Go back to GPG forums back in the day, you would see a employee post once per month xD I dont know... you expect them to post all the time, and in the same time finish the game this year? That just wont work... so just relax and wait.

I don't mean to be rude, but we helped fund this game. This game would not have happened without the backers.
Uber needed us.

It is not unreasonable for the backers to desire some greater interaction from the developers in exchange for our investment.

It's not unreasonable for us to demand it.

It's not unreasonable for Uber to deny it. It's their prerogative.

I agree with a lot of what YourLocalMadSci is saying, but equally as someone who has been involved with other developers, both as a fan and as someone in a community moderator position, I would never ask for more than the developer can give.

The question is, given how hard we know Uber is (over)working, how much in the way of little posts and feature explanations can we reasonably desire from them?

I believe they are looking for a community rep person, for what I imagine is exactly that job.

That would be equally good, and everybody wins! Assuming the developers have the time to explain things to the community manager/spokesperson/hate magnet so that people are satisfied with both encouragement and dev-informed posts

EDIT: did I mention how much I hate these smilies? They're worse than Skype's default set.