Release, a sacred graal ?

So you do realize the plan is to build a platform that the community can continue to build things on and that supports it's own existence right? I guess maybe I'm not clear enough about this stuff.

Something like this I guess. Basically someone needs to draw a line somewhere and once drawn it's hard to undraw. I really wish people wouldn't just needlessly argue about it for "our sake". We will live and die by the decisions we make here, we already know the stakes are very high. We've drawn the line in a certain place and started to align the starts, it's awfully difficult to change.

I realize it, but possibly I'm just not as good at explaining it to people as you are. It would be nice to get something like a press release from you or Brad later on when if you're not busy so that we can answer questions by pointing people to it. Sort of a long-form FAQ that is more PR than information but easy enough to read that we can send it to more casual fans.

I don't think he meant it in any offensive way.

Yes this is a good idea. I'm sure Brad is paying attention. Basically a description of what we envision the mod program looking like.

No offense taken or given. Just pointing out that we probably need to be more descriptive about the long term platform plan. Basically we are still building out the mod system. Once it's built out there will be a way to submit and publish mods that show up in the game. Some of these, at both ours and the authors discretion, can become paid mods. We will then share the revenue from the mod with the team or individual who created the mod. The first example of this is the custom commanders that were commissioned by some of our backers.

This is more of a long term aspiration but it's a model that would allow extreme longevity for the game.

Well honestly for me, offline servers and non-connected play was by far the #1 thing I was looking forward to in release, and basically have been looking forward to since I got access to the game, this was for basically two reasons, performance and server stability.
Though after reading your reddit post on the topic, I realize that's probably silly of me. I always assumed that all those times the game was crashing was my crappy cable internet crapping out on me like it is so good at doing, but if those are server crashes rather than internet disconnects then as you say offline mode probably won't help. Also with performance now I assume that game optimization will do more to help game performance than removing the server latency would. So ya. Was looking forward to it sooner than later, but I guess for reasons that were false assumptions in the first place. Keep up the polish!

Do you think that many UI mods would have a good chance of getting that special attention or do you expect to see the mod market have mostly balance overhauls and total conversions?

That's surprising. I'd have thought that the PA server instances would be computationally intensive and therefore costly to run, which would have made enabling player-run servers a priority.

Yeah what you were describing is definitely server crashes. Unless you have really flaky internet it's unlikely you would get disconnected unless the server crashes. And if you do get disconnected you should be able to reconnect if the server didn't crash.

AWS instances are relatively cheap compared to the money they'll lose to piracy and the time they need to spend on finishing offline mode. The team is probably just too small to have someone focused on that right now.

The cost of them isn't too excessive. However, if it gets that way we will release the servers more quickly. Basically there is a bunch of work to do on them before we can release them. Our entire system needs to be tweaked to support the user run servers.

Lots of people are going to be upset about not being able to play offline. A lot of people are currently unhappy about not being able to play offline, mainly because some people have slow bandwidth so it effects gameplay, or they have bandwidth caps and literally can't afford to play online against an AI.

Ah, I see. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity!

I have a 15GB bandwidth limit (I can play after 11pm as I have unlimited through 11pm - 7am) and I can definitely vouch for this. I'm not going to be upset really, but disappointed, as I was looking forward to being able to play PA whenever I'd like to.

PA uses what... A gig a match at times?

(I mean, when I was doing that tourney, I was using MCDONALDS internet so that I could take part XD )

Yes, I'm sorry for that. The game really was built assuming you had a decent connection with plenty of bandwidth. The server will eventually get released but like any other feature it's prioritized against everything else.

Gentlemen, gentlemen, it's reasonable to be frustrated at delays but please let a little forgiveness into your hearts. Software development is and has always been as much a notoriously inexact art as it has been a science and, as cptconundrum has already pointed out, they're doing the best they can for all of us already with the limited resources they have.

Well yes, I understand, like I said.. Won't be upset, just disappointed!

I'm most generally a very accepting and understanding person, I just hope that the no offline mode doesn't bit Uber in the butt

(A lot of people are SO heavily anti-DRM, and I'm sure some will go as to even claim Uber is some evil corporate company, spouting their hate for EA and stuff.)

I realized a while ago that we can't please everyone. We stick to the best vision of the game that we can while trying to take into account what the customers want.

Well alright, I'm just trying to warn you guys about the incoming flak from ignorant players. D: