Expectations (and managing them)

Expectations are very powerful. Research shows that expectations can totally dominate for example, the amount of pain one feels when an electric shock is delivered or a burning treatment is applied to the skin. People who expect something to hurt, tend to feel more pain than was actually delivered, and vice versa, people who expect something not to hurt tend not to feel that it was painful. I think the PA community has incredibly high expectations with regards to what will be in the final release version of the game. This is resulting in histrionic responses to every single tidbit of new information the developers give us. This has resulted in a tense community where the devs themselves have now gotten rather defensive and have actually snapped at a few people on accident, and are generally less willing and able to divulge new information. As release gets closer the drama and tension gets higher, with more and more people lamenting about which lacking pet feature will ruin the game. In short, our expectations have become unmanageable both for ourselves and Uber.

The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We will not enjoy the release version game and there will be a huge drama bomb regardless whatever is in it. Our expectations are going to dominate reality. This will reflect poorly on the game and will have an impact on the final reviews it receives. I know many of you paid quite a bit of money to be here since the beginning, and naturally have high hopes for what PA can be. But we need to collectively accept the likely truth:

The game we have now is largely the one we will have at release.

It is clear that for whatever practical, development, or financial reasons, this will be the case. We may not fully appreciate all the reasons behind this, but it's a natural part of game development. Some features turn out to just not be possible within the practical limitations of a development cycle. If you commit yourself wholeheartedly to believing that PA will not be a good game without whatever currently missing feature, you are going to have a bad time at release. If the community as a whole does this, there is going to be a massive drama bomb at release. The media will pick up with this. The story that runs will be that PA is a controversial example of a kickstarted game that has infuriated it's fanbase.

I think this would be a tragedy. For one, it would work very strongly against us ever getting the features we want. It would also tragically obscure the fact that PA is in fact, a pretty good (if overly ambitious) game. If the PA userbase has already peaked, it is doubtful that either Uber or the mod community will enjoy the prolonged (at least + 1 year from now) dev time needed to properly implement and balance all the currently missing features. It is also clear that if PA stayed in 'beta' for that time, things would only get worse as the community becomes more fractured and histrionic. PA needs to launch. This is the only hope for us to get all the wanted for features.

So I think we as a community need to really scale back our expectations, and try not to overreact to every new reveal of which features won't be making it. Accept the game for what it is now - a fun, albeit slightly flawed game where you can mash thousands of units together over multiple planets. Appreciate the 50+ hours of fun you have probably already enjoyed, and try to understand that new players will have as much fun as you did back whenever you first got involved. This will make release day much less a headache for everyone involved and might help to ensure the prolonged life for the game we all hope to see.

To reiterate what I said in another thread...

PA as it is right now, delivers what was pitched during the kickstarter. If uber were forced to stop everything today, what they have already achieved is impressive and far beyond what many other projects managed to deliver.

Uber have done a lot of work with very little resources, and I think we should be more appreciative of that. I don't think we could have realistically asked much more of them, so please try and keep that in mind when giving feedback.

This is a common problem across early access games. You should see the crazy expectation some Star citizen players have, i cringe on some of the questions that are asked for "10 for the chairman".

What uber have managed to do since the kickstart is very impressive. But when compared to something like MWO and PGI, that uber have achieved is downright amazing.

Best example: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/call-of-duty-ghosts LOL see the lovely User Score there.

I agree, people are getting too hung up on what the game isn't, rather than what it IS.
I think a good, overly ambitious game, as you put it, is exactly what I would want from this project. It means there is plenty of potential for the game, or even the series, in future.
Fingers crossed over the next year! I'm still excited to see where we end up.

I think you're over-estimating the effect this community has, techncially we aren't even the "Target-Audience" nor are we large enough nor able to invest enough(limited options) to be PA's "Whales" and support it.

Also I think it's a bit unfair to lay the blame on the community. Yes there will always be some people that that don't have reasonable expectations and there are people who will blow things up larger than they are. But that's not what the majority of the community is doing, nor are our expectations entire of our own creation.

I think that, if you really read the discussion in depth and really think about it you'll find that the median expectations are in of themselves, reasonable. Especially in the context that many of the founding ideas stemmed from comments by the Devs in assorted formats.

In the end it feels like you're saying we can't handle change, I disagree and would further go on to say that this community is probably more capable of understanding change, the problem is that we can't do that in a vacuum, we need context. Sure there are people within the community whose varied experience allows them to make some pretty accurate assumptions about why things happen even with little direct information, but we can never be sure about the accuracy of any of that without confirmation from Uber. Heck, Uber had a team of Community members chomping at the bit to help the community understand changes, but that got shut down without the members even being told. The resources were there, they just needed to be given the "tools" they needed.

As for "Managing Expectations", I don't see why this should rest solely on the Community, heck, the way you talk about it it's almost like it's some process completely separate and is applied after the fact when really it's not, it's inherently tied into the "creation" of the expectations if anything. The "after the fact" managing only comes up when changes happen and even this it's still less of a separate action more more so a part of communicating those changes. As mention above I feel that overall the Community did about somewhat above average in regards to forming it's expectations. Time and again we've had to deal with our expectations being flawed due to new information suddenly being found out that was either unexpected or ran completely counter to reasonable expectations.

A good example of that is the Offline play aspect of PA. Almost since the beginning we expected to be able to host our own servers, initially pre-release and eventually we shifted it to at release through discourse with Uber. Every time it's come up we've jumped at the opportunity to help people confused by it's current lack and understand that it would be coming at release and explain the reasons why it wasn't available until then, but it's only been very recently that Uber has stepped up to say that it might not be there at release(and reading between the lines leaves many assuming it won't be there at release) but with little explanation as to why this would be the case nor why we've been led to believe otherwise until now despite this specific expectation being very well known to Uber.

Uber helped in the setting of the expectations, but fell through went it came to the upkeep/updating of them.

Mike

Managing stakeholder expectations is one of the hardest parts of project management, and often has no clear-cut benefit, and is therefore unfortunately relegated to 'will do if I have time'.

People exaggerate the importance and % this forum represents of the community. The vast majority of games I've ever played I never visited the forums - most play for their own fun, not to engage with others.

If the level of activity of this forum is anything to go by predictions of the games death are highly pessimistic. FAF survives, there is little RTS out there at the moment, PA will flourish. My only concern is whether they can sort Galactic war out in time, it seems a little weak to me, certainly not captivating. As they have said, the majority of games are single player, but that is the weakest part currently. The other issues to my mind pale in comparison to having a good single player experience (that said, I don't care to play single player, I just think its needed for success).

Ultimately people will only jump ship if a better RTS comes along, and I cant see one on the horizon. This panic will be for nothing, come launch day they will reveal a redacted and joy will spread across the world.

PA has come a long way in a short amount of time. There have been some questionable decisions, like the recent decision to remove wreckage, but there were good reasons for them at the time.

Regardless, the fact is the PA engine is probably the most powerful RTS engine anyone has ever made, and that means modders are going to have a field day once they get up to speed.

Even TA, which was rather difficult to work with as a game from a modding perspective, and which literally died in every way a game can die, including Cavedog going under and stopping all support, was still played. Despite all that, TA had one of the most vibrant modding scenes ever, even five, ten years later. And depending on how many planks you are prepared to replace on the ship of Theseus that is TA, the game is arguably still kicking today.

I am highly optimistic for PA, even as Uber makes decisions like flat-out removing wrecks from the game. What this means is that PA is going to need its own Uberhack mod (the TA Mod "Uberhack"- not related to Uber). But then I guess that isn't a surprise to anyone that a few years after release, after a lot of testing and tweaking and modding, that some mod is going to overshadow the vanilla game.

Actually TA was revolutionary in terms of modding support (and I expect Mavor, as engine architect had something to do with that)...

What made TA so moddable compared to other game (at the time, remember TA came out in the 90's when game modding was a dirty word to developers), they specifically designed the system that controlled the unit properties and such into simple files that could be edited using any standard text editor. This *hadn't been done before* due to the fact that most games actively looked to prevent modding. That early decision to build in capability to allow tweaking is why the game still exists.

Back when I was playing TA, a group called the 'Sweedish YankSpankers' created some very good tools that became pre-requisite for competitive play- specifically the 'demo recorder' that allowed the recording and play back of games. The demo recorder also added in UI functionality such as line building which greatly sped up queueing of things like solar collectors or wind turbines. They then designed a 3D replay viewer that could import a recorded game, then play it back in full 3D (TA always had 3D units but the landscape was isometric). Finally that project evolved into the Spring engine which is still going strong today. None of that would have happened had it not been for some very clever (and intentional) mod support included at the very beginning.

People also seem to forget that Uber isn’t that big a company and has gone through a significant period of growth off the back of PA. With sudden growth comes problems as the smaller company lacked the policies, resources, and culture required by larger organisations. These come with time, but take effort to develop, and development is often a trial and error process – you don’t know you need and lack a policy in X until it blows up in your face. This can explain why some decisions have been questionable at best, often being results that a big company would not make as it has the support infrastructure (checking procedures, PR, in-house legal team etc) already in place to prevent errors, e.g. the great Able commander debacle of 2014. These are easy to spot in hindsight, and with hundreds of internetters examining it, but at the coalface these things are harder – and those that spot the error often lack the influence or ability to avert it.

The game is fun, and its just a game, stop panicking.
(although I too would be a bit peeved if I’d spent as much as some people on here have).

Oh I certainly disagree that a bigger company could ever have done a better job than Uber has done. Absolutely no way. Big studios, especially public corporations making video games these days would never even make a game anything like PA, much less such an ambitious take and effort to open up the game design process and involve the game's community. Uber has done a lot more than just make a game here.

That said, in my opinion PA still has a long ways to go. Not for any fault of Uber. TA had a long road ahead of it well after Cavedog was removed from the equation, and it certainly looks like PA is going to be treated a lot better.

What I expect will happen is that Uber is going to make the best game they can. But there's no substitute for years of experimentation post-release. And some enterprising modder is going to put together the products of countless experiments by countless players into a single package that will blow vanilla PA away.

If we are very fortunate, this process might happen several times. After years of experimentation with the first mod, some other modder will have accumulated a lot of ideas cooked up by countless other people and will put them together into still another big mod.

Nobody can hierarchically design a game that can compete with thousands of players experimenting for several years to try and find what plays best. It's impossible.

As Uber has said, PA is a platform just as much as it is a game. And in that regard the PA engine is pretty much a masterpiece for making RTS games.

Mike I agree that Uber is complicit to some degree in the wild expectations, and that they could certainly have done a better job on various areas both PR and development wise. Still, that doesn't change the observation that quite a large portion of the community has expectations out of pace with reality (see the drama that erupts after literally every Uber weekly update). It's hard to really argue about what role this will have on the greater PA community but I think it's safe to say that the core fanbase can and will have an effect on the overall public perception. One way or another, it is in everyone's best interest to scale back our expectations. The game we have is the one we're getting (for now) - we can either collectively accept that, or watch the fireworks that happen come launch day.

You make it sound like we don't have valid issues to discuss. Like I said, the conflict doesn't arise simply because our expectations don't match reality, for the most part they are very well grounded in reality and Uber helped established them to begin with.

The problem is that now suddenly Uber keeps blindsiding us with these changes, changes they should know challenge or run counter to the Community's expectations and not even being willing to work it out with us.

Like was anyone expecting them to completely cut out mobile wreckage like this? Was anyone Expecting them to Cut Ladders, or Offline play? Of course not because even if we thought those things were important for Release, so did Uber at one time because they've said time and again in the last 2 years that ladders were important, hosting your own servers was important and all that. It's happened suddenly from our perspective, but I guarantee you that none of these things that had decisions made out of nowhere, these were planned and calculated to varying extends and none of the process is ever communicated to us, all we get is the result with a throw-away explanation and that isn't good enough on it's own when we've been left to our expectations they helped establish.

Mike

You make a good point, but I'm not saying that mistakes were not made or that any unhappiness is unwarranted. I'm also not super pleased with many of these things, but I think you are missing the gist of my original post. Expectations override our experience of reality and I think it's pretty clear that for many, expectations have far outstripped what we are going to get. You want to talk about why that is and what happened to create those expectations; i'm just trying to reel the drama in a bit and remind everyone that we already basically know what game we'll be getting.

edit: as for the unexpected changes, I don't have much to add. I wasn't terribly surprised when they suddenly announced they would be removing reclaim. It's clear that from here to release, everything is going to be about polish, and by extension, anything that stands in the way of that will be removed. I'm not really empathetic to the huge outcry that happens after each and every revelation; it should be obvious by now that Uber is doing the best they can to reach a respectable release and that A LOT is going to be left on the cutting floor in the process. Mistakes have very clearly been made a long the way but here we are.

If this is truly your intent I'd recommend a different process, nobody likes to be wrongly accused and guilted into settling for worse than what was initially communicated.

Mike

Absolutely agree with OP. I think if people worked on being more constructive with their criticism they may actually get the results they want. Also not everyone wants the same thing. Simple as that. No one way is the absolute correct path.

I still want Asteroid belts and offline play/LAN and I better get them. PA has come along way since I bought into the Alpha back in June of last year. Uber I'm sure has worked hard and long to deliver a great game to us, but without those Asteroid belts, I will never feel complete to me. Or Wreckage, that was a biggie for me.

I think I would agree and disagree with OP.

First off, there are a lot of expectations that the community, and more importantly, the entire internet has. Expectations that based on Uber's hints, won't be met by 1.0. Mainly, offline play, LAN play, and server access.

We have been saying for the entirety of Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, "Don't worry, we'll have offline play at 1.0 so you won't have to worry about your internet connection." And now based on what Uber has said here and there, it doesn't seem that we'll have offline or server access at 1.0.

I believe that is a huge mistake. Particularly the lack of offline play. Offline play is a critical feature and the backlash will be out of the park if we do not have it.

Out of all the features PA should have at 1.0, offline play is the most important IMO.

It's Uber's job to set expectations. Uber is the one who knows what is going to happen with the game and when (to a degree). We have been saying for the past year+ that certain things will be available at certain times. Uber has let us have those expectations and has done little to nothing to change our expectations.

But most importantly, the internet at large saw the Kickstarter, stretch goals, and promised features. Anything that is lacking from those will be met with backlash from the internet at large. Some of that can't be avoided short of postponing 1.0 for who knows how much longer. So it's a fine line of when to release and what features to include. Uber apparently believes they're at that line and can release it. Personally, I'd disagree. Either that, or Uber needs to do more to set our expectations at 1.0.

We've had certain expectations for the past year, and we are not obligated in any way to magically know what Uber's goals actually are. We can only set our expectations based on what Uber tells us. We have our expectations, so now Uber needs to confirm or deny them.

I guess what I'm saying is, we are not the ones burdened with managing expectations. That rests almost entirely on Uber's PR efforts. The community can help, but we will have little impact. And most importantly, we aren't obligated or expected in any way to be Uber's PR team. That being said, I do everything within my power to help spread the word about PA. That still doesn't mean it's the community's job.

PA does not deliver what was pitched during the Kickstarter... There are many missing features that were promised during the Kickstarter.

I'm not saying what Uber has done isn't impressive. But the game we have now is by no means complete when compared to the Kickstarter goals.

Expectations is mostly psychological thing, they apear when information/explanations has gaps in them, and people fill these gaps imagining what they think would be the most fun, cool or epic.

And yes when information is released and it goes against expectations people get mad, because in there mind it is injustice, and things should be like they want it to be.

But the most important part here is not that we are angry, disapointed or sad, it is uber task to not leave such gigantic gaps that people can fill up with there own imagination. And in my honest opinion uber constandly leaves gaps litterly everywhere, they either don't tell or the information they give has gaps in them that people can/will fill up.

Yes we could try to retrain ourselves abit more, i agree, but uber also need to give more solid information, with good explanations more often.

If there are no gaps, people can not fall in them and get mad for it being there in the first place.

I agree with OP and KNight because both have valid points. On the one hand there are high expectations and the reality will be that we have to settle with the game we get. I think it is a fine game and I can accept it. I will most likely be happy with the release especially if there is more performance improvement, server stability and polishing. And I guess we will get that or at least some of it. The threads here on the forum are tense sometimes but I think the people here will be okay with the release. There will be threads about missing features but if you read these forums you already have some idea of what will be there and can follow the post-release progression of the game, waiting for your most wanted feature. There will be disappointment but it will be okay because there is already some disappointment and I don't expect some big negative surprise for release that will set a new huge storm here on the forums.

However if I put myself in the shoes of someone who sees the website of Uber (which Uber knows is outdated) or a retailers site where DRM free and offline play amongst other things are promised, I would be very disappointed if I bought the game in the state it is now. And you couldn't blame that on wrong expectations because these people don't know the history of the game and they don't know the reasons behind some features missing. Maybe they wouldn't even know that some features will come 1 week after release because they already returned the game. For them a missing feature will be a big negative surprise. Of course there is still time and it won't be that bad if the features come a bit later but it is a gamble.