PA is cool, but I am not having fun

Hello,

Presentation of who I am :

Summary of what my main problem with PA is :

Little story to illustrate my points :

To summarize : I don't know what is going on (unintelligible icon fest), I don't understand what is going on (lack of map features) and I can't control what is going on (lack of hotkey support)

Now, I want to soften my position. I wouldn't write this if I didn't like PA at least a little bit. I wouldn't write this if I hadn't spent three hours putting reactors on a moon before realizing that is was not "movable" because of its size (why would you be able to build those buildings on an unmovable planet?) I wouldn't write it down if I hadn't crashed waves after waves of bots against my opponents. I do like SC2, I do like SupCom (or rather, FA). And while I know that PA is still in beta, I feel that game design decisions are limiting my enjoyment of the game. Of course, this whole post is about me, and I understand that some (most?) of you enjoy the game a tremendous lot, so my considerations are of little value to you. But I believe I represent a non-zero share of the market of hardcore RTS fans.

Let me give you an example of game modification I would do that some (most?) of you would despise because it would "dumb down the game" : the camera must always have the north on top of your screen, and the poles of each planet are not usable (impassable terrain). I am willingly limiting myself, and what the game does. And I feel this would make a better game, because it would give me a stronger visual representation of the world, I wouldn't be confused by rotations anymore. The game is "less". But the game is more fun.

I would remove these swarms of little icons when they are all together (your army blob) and replace it with a huge icon that sums up my army values. Right now, when I have a swarm of T1 and T2 bots and vehicles, it's just a gigantic mess, and I have no idea if I am going to crush the opposing blob. Because right now, I am not having fun when I have to squint to gauge the armies

Thank you for your attention, and thanks for UberEnt for pushing updates that always improve the game!

I think you are making the case that there is a lack of clarity in the "icon fest" in terms of strategic information presented to the player, and a lack of sharpness in the player's strategic choices, such as choosing this unit or that unit, or whether to attack, and so on. Pretty solid criticism, actually, and I mostly agree, but I am highly optimistic because those features seem quite small after the achievement that is the PA engine.

Fortunately your complaints are quite high-level criticisms about the tuning of the game. Addition of lots of new units, design changes to make those units interact in interesting ways, and the introduction of sophisticated command and control tools and UI should go a long way towards alleviating your concerns.

Better organization of forces (e.g. formations), better representation of game state information (e.g. grouping), more nuanced unit design and interactions (design changes), and smarter command and control (UI sauce) should help. I also hope the game's state will become much clearer and more manageable, offload many of the "chores" like rote building construction to the UI, and present players with difficult strategic decisions about how to use their forces. But you must admit that the base game is pretty good, even when the player has to do everything manually and it is an "icon fest."

You sound like you might benefit from some of the mods we have available. There are icon mods that you might like, and hotbuild2 is something I think you will be very impressed with.

Hotkey support is coming, in the meantime (that is, until tomorrow since we're supposed to get a UI update in 1 day) there are hotkey mods. Hopefully we get a good system tomorrow or soon.

The icon fest thing is an issue. Formations are being worked on, and the Uber devs have mentioned in livestreams that they also have concerns about them, such as not being able to put the correct units where you want in a formation. I'm sure they'll be improved a whole lot, if the dev streams are any indication. I agree that this is currently a problem.

As for your North/South suggestion:
There is a toggle-able option for making the camera keep the same orientation on planets, that is, north = up south = down. Check in the settings to enable it at all times, I think most people do. It can certainly help with navigation.
You can also save and recall camera positions, and multiple views (such as split screen, and the current PIP window) will be supported (and already are to some extent with mods that alter the PIP window).

Terrain is still being worked on. I hope it gets more interesting, it would also make navigation by landmarks easier as you say.

The Halley engine icons aren't really clear right now. I agree with you on that, and I also think that the lack of a real tutorial is partially to blame for the lack of clarity with things like this.

I recommend going through the settings menu, particularly the UI and Keyboard tabs.

the thing is with star-/warcraft, AoE, or other RTS: its just a learning curve...
same goes with PA. the learning curve might be a bit more difficult with the rebalancing but the basics remain the same. I recommend watching ZaphodsX' videos here: http://pamatches.com
he's pretty much the best at playing and explaining whats going on and why, at the same time.
at least it helped me immensely! and I'm NOT what you would call an RTS player; I really hate star- /warcraft and stuff like that (loved C&C back in '96), but this game got me hooked.
play lots vs. the AI! its pretty smart and once you get the hang of it, play vs. two AIs. once you can easily overcome one or two players, you should be good to go for PvP. this helps you try out stuff, and units and what does what and why you'd pick that one in that situation...it's all about experience man, like everything. dont give up, its really fun once you're past the basics...!

I don't think the criticism is unwarranted. Mostly it's reflective of stuff not being finished. We are working on things in almost every area that you mentioned.

Firstly - the Halley thing - I'm sorry, that's because you're a new player, and you didn't realise that movable planets are described as "movable" in the system UI - they have "slots" you can build Halleys to fill. That's a lack of familiarity with where to look for the information, rather than the information not being present.

Lack of map features - I find that hard to believe. There are many map features that can be used to figure out orientation. Irrespective of that, the n hotkey reassigns the camera to north, and there is a setting in the settings to turn Pole Lock to ON.

Lack of Hotkey Support is being actively worked on. The last build already made a whole lot of stuff toggleable commands, which was an amazing change (thanks @metabolical /Uber Dev who did that!!!!!) Hotbuild2 is the level of hotkey support we are hoping for.

Unintelligible icon fest - I don't mind this actually. I think 1 massive icon saying "you have 30 bots, 5 vehicles and a fabber in this army could conceivably be more confusing. I haven't seen this done in many games with similar scale to PA.

Supcom2 autogrouped units in the strategic view. It didn't tell you the type of units but just having a single neat icon for groups was great.

units only started using formations, you can make anti air follow by doubleclicking one and ordering assist on the back unit so they intentionally follow behind the back.

tedious, yes. Still getting better. Good thing is, get used to micromanagement now and when UI updates slowly remove it you will be overfamiliar and speedtrained as to be even faster with the new UI. Then it will feel more lax.

I think as the game gets more balanced and the units become more unique, you will feel less like "why should I build this". Also, the game is more about epic scale, so it's more like "I need roughly this, this and this, now how do I get enough of the planet to build 20 factories for each" .
Whilst I think you make some valid points, I hope that you stick with the game long enough to see exactly what Uber do to allay some of your fears.

P.S. I would argue that, for me (a casual-amateur level player of RTS) many RTS games are the same sort of "build a blob of units and smash it against the other player's blob". This game just turns that up to 11.

Perhaps I can help with that.

Inevitably playing with thousands of units you'll be seeing a lot of those icons. SO it is vey important these icons not be ugly so they contribute to making the big blob not ugly.

You a have a wide choice of replacement icons in PAMM and the mod section.

try hotbuild2, starcraft APM applied to PA.

this sound familiar: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/different-blips.49424/page-2#post-764593

this too: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/scale-megathread.48650/page-19#post-809774