Game is practically unplayable right now

I haven't been playing much PA lately, and it seems I'm not the only one who hasn't been playing much. Several other players have talked about how they aren't playing much, and PA Matches has been getting very few submissions – fewer even than when it launched.

PA is very unstable as of the last few builds.

Crashes are very common, especially when multiple planets are involved.

Even though I normally don't have crashes, the past 4 games I've played my opponent crashed and didn't come back. Even if they did come back, it would be pointless since I'd be so far ahead. The last game I commentated, I crashed four times. Many of the games before these, crashes were also common.

There's also the issue of missing strategic icons on units. They normally come back when I restart PA, but upon the initial launch, they're practically never there.

All of these factors result in PA being mostly unplayable. It simply isn't worth it for me to try and set up a game when 4 out of 5 times my opponent will crash in the first 3 minutes and not come back.

What I'm trying to say is...

Uber, please fix some of these stability issues before implementing new features.

I really want to play this game more.

I don't really have those stability issues. But I'm not playing much either, because there isn't really much to test atm. Most bugs have been reported already, and hardcore-testing stuff like orbital is kinda redundant, because it's nowhere near completion.

Besides, I have played like 60 hours already. It gets a bit stale after a while

I have noticed a significant drop in participation and it is primarily due to stability issues at the moment.

The last one was a particularly unstable build.

It's beta, it happens I won't lose too much slsleep over one unstable build

I bet Uber have something they're working especially hard on atm because they have been particularly quiet on the forums this week!

Optimism, boys and girls!

I tired a simple system with an earth planet and 2 moons of 150 radius. Server crashed on that

On the other hand, you just provided Uber with another crash report so they can fix it!

There are pros and cons to crowdsourcing playtesting.

Con: People are fickle. It's not a job. So unless there is interest, people won't play.
Pro: Numbers.
Pro: Passion. People playing do this for amusement. Sometimes you have psychos like myself to do the UI stuff.


Things will get a lot more interesting once the full unit roster comes in...
(and we'll be able to churn through more games when we can adjust the game speed).

I think it's the orbital that has slowed me down a bit. The last couple of games have had us all agree to end it, because your opponent is on a ship 15 minutes away from some farflung planet, and you've blown up all his worldly goods I've also had some quite slow bits where I've been too slow to setup power on my new planet, and then suddenly everything stops because the enemy blew up my power on the other planet. My own fault, but time consuming to fix

I've stopped playing as much because of stability issues also. Sometimes orbital is broken and makes the game so unfair it's not worth trying.

I play on single planet systems because of Orbital not being flushed out enough.

I'm fine with that.

And I understand Beta is beta. I understand how stability is a process and all that.

Just really frustrating place right now.

Uber got me addicted to this game, and now I can't play.

I need my fix man!!!

The few 1v1 I play are not really affected, they work for the most part.
I was wondering why fewer games are reported to pa stats. Might be a sign of less people playing due to problems in bigger games.

I think it's also an issue of less powerful computers. They're crashing a lot more.

The reason for me basically stopping playing is due to time wastage. I love this game but I think my skill set can't help so much any more with the development except maybe with balance issues, which in turn are probably going to be somewhat biased. I used to try perfect bombing or dog fighting for hours and hours until a change in the units would deem this personal testing useless. I'm in no way dissing the devs because this is what i signed up for, but I'm prob gonna back bench a little more until final release.

I havent noticed any increase in connection issues/dropouts. however i have noticed its somelevel harder to find a game than it was a few weeks ago (though that might be due to a recent trend for a higher proportion of games to be team armies which i choose not to play).
In fact just on a gut feel basis had i not read the above i would have said the last two patches had helped stability.

Edit: I Mostly play FFA between 4-6 players, usually on 3 or less planet systems with scale four or less planets.

For me, I rarely have crashes, even lately. I just have my strategic icons go away.

However, my opponents crash all the time and we're having crash reports on the forums all the time.

A the moment I am playing on a one planet system... partly due to the fact that my brain cant handle dealing with another planet/moon... I never get any crashes.

I am considering shelving this game till release.

Again mainly due to stability issues and the lack of save game functionality.

I don't want PA to leave a bitter taste in my mouth if I get too frustrated at crashing etc. The resume feature is nice, but even so....

Save game functionality? how on earth are you going to save a game? that's just silly!

It will be embedded into the replay functionality, it already works just not turned on in our clients apparently.
You choose one of your old replays, use the chronocam and play on from where ever you want, thats my understanding of it.

AI games possibly? Network games with other humans... nah not so much

Save-Game functionality in a Multiplayer only game? That's like asking for Save-Game functionality in a First Person Shooter like Counter Strike. There is almost no time where this would ever be useful especially in the current build on PA.

For me the main reason I don't play daily is the lack of choices in strategy. You can't really do anything that will surprise the other players (at least in my opinion) since there are only a few viable choices of how to win.