[2012] TotalBiscuit Interview with PA Devs [2012]

His reaction to the early access box was simultaneously knee-jerk and stupid, because for some reason selling clearly labelled early access products in an electronic store was a-okay, but when it was in a clearly labelled physical box then it becomes unacceptable.

Wut?

And for regions of the world that prefer to buy a physical copy because credit cards aren't as ubiquitous, well **** you because TB doesn't give a **** about you, you don't get to play in the early access world.

So dumb.

@Quitch that's not it, he wasn't mad at the boxed copy, he was mad at PA.

His opinion towards early access forged way after him backing and praising PA.

it created a paradox for him and eventually he decided to side with his newfound hatred with early access because Uber's late plunders were making the choice way too easy for him

(please do not blow up on me none of these statements are my personal beliefs, they are his)

i SUPPOSE it could be because i dont use the "reply" button but wrote the /quotas myself =O

And yeah, i know you are right, the long way it would take to make the game something i personally would desire, thats why, only speakin for myself, dont have much hope left the game will become what i thought it will be when i bought the alpha.
I mean, i dont get tired repeatin myself, but i have some fun with this game, i play my occasional round of galactic war or a multiplayerround, for the most part because its something different from the usual RTS stuff. But i hoped it could become my new venom, the next WC3 which will blow my mind for years, and i would play a fckin lot.
But back to buisness, thats why i kinda lost my "hope", the journey would be so long, and well, the angry voices in the forum are there, but i wouldnt even want to give Uber the burden to make a 180° turn, and start going into a completely different way. Thats why i focus on the "easy/doable" stuff for the most part when i write in this Forum. I know its a question about money as well, and im kinda glad i dont have to make these decisions. After all, 2 + sales millions are not SO much for the complex game they targeted to make.
But after all, even knowing that UBER has been in a tough spot from the very beginning (but they themself had put themselves into it), i cant do other but feel a slight emptyness, after the hype PA generated, and in the end it was only able to fill it up for a very small amount.

https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/466350622741385216

Among others.

Is it really so hard to imagine the implications when games can be sold unfinished in stores?

Hate to tell you, but it's a bit bizarr how you guys are trying to make it into a small psychosis of TB, when he critizises the PA EA-box. That statement has literally nothing to do with the game, no point in throwing away rationality and getting defensive. Not that that would ever be a good thing to do.
And btw, TBs only recent statement to the game was along of the lines of 'i've not yet played enough to judge it'.

Back to Early Access:
Frankly, that system is a f*ing cesspool at the moment. PA might be great, some other EA-games might be great, but that thing literally the least consumer-friendly business model for games. And that shows, locking at countless stalled and failed projects. It's buying a game, with the hope that it gets finished via sales.
Kickstarter is at least built around the idea of trust and estimations, Early Access is literally gambling to get enough money. Nobody can predict their sales.

And extending the modell into stores, where you can't look up the current state of the game or flaws of the system? Where reviewers can't even judge the game 'because it's not yet finished'? That's a horrible idea. Even more, that's opening a whole new world of possibilities for ******* over consumers, since it creates another precedent for selling unfinished games. At least EA's getting a lot of **** over the state of BF4.
Unfinished games in stores. Why would that ever be a good thing?

The difference is EA sold Bf4 as if it were a full game, PA's box has a huge banner stating it's early access.

That's the point. The banner does not excuse throwing away principles. And this isn't just about EA. Think ahead, this is only steams thing. In stores, every single little publisher or even dev could make it's own Early Access-thing.

Buying games would be like walking through a minefield. That is the reason we need standards, like 'you don't send unfinished games into retail'.

How does it not? It's clearly stating it's in development, aka, not finished. How is that any different from a digital version? Please, elaborate.

Where are we getting these morales from, anyhow? Who says you can't sell a product, labeled explicitly as still being in development? And why is it okay to sell it in the digital platform, yet horribly wrong in the physical platform?

I'd like to discuss with you, but i already more or less answered most of these questions.

And were this March 2013 and he was complaining about Steam, then no problem. But it's not and he's not.

You say that 2+ millions aren't enough for this size of a project, and I've heard this *excuse* before.

I was willing to accept it, but in that video Mavor himself says that they had been careful in asking the money they needed to complete the core of the game. Stretched goals weren't revealed yet, since they did not know if they had the budget for that. But they wanted to implement a complete naval roaster within the basic game (for obvious gameplay reasons - random planets might have lot of water).

In any case, the basic game should have been financed by the initial 900.000 USD, that have been pledged on Kickstarter. He also says that they will be able to complete the game within two years, 'cos that's how they do things.

That's Mavor to say it, not a random user of this forum. This for me, at this stage, change things pretty much. For me it is very important that people who asked my money will honour their promises.

I'd argue uber have released the core game from the kickstarter and within the timeframe of 2 years... The game at beta launch fulfilled that goal though. What is taking longer imo is the stretch goals. Uber didn't ask for nearly enough extra for those, still everything is in the game.

Meh, i fear i have to intercept here. Even so its theoretically there, the current form of the game does not hit the promises. You cant make a kickstarterthing, then implement the stuff in the worst and not-fun to play there it (what pretty much sums up naval and orbital at the moment), and then state "Well, they held their promises" -
And that is no excuses why elementary mechanics like pathfinding are deeply flawed. Besides the gameplayfailures. They promised this game as actionheavy (it IS supposed to be the successor of TA and FA, after all), but right now, there is probably no other RTS where are more downtimes, stretched time where nothing happens.

Play some 1 v 1 vs me and we'll see about those 'downtimes'.... Uber have made an open system, and it is quite possible to design poor maps that result in slow play. That isn't their fault though, and personally I'd rather have a flexible open ended system than one that forces the 'optimal' style of play due to a few people being dumb with what they are doing with it.

As for the path-finding, it's pretty good now. There were real problems with it in late Gamma (just after the switch in systems from a 2d based map to full 3D), however those are pretty much all resolved. A few units getting stuck occasionally is not the same as broken path finding, I've been playing the game lots lately and not really run into much pathing problems even on planets with trees or lots of rocks and so on, so I don't think your being fair here.

I agree balance of naval and orbital needs adjusting, but poor balance is not the same as a fundamental floor in the game, and many of the various balance mods correct these problems so this is fully resolvable. You mention TA and SupCom as shining examples, however being an older community member I remember BOTH games from release. The 1.0 version of TA had atrocious balance, and the same is true for SupCom1. It took multiple patches on both games after release to get them to a good playable state. SupCom FA was somewhat better but then that was the second iteration of the game so had a solid base to work on. PA is a new game, it may be the 'spiritual successor' however it isn't a direct sequel to either series.

I accept that PA has some problems, and some features (offline, saves etc) should have been in before they released. That isn't the same as saying the core game is broken (it isn't). You may well want other things (as in your suggestions) however that sounds like a different game to me. It may well be possible on the engine and might get added in future but you can't criticize Uber for following their plan imo.

Then I would say that you may want to watch the interview once again. Specially the first 15 minutes.

I'm not really sure I get your point? Uber were a bit over optimistic at the outset of a significant project... They've still delivered the majority of what they set out to, and they're still working on the game. The kickstarter funded major project is still pretty new, many projects wind up going nowhere, that really isn't the case with pa.

My point is that I've read so many times how 2 million USD gathered from Kickstarter have never been meant to be sufficient to complete the game. It has been written so often that even I myself know it. And I believed it.

But the interview given to TotalBiscuit disproves it. Back during the Kickstarter campaign Mavor himself said that 900k had to be enough 'cos they weren't going to make the same mistake other developers made, in other words to ask too little money. He was genuinely convinced that 900k were enough.

Stretched goals had to be financed with the extra budget over the 900k baseline. Mavor also said that he was confident to be able to complete the game within 2 years, and that the stretched goals weren't going to affect development time, 'cos more money simply meant more people working at the same time.

Ok, so they clearly screwed things up. It's in the video, how can you deny it?

There is no much of a shame in making mistakes and trying to get things straight as much as possible. That would be kinda' ok. Unfortunately is not what Uber is doing. Their lack of a good/transparent communication is another undeniable fact.

I am frankly not fine with the dev now saying that the game is what they envisioned for. Because it is not. I like this game, but it seems to me that people in here (and at Uber) have a very short memory.

If this is not an issue for you, very well. I feel a bit sorry for you, 'cos you will be fooled again and again in Life. But that's your choice.

There are plenty of titles (specially on Steam) that I'm eager to put my hands on. And it's very unlikely that I will ever support a videogame on Kickstarter, neither in Early Access on Steam.

That phase for me is closed. They need to get their money from someone else, and show me the final product before I'll buy it. Specially Uber, 'cos at today they lost my trust.

As mentioned before or in other threads, people like u which are saying "hey 1on1 on a small planet is completely fine" are not to be taken seriously. It was one of the big goals for this game to have huge fights on many planets. If the only acceptable way for this game is somehow to be played on one planet and a 1on1, then sorry, i go back into my Supcom corner, because i dont give much if theres only one planet, and Supcom has couple of reasons ot be played instead of a 1on1 on a small planet in PA. And sorry, but when i check out multiplayergames about PA, when people starting sitting on their planets like hens on their eggs waiting for their orbitalsnipe to be ready, that are the downtimes im talking about. Sorry, but the game you want to play is not what PA was supposed to be, talk about that somewhere else.
Yeah okay, if the real Pathfinding problems have been solved its okay, because i didnt touch PA for like a month because it was in an unplayable state.
I wonder why people especially ride on the savegame/offline part. I personally dont care bout that one tiniest bit.

The game plays fine on multi planets, especially in teams with multi planet spawns as that negates the orbital stalemate you can get. How well or badly pa plays is entirely down to the config of the map.. watch the clan wars 4 v 4 games if you need proof, I've even invited you to play some team games with us, not sure what else I can do. Also 1 v 1 doesn't have to mean small planet

All this video proves, is what Uber thought at the outset of the project before they did anything...

What precisely does the game lack from the core features? The game plays across multiple planets, you can smash them, blow them up with the metal planet, you can mine gas giants, you have orbital, naval as well as land and air. The game deliveres what it promised, albeit there are still balance tweaks needed and the server side can lag a bit in large games (but be aware I've been playing alot of 4 v 4 games recently to practice for the clan wars and the performance has been much better of late, they're working on this stuff).

I really don't understand this attitude of "they mentioned X 2 years ago in a random interview I've now been able to dig up and it isn't *exactly* as they said it would be so I'm angry"? Seriously?!

I develop products for a living (I actually run my own company) and I'm very aware that things change espetially when working on something complex. That is the nature of a Kickstarter project. I agree I think you need to avoid kickstarter or any other 'early access' type deal for sure, you are obviously far to inflexible to cope when detials change, and with anything like this things will and do change on a regular basis.

You've said youself you enjoy the game, you have 2 options at this point:

1: Look at *what we actually have* and *if you actually enjoy it*. If you like it then great, play the game theres still more to come. If you don't like it, play something else, maybe check it out again in a few months after it's been patched again.

2: Look at *what you think you should or could have had* get angry about that and be miserable.

I mean if there is a problem with the game, instead of combing through old videos to try and catch Uber out, why not create a constructive thread, explain whats wrong (in a calm and reasonable mannor) and maybe even make a few suggestions on ways forward. Uber do read this stuff and have implemented a number of things requested or suggested on this forum which is more than many developers do. If Uber don't deal with it directly one of the many tallented modders may well give it a go (I'd highly reccomend trying out some of balance mods available for example).

Constructive critism and debate is a good thing and Uber do engage in those sorts of discussions, doing a 'witch hunt' to find a problem and blame someone isn't helpful and is precisely why they've been avioding communicating with us as much.