Uber Weekly Update - August 13, 2014

I've seen them but I figured I'd give them some time to elaborate. Now that they have gone into a bit more detail, the lack of aforementioned features has left me wondering what they're planning or not planning on doing.

exactly, just add it to the list

Are we going to get Asteroid fields?

Unknown.

Mike

Wasn't that a core feature? Why are they releasing this game without core features implemented yet? I thought the point of them being idie was so they didn't have to have a deadline t0 complete a game? What did they do? Run out of money? Another thing, did everybody notice that the price went down to $29 instead of the $40 for final price.

Wish Uber would at least mention Lava and improvements for it. Seems like they avoid the conversation almost all the time when it comes to "polish".... I seriously think there were much better questions asked then the one "when's toy rush coming to android?" I could think of 20 questions better to ask than that.

As far as we can tell from the Discussions regarding Ladders, Uber seems to feel that the game will only get more popular over time, so releasing without certain features won't have any impact on thier ability to continue to create content.

Mike

I honestly dont think the game is getting any popular, I think its more in the backshadows. The game probably will continue to get more features, but if they still need to implement them, people arent going to jump at buying the game and will probably wont see as much sales as they would like, so I ask why the jump to 1.0? Is this due to the Early Access release of a retail box? (stupid decision by the way) Caving in to Nordic games's demands.

Stagnating in Early access can be pretty terrible for player retention and growth, better to launch in a reasonably polished state than stumble around in "Eternal Beta".



Getting the game out of Early access and focusing around a single launch window is really important for marketing.

The game has only been in Early access for a year. There are games on steam that have been in Early acess far long and have done better

Anyhows back to the topic, Thanks for the update brad. I like the idea of wrecks but they didn't play well as you have mentioned. Not worth reclaiming and blocked shots as they were. Trees have similar issues.

I wouldn't mind keeping structural wreckage. But in this macro-*** game, every single unit out of thousands having wreckage is counter intuitive.

The catch is that when you cut corners to make that "polished" release version you could severely impact the game's post release performance. Uber's eyes are focused on Long Term goals with PA(PA as a platform), yet to many of us in the community this seems to clash with decisions to cut/reduce things that help to retain players to the point where they can experience those things that were cut/delayed.

If no-one cares about PA 2 months after because it hasn't progressed feature-wise since release those features won't come at all because Uber doesn't have the money to make it in the first place. From our perspective it really odd.

Mike

But that's based on an assumption. There is no reason, at the moment, to expect that Uber will drop PA after launch, or that they don't have enough money left to do so. On the contrary, they are adamant that continued support will happen, and appear to be making sufficient financial returns on it.
Granted, certain features have been pushed back, or removed, and this may give some people the evidence they need to think that Uber will abandon the project, but not me.
We will see, but personally I'm not too bothered by the cuts, or the delays, and find all this cynicism quite bemusing. Meh.

And yes, I also feel that wreckage, in its current state, wasn't that important to the game. Depending on how the final game plays, balance wise etc., I would be interested to see if wrecks improved the game or not.

I like trees because you know in advance they're there (unlike wreckage). They're an interesting dynamic terrain element, like mini walls. Once tanks return I want to see heavy Grenadier usage on a tree heavy map to see if they're superior in that environment, or whether simply strafing the tanks gets the shots through.

It also means you need to make sub-optimal choices. I pursued one raiding tank through the trees with two of my own. My two lost. It means I need to commit more forces to hunting down raiding parties, which in itself introduces its own risks of building near trees. Then you have to start making decisions about whether to burn them down, etc.

Think we going to have to agree to disagree on this one . I don't like adding luck to situations and sometime you have to build near trees. Have them targetable and I'd be happy.

I'd just like to point out that I never said Uber would choose to abandon PA. I said that Uber's intent seems to be on the long haul yet they've made choices that, from our perspective, hamper the game's long term prospects.

Yes, having a proper Release is good, but lets face it, unless there is some kind controversy Release is when you get the most marketing and arguably the most sales/prospective buyers. So you get a lot of people playing PA in the big Release push........but how long will they stick around? Sure once the Purchase is made Uber gets paid as well and even if the player never plays PA but again, Uber seems really focused on teh Long term stuff and while Purchases of the game will always play into that to a degree, they've really been pushing the Armory, and want to do some kind of Mod Market place as well, the long terms they see seems to depend to a fair degree on micro-transactions, but for those to work you need players(The Modding stuff is a huige topic in it's own right), and it's hard to keep players invested with only hints of upcoming [REDACTED] as they seem to be fond of saying..

We understand Uber can't sit around until the game is "100% Done" because that'll take years and years still (and it isn't a reasonable goal in of itself really), but at the same time many in the community view this course of action as the opposite extreme, cutting corners to get something released only to have it run out of steam before Uber can deliver just the basics they delayed to make that release possible in the first place.

A while back I used a nice analogy, PA is like a Running in a Marathon that only has one shoe, sure teh coach promised PA that their second shoe would be provided later on, but it's already going to be at a disadvantage without it and might even get injured to the point where getting a second shoe doesn't help it complete the marathon anymore, assuming they even got the point the shoe would have been provided.

Mike

Why they are made of mass not energy..... Turning tree's into nuclear power replacement does not compute.

Where am I being impatient?
I am asking to delay 1.0 to put all necessary features in, that is the exact opposite of impatient.

I think Uber will implement everything they promised in the kickstarter. however, they will all be first pass. See GW, Orbital, Lava planet and most likely Gass Giants, Astroid belts etc etc... Now that's all fine for me but I am concerned about 1 thing. How fast will development go AFTER they release the game. Are the same amount of rescources going to be put in the game for years to come? or are they going to divert some of their rescources that are now working for PA to something else.

Because if anyone played Planetside 2, you will perfeclty understand why I am concerned about this.